School culture and teachers' value systems

This research aims at determining the correlation between primary school principals' and teachers' value systems and their perceptions of school culture at the places where they work.The research sample consisted of 50 principals and 902 teachers, totally 952 persons, working in 50 primary schools in the metropolitan area of Izmir in 2004?2005."Personal Data Form", "School Culture Inventory" and "Portrait Value Scale" were used to collect the data for the research. Nine research questions were answered in the research. Arithmetic mean, standard deviation, t-Test, One Way ANOVA (F), LSD Test of Significance, Mann-Whitney U Test, Kruskal Wallis Test and Pearson Moments Product Correlation Coefficient (r) were used to analyze the data.The results of the research are summarized below:Principals' scores of perceptions of school culture are higher than those of teachers. Principals' perceptions of school culture vary only in terms of school type. Principals' scores of perceptions of school culture both in general and concerning the sub-dimensions do not vary in terms of such variables as their gender, age, branch, the duration of teaching service, the duration of service as a principal, educational level and the age of school. Such variables as principal's the duration of service at school, the membership of a union, the socio-economic level of the school environment and school size do not result in significant effects in general but only in certain dimensions. Teachers' scores of perceptions of school culture show significant differences in terms of the duration of service at school, the membership of a union, school type, the socio-economic level of the school environment and school size. Teachers' perceptions of general school culture do not vary only in terms of branch; however, such variables as gender, age, educational level, the age of school do not result in significant effects in general but only in certain dimensions.According to this research, the values attributed by principals and teachers to the dimensions "Hedonism", "Self-Direction" "Security" and "Benevolence" vary, but they attribute similar levels of value to the other dimensions. Principals' value systems show significant differences in terms of the duration of service at school, the duration of teaching service and the membership of a union. The research has discerned that all variables except for the age of school result in significant differences in teachers' value systems.The research has shown that there is a significant correlation between the perceptions of both principals and teachers? perceptions concerning school culture and concerning value systems.