Just a Leader or Servant Leader: How Do Teachers Perceive Their School Principals?

Abstract

This study aims to explore the perceptions of teachers working in state schools in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, of their school principles’ “servant leadership behaviors.” This is a quantitative study conducted in a relational screening model. The sampling of the research consists of 330 teachers working in state schools in the city center of Kahramanmaras province, Turkey, during the 2016-2017academic year. The “Servant Leadership Behavior Scale” developed by Ekinci (2015) was used as the data collection instrument in the research. The scale comprises 36 items and five sub-dimensions of altruistic behaviors, empathy, justice, integrity, and humility. In the analysis of the data, arithmetic mean, standard deviation, t-test, and ANOVA test were employed. The study revealed significant differences between theschool administrators’demographic characteristics of age, branch, seniority, and education status, and the attitudes of servant leadership. Moreover, the differentiation of teachers’ views on servant leadership skills is dependent upon the education level of the school administrator, which leads to a statistical difference between the school principals’ servant leadership behaviors and their education levels. Thus, teachers see a direct connection between the school principals’ level of education and the exhibition of more servant leadership.