Leadership skills and abilities, professional attributes, and teaching effectiveness in athletic training clinical instructors.

摘要

This study validated an evaluation tool used to identify leadership skills and abilities in athletic training clinical instructors. Two groups of subjects, 31 students/23 alumni, and 41 clinical instructors composed the sample. The two sample groups took an identical 50-item survey evaluating leadership skills and clinical teaching effectiveness. The student/alumni group identified leadership skills, abilities, professional attitudes and teaching effectiveness in clinical instructors with whom they worked. The clinical instructors performed a self-evaluation identifying the same constructs, as did the student sample. The five leadership variables investigated included professional attitudes, characteristics of effective leaders, communication skills, and teaching abilities and attitudes and personal attributes. Both the students' and clinical instructors' scales for the five leadership variables provided evidence of reliability and its validity was supported. The five leadership variables, collectively, did predict teacher effectiveness; however, when analyzing them separately, professional attitudes, characteristics of effective leaders and communication skills proved to be the strongest predictors of teacher effectiveness. Further findings demonstrated that leadership courses taken by clinical instructors did influence professional attitudes. The final significant factor was that clinical instructors and students both felt the five leadership variable were predictive for teacher effectiveness; however, the two groups did not view the leadership variables the same context.