The relationship between the strategic leadership actions of public and private primary school principals and the dimensions of organizational learning

The purpose of this research is to analyze the relationship between strategic leadership actions of public and private primary school principals and the dimensions of organizational learning perceived in their schools. The research was conducted by use of cross-sectional survey method. Participants in the research included 606 teachers who were randomly selected as the sample from 24 different public primary schools and 10 different private primary schools in İstanbul. The data used in the analyses were collected via two scales entitled ?The Strategic Leadership Questionnaire (SLQ)? by Pisapia and ?The Dimensions of Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ)? by Watkins and Marsick.The techniques of means and standard deviation were used to analyze the data to determine the teachers? perception of strategic leadership actions of school principals and the dimensions of organizational learning affected by these actions. ?Independent Samples t-Test? was used to determine if there is significant statistical difference between the ideas of teachers according to school types. To determine the correlation between strategic leadership actions of school principals and the dimensions of organizational learning perceived in their schools, Pearson?s correlation coefficient and multiple linear regression techniques were used. SPSS 17.0 for windows package program was used for the statistical analyses at a significance level of .01.The findings of the research have revealed that teachers? perceptions of school principal?s strategic leadership actions significantly differed in all four dimensions of strategic leadership by school type. Both public and private school principals use ethical actions the most frequently and they use political actions the least frequently.In this research, dimensions of organizational learning in public and private primary schools have been measured. In both public and private primary schools, the highest level of learning is perceived at team or group level and the lowest level is perceived at individual level. Besides that the level of learning perceived in private primary schools are significantly higher than in public primary schools at all four dimensions of organizational learning.It was found that in both public and private primary schools there is a positive and significant relationship between all of the factors of strategic leadership and all of the factors of organizational learning. The strongest significant relationship was found between transforming leadership actions and organizational and global levels of organizational learning. In both public and private primary schools, transforming, political and ethical leadership actions are the significant predicators of organizational learning. However, it was found that managing actions isn?t a significant predicator of organizational learning at any levels.As a result of the research, it was found out that the teachers? perception of organizational learning increases when the school principals use strategic leadership actions more frequently.