Abstract

The purpose of the current study is to reveal the relationship between the specific leadership behaviors of principals and teacher collaboration in Turkish primary schools, controlling for several school characteristics, such as school size and average class size, and the demographic characteristics of teachers, such as level of education and years of experience. The data of this study come from the 2008 administration of Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. A hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used for analyzing the TALIS data where teachers are nested within schools. The results of this study indicate that there is an important link between various components of principal leadership and teacher collaboration in Turkish primary schools. In general, the implementation of instructional leadership approach by principals associated positively with teacher collaboration, while administrative leadership attitudes negatively correlated with teacher collaboration.