Effects of the Peer-Assisted Leadership Program on Professional Isolation and Informal Networks of Educational Managers from Two Quebec School Districts.

This paper presents findings of a study that investigated the effects of the peer-assisted leadership program (PAL), a program created at Far West Laboratory, on the networks and professional isolation of educational managers. A one-group pretest-posttest design (Campbell and Stanley 1966) was used to test the hypotheses, which expected that PAL would reduce professional isolation and enhance the extent of informal communication networks. The subjects included 41 educational managers from two school districts in Quebec. The first PAL cohort (1993-94) consisted of 16 managers from a suburban school district. The second group (1994-95) was comprised of 25 managers from a rural district from the northern part of Quebec (Canada). The study used the Echelle de Solitude de l'Universite Laval (ESUL) (De Grace, Joshi, and Pelletier 1993), a validated French version of the UCLA loneliness scale (Russell, Peplau, and Cutrona 1980), to assess isolation. A sociometric questionnaire was also administered to assess subjects' informal networks. Findings indicate that PAL significantly reduced professional isolation without greatly enhancing the extent of participants' communication networks. Two tables are included. (Contains 35 references.) (LMI)