Examining the relationship between schools' social capital levels and teachers' work motivation

The purpose of this research is to examine the social capital levels of schools and teachers' motivation perceptions and the relationships between them. Determining the social capital levels of schools and teachers' motivations has been deemed important for school administrators, teachers and other education stakeholders. This research is a quantitative research and the relational screening model has been used as the research model in the screening models. The universe of this research consists of teachers working in schools affiliated with the Isparta Provincial Directorate of National Education. The sample of the research consists of 400 teachers who were selected from this universe by simple random sampling method and participated in the research voluntarily. In this research, the teachers'; "Personal Information Form" was used to determine demographic characteristics such as age, gender, seniority, education status, branch, school type, location of the school, satisfaction level with the school, "Social Capital Scale in Schools" developed by Polatcan (2017) to determine the social capital level of schools, and "Work Motivation Scale" developed by Mottaz (1985) and adapted to Turkish by Ertan (2008) to determine the motivation levels of teachers. The analysis of the data obtained for the research was carried out with the help of SPPS Statistics 23 package program. Descriptive statistics (frequency, mean, standard deviation, etc.) were used to examine how the social capital levels of schools and motivation levels of teachers were distributed depending on demographic variables. Then, it was examined whether the scores obtained from the scales showed a normal distribution and whether they differed according to some variables. In case the data were normally distributed, t-test and one-way ANOVA test were used for independent samples from parametric tests. In case of non-normal distribution of data, Mann Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis H test from non-parametric tests were used. In case of normal distribution, Pearson correlation coefficient was used to determine the relationship between independent variables of the study and in case of non-normal distribution, Spearman Brown rank difference correlation coefficient was used. Analysis of research findings showed that total scores of social capital levels of female teachers were higher than total scores of social capital levels of male teachers. It was concluded that social capital levels of schools did not show a significant difference according to teachers' education status, branches, seniority, and place of duty. On the other hand, it was concluded that social capital levels of teachers showed a significant difference according to age, type of institution they worked in and satisfaction with the institution they worked in. Again, when motivation levels of teachers were analyzed in the study, it was concluded that total scores of motivation levels of female teachers were higher than total scores of motivation levels of male teachers. It was concluded that motivation levels of teachers did not show a significant difference according to age, education status, branches, seniority, and place of duty. On the other hand, motivations of teachers; It was concluded that there was a significant difference according to the type of institution they worked in and their satisfaction with the institution they worked in. Finally, it was concluded that there was a high level and positive relationship between the social capital levels of schools and the work motivation of teachers. Key Words: Motivation, School, Social Capital, Teacher, Teacher Motivation