TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS TOWARDS THE FREQUENCY OF THE SHCOOL PRINCIPALS’ USING CONFLICT MANAGEMENT STYLES AND THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THESE STYLES

Problem: The purpose of this study was to determine general high school teachers’ perceptions towards the frequency of school principals’ conflict management styles and their effectiveness. Method: The sample of the study consisted of 362 teachers working for general high schools during 2007-2008 academic year in Izmir. The 28 item scale titled “Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory II developed by Rahim (1983) was administered in order to collect data. The data collected was analyzed by employing statistical techniques such as mean, standard deviation, the t-test, the one way analysis of variance and LSD test.Results: After analyzing the data the following results have been reached: According to the perceptions of teachers, while school principals mostly use “collaboration style , they prefer “compromise, "avoidance, “domination styles occasionally dealing with conflicts among teachers respectively. The teachers perceived that the principals use “accomodation style with minimum frequency. Teachers also perceived that the most effective conflict management style exhibited by their principals was “collaboration style, on the other hand “compromise, “avoidance and “accomodation was perceived relatively less effective but the “domination style was perceived least effective by teachers. According to the 20-29 age group of teachers’ perceptions, most effective style is “avoidance while 30-39 and 40 and over age groups emphasize “collaboration style as most effective conflict management style. The least effective style according to the 20-29 age group’s perception is “accommodation style, while 30-39 and 40 and over age groups perceive “domination style is the least effective one. The perceptions on the effectiveness of “collaboration and “accommodation styles differ according to the age groups. The group of 30-39 age sees the “collaboration style more effective than the group of 20-29. The 30-39 age group also thinks that the “accommodation style is more effective than the groups of 20-29 and 40 and over think. The perceptions of the teachers on the effectiveness of the conflict management styles differ according to their education level. The teachers who have pre-license and license education, perceive the “collaboration style as the most effective one while the teachers who have post-graduate degree perceive “avoidance is the most effective one. According to the teachers’ perceptions of pre-license and license groups, the least effective conflict management style is the “domination style while the teachers who have post-graduate degree, think the least ef