Teachers' views on primary and secondary school principals' social justice leadership behaviors

The aim of this research is to determine the level of teachers' views on social justice leadership behaviors of primary and secondary school principals and to reveal whether these views show a significant difference in terms of some variables of teachers and the school they work in. The research sample consists of 352 teachers working in public primary and secondary schools in Karşıyaka district of İzmir province in the 2021-2022 academic year. The research data were obtained by using the "Personal Information Form" developed by the researcher and the "Social Justice Leadership Scale" developed by B. Bozkurt (2017). In the study, answers were sought for 11 sub-problems. Arithmetic mean, standard deviation, t-test, ANOVA and LSD Significance Test were used to analyze the data. The findings of the research can be summarized as follows: Teachers' views on the social justice leadership behaviors of primary and secondary school principals are at the level of "agree" both in general and in terms of scale dimensions. Teachers state that school principals mostly show social justice leadership behavior in the dimension of "stakeholder support"; this is followed by behaviors in the dimensions of "distributive justice", "participation" and "critical consciousness", respectively. Teachers' views on social justice leadership behaviors exhibited by school principals; there is no significant difference in terms of teachers' gender, age, professional seniority and income level, and socioeconomic level of the school's environment, both in scale and in scale dimensions. The views of undergraduate teachers on the social justice behaviors of school principals were found to be significantly higher than teachers with graduate education only in the dimension of "distributive justice"; no significant difference was found in terms of education level variable in other dimensions and overall scale. It was observed that married teachers perceived school principals' social justice leadership behaviors in all dimensions and at a higher level than single teachers. It has been revealed that teachers who have both 1 child and 2 or more children perceive school principals' social justice leadership's distributive justice behaviors at a higher level compared to teachers who have no children. No significant difference was found in terms of the aforementioned variable in other dimensions and throughout the scale. It has been observed that the views of teachers on the social justice leadership behaviors of school principals show a significant difference in the dimensions of "participation" and "distributive justice" according to the type of school. In both dimensions, it was concluded that the mean score of teachers working in primary schools was higher than that of teachers working in secondary schools. No significant difference was observed according to school type in other dimensions and overall scale. It has been determined that the views of teachers regarding the social justice leadership behaviors exhibited by school principals differ significantly in terms of the number of mainstreaming students in the school, both throughout the scale and in the dimensions of the scale. According to the findings obtained; Teachers working in schools with 10 or less inclusive students are of the opinion that school principals exhibit social justice leadership behaviors at a higher level when compared to teachers working in schools with 11-20 inclusive students. Teachers working in schools with 21 or more inclusive students stated that school principals exhibited social justice leadership behaviors at a higher level when compared to teachers working in schools with 10 or less and 11-20 inclusive students.