Abstract:

Ethical leadership is the leadership approach that principals use to regulate the communication, climate, behavior, and decision-making processes in the school. It is seen that these studies are carried out in both public and private schools. However, it is difficult to say that these studies reflect the sector and level-based view of ethical leadership holistically. Therefore, in the present study, ethical leadership behaviors of principals in public and private schools were examined at the secondary and high school levels. The study was carried out with a cross-sectional survey, one of the quantitative research designs. Research data were obtained from teachers working in public and private schools in Samsun. In this context, 400 participants' opinions were taken by stratified sampling. Software named SPSS 25.0 and Mplus 8.3 were used for the analysis. Findings illustrate that teachers perceive their principals as brave leaders in both sectors. However, it is understood from the findings that school principals have relatively low scores in respecting social values. Comparisons show that teachers working in public schools perceive their principals as more ethical leaders. In comparisons at the school level, the significant difference in finding the school principal more ethical favors public high schools and public secondary schools. Various inferences were made based on the research results, and suggestions were made.

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