Ethical behaviors of primary school administrators

The aim of this study is to determine to what extent public school principals behave in accordance with the code of ethics as perceived by school principals, teachers and inspectors. The sample of the study consists of public elementary schools in the European side of Istanbul. The sample size of the study consisted of 31 schools and those schools were randomly selected from 19 counties in the European side of Istanbul. Elementary school inspectors working in the European side of Istanbul were also included in the sample size. As a total of 696 people, including 559 teachers, 106 inspectors and 31 school principals participated in the study. Data for the study was collected through the questionnaire- ?The Code of Ethics for School Administrators?- developed by Aydın in 1997. The questionnaire was composed of 79 items that were representative of the code of ethics related to tolerance, justice, accountability, honesty, democracy and respect. The participants of the study were asked to rate to what extent school principals behave in accordance with the code of ethics. The teachers rated their school principals and principals rated themselves on each item. Inspectors were also asked to rate on each item the school principals working in schools within their work area. To analyze data, Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS,11.5) was used. Standard deviation, frequency, percentage and mean scores were calculated to analyze data. To determine the differences according to job, age and seniority variables, t-test, oneway- ANOVA and LSD tests were used. The results of the study showed that school principals were found to behave in accordance with the code of ethics while performing their administrative job, as perceived by teachers. Teachers agreed that school administrators behave more strongly in accordance with the codes of ethics related to respect. However, they perceived that school administrators less likely behave in accordance with the codes of ethics related to tolerance. School principals perceived themselves behaving more strongly in accordance with the code of ethics. Inspectors, on the other hand, were found to disagree with the perceptions of teachers and school administrators. Inspectors perceived that school principals behave more strongly in accordance with the codes of ethics related to respect, but less likely behave inaccordance with the code of ethics related to honesty. As a result, among the participant groups, inspectors were found less likely to agree that school principals behave in accordance with the code of ethics. According to the age variable, a non-significant difference was found in all three groups. According to the variable of seniority, a non-significant difference was found in the perceptions of school administrators, but significant differences were found in the perceptions of teachers and of inspectors. Unlike their senior colleagues, novice teachers and inspectors were found to perceive that school administrators behave more strongly in accordance with the code of ethics.