The Relationship between Physical Conditions of School Buildings and Organizational Commitment According to Teachers’ Perceptions

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between the physical conditions of school buildings andorganizational commitment according to the perceptions of teachers in public primary schools. The researchpopulation consists of 2450 teachers from 92 primary schools in the central district of Diyarbakır/Turkey in theacademic year of 2017-2018. The data collection instrument was applied to randomly selected 534 teachers from 27schools. “School Buildings Scale" developed by Çağlayan and Yılmaz (2011) and “Organizational CommitmentScale" developed by Meyer, Allen and Smith (1993), and adapted into Turkish by Dağlı, Elçiçek and Han (2017)were used in this study.Some important findings of the study are listed below: According to teachers' perceptions, the highest item that isassociated with the school buildings was found in the dimension of “General view (M=3,58; Quite adequate), theitem with the lowest level was found in the dimension of “Fields reserved for students” (M=2,44; insufficient). Themean of the whole scale was found as (M=2.99) “Partially adequate”. It was determined that the highest mean ofteachers' perceptions about organizational commitment (M=3.50; Agree) was in “affective commitment” dimensionand the lowest mean (M=2,94; Undecided) in the dimension of “normative commitment”. Teachers participated inthe total mean of the organizational commitment scale at the level of (M=3.19; Undecided). Generally, it was foundthat there was a moderate and positive relationship between the school building scale and organizational commitmentscale (r=,561, p <0.01). This shows that, as the physical conditions of the school buildings are improved, theorganizational commitment of the teachers is increased.