Abstract:

This research examines whether organizational structure/patterns mediate between information overload, time pressure, educational framework and teachers' roles within the school. The main question was: Does the organizational pattern, as it is perceived by different faculty members mediate between information overload, time pressure, role, and the educational framework in which they work?

The population being studied in this research included 539 administrative teams, homeroom teachers and subject-matter teachers teaching in elementary and high schools in the Jewish public and public-religious school systems in Israel. 189 were members of administrative staff, 165 were homeroom teachers and 185 were subject-matter teachers; 66% had a BA and 34% had an MA or a higher degree. The study included 38 schools – 21 elementary (55.3%) and 17 high (44.7%). The schools were chosen randomly and had the following geographical distribution: 23 were in the central district (60.52%), 9 in the Tel Aviv district (23.68%), 3 in the southern district (7.89%), 2 in the Jerusalem district (5.26%), and one in the northern district (2.63%).

The path analysis was designed to determine whether correlations between a sense of time pressure and information overload on the one hand, and the level of educational framework (elementary/ high school) and roles on the other hand, are direct, or whether they are mediated by organizational structure. It seems then that the organizational structure variable served as a mediator for the sense of time pressure and information overload for all parameters for homeroom teachers and subject-matter teachers, but did not serve to mediate between administrative teams and use of information sources (.11) and information relevance (.10). Another finding with a strong significance was the revelation of a correlation between administrative teams and the perception of an organizational structure as systemic (.25), much more so than among homeroom and subject-matter teachers. Thus, administrative teams perceive schools as being more systemic than other groups of teachers. The key finding of this research is that teachers who perceive the organizational structure of their school to be more bureaucratic-hierarchical feel greater information overload than their counterparts who see their schools as more systemic.

Keywords:

Organizational structure, information overload, bureaucratic-hierarchical structure, time pressure, systemic structure.