Relation between humour styles of school administrators and their levels of motivating teachers

Purpose of this study is; to determine relation between humour styles of school administrators and their levels of motivating teachers. On this study, school administrators' humour styles are determined according to teachers' view and motivation levels of these behaviors on teachers are attempted to be determined. The research is in the survey model form. The primary and high school teacher working in Üsküdar, İstanbul constitutes the target population of the research. 364 teachers, chosen by rational member sampling method, constitute the sampling of the research. T o gather the data of the research, "Humour Senses Questionnaire" and "Teacher Motivation Survey" were used. According to the findings obtained, the teachers think that the school managers often show behavior to motivate the teachers in all aspects. The teachers working in primary and high schools think that the schools managers use rarely ironical humour, repudiativehumour and non-humorous humour, sometimes producting social humour, and often affirmative humour. It's observed that male teachers think that their manager is showing his/her "denying" and "non-humorous" humour style, more frequently than female teachers. Classroom teachers state that managers show more sarcastic humour style than branch teachers. Teachers with lower seniority, state that school managers use humour more and it can be said that as teacher's seniority rise, their ability to discern "approving", "productive social" and "denying" humour styles of school managers falls. Along with classroom teachers and branch teachers stating that they both agree on the decision in most of the times, it was observed that branch teachers' perception on agreeing on the decision was higher than classroom teachers. We came to conclusion that teachers with lower seniorities have stronger opinions towards managers' motivational actions. It can be said that married teachers are able to discern school managers' needs for motivational actions, recognizing personal differences and understanding sub-levels of attitude and behaviour more than single teachers. In addition, it was seen that there is a negative and medium level relation between the managers' ironical, repudiative and non-humorous styles and the all aspects of the motivation behaviors of the teachers, and that there is a positive and medium level relation between the managers' affirmative, productive social styles and the all aspects of the motivation behaviors of the teachers. Key Words: humour, motivation, humour styles , school managers, teachers