The attitudes of private school teachers towards conflict and the conflict management styles they resort to

Songül Kılıç?The Attitudes of Private School Teachers Towards Conflict and the ConflictManagement Styles They Resort to?ABSTRACTThe main objective of this study is to identify the private school teachers?attitudes towards conflict and the conflict management styles they resort to with regardto individual demographic variables; and thus, to determine whether there arestatistically significant relationships between their attitudes towards conflict and theconflict management styles they resort to.The data of the study was collected with questionnaires administered to a samplegroup of 352 teachers working at the private foundation and founder schools in thecity of stanbul. Three questionnaire forms were used in the study. The first is a5-question form to obtain data on individual demographic characteristics of theteachers. To identify teachers? conflict managemet styles ?Rahim OrganizationalConflict Inventory-II? (ROCI-II) (Form A) was used. And the third form used in thestudy is the ?Identification of Attitudes Towards Confflict Scale?, which was developedby the researcher to identify the attitudes of teachers towards conflict. The data obtainedwas analyzed using some statistical techniques such as mean, percentage, standarddeviation, t-test, ANOVA, LSD test, and Pearson product-correlation, and interpretedand reported.The results of the study are as follows: (1) More than half of the teachersworking at private foundation and founder schools do not adopt the classical approachin principle; they are more likely to adopt the modern approach. (2) There arestatistically significant differences at .05 level between the teachers? attitudes towardsconflict according to their demographic characteristics such as age and the school levelworked. (3) The teachers working at private foundation and founder schools resort tointegrating and compromise most frequently; and then to obliging and avoidingrespectively, and to dominating least frequently. (4) There are statistically significantdifferences at .05 level between the conflict management styles of the teachersviaccording to their demographic characteristics such as gender, age, the type of schoolgraduated, professional seniority, and the school level worked. (5) There are not anystatistically significant relationships between the attitudes of the teachers working atprivate founder schools towards conflict and the conflict management styles theyresort to. (6) There are statistically significant negative relationships at .05 levelbetween the attitudes of the teachers working at private foundation schools towardsconflict and the integrating and dominating conflict management styles; and negativerelationships at .01 level between their attitudes towards conflict and obliging andavoding conflict management styles.vii