Examination of the conflict management styles of school administrators and teachers according to social intelligence and certain personal variables

This is a descriptive study conducted to examine the effects of social intelligence, gender, seniority, job position, and marital status upon the conflict management strategy levels of teachers and administrators. Study participants include a total of 351 individuals (275 teachers and 76 administrators) employed in the public primary and secondary schools in Bahçelievler, Bakırköy, Bağcılar,and Küçükçekmecedistricts on the European side of Istanbul in 2015-2016 academic year. The "TromsoSocial Intelligence Scale (TSIS)", "Conflict Management Strategies Scale", and a "Personal Information Form" were used to collect the study data. The scales were administered to the participant teachers and administrators for data collection and the collected data were analyzed using SPSS 21 Software Pack. MANOVA, Fisher LSD Test (Least Significant Differences Test) and t-testwere performed in order to determine whether the conflict management strategy levels of the teachers and administrators significantly differaccording to social intelligence, gender, seniority, job position, and marital status. The significance level was set to .05 for the study. The study examined whether social intelligence significantly affectsthe conflict management styles of school administrators and teachers. The results revealed significantly higher levels of compromising style, dominating style, and avoiding style among the administrators and teachers with high social intelligence, when compared to those with lower social intelligence. The study also examined the impact ofgender upon the conflict management styles of school administrators and teachers and the results demonstrated significantly higher levels of compromising and dominating styles among male administrators and teachers when compared to females. Another point of investigation in this study was the effect of seniority upon the conflict management styles employed by school administrators and teachers. It was found that the lower the seniority of administrators and teachers, the significantly lower the compromising style. The study also investigated the impact of job position (administrator or teacher)uponthe conflict management styles of school administrators and teachers. The results showed that the administrators had significantly higher levels of integrating and compromising styles than the teachers. Finally, the study examined the effect of marital status on the conflict management styles of school administrators and teachers, and no significant difference was found between the conflict management styles of school administrators and teachersaccording to marital status. Keywords: Social Intelligence, Conflict Management, Administrator, Teacher