The relationship between social justice leadership and favoritism behaviors

The aim of this research is to determine the relationship between social justice leadership behaviors and favoritism behaviors of school principals according to the perceptions of teachers working in public secondary schools. Screening and relational screening models were used in the research. The universe of the research consists of 110 secondary schools in the city center of Diyarbakır in the 2022-2023 academic year and 4920 teachers working in these schools, while the sample consists of 35 secondary schools and 530 teachers working in these schools selected randomly from the universe. The "Social Justice Leadership" scale developed by Bozkurt (2017) and the "Favoritism in School Administration" scale developed by Erdem and Meriç (2011) were used in the research. The "Social Justice Scale" consists of 4 dimensions and 34 items. These dimensions are "Critical Consciousness", "Stakeholder Support", "Participation" and "Distributive Justice. The "Scale of Favoritism in School Administration" consists of 4 dimensions and 25 items. These dimensions are; "Planning", "Organization", "Coordination" and "Evaluation". In the analysis of the data, techniques such as percentage, arithmetic mean, frequency, t-test, ANOVA, correlation methods and regression analysis were used. The relationships between Social Justice Leadership and Favoritism behavior were examined using the Spearman correlation coefficient. The significance level was taken as 0.05. Some important findings obtained in the research can be listed as follows: • The general average of teachers' perceptions of their school principals' social justice leadership behavior was determined at the level of "I agree" on the scale. According to teachers' perceptions, the item with the highest average on the scale is "They distribute lessons fairly at school" (I agree), and the item with the lowest average is "They are open to discussing new ideas" (I agree). • A significant difference was found between teachers' perceptions of their school principals' social justice leadership behavior in all dimensions and scales except for the distributive justice dimension according to the educational background variable, and in all dimensions and scales according to the variables of professional seniority and school size. No significant difference was found between teachers' perceptions according to the variables of gender, marital status and union membership. • The general average of teachers' perceptions of their school principals' favoritism behavior was determined at the level of "Never" on the scale. According to teachers' perceptions, the item with the highest average was "Preparing teachers' weekly lesson schedules" (Never), and the item with the lowest average was "Among teachers, according to their hometown" (Never). • A significant difference was found between teachers' perceptions of their school principals' favoritism in all dimensions and total scale except for the evaluation dimension according to the educational background variable, in all dimensions and total scale according to the gender variable, in all dimensions and total scale except the organization dimension according to the seniority variable, and in all dimensions and total scale according to the school size variable. No significant difference was found between teachers' perceptions according to the variables of marital status and union membership. • A low-level, negative and significant relationship was found between school principals' social justice leadership behavior and favoritism behaviors. It was found that as school principals' social justice leadership behaviors increased, the level of favoritism of teachers decreased. Keywords: Social Justice, Leadership, Social Justice Leadership, Favoritism, Favoritism in School Administration