A study of opinions of professional personnel in selected East Tennessee school districts regarding professional negotiations

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which job position, sex, and individual system membership affected the opinions of teachers, principals, and central office administrators toward professional negotiations. Educators from 17 selected East Tennessee school districts having membership in the organization of Public Schools for Cooperative Research responded to Ostrander's Collective Action Scale regarding their agreement or disagreement with 33 collective action items.

Frequencies of response by job position and sex were gathered. The statistical test run for significant differences in means by job position was the analysis of variance with calculated F ratio. The statistical test run for significant differences in means by sex was the t test.

The t test of significance of differences in means was made for teachers only, principals only, and central office administrators only, in three categories of Collective Action, Goals, and Sanctions on three groups of school districts; they were negotiating in two groups and not negotiating in the other group.

The findings of this study indicated that opinions differed significantly by job position and by sex on a majority of the 33 items of Ostrander's Collective Action Scale. There were significant differences in means between job positions, the sexes, and the status of negotiating as a county district, negotiating as a special school district, or not negotiating as a special school district on the categories of Collective Action, Goals, and Sanctions.