A mixed-method study on the ethical leadership behaviors of secondary school administrators

The purpose of this study was to investigatethe ethical leadership behaviors of secondary school administrators through a mixed method research design. The findings obtained from quantitative data were enriched with qualitative data in the study designed with exploratory sequential mixed method. In this respect, the teachers working at Şahinbey and Şehitkâmil districts of Gaziantep province in 2016-2017 educational yearwere determined as the universe of the study. The quantitative phase of the study consisted of 528 teachers with simple random sampling and the qualitative phase included 14 school principals and 15 teachers withmaximum diversity sampling. The quantitative data of the study were obtained through the Ethical Leadership Scale and the quantitative data were through a semi-structured interview protocol. The quantitative data was analyzed through the SPSS software package and the qualitative data was through the content analysis. The research results indicated that the teachers' perceptions on the ethical leadership levels of school principals were found to be high and their opinions differed significantly according to a number of demographics. In addition, the school administrators were detected to be zealous to act in accord with ethical values and to promote ethical behaviors at school, and the ethical values at schools were identified to influence school climate and the school principals' decision making processes in a positive manner. However, it was ascertained that the school principals frequently experienced ethical dilemmas and occasionally exhibitedunethical behaviorsdue to a number of factors and had to cope with psychological, social and organizational outcomes. The study was concluded by offering some implications after the discussion of research results.