The impact of school administrators' positive perception levels on teacher motivation: a review based on teacher's opinions

Motivation and positive perception are two important concepts that lead us either positively or negatively at every stage of life. As a matter of fact, one's own beliefs and positive attitudes towards people around him/her form the basis for increased productivity in the working, social and family life. The concept of motivation has been the subject of many researches; at this point the management perception which gives priority to the human factor under the working conditions and is active in motivation increasing activities becomes more dynamic for reaching the intended targets. The object of this study is to investigate the extent to which positive perceptions of school principals and their deputy principals influence teachers' motivation. The population of the study consists of teachers in Elazığ. Factor analysis was applied in order to ensure construct validty of the scale. As a result of the factor analysis on 18 items in the scale, three items were removed from the scale; and it has been detected that the remaining 15 items revealed 67.513% of the total variance and were collected in three sub-dimensions. First-order confirmatory factor analysis was applied to the resultant three-factor measurement model to increase the validity evidence of the scale and it was observed that the fit values were good. For the reliability of the 15-item scale, the validity of which is confirmed, the Cronbach Alpha coefficient was first calculated and was measured as 0.90 for the whole scale. This value is an indication that the items are reliable to the desired extent. Analyzes performed show that the developed Positive Perception Scale is a valid and reliable measurement tool. In order to determine the effects of school principals' positive perception level on the teachers' internal and external motivation, 700 teachers were reached by means of random sampling method and a regression analysis was done with 558 of the returning data. As a result of the regression analysis, it was found that only the occupational and personal competence phenomenon (OPC) is a significant predictor for the internal and external motivation among the three factors of the positive perception scale: occupational and personal competence, effective communication and cooperation and the responsibility capacity, and contribution to the gain.