The examination of the group perception level of administrators and teachers at elementary schools

The goal of this study is to determine whether the team perception of administrators and teachers at elementary school (the primary phase of our education system) varies according to their individual and professional features and to stress the importance of this subject. Because team-work is becoming more important and widespread, improvements and developments in teams result in important improvements in administrations and schools. This situation draws the attention of administrators and teachers to team work and increases the importance of the research in this area. The participants of the study include the elementary schools at Balçova, Gaziemir and Çiğli towns of İzmir, and all the administrators and teachers that work at these elementary schools during the academic year of 2005-2006. The number of elementary schools was 47, the number of administrators and teachers was 310 at Balçova, 706 at Çiğli, 534 at Gaziemir, in total 1550. 22 out of 47 schools that participated in the study could be reached and 438 teachers and administrators returned with scale responses. 57 of these scales belong to the administrators and 381 belong to the teachers. Group Perception Scale, a Likert type scale developed by Mualla Bilgin Aksu, Demirtaş ve Atılgan (2005) is used as a data collection tool. The 30-question scale that was applied to teachers was observed to have a Cronbach alpha confidence of 0,9355 and that applied to administrators had a Cronbach alpha confidence of 0,9320. The tool consisted of two parts. The first part had 6 questions related to teachers? and administrartors? personal features according to their gender, title, professional rank, period of assignment at schools and the latest education degree completed. The second part included 30 questions that evaluated teachers? and administratiors? perception of team work. viii In this study percentage, frequency, mean, standard deviation techniques are used, and the question of whether or not the team perception of teachers and administrators vary according to gender is analyzed by t-test for independent variables. A one-way ANOVA is conducted to test whether the team perception of teachers and administrators vary according to the institution where they graduated from, their rank, the lenght of their assignment, the size, the age and the achievement level of their schools. For pairwise comparisons, LSD tests are used. The significance level is taken to be 0.05 and two way hypotheses were formed. Following are some of the results of the study: 1. The group perception of teachers and administrators at elementary schools is observed to be high . 2. While the group perception of the elementary school administrators does not vary according to their gender, , the length of assignment at their schools, the age and the achievement of schools; a significant difference is observed due to their professional rank, the institutions where they graduated from and the size of the school where they work. 3. While the group perception of elementary school teachers varies in accordance with their gender, and achievement level of the school that they are working at, the institution where they graduated from; no significant difference is observed due to professional rank, the size, the age of the schools and the length of their assignment at schools.