The Role Expectations for the Division Director of Education of Seventh-day Adventists : As Perceived by Seven Status Groups Within the Church
type: CreativeWork
description: Problem: One of the most important and costly services provided by the Seventh-day Adventist Church is education. With a rapidly growing membership overseas and new nations sprouting up almost overnight, the need for adapting and fitting the Adventist educational mold to church school systems in these new nations is crucial. In this context, the Division Director of Education appears to play a vital part, yet his role has not been clearly delineated. It is with a view to ascertaining what his role should be, that this study has been undertaken. Method: The respondents drawn from eight overseas divisions as well as from the world headquarters of the Seventh-day Adventist church were grouped under the organizational levels (sectors) of General Conference, Division, Union, and Local, and the professions (units) of principals, pastors, and teachers. A thirty statement questionnaire so designed as to be easily answered and computer scanned, and containing a five-point scale of response covering the range from I, "strongly agree," to 5, "strongly disagree," was provided. These statements were grouped under six areas, namely, communicator and coordinator; director of personnel; educational specialist and consultant; relations with management; spiritual leader; and supervisor and evaluator. This descriptive study used three statistical procedures to aid in analyzing the data. The first, the Kendall Coefficient of Concordance W, tested the reliability within groups. The second, the Cattell Coefficient of Pattern Similarity, presented a "Gestalt" view of the inter-relationships of the group responses. The third, the median and Q test, assisted in item identification. Results: The reliability was low but statistically significant. The Gestalt view indicated a negative pattern of similarity among the group responses. The views of teachers, church administrators, educational administrators, and education secretaries compared more closely than did those of pastors, Division Direc…
abstract: Problem: One of the most important and costly services provided by the Seventh-day Adventist Church is education. With a rapidly growing membership overseas and new nations sprouting up almost overnight, the need for adapting and fitting the Adventist educational mold to church school systems in these new nations is crucial. In this context, the Division Director of Education appears to play a vital part, yet his role has not been clearly delineated. It is with a view to ascertaining what his role should be, that this study has been undertaken. Method: The respondents drawn from eight overseas divisions as well as from the world headquarters of the Seventh-day Adventist church were grouped under the organizational levels (sectors) of General Conference, Division, Union, and Local, and the professions (units) of principals, pastors, and teachers. A thirty statement questionnaire so designed as to be easily answered and computer scanned, and containing a five-point scale of response covering the range from I, "strongly agree," to 5, "strongly disagree," was provided. These statements were grouped under six areas, namely, communicator and coordinator; director of personnel; educational specialist and consultant; relations with management; spiritual leader; and supervisor and evaluator. This descriptive study used three statistical procedures to aid in analyzing the data. The first, the Kendall Coefficient of Concordance W, tested the reliability within groups. The second, the Cattell Coefficient of Pattern Similarity, presented a "Gestalt" view of the inter-relationships of the group responses. The third, the median and Q test, assisted in item identification. Results: The reliability was low but statistically significant. The Gestalt view indicated a negative pattern of similarity among the group responses. The views of teachers, church administrators, educational administrators, and education secretaries compared more closely than did those of pastors, Division Direc…
author: Gorle, Timothy Vaughan
keywords: Education, Leadership Studies
date published: 1976-01-01T08:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T00:54:11Z
provider: Andrews University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Andrews University