THE EFFECT OF PERSONAL AND SOCIAL DETERMINANTS ON TEACHER ASSOCIATIONLEADERS STATED INTENTION TO SUPPORT THE CONVERSION OF PUBLIC-SCHOOLS TO PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS

Past efforts investigating teacher association attitudes toward charte r schools have contributed little to explaining teacher association le aders' disposition to support or not support the charter school moveme nt. By focusing directly on respondents' behavioral intention, the the ory of reasoned action was used to investigate whether personal outcom es or social influencing factors had a greater influence on associatio n teacher leaders' behavioral intention to support the conversion of p ublic schools to public charter schools. While association leaders rep orted their decision to perform or not perform the criterion (behavior al intention) was based primarily on the evaluative component, finding s showed that the respondents' attitude was poorly grounded in the sev en personal belief statements presented in this study. One explanation why the belief statements were not salient for respondents may be due to a lack of information or exposure respondents may have had with ch arter schools.