The relationship between the leadership styles of female school managers and the power distance of teachers according to teachers' opinions

The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between the leadership styles of female school principals and the perceived power distance of teachers. The research was designed with the relational scanning model. The universe of the research consists of 1982 teachers working in schools with female school principals in Muğla in the 2021-2022 academic year. The sample of the study consists of 378 teachers selected from the population using the disproportionate cluster sampling technique. The data of the study were collected with the Leadership Styles Scale and the Organizational Power Distance Scale. In the analysis of the data, percentage, frequency, standard deviation and mean analyzes were used for descriptive analyses. In addition, statistics such as t- test and Anova were used to compare the averages. In addition, multiple regression analysis was performed to determine the predictive relationship between the two variables. According to the results of the research, female school principals are highly transformational; It has been seen that he has a medium level follower and a low level liberating leadership style. The transformational leadership perceptions of female teachers towards female school principals are higher than male teachers; According to the age level, it was determined that the transformational leadership perceptions of the teachers in the 50 and older group were higher than the teachers in the other age group. In addition, it was observed that the perceptions of undergraduate teachers about the transformational leadership characteristics of female school principals were higher than those of postgraduate teachers. It was found that teachers with a seniority of 26 years or more perceived the transformational leadership characteristics of female school principals at the highest level and teachers with a seniority of 16-20 years perceived the lowest level; According to the school type, it was concluded that kindergarten teachers adopted the transformational leadership style of female administrators more compared to primary, secondary and high school teachers, and paid teachers perceived female administrators as having more transformational leadership characteristics compared to contracted and permanent teachers. When the organizational power distance perceptions of teachers are examined; In schools where female school principals work, teachers' perceptions of accepting power and consenting to power are high, while the perceptions of using power instrumentally and legitimizing power are low. 20-29 age group teachers' perceptions of using power instrumentally and legitimizing power are significantly higher than teachers in other age groups; It has been stated that the perceptions of accepting power, using power instrumentally, legitimizing power and accepting power are higher than those of senior teachers. It was concluded that contract teachers' perceptions of legitimating power were significantly higher than permanent teachers, and teachers who worked for 5 or more years with their administrators had more perceptions of accepting power than those who worked for less. Keywords: women executives, school administration, leadership styles, powerdistance, teachers.