# Methods Section Jethro Jones ## Assignment Directions The methods section will be part of your final proposal due at the end of the semester. Using the research questions you have decided upon, the methods section should explain what methods you will use to answer the research question(s). If you have multiple questions, you might be using multiple methods. You will need to describe the methods used to answer each question.  The methods submission should include: - Research questions - Research design - If applicable: - Discussion of sample - Discussion of instruments. You are not required to submit interview or survey questions but may if you would like feedback.  - Data analysis strategy Page Limit: There is no required number of pages. Your final proposal should be 15 to 20 pages. This is part of that proposal. It should be long enough to adequately describe the methodology you would use to answer your research question(s). ## Methods ### Research Question How do principals feel about their current state of leadership development after coaching in a mastermind program, compared to before participation in a mastermind program? ### Research Design I'm going to survey practicing principals on their perception of the value of their professional development experiences in a mastermind setting compared to their perceptions of professional development before being involved in a mastermind setting. This Sustained Professional Development Survey is a Retrospective Pre-Post (RPP) test instrument. It is designed and delivered in Google Forms to keep it simple and familiar since most principals are already familiar with Google Forms. A mastermind is a specific approach to professional development that is focused on gathering a few people together (virtually or in person) over a regular period of time to meet and discuss present issues. Gerber defines this as working on your school instead of just working in your school (Gerber, 1995). The term mastermind was popularized by Napolean Hill in the book The Law of Success in 1928, and has been adopted in business environments. Hill talks about the Master Mind Alliance and "how it’s a friendly alliance among people to support each other with their plans" (Greenstreet, n.d.). Perhaps the closes corollary in education is the Professional Learning Community as advocated by DuFour et al (2010) in which they define a PLC as an "ongoing process in which educators work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve." The major difference between the two is that the mastermind is a choice group you enter into, to engage in friendly discourse, support, and brainstorming, while the PLC is an assigned group that you are placed into to focus on student outcomes. Masterminds are a powerful force because everyone chooses to be there and chooses to engage in the conversation. This self-selection bias will most likely prove out in the survey results as well. However, this research is valuable because the concept of a mastermind for school principals is a relatively new one. As far as I know, I am the first person to explicitly use this approach in a coaching practice, starting in 2016. ### Sample The sample that I will use will be a convenience sample of principals who have been clients of mine in the masterminds that I have run, and clients of my friends who also run masterminds for principals. I will focus on this sample because this idea of a mastermind is so new to education that not many other people are doing it. As I have pioneered this professional development practice in education, I already know almost everyone who is running a mastermind and have a good enough relationship with them that I can ask them to send this survey to their current and former clients. Furthermore, mastermind leaders will be incentivized to pursue this because I will share the results with them through this dissertation and they will be able to use it in their marketing efforts as well. In order to gather perceptions on the wider principal audience, I will also use my 4500-person following on the social media site, X (neé Twitter) and 3500-member email list to survey principals who may be in a mastermind that I don’t know about, yet. Again, because this is a convenience sample, there is likely bias inherent in that my audience likely knows about a mastermind. Participants will self-select to continue the conversation to participate in the qualitative aspect of this study. This sample period will run during principals month, in October to gather data at a time when principals are feeling appreciated and will possibly feel more generous with their time and attention. ### Instruments The Sustained Professional Development Survey comprises 10 Likert-based sets of questions and three open-ended questions that will allow principals to respond in an open-ended manner. At the conclusion of the survey, respondents will be able to schedule a time to meet with me for a short 15-minute screening interview to discuss the findings and see if there is a powerful story behind their responses. I will use a structured interview process to learn their perceptions about sustainable leadership development and whether their needs are being met in their current offerings of professional development. While I will likely interview many respondents, I will limit my pool of qualitative studies to keep it manageable to no more than 15 case studies chosen from the 15 minute interviewees. I plan to limit it to powerful stories of great impact from the experiences they have had to share the effect of the mastermind experience on leadership development using analytic induction. There are a lot of different ways we can ask questions and different things we can focus on. The role of a principal is an "exquisitely intellectual enterprise" and it requires "responses that are not patterned, judgements that are delicately thoughtful and many times perhaps, quite agonizing" (Roberts, 1991). While many studies focus on instructional leadership I am interested in principals' ability to lead change in their schools, which requires different skills than instructional leadership. ### The Questions The following questions will use a Likert scale where 1 represents Strongly Disagree and 7 represents strongly agree. The midpoint 4 represents neither agree nor disagree. I'm intentionally leaving off agree and disagree and variants. As mentioned above, there will be two parts to each question, where the principals will respond to their perceptions BEFORE participating in a mastermind and AFTER participating in a mastermind. After obtaining consent the participants will be given the following Likert scale questions: 1. BEFORE MASTERMIND: My district-provided regular PD helps me develop the leadership skills necessary to lead change in my building. 2. AFTER MASTERMIND: My district-provided regular PD helps me develop the leadership skills necessary to lead change in my building. 3. BEFORE: My personal professional development has mostly been classes offered through a university. 4. AFTER: My personal professional development has mostly been classes offered through a university. 5. BEFORE: Attending state and national conferences has been the most beneficial professional development for me. 6. AFTER: Attending state and national conferences has been the most beneficial professional development for me. 7. BEFORE: I attend networking events in my community regularly 8. AFTER: I attend networking events in my community regularly 9. BEFORE: The mastermind has been the most beneficial professional development for me. 10. AFTER: The mastermind has been the most beneficial professional development for me. 11. BEFORE: I got what I needed from the mastermind and have no plans to stay in or rejoin a mastermind 12. AFTER: I got what I needed from the mastermind and have no plans to stay in or rejoin a mastermind 13. BEFORE: I know how to lead change efforts at my school 14. AFTER: I know how to lead change efforts at my school 15. BEFORE: I am excellent at having difficult conversations with staff 16. AFTER: I am excellent at having difficult conversations with staff 17. BEFORE: I am excellent at having difficult conversations with supervisors 18. AFTER: I am excellent at having difficult conversations with supervisors 19. BEFORE: I know how to proactively plan for difficult situations. 20. AFTER: I know how to proactively plan for difficult situations. ### Open Ended Questions At the completion of the Likert scale questions above, participants will be asked the following open-ended questions. 1. What caused you to join a mastermind in the first place? 2. What is the single biggest benefit you have received from joining a mastermind? 3. Please describe how the makeup of the group you were/are in has helped you specifically. ### Data analysis While I'm still learning about data analysis, this section will need some editing in the future. For the qualitative review, I'm planning to use analytic induction, which "is a method for generating causal explanations of phenomena through the intensive analysis of a small number of cases" (Thirlby, 2022). I'll take 6-10 of the respondents and use analytic induction to determine what commonalities we can find between them that will help tell the story of why a mastermind is a powerful method of professional development. For the quantitative review of the qualitative responses, I'm interested in trying a newer approach, and using Artificial Intelligence to perform content analysis of open-ended responses. I can use statistics to gain insight after coding, but am interested in trying something more modern: "the use of open collection methods such as open-ended questions or interviews facilitates a better expression of ideas among students, allowing researchers to gain a deeper understanding of the relevant issue" (Álvarez-Álvarez & Falcon, 2023). This approach of not limiting responses to only Likert scale-type questions will hopefully result in principals being more honest about what they experience. The qualitative questions are chosen for a specific purpose. The first question, what caused you to join a mastermind is intended to have an open-ended response, with mostly known answers. The second question about the single biggest benefit, is designed to elicit a 1-2 word (or short sentence) response which will be much clearer for the content analysis done by AI piece. Finally, the third question is going to a get a variety of responses based on the different groups that participants are in based on their perceptions of their peers and the benefit, or lack thereof, that they received. This should lead to a more complex content analysis that will hopefully test the limits and capabilities of the AI.