Examining the relationship between school principals' management style, school climate and teacher collaboration through structural equation modelling

The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between school principals' management styles, school climate and teacher collaboration, and to identify whether school climate plays a mediating role in the relationship between school principals' management styles and teacher collaboration. A correlational survey was adopted as the quantitative research design in this study. The "Personal Information Form," "Perceived Principal Management Style Scale," "School Climate Scale," and "Teacher Collaboration Scale" were used to collect research data.The universe of the study consists of teachers working in primary schools, secondary schools and high schools in Şırnak province and its districts during the 2024-2025 academic year while the sample consists of 539 teachers determined using the proportional cluster sampling method. IBM SPSS 26, AMOS 24, and Process Macro v4.2 SPSS programs were used to analyze the data obtained.Frequency and percentage distributions, descriptive analysis, t-test, One Way Anova, and Pearson Correlation Analyses were conducted to analyze the data. Data distribution was checked by Skewness and Kurtosis values.The research data was found to be normally distributed. In the study, a mediation model was proposed to analyze the mediating effect of the school climate between the management style of the school principals and teacher collaboration, and the designed model was tested using the Process Macro v4.2 SPSS add-on.The results revealed that teachers perceived their school principals' cooperative management style as "high," authoritarian and resistant management styles as "low," and indifferent management style as "very low." Teachers' perceptions of school climate and teacher collaboration levels were both found to be "high". It has been observed that teachers' perceptions of cooperative management style of the school principals differ significantly in terms of gender; school climate and teacher collaboration in the type of school where they work; perceptions of authoritarian management style in terms of professional seniority; and perceptions of indifferent management style in terms of length of service at their current school. It was found that cooperative management style was positively and highly correlated with both school climate and teacher collaboration; authoritarian management style was negatively and moderately correlated with both variables; while indifferent and resistant management style were found to have a high level of negative correlation with school climate and a moderate level of negative correlation with teacher collaboration.It has been determined that there is a high level of positive and meaningful correlation between teachers' perceptions of school climate and the level of teacher collaboration. As a result of the mediation analyses conducted, it was observed that school climate played a mediating role in the relationship between cooperative and indifferent management styles of principals and the teacher collaboration. However, it has been determined that the school climate does not play a mediating role in the relationship between authoritarian and resistant management styles and the teacher collaboration. Based on the research findings, it was concluded that the school principals need to adopt a more cooperative management style in order to ensure a positive school climate and a high level of teacher collaboration. In addition, it is suggested to examine the mediating roles of other organizational and managerial variables in the relationship between principals' management styles and teacher collaboration through the subsequent research.