Organizational culture in private and public high schools: The case of Ankara province

The purpose of this study was to describe cultural structure in private and public high schools. Differences in cultural structure between private and public high schools were identified. Participants for this study consisted of 85 school administrators and 505 teachers in 11 private and 16 public high schools selected from 29 private and 61 public schools in Çankaya, Yenimahalle, Keçiören, Mamak, Altındağ, Etimesgut and Gölbaşı townships of Ankara province. Cluster sampling procedure was used to identify schools included in this study. Data were collected by survey methods. Frequencies and means were used to describe cultural structure. Differences in organizational culture by gender and school type were tested by using t-test. Differences by "administrator" "teacher" grouping were tested by using Mann- Whitney U test. Kruskal-Wallis test was used to test differences by years of service in teaching and oneway analysis of variance was ued o test differences by teaching subject. Differences were tested at p=<.05 level. Findings demonstrated that private and public schools have similar patterns organizational culture. However, private high schools compared to public high schools showed a more positive cultural structure. Findings indicated that there were significant differences in organizational culture by demograhic characteristics. These findings were supportive of previous research findings. IAS