The relationship between school administrators’ leadership style and physical education teachers’ organizational commitment

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the relationship between school administrators’ leadership style and physical education teachers’ organizational commitment.

The population of the study comprised 291 physical education teachers working in Sakarya and Bartın cities in 2009-2010 education year. In order to identify school administrators transformational and procedural leadership styles, Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire 5-x short (MLQ) was used. Organizational Commitment Scale which was developed by Balay was used to measure the organizational commitment levels of physical education teachers (Balay, 2000a & Balay, 2000b). In order to analyze the data collected for the study, several statistical techniques such as descriptive statistical analyses, variance analysis, correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis were used.

As a result of the study, according to physical education teachers’ perceptions, school administrators “usually” demonstrate transformational leadership behaviors and “sometimes” demonstrate procedural leadership behaviors. Physical education teachers show lower organizational commitment in the compliance sub-dimension, moderate organizational commitment in the identification sub-dimension and higher organizational commitment in the internalization sub-dimension.

When sub-dimensions of physical education teachers’ organizational commitment and sub-dimensions of schools administrators’ leadership styles are examined, transformational leadership has 1-a negative moderate significant relationship with adaptation, 2-a positive moderate significant relationship with identification and 3-a positive high significant relationship with internalization. School administrators’ procedural leadership sub-dimension has a positive high significant relationship with only internalization sub-dimension of physical education teachers’ organizational commitment.