Abstract:
The objectives of this research were to identify and compare the opinions of teaching staff on use of power by school administrators in the Nadee Quality Area 2 under the jurisdiction of Prachinburi Primary Educational Service Area Office 2 categorized by the experience of school administrators and the size of school. The sample used in this research consisted of 95 teaching staffs from public schools in the Nadee Quality Area 2 under the jurisdiction of Prachinburi Primary Educational Service Area Office 2. The tool used to collect data was a 5-level rating scale questionnaire with a reliability of .929. The statistics used for data analysis were mean, Standard Deviation, and ttest.
The results of the research were as follows:
1. According to the opinion of the teaching staff, the use of power by school administrators was at a high level. On the individual aspects, the use of power was at a high level on 4 aspects, these were, referent power, legitimate power, expert power, and reward power, in descending order. Coercive power was at a low level.
2. According to the opinion of the teaching staff, the overall use of power by school administrators compared between different levels of experiences was found to be different without a statistical significance. On each aspect, it was found that legitimate power, referent power, and expert power had different levels of the use of power with a statistical significance (p<.05), where administrators with 1-5 years of experience were found to use legitimate power, referent power, and expert power more than administrators with more than 5 years of experience. The use of reward power and coercive power were found to be different without a statistical significance.
3. According to the opinion of the teaching staff, the overall use of power by school administrators compared between administrators from small and medium schools were found to be different without a statistical significance. On the individual aspects, it was found that the use of reward power, legitimate power, referent power, and expert power were different between administrators from small and medium schools with a statistical significance of .05. The use of coercive power was different without a statistical significance.