Opinions on humour used in managerial tasks by primary school administrators and the relationship among schools' humour climate, administrators' humour styles and conflict management strategies

The aim of this study is to determine primary school administrators' and teachers' opinions on humour used in managerial tasks by primary school administrators and to determine the relationship among schools' humour climate, administrators' humour styles and conflict management strategies. The study was modelled as a convergent parallel design, one of the mixed methods which combined qualitative and quantitative methods. The population of quantitative part of the study consists of 631 primary school administrators and 6850 teachers working in state primary schools in 5 center districts (Muratpaşa, Kepez, Konyaltı, Döşemealtı, and Aksu) of Antalya Province in 2014-2015 educational years. The data gathered from 253 administrator questionnaires and 651 teacher questionnaires was evaluated in the study. The study group of qualitative part of the study consists of 9 administrators and 12 teachers working in primary schools. For data collection, the researcher developed and used a semi-structured data collection form consisting of open ended questions. Qualitative data was also gathered by observation notes. In quantitative part of the study, three scales were used for gathering data on schools' humour climate, administrators' humour styles and conflict management strategies. These three scales were combined in a single questionnaire which consists of four parts. The first part of the questionnaire aims to collect data on the personal information of the participants. The second part consists of items for defining the degree of schools' humour climate, the third part includes items about administrators' humour styles. The last part includes items on defining conflict management styles of primary school administrators. A five point Likert Scale was used in the scales. An alpha level of either ,05 or ,01 was set for the analyses. Specific descriptive analyses which were conducted to calculate the quantitative data included percentage, frequency, means, standard deviation, t-test and one-way ANOVA for unrelated sampling, bivariate correlation (Pearson correlation coefficient), hierarchical multiple regression analysis. In case the assumptions of One Way Anova were not satisfied, Kruskal Wallis test was used. The qualitative data obtained were subjected to descriptive analysis and content analysis. As a result of the study, the study found that administrators and teachers have positive opinions on humour and perceive humour as a positive phenomenon. The results on humour climate revealed that positive humour types were mostly used in primary schools. Positive effects of humour used by administrators were higher than negative effects on school and subordinates. Parallel to these results the study observed that positive humour climate styles were predominant in schools. Results on humour styles revealed that administrators preffered positive homour styles more than negative ones. As for the results on conflict management strategies, participants stressed that administrators preffered using the problem solving most and the compromising least. Moreover, the study found that opinions on the effects of using humour in conflicts were generally positive. On the other hand, participants emphasized the risks of using humour in conflicts was also a significant result. Findings show that humour use by third persons in conflicts may be an effective tool for overcoming the obstacles. Otherwise it may intensify the problems which may create risks. Finally, according to the results, significant correlations were found among the humour climate, humour styles and conflict management strategies. As for the administrators' humour styles, they were significant predictors of schools' humour climate and administrators' conflict management strategies. Similar to this result, schools' humour climates were found to be significant predictors of administrators' conflict management strategies.