The relationship between the principals' leadership behaviours and the teachers' psychological capital

The purpose of study is to determine principals' leadership behaviours impact on teachers' psychological capital in public primary and secondary schools. Research population carried out in accordance with quantitative research method consisted of 13657 primary and 14868 secondary school teachers in nine districts of Ankara. Stratified sampling method was used for statistical data collection. Study was designed with single and correlational research designs. Teachers were represented by 731 participants, 361 of whom work at primary and 370 of whom work at secondary schools. "Scale (LPS)" adapted into Turkish from Kouzes and Posner's Leadership Practices Inventory by Yavuz (2010) and the "Psychological Capital Scale (PCS)" developed by Çetin (2015) were used as data tools. Data was analysed with SPSS 22.00 program. Regression analysis result indicates that principals' leadership behaviours are a significant predictor of teachers' perceptions regarding their psychological capital. Furthermore, primary school teachers' perceptions concerning their psychological capital is slightly higher than that of secondary school teachers. Research results also point out that both teachers' perceptions on principals' leadership behaviors were highest in encouraging the heart dimension and lowest in challenging the process dimension. Teachers' perceptions regarding their psychological capital were lowest in humor dimension and highest in wisdom dimension. Participants' gender, school type, seniority and educational level shows a statistically significant difference in their perceptions regarding principals' leadership behaviours. Moreover, teachers psychological capital levels in both school groups show a statistically significant difference in terms of aforementioned variables. Keywords: positive psychology, psychological capital, positive organizational behaviour, leadership, teachers, principals