Analysis of the relationship between the leadership styles perceived by the early childhood teachers in their administrators and their own job satisfaction level

The purpose of this research is to analyze the relationship between the leadership styles perceived by early childhood teachers in their administrators and their own job satisfaction levels. In accordance with this purpose, the opinions of the early childhood teachers participating in the research about the leadership style characteristics of the principals of the educational institutions they work and the job satisfaction levels of the teachers were taken. This research was designed as a descriptive and relational research and was conducted using mixed method. The population of the research consists of 1586 early childhood teachers working in official preschools and kindergartens in the central districts of Diyarbakır province during the 2022-2023 academic year. Also, the sample of the research consists of 302 number of early childhood teachers. Leadership Style Scale of School Principals developed by Akan, Yıldırım and Yalçın (2014) and Minnesota Job Satisfaction Scale developed by Weiss, England, David and Loffguist (1967) and translated into Turkish by Baycan (1985) were used as quantitative data collection tools in the research. Also a semi-structured interview form with six questions was used to collect qualitative data and a personal information form was used to collect demographic information of early childhood teachers. The analysis of the quantitative data was made using descriptive statistics and SPSS 26.0 package program consisting of Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal-Wallis H and Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient tests were applied. In qualitative data analysis, the content analysis method was preferred. As a result of the research, it has been revealed that school administrators exhibit transactional leadership style the most according to early childhood teacher perceptions. When the job satisfaction levels of the early childhood teachers were examined, it was found that their professional satisfaction was moderate. When the relationship between transformational leadership and teachers' internal job satisfaction level is examined, there is a positive, significant and weak relationship. On the other hand, there is a positive, significant and high level of relationship between the level of external job satisfaction and transformational leadership style. When we look at the relationship between laissez-faire and transactional leadership styles and teachers' internal job satisfaction levels, a negative, meaningful and very low relationship is seen. Also, there is a negative and high level of relationship between laissez-faire leadership style and teachers' external job satisfaction level; and a negative and medium level of relationship between the transactional leadership style and teachers' external job satisfaction. In addition, the data obtained from the semi-structured interviews with early childhood teachers also support quantitative dimension data of the research.