Page 51 - Azerbaijan State University of Economics

Ercan Yılmaz, Gulnar Jafarova: Leadership and School Climate in Effective Schools: A Meta-
Analysis

One of the factors which is deemed as important in terms of organization members
displaying a performance in line with their target is the climate the school has
(Şentürk, 2012; Şenel, 2016). School climate is a relatively permanent characteristic
of school atmosphere based on the common perceptions of the members of the
organization and consists of internal characteristics which differentiate one school
from another. In this respect, climate can be stated to resemble the definitions of
personality. “What personality is for the individual; climate is the same for the
school.” School climate embodies norms, values and expectations which makes
people feel socially, emotionally and physically safe (Cohen et. Al, 2009, p 182).
Balcı (2011) states that effective schools are those in which the academic success of
all students are contributed to, students with a low level of success are shown interest,
students are given the chance to work in harmony without discriminating them in
terms of their ethnic and socio-economic conditions and there is a positive social
climate.

When the local and foreign literature is reviewed, it can be seen that there are
numerous studies on effective schools and school climate (Bryant,2001; Okafor,
2006; Karadağ,2008; Manaf ve Omar,2015; Hairston,2016; Şenel,2016) and
leadership (Buzzi,1990; Herbst,2003; Okafor,2006; McVey,2009; Ngang,2010;
Ngang,2011; Bolanle, 2013; Özkan,2014; Abdurrezzak,2015; Al-Harthi ve Al-Mahdy,
2016; Çerit, 2017) which are independent of each other in which the relationship
between effective schools and school climate are dealt with but that there are no
studies in which a meta analytical research has been done. It can be seen that there are
studies in which the aspects of school climate and leadership in effective schools are
dealt with together with other factors and try to identify their effect levels
(Scheerens,2013) and studies which only deal with transformative leadership
(Chin,2007; Leithwood and Sun,2012). In this respect, it is considered that a meta-
analytical study is need to better present the importance of the factors of leadership
and school climate in making schools effective, make it possible to integrate research
findings, expand the sample size and make generalizations and to facilitate the
efficient use of accumulation of knowledge obtained from the findings of numerous
studies.

In this study, it was aimed at analyzing the relationship between school effectiveness
and the factors of school climate and leadership through the meta-analysis method.
Within the scope of this aim, the answers to the following questions will be sought:

1. What kind of a relationship is there between school effectiveness and leadership
and if there is a relationship, what is the level of effect size?

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