Teachers' Views on the Communication Skills of School Administrators: A Mixed Method Research

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to find out the teachers’ views on the communication skills of school administrators through a mixed methods design. The quantitative data of the study were obtained from 368, and the qualitative data were obtained from 20 teachers working in primary, secondary and high schools in Turkey. The data were collected via the "Interpersonal Communication Skills Scale of Primary School Administrators" developed by Şahin (2007) and through an interview form developed by the researchers. For the analysis of the quantitative data, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, t-test and one-way analysis of variance were applied as a content analysis was carried out in the analysis of qualitative data. When the results were examined, it was observed that the communication skills of the school administrators were at a high level and it was revealed that their communication skills were at the highest level in the dimension of "giving confidence", while it was at the lowest level in the dimension of "giving feedback". There are significant differences in the communication skill levels of school administrators considering the variables of branch, teachers' tenure at school, school type and number of teachers.

Keywords

• Teacher
• School administrator
• Communication skills
• Communication barriers

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