Effects of high school principals' supportive leadership behaviors and collective trust on school effectiveness

The general purposes of this research are to determine teachers' perceptions on supportive leadership behaviors of high school principals, collective trust in school and school effectiveness and students' perceptions on collective trust, to determine whether these perceptions vary according to a number of independent variables. Additionally to determine the relationship of school principals' supportive leadership behaviors with collective trust and school effectiveness, and to test the intermediary effect of collective trust in the relationship between supportive leadership and school effectiveness. The research was designed in the relational screening model. 3,409 teachers working in high schools in Elazığ province and district center and 34,510 students continuing their education in these schools in the 2015-2016 Academic Year constituted the population of the research. 558 teachers and 1,073 students who were selected using the disproportionate element sampling method constituted the sample of the research. The reliability and validity studies of the supportive leadership, collective trust and school effectiveness scales were carried out again, and they were used as data collection tools in the research. LISREL and SPSS programs were used to analyze the research data and to test the models. The skewness coefficient was used in the normality test of the scale and sub-dimension scores. While t-test was used in the comparisons of the variables of teachers' gender, marital status and educational levels, one way analysis of variance (OneWay ANOVA) was used in the comparisons of the variables of school type, age, time in the profession, working time in the school, branch and the number of teachers in the school. When a significant difference was found between the groups in the ANOVA test, the LSD post hoc test was used in the case of the homogeneity of variances to determine between which two groups there was a difference. While t-test was used in the comparison of the variable of students' gender, one way analysis of variance (OneWay ANOVA) was used in the comparisons of the variables of class level, school type, educational level of mother, educational level of father, monthly income of family, family type, occupation of mother and occupation of father. In order to determine between which two groups there was a difference when a significant difference was found between the group in the ANOVA test, the LSD post hoc test was used in the case of the homogeneity of variances and the Dunnett C post hoc test was used when the variances were not homogeneous. According to the results of the research, it was found that teachers' perceptions on collective trust and perceptions on principal and colleague sub-dimension were generally high, their perceptions on customer sub-dimension were moderate, and their perceptions on school effectiveness and supportive leadership were high. It was also found that students' perceptions on collective trust and its sub-dimensions were high. It was concluded that teachers' perceptions on collective trust showed significant differences in terms of the variables of educational level and school type, but they did not show any significant difference in terms of the variables such as working time in school, gender, age, professional seniority, branch, marital status and number of teachers in school. It was concluded that teachers' perceptions on school effectiveness showed significant difference in terms of the variable of school type but did not cause significant differentiation in terms of the variables such as educational level, working time in school, gender, age, professional seniority, branch, marital status and number of teachers in school. It was concluded that teachers' perceptions on supportive leadership showed significant differences in terms of the variables of school type and working time in school but did not cause significant differentiation in terms of the variables such as educational level, gender, age, professional seniority, branch, marital status and number of teachers in school. It was concluded that students' perceptions on collective trust showed significant differences in terms of the variables of gender, class level, school type, educational level of mother, educational level of father, monthly income of family and family type but did not cause significant differentiation in terms of the variables such as mother's profession and father's profession. According to the teachers' perceptions, it was concluded that there was a positive, highly significant correlation between collective trust and school effectiveness, that there was a positive, moderately significant correlation between collective trust and supportive leadership. There was a positive, moderately significant correlation between school effectiveness and supportive leadership. According to the teachers' perceptions, it was concluded that supportive leadership had a significant effect on collective trust and school effectiveness that collective trust also had a significant effect on school effectiveness, and that supportive leadership positively affected the school effectiveness and this effect significantly changed in teachers with high collective trust perception. It was concluded that collective trust had an intermediary effect between supportive leadership and school effectiveness.