Teachers' organizational commitment to internal and external stakeholders of the school

Abstract

The relationships between teachers' commitment to internal and external stakeholders of school and their relation to gender, age, length of service in school and in teaching profession, and level of education were examined in this study. The research used a relational screening model. The sample group determined by the simple random method consists of 806 teachers working in schools in Ataşehir and Beşiktaş districts of Istanbul, Turkey. The scales used are as follows: Commitment to Internal Stakeholder of School Scale (CISSS), adapted by using “Teachers' Organizational Commitment Scale” developed by Celep (2000) to determine teachers' views on the commitment to internal stakeholder of school; Commitment to External Stakeholder of School Scale (CESSS), adapted by using “Commitment Focuses of Teachers” developed by Celep & Bülbül (2003) to determine teachers' opinions on the commitment to external stakeholder of school. During the adaptation period, confirmatory factor analysis was performed while Maximum Likelihood Estimation of Mplus statistical program was used in the analysis. Since the data did not provide normality to analyze the Spearman correlation coefficient was employed, the Mann-Whitney U and the Kruskal-Wallis H tests were referred to with a view to comparing the differences in participants' opinions on commitment focuses based on demographic variables. The Friedman test was applied to examine whether organizational commitment differed depending on the focus they prioritized. Among dimensions in two scales, there is a negative, statistically significant, and low relationship between commitment to school and commitment to politics, commitment to profession and commitment to politics and religion; there is a low and positive relationship between commitment to profession and to family. There is a negative relationship between commitment to internal and external stakeholders of school. Significant differences were found among commitment focuses of teachers based on gender, age, length of service in school and teaching, and education level.