Examination of the relationship between the social justice leadership behaviors of school principals and teachers' perceptions of organizational commitment

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between the social justice leadership behaviours exhibited by school principals working in primary schools and teachers' perceptions of organisational commitment according to teachers' opinions. "Convergent parallel design", one of the mixed method designs, was preferred in the study. The sample of the study consists of 603 teachers working in primary schools in Şahinbey district of Gaziantep province in 2021-2022 academic year. The study group of the research consists of 16 teachers working in primary schools and selected by maximum diversity sampling method. "Personal Information Form", "Organisational Commitment Scale" and "Social Justice Leadership Scale" were used to collect quantitative data. Qualitative data were collected through interviews using a semi-structured interview form prepared by the researcher. Statistical software was used to analyze the quantitative data and t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation and regression analyses were performed. Content analysis was used to analyse qualitative data. According to the results of the study, while teachers' general perceptions of social justice leadership are at high level, their perceptions of organisational commitment are at medium level. Teachers' perceptions of social justice leadership behaviours exhibited by school principals differed significantly according to educational status, age and professional seniority variables. On the other hand, teachers' perceptions of organisational commitment differed significantly according to the variables of educational status, working time in the school, age and professional seniority. It was determined that there were positive, significant and moderate relationships between the social justice leadership behaviours exhibited by school principals and teachers' perceptions of organisational commitment. The social justice leadership behaviours of school principals explained 35% of the total variance of teachers' perceptions of organisational commitment. Participation and critical consciousness, which are sub-dimensions of social justice leadership, were found to be significant predictors of teachers' perceptions of organisational commitment.