Applying School Administrators' Authentic Leadership Skills in Conflict Situations: The Perceptions of Substitute Teachers

Abstract

This study mainly aimed to determine the relationships between conflict management strategies and authentic leadership attitudes of primary school administrators based on the perception of substitute teachers, who were in pedagogical proficiency classes at a university. This quantitative study included 456 substitute teachers. Two instruments were used for data collection. Authentic Leadership Questionnaire (ALQ) was used to examine primary school administrators' authentic leadership levels and Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II (ROCI-II) was used to examine their conflict management levels based on the perceptions of substitute teachers. The data was analyzed based on the descriptive statistics, correlations, and regression analyses. The findings of the study showed that administrators' leadership levels were the highest on Self-Awareness (SEAW) and the lowest on Relational Transparency (RETR). In addition, their conflict management levels were the highest on Dominating (DO) and the lowest on Avoiding (AV). The results also suggested that there were significantly low levels of relationships between primary school administrators' conflict management strategies and authentic leadership attitudes. Lastly, based on the findings from regression analyses, the variables constituting the subscales of ALQ predicted quite low percentages of variances in ROCI-II's subscales.