Teachers' Views On School Principals’ Servant Leadership Behaviors: A Mixed Method Study

Abstract

In this study, it was aimed to determine the opinions of the teachers working in secondary schools about the servant leadership behaviors of the school principals. Combination (diversity) design was used in the research which was carried out by using the mixed method, a combination of both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Accordingly, the scale was applied to 392 teachers determined by simple random sampling method in center of Van and interviews were made with 13 teachers who participated in the quantitative dimension of the research. The Servant Leadership Behaviors Scale (OMHLDÖ) of School Principals developed by Ekinci (2015) was used to collect the quantitative data of the research. The qualitative data of the research was collected through a semi-structured interview form created by taking into account the dimensions in the quantitative measurement tool. In the analysis of quantitative data of the study descriptive statistics and in the analysis of qualitative data descriptive analysis method were used. As the result of the quantitative dimension of the research, the teachers stated that school principals often exhibited servant leadership behaviors in the sub-dimensions of altruistic behavior, empathy, justice, honesty and humility. However, in the qualitative dimension of the research the teachers stated that the school principals did not exhibit adequate level of servant leadership behaviors in the sub-dimensions of altruistic behavior, empathy, justice, honesty and humility. In this context, it was concluded that there is no complete parallelism between the qualitative findings and the quantitative findings. Based on the findings, it can be suggested that school principals should have a more service oriented leadership approach for teachers.