The relationship of demographic variables to the perceived performance and importance of selected functions of school media specialists

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to analyze the perceptions of school media specialists of their involvement in six functions, and the importance of that involvement to their programs. The study also sought to relate these perceptions to selected background and demographic variables associated with secondary media personnel. Five hypotheses were tested using correlation analysis and one-way analysis of variance to determine if the perceptions of six functions, as held by media specialists, were related to five characteristcs of media specialists in their school settings;The six functions which were investigated were human behavior, instructional development, planning and evaluation, research, professionalism, and external cooperation. The first five functions, with definitions, were selected from the Behavioral Requirements Analysis Checklist. External cooperation was defined from ideas extracted from the literature;The five background and demographic variables were number of standards met by the center in which the media specialist worked, the size of the school district in which the media specialist worked, the location (Area Educational Agency region) of the media specialist's school, the level and type of professional training of the media specialist, and the number of years the media specialist had worked in his or her building assignment;Major conclusions of the investigation were: (1) There was no significant relationship between the extent of media center development and the perceptions of the respondents. (2) The size of the school district appeared to influence the perceptions of the subjects concerning instructional development, planning and evaluation, research, and professionalism. (3) There was a relationship between training of the subject and the subject's perceptions of instructional development, planning and evaluation, and professionalism. (4) Length of service in building assignment was related to perceptions of human behavior and instructional development. (5) Subjects did not differ significantly in their perceptions of the functions when stratified by location (AEA region).

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