Opinions of instructors working at schools of foreign languages on distributed leadership behaviours

The aim of this research is to reveal the views of the instructors working at the schools of foreign languages about distributed leadership behaviours and examine the relation between these opinions in terms of various variables. This research is a mixed method research in which both quantitative and qualitative methods are used together. First quantitative, and then qualitative data are gathered in order to see whether these data support each other. The target population of the study is composed of the instructors who work at the schools of foreign languages in public universities in Izmir, in 2016-2017 academic year. The quantitative part of the research is carried out with 154 instructors. In the qualitative part, semi-structured interviews are conducted with 14 instructors who stated that they could voluntarily participate in the research. In the quantitative part, descriptive method is implemented and personal information surveys are applied in order to collect the data of independent variables. Data of the instructors' level of distributed leadership are gathered using "Distributed Leadership Scale" which is developed by Özer and Beycioğlu (2013). Qualitative data is collected soon after the quantitative data is analyzed. The interview forms consist of 3 questions and 13 probes. The data obtained from the semi-structured interviews are analyzed thematically with the content analysis technique and the results are compared with the quantitative results. The arithmetic mean of the levels of distributed leadership behaviours of 154 participant instructors is found to be 39,72 - "Mostly". The opinions of the instructors on distributed leadership behaviors are seen similar with respect to the qualitative part of the research. It is, therefore, seen that both quantitative and qualitative results overlap each other. The opinions of the instructors regarding the distributed leadership behaviors show a significant difference according to the number of instructors in the schools. Likewise, the level of the distributed leadership behaviors show a significant difference according to the number of students in the schools. Thus, the research result indicates that the levels of distributed leadership is higher in relatively bigger schools. According to the participants, instructors are often encouraged by the principals and the principles have positive attitudes towards co-operation with instructors and participation of instructors in management and decision-making process. Instructors, on the other hand, believe that the instructors are not willing to take responsibilities especially on managerial issues. Many of the participants state that the instructors often share and collaborate with the other colleagues. Apart from that, it is emphasized that the instructors are not very willing to contribute to the schools' administrative work. Key words: distributed leadership, leadership, higher education