The relationship between favouritism behaviours of school administrators and life satisfaction of the teachers

The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between the favouritism behaviours of school Official High school administrators and life satisfacition of teachers. The research population consists of 1100 teachers from 32 secondary schools in the central district of Diyarbakir in the academic year of 2018-2019. The data collection instrument was applied to randomly selected 350 teachers from 20 schools. "Favouritism in the School Management Scale", developed by Erdem and Meric (2012) and "The Satisfaction with Life Scale" developed by Diener, Emmons, Larsen ve Griffin (1985) and adapted into Turkish by Dagli and Baysal (2016) were used in this research. "Favouritism in the School Management Scale" contains 4 dimensions (planning, organising, coordination and evaluation) and 25 items. "The Satisfaction with Life Scale" consists 1 dimensions and 5 items. Arithmetic mean and standart deviation calculations were used while analysing the data, first for each variable, the normality results from favouritism and satisfaction with life analyzed with Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Shapiro-wilk and the results show that the data of all the independent variables were not normal distributed. According to this, there have been analysis by using a nonparametric test Mann-Whitney U test in groups of two (educational background, gender, marital status and union membership) and Kruskal-Wallis H Test for the groups of more than two (professional experience and school size). The relationship between favouritism behaviours and life satisfaction is analyzed by using correlation coefficient. The relationship between favouritism and the life satisfaction with behaviours were analysed by means of Spearman's rank correlation coefficient. In this analysis to determine the significant differences, the level of significance was accepted as "0.05". Some important findings which were obtained in the research are ordered below: Teachers participated the overall mean of "Favouritism in the School Management Scale" at "rarely" level. According to perceptions of teachers, the first three items which have the highest means at favouritism scale are: "(1) In the preparation of teachers' weekly lesson plan", (X̄=2,51; sometimes)", (2) "Giving teachers additional works regarding education and training (X̄=2,39; Rarely)", (3) "The planning of distribution of class (X̄=2,38; Rarely)". Three items which have the least mean are; (1) "Among teachers according to their hometowns (X̄=1,71; Rarely)", (2) "Related to teachers' political view (X̄=1,88; Rarely)", (3) "Related to teacher's field of study (X̄=1,89; Rarely)", respectively. No significant difference was detected with respect to the teachers' educational background, gender, marital status, professional experience and union on the perceptions of favouritism behaviours. Nevertheless, significant difference was found in "planning" and "organizing" dimension significantly the whole scale of favouritism regarding to school size (the number of teachers) variable. Teachers responded satisfaction with life questionnaire's total average with (X̄=2,52) "I agree in medium level". The item whish has the highest average according to teachers' perception; "So far, I had important things which I wanted in life (X̄=2,814; I agree in medium level)", The item which has the least average is "My living conditions are perfect (X̄=2,137; I hardly agree)". No significant difference was detected with respect to the teachers' educational background, marital status, professional experience, school size (the number of teachers) and union on the perceptions of life satisfaction behaviours. Nevertheless, significant difference was found in all dimensions and throughout the whole scale of life satisfaction regarding to "gender" variable. Life satisfaction perceptions of female teachers were higher than male teachers' life satisfaction perceptions. Statically, a significant relationship is not determined between favouritism, behaviours and teachers' perception of life satisfaction (r = -.026, p >.05). KeyWords: Favouritism, favouritism in school management, life satisfaction