NEEDS ASSESSMENT OF ACCOUNTABILITY DEVELOPMENT OF SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS UNDER SAKON NAKHON PRIMARY EDUCATIONAL SERVICE AREA OFFICE 1

Abstract

The purposes of this study were: 1) to explore the current and desirable conditions of accountability among school administrators in Sakon Nakhon Primary Educational Service Area Office 1; 2) to prioritize the need of accountability development of school administrators in Sakon Nakhon Primary Educational Service Area Office 1; and 3) to compose the guidelines for developing accountability among school administrators in Sakon Nakhon Primary Educational Service Area Office 1. The sample consisted of 327 participants, including school administrators and teachers in Sakon Nakhon Primary Educational Service Area Office 1, obtained through multi–stage random sampling. The research instruments included: 1) questionnaires assessing the current and desired conditions of accountability among school administrators, with the discriminative power from 0.63 to 0.93 and from 0.64 to 0.90, and reliability coefficients of 0.99 and 0.98, respectively; and 2) a questionnaire on approaches to developing accountability among school administrators. The statistics used for data analysis included frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, and Modified Priority Need Index.

The findings showed that the current condition of accountability among school administrators was at a high level overall, whereas the desirable condition was rated at the highest level overall; 2) the priority needs index for developing accountability among school administrators was 0.1244, which backup planning ranked the highest, followed by monitoring and evaluation, morale, shared ownership, and goal setting, respectively; and 3) the proposed guidelines consisted of one aspect, namely backup planning–encompassing planning, implementation, monitoring, and continuous improvement, respectively. The overall appropriateness and feasibility of the developed guidelines were at the highest level.