Levels of Conformity to Leader in Normal and Critical Situations

Yüksel Gündüz

doi:10.13189/ujer.2017.050806

Abstract

The aim of this study is to determine primary school, middle school, high school and university students' levels of conformity to leader in normal and critical situations. Experimental model was used in the research. Study group is comprised of 80 students chosen randomly from Karadeniz Bakir Primary School, Gazi Middle School, Kazim Karabekir Anatolian High School and the department of Primary Education, Faculty of Education, Artvin Coruh University, Turkey in 2015-2016 academic year. Participants' levels of conformity to leader in normal and critical situations were determined by first calculating group averages in normal and critical conditions to see its proximity from leader's estimate, then differences between leaders' estimates and participants' estimates were calculated to determine participants' levels of conformity to leader in each group, and finally averages of the differences in four separate conditions (NC-w/o leader, NC-w/leader, CC-w/o leader, CC-w/leader) were calculated. Results gained in this study reveal that middle school, high school and university students didn't display much conformity behaviour to leader in normal situations, but primary school students displayed higher conformity behaviour to leader. However, primary school, middle school, high school and university students displayed conformity behaviour to leader in high levels in critical situation. While students generally didn't display conformity behaviour to leader whom they chose for both situations in normal situation, they highly displayed conformity in critical situation.

Highlights

Since people are social beings living in groups, they have always needed leaders who could head groups and make them achieve their goals
Students are selected with maximum variation sampling method from Karadeniz Bakır Primary School, Gazi Middle School, Kazım Karabekir Anatolian High School and Artvin Çoruh University, Education Faculty, Department of Primary Education which are in service in the centre of Artvin Province
The study was done in two stages, the observation of conformity behaviours to leaders in normal and critical situations

Summary

Introduction

Since people are social beings living in groups, they have always needed leaders who could head groups and make them achieve their goals. Creating people groups directed to specific goals and objectives and activating them requires especial skills which cannot found in every person and ability to persuade. This ability does not mean that there is an innate characteristic, because leadership is a set of behaviours that can be learned. In this sense, a leader is a person who can gather a group around certain purposes and has skills and knowledge to influence and mobilise them for these purposes. It’s useful to lay emphasis on the concept of leader first and leadership

Objectives

Methods

Results