Examination of teachers' perceptions on positive psychological capital

Positive psychology is an approach which focuses on revealing the positive aspects of the individuals' rather than their negative aspects and it became core of focus for the works in that context after World War II. Positive psychological capital, which took its basics from the approaches of positive psychology and positive organizational behavior, is a kind of capital which is defined as a set of qualities that affect the increase of the employee productivity positively. The impact of positive psychological capital on employee productivity and organizational behavior is great. The main aim of this research is to examine the teachers' perceptions of positive psychological capital. The research is designed as mixed method. In the research, a scale was developed by the researchers to determine the perceptions of the teachers and the findings were supported by qualitative work. Some results of the qualitative work were shared with the teachers by arranging interviews. The study group of the quantitative part consists of total 1750 teachers from 15 provinces which were taken two provinces from each geographical regions and five provinces according to their development level (low, middle and high) from the sample of Turkey (as of 2014). The study group of the qualitative part is consists of 18 teachers who are working for the Ministry of National Education and at the same time doing master at the department of educational administration at Dicle University. The results of the study show that the teachers' perceptions of positive psychological capital are high; the teachers' positive psychological capital is inversely proportional to the provinces' developmental levels; marital status, seniority, age, salary satisfaction, the kind of graduated faculty and school size affect psychological capital. The cases that prevent the development of the psychological capital and necessary solutions were investigated with teacher interviews. Finally, some suggestions were made to researchers and practitioners. Keywords: Psychological Capital, Positive Psychology, Positive Organizational Behavior