Introduction
Leadership has an important place in all organizations including school organizations. The leadership role of educational administrators has become even more critical with the advent of a modern management approach. A school manager who aspires to enhance his or her school in line with his or her objectives is obliged to be a leader in order to achieve an effective management (Kaya, 1993). The leadership of a school principal is a significant factor for the provision of education and training in schools. The leadership orientation of a school principal has either a director an indirect impact on the effectiveness level of his or her school; therefore, the determination of the leadership orientations of school principals forms the basis of the study.
Method
The study is a descriptive study which aims to determine the perception levels of the teachers at secondary schools towards the leadership orientations of their school principals. To this end, the study was utilized the general survey model, which is one of the survey models. The population of the study consisted of the teachers who serve in anatolian high schools, technical high schools and religious high schools in Çanakkale. Stratified sampling method was utilized in specifying the research sample. The sample of the study was a total of 251 teachers working in five different districts.As the data collection tool, the study was used the “Leadership Orientations Scale”. Among descriptive statistical methods, the techniques of arithmetic mean, standard deviation, frequency and percentage, were utilized for the analysis of the data. The study was performed t-test and one-way analysis of variance in order to determine whether the perceptions of teachers vary significantly across the specified variables and Tukey test in order to find the sources of variation. The significance level of the study for statistical analysis was set at p≤0.05.
Findings
The analyses indicated that the perceptions of the teachers towards the leadership orientations of their school principals were in “good” level. The study found that the teachers held perception towards the dimension of human resources leadership in the highest level, followed by those towards the dimension of structural leadership and then those towards the dimension of political leadership. The teachers held perceptions towards the dimension of symbolic leadership in the lowest level. The study found out that the female teachers perceive their principals as a structural leader and a political leader more than the male teachers. Besides, the perceptions of the teachers at the Anatolian high schools and technical high schools towards each of all the four leadership orientations were founded to be more positive than those of the teachers at religious vocational high schools.
Conclusion
In regard to the findings on the perceptions of teachers towards the leadership orientations, it can be stated that the teachers are of the opinion that their principals employ all of the four leadership orientations in an effective way. In the study, the perceptions of the female teachers towards the dimensions of structural leadership and political leadership were found to be more positive than those of the male teachers. Accordingly, the perception levels of the female teachers towards the dimension of structural leadership, which are higher than those of the male teachers, may be an indicator that the female teachers attach more importance than the male teachers to the bureaucratic elements at theirs chools, such as chain of command, division of labor. The perception levels of the female teachers towards the dimension of political leadership, which are more positive than those of the male teachers, may be an indicator that unlike the male teachers, the female teachers believe that their principals are more successful in persuading the people with opposing views and more talented in acting in a political way.
In the study, the perceptions of the teachers at the Anatolian high schools and technical high schools towards each of all the four leadership orientations were found to be more positive than those of the teachers at religious vocational high schools, which may be an indicator that, the teachers at the Anatolian high schools and technical high schools describe their principals as a structural leader, a human resources leader, a political leader and a symbolic leader more than the teachers at religious vocational high schools. The factors such as that the Anatolian high schools and technical high school are more favored and larger schools than religious vocational high schools, and that the organizational culture of these schools is more well-established compared to religious vocational high schools, may be influential in the perception of the teachers towards their principals as a leader in a positive way.
