Abstract:

The aim of this study is to determine the leadership orientation of the students in the faculty of sports sciences in terms of some variables (gender, age, class level, department, doing individual or team sport, the year in which the sport was done). A total of 118 students (55 female and 63 male) attending the Faculty of Sports Sciences of the Akdeniz University participated in the study in 2017-2018 school year. Personal information form and leadership orientation scale (Dereli, 2003) were applied to the participants. The data were analyzed at a significance level of 0.5 (p <0.05) in the SPSS 18.0 program. According to the study, participants preferred transformational leadership style the least and human-oriented leadership style the most. Leadership styles that participants preferred differ by age, gender, class level, and department. Female participants were more likely to prefer leadership styles to men than men. In the older ones, there was a significant difference in leadership towards structure, transformational and charismatic leadership. According to the class variable, the 1st grade preferred more human oriented leadership style. The upper classes preferred the more structured leadership style to the lower classes.There was no significant difference between the leadership style and participants doing individual sports and team sports and the year the sport was done. In the leadership styles preferred, the class level is quite decisive. In this sense, more theoretical and practical studies in faculties of sports sciences may be useful after evaluating the relationship between education and leadership styles. Moreover, since leadership is different from management, it is evaluated that it might be useful to evaluate sport leadership separately from sport management and to develop a program accordingly.

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