Scout Educators' Psychological Type and Their Leader Behaviors

Author: Yih-Nan Lee(Department of Civic and Moral Education, National Taiwan Normal University)

Abstract：

Research on leadership has found that the personal characteristics are related to leadership outcome only in the context of specific situations. And more recent studies emphasized on some basic considerations of per-sonality constraints. Since eductors in scout education usually assume the leadership in outdoor education, scout troop activities, and student develop-ment within the school system, it is important to assess their personal and professional characteristics to facilitate the effectiveness of the leadership. It is the purpose of the study to identify the professional groups' psycho-logical type, vocational interest and motivation, and their professional expe-rience in scouting leadership for better teacher-leader programming.
The study, taken in last two years, has involved 177 college students with scout education major and 57 teachers in short -term scouting cours-es. Four areas of measurement were included: (1) scout leader's profession-al experiences (2) psychological type inventory, (3) vocational interest in-ventory, and (4) effective leader's behavior. All these materials were either made or modified by this suthor. All measurements were administered to the sample in class hours. Reliability was tested with a combination of test-retest and parallel-forms methods. The data were processed through SPSS PC; the procedures included distribution, t-test, chi square, correlation, and factor analysis. Important findings were presented in tables and further discussed in the article.
Major findings indicated that there was no significant difference be-tween male and female groups in psychological type, but groups with different class levels did show special preferences in types, leader's attitudes and behaviors. The psychological types were correlated with types of voca-tional interest in the student group. The discrepancy between the profes-sional attitudes and psychological types also existed in teacher groups. Based on the findings, the study presents the effective leader training methods for the groups and suggests more sensor training and outdoor adven-ture programs be provided for the professional who articulates the active and reflective experiences of leadership.

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