Primary school inspectors and teachers perceptions of levels of adherence to professional ethical principles of primary school inspectors

This study has been carried out with the goal of determining primary school inspectors' and teachers' perceptions of levels of adherence to professional ethical principles with regard to the role and behavioural dimensions of primary school inspectors. The study was done with a screening model. The geographical scope of the study was the Anatolian region of Istanbul province. The study comprised two groups. The first group consisted of primary school inspectors working in the inspection subsystem of the Turkish Education System. All primary school inspectors working in the Anatolian region of Istanbul province were included in the study. As a means of collecting data, a questionnaire (24 questions) was used. 128 out of a total of 130 questionnaires were evaluated. As for the second group, it consisted of teachers working in 36 primary schools from the three central districts in the Anatolian region of Istanbul which have the highest number of official primary schools attached to the Ministry of Education (Kadıköy, Ümraniye and Pendik) as well as from the three with the lowest number (Tuzla, Sultanbeyli and Kartal). The districts of Sile, which lies outside the centre, and Adalar, which has a very low number of schools, have not been included in this study. As a means of collecting data, the same questionnaires were used. A total of 662 questionnaires were hand out to this group. 481 of the questionnaires were evaluated. Frequency tables were used in the analysis of the data collected; the t-test in that of centralisation and distribution measurements and the grouping of variables into two independent groups; one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) in that of variables in groupings of three or more. In order to determine exactly how the differences found by one-way ANOVA were, the Post-Hoc Tukey test was used. According to the findings of this study, inspectors think the level of their colleagues' adherence to ethical principles to be 'high' in relation to the role and behavioural dimensions and in general. Teachers think the level of inspectors' adherence to ethical principles to be 'medium' in relation to both dimensions and in general. Teachers specified that primary school inspectors' levels of adherence to ethical principles in the role dimension were higher than that in the behavioural dimension. While primary school inspectors expressed their colleagues' adherence to professional ethical principles in the role and behavioural dimensions, they stated that teachers adhered less. In the primary school inspectors' and teachers' perceptions, all the elements that account for the behavioural and role dimensions showed a statistically meaningful difference depending on which job. There was no meaningful difference between teachers' perceptions of the levels of inspectors' adherence to professional ethical principles in the role and behaviour dimensions and 'gender', one of the personal variables. On the other hand, important differences were established with regard to the 'seniority' and 'subject' variables. There was no meaningful difference between primary schools inspectors' perceptions related to the levels of their colleagues' adherence to professional ethical principles in the role and behaviour dimensions and 'gender', one of the personal variables. However, an important difference was established according to the 'seniority' variable.