Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

3-1982

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education

Major

Educational Administration and Supervision

Major Professor

C. Kenneth Tanner

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate on-the-job problem solving activities of administrators in selected Tennessee colleges and universities. An additional purpose was to design a prototype for a larger study designed to investigate the problem solving activities of a general population of adults.

The population consisted of 28 subjects with the administrative office of departmental chairman or above. One group of 14 administrators participated in Part I of the study and a second group of 14 participated in Part II of the study.

The subjects in Part I were interviewed about two administrative problems, one which had been solved and one which at the time of the interview was unsolved. The subjects in Part II were interviewed about hypothetical administrative problems based on the actual problems identified by the Part I subjects.

The instrumentation used to collect data was adopted from interview procedures used in studies on adult learning projects by Tough (1971) and Peters and Gordon (1974). A process tracing technique was utilized in the analysis of verbatim typed transcripts of taped interviews.

Other researchers might in the future consider examining the concept of "continuous evaluation." It is possible that individuals, when solving problems, constantly evaluate their efforts to obtain a solution. This evaluation may be an unconscious cognitive process that takes place in conjunction with other cognitive problem-solving processes.

The data revealed that the majority of administrators engaged in the following problem-solving steps: identifying the problem; clarifying the problem; recalling similar and/or former problems; a planning/action phase; and a solution/evaluation phase. This finding was for the most part consistent with those steps or phases found in the problem solving and decision-making literature.

However, there was no consistent pattern or order of proceeding through the phases by administrators. Each administrator used the same general procedure for solving both actual and hypothetical problems, although they placed more emphasis on some components and less emphasis on other components, depending on the nature of the problem involved.

Other findings included the incidence of recall of previous problem solutions in all other problem solving steps described by administrators to consider more than one alternative solution to their problems.

As a prototype for a larger study, this research pointed to the importance of probing interview questions, the need to disclose reasoning patterns associated with the problem solving process, and the need for a theory-based content analysis procedure. These implications and others were cited for further research and for theory development.

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