Secondary School Directors’ Communication Competence on the Basis of Teacher Opinions

The purpose of the current study is to determine the communication competence of school directors working in various secondary schools in the city of Usak, Turkey, in relation to variables on the basis of teachers’ opinions. The population of the study, which employs the descriptive survey model, is comprised of 820 teachers working in 18 secondary schools located in the city of Usak during the 2014-2015 school year. All the schools included in the study were visited and the questionnaire given to teachers who were willing to participate in the study. Of the distributed questionnaires, only 301 were subjected to analysis. The research data were collected by using “Communication Competence Scale for Elementary School Directors” developed by Topluer (2008). The statistical analyses of the collected data were conducted using the SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) 17.0 program by means of descriptive statistics, t-test, one-way variance analysis (ANOVA) and Tukey significance test. Findings revealed that in general the teachers think that the school directors’ communication competence is high. The school directors’ communication competence for the dimensions of understanding, empathy, social comfort, and support was found to be “mostly” positive. Moreover, it was also concluded that the gender variable has no significant effect on teachers’ opinions about any of the sub-dimensions of directors’ communication competence. However, the teachers’ opinions about the sub-dimension of support were found to vary on the age variable. Older teachers are of the opinion that school directors demonstrate more supportive communication patterns. The number of teachers in a school was also found to significantly affect teachers’ opinions. In terms of the sub-dimensions of understanding empathy and social comfort, with increasing numbers of teachers, the school director’s communication competence in general is evaluated more positively.