The Leadership Orientations of the Students Receiving Sports Education in Turkey

This research has been planned to identify the factors related to the assessment of “The Leadership Orientations” of the students receiving sports education (physical education and sports teacher, sports management, recreation, trainer education departments) in the universities in Turkey. This descriptive study has a population consisting of the students receiving sports education in the universities in Turkey and a sample of totally 1032 students (N: 1032) (who attend physical education and sports teacher, sports management, recreation, trainer education departments). The data has been collected using The Student Information Form and the Leadership Orientation Survey. According to the means of sub-scales of “Leadership Orientations by Sexes” obtained by the students receiving sports education, a significant difference has been identified between the frames of “Transformational Leadership” and “Charismatic Leadership”. This difference can be explained by the fact that male students consider themselves more competent compared to the female students in these two sub-scales. Consequently, when the mean points of the sub-scales of the Leadership Orientation Survey [Self] obtained by the students receiving sports education in Turkey are compared, it has been observed that the direction and strength of relation between sex, class, department and school is “positive” and “moderate” and also those students have “people-oriented leadership” characteristics among the sub-scales of the leadership orientation frames.


Introduction
Leadership can be defined as the combination of the skills and knowledge to gather a group of people around certain goals and motivate individuals to achieve these goals (Eren, 2010).A leader's role behaviours, strategy and tactics are influential on performance of the duties and achievement of adaptation within an organization as well as the followers' values, believes and behaviours (Helvacı, 2010).
Since leadership is a concept difficult to be defined exactly, it is considered as a complex subject by the organizational academicians (Theodore, 1981).Many definitions on leader and leadership have been made.Leadership is defined as motivating others to act in line with the intended purpose and as exercising authority to take decisions.Leadership is considered as a function of personal traits, behaviour or characteristics of a position possessed.In this scope, a leader's role is to ensure that others produce an effective performance (Mullins, 1996).To collect these definitions on a common ground, leadership is defined as the process, skill or art to affect, motivate and encourage all individuals within an organization in order to achieve the defined goals (Hellriegel & Scolum, 1992;Black & Porter, 2000;Robbins, 1998;Eren, 2007).
It is clear that leadership is fundamental for the effectiveness of work groups and for the organizations to which they belong (Pecino & Santa-Bárbara, 2000).
Leadership must respond effectively to the new needs of organizations: innovation, cultural diversity, work-based knowledge, communication, and work groups.Work groups play a central role in organizations, and leadership is essential for the effectiveness of these teams (Judge & Piccolo, 2004;O'Reilly, Caldwell, Chatman, Lapiz, & Self, 2010).
Because of their characteristics and diversity, today's organizations represent fertile ground for the study of leadership models, More specifically, globalization, new technologies, communication, and economic and social trends challenge organizations with new leadership roles and functions (Burke & Cooper, 2006).
The need to face new challenges in a globalized world requires leaders to accept a complex role which involves combining continuity with innovation, based on a solid foundation of social values, ethical principles and the practice of integrating groups of professionals from different areas.
In comparison with typical traditional leadership, there have emerged new models of leadership much more dynamic and in step with reality.Thus, we see other types of leadership, for example, the transformational model which demonstrates positive correlations not only among different individual variables in the leader (ethics, emotional management, knowledge-building, etc.), but also with results at the organizational level (better performance, higher team satisfaction) (Imbroda-Ortiz, Castillo-Rodríguez, & Chinchilla-Minguet, 2015).
The classification of leadership theories varies according to the related literature.For instance, Can (1997) has made the following classification of the leadership theories: possession of certain traits, behavioural theories, situational leadership models and the latest developments in leadership theories.Başaran (1998) has made the following classification of the leadership theories: traits theories, transactional leadership theories, contextual leadership theories and contingent leadership theories.Hodgetts (1999) andÇev, Çetin, andMutlu (1999) have gathered the leadership theories under two titles: traits theory and situational theory.While Mullins (2005) has classified the leadership theories as qualitative/behavioural attitudes, functional attitudes, behavioural attitudes, situational attitudes, transformational leadership and inspirational leadership, Robbins, Judge, and Hasham (2012) have made another classification between theories and inspirational attitudes.Based on the classifications made in the literature, the leadership theories have been examined under four categories including Traits Approach, Behavioural Leadership Theories, Situational Leadership Theories and New Approaches in Leadership in this study (Acar, 2014).
The previous studies have shown that effective leaders sometimes don't have the same traits and some group members don't become a leader although they have more traits compared to a leader's.Also, the Traits Approach couldn't respond to the question on how to raise a good leader.Therefore, this situation has necessitated addressing other variables in order to understand the leadership process completely (Koçel, 2003).
Scholars have recognized the importance of leadership in the sport industry; early sport leadership studies emerged as early as the 1970s (Brassie, 1989).
Since then, scholars have developed and pursued numerous lines of leadership research situated in sport, investigating a myriad of leadership styles and behaviours and their relation to individual, dyadic, group, and organizational outcomes in the context of both the on-the-field athletic team and the off-the-field conventional management of the sport organization itself.Within sport leadership specifically, the sport psychology discipline has traditionally concerned itself with on-the-field team aspects of sport leadership (e.g., the coach leading the team), whereas the sport management discipline has centered more on leadership in the conventional off-the-field aspect of sport (e.g., the athletic director providing leadership to an intercollegiate athletics department).To date, however, there has been no comprehensive review of the sport management leadership literature (Peachey, Zhou, Damon, & Burton, 2015).

Method
This research has been planned to identify the factors related to the assessment of "The Leadership Orientations" of the students receiving sports education (physical education and sports teacher, sports management, recreation, trainer education departments) in the universities in Turkey.
In line with this goal, the following questions have been tried to be responded:

•
What kind of leadership behaviours do the students receiving sports education demonstrate?
• Is there a relation between the students' sexes and leadership orientations?
• Is there a relation between the students' school, department, class and graduation status and leadership orientations?

Participants
In this descriptive study, the population consisting of the students receiving sports education (physical education and sports teacher, sports management, recreation, trainer education departments) in the universities in Turkey.
This research aims at the students who receive sports education (physical education and sports teacher, sports management, recreation, trainer education departments) in the universities in Turkey and who satisfy the criteria to be involved in the sample.The research sample consists of 1039 students who are in their first, second, third and fourth year of university education and have bachelor's degree and who are volunteer to take part in the research online on the data collection days.The number of academic units that carry on their activities in universities as of the end of 2015-2016 in Turkey (YÖK, www.osym.gov.tr).

Design
This is a descriptive research.Descriptive research does not fit neatly into the definition of either quantitative or qualitative research methodologies, but instead it can utilize elements of both, often within the same study.The term descriptive research refers to the type of research question, design, and data analysis that will be applied to a given topic.Descriptive statistics tell what is, while inferential statistics try to determine cause and effect (Knupfer & McLellan, 1996).

Data Collection Tools
The personal traits of the students receiving sports education in universities in Turkey have been investigated using the Student Information Form and their leadership orientations have been examined through "Leadership Orientation Survey".The questionnaire form has been applied online in line with the call for questionnaire via the social media groups followed by the students receiving sports education.

Student Information Form
This form includes the questions related to the traits of students receiving sports education in terms of their personality (gender) and school (school, department, class, graduation).

Leadership Orientations Survey
It has been developed by Bolman and Deal (1990) to assess students' leadership characteristics.
The first section of this survey (Section I: Leadership Behaviours: The Leadership Orientation) includes the questions on leadership behaviours and its second section (Section II: Leadership Style-The Leadership Orientations Survey Instrument) involves the questions related to leadership style and third section (Section III: Overall rating) contains the questions on assessment of an individual's perceptions as a manager and leader (Bolman & Deal, 1990;Dereli, 2003;McArdle, 2008).
In this study, the first section of the survey (Section I: Leadership Behaviours: The Leadership Orientation) regarding the leadership behaviours has been used.The section that assesses the leadership behaviours contains 32 items with a 5-point Likert scale.7,11,15,19,23,27 and 31 for Transformational Leadership and Item 4,8,12,16,20,24,28 and 32 for Charismatic Leadership).This survey with a 5-point Likert scale contains 32 expressions.Each expression is scored as follows: 1 = Never; 2 = Occasionally; 3 = Sometimes, 4 = Often; and 5 = Always.Minimum 8 points and maximum 40 points can be obtained from each frame.A high score obtained from the frames of the survey indicates that the person always displays the related behaviour while a low score means that he/she never exhibits the leadership characteristics (Dereli 2003;McArdle, 2008).
The validity and reliability of the survey in Turkey (Dereli, 2003) was studies on primary school teachers and principals in the year 2003.In Dereli's study, Cronbach alfa internal consistency coefficient was reported to be between 0.84 and 0.88 for the sub-scales of the survey.Since the Turkish version of the survey is valid and reliable and due to its applicability and intelligibility coefficient, it has been decided to use the survey in this study (Özkan, Akın, & Durna, 2015).

The Research Restrictions
One of the research restrictions is the fact that this study has been performed with the students receiving sports education (physical education and sports teacher, sports management, recreation, trainer education departments) in the universities in Turkey.Another restriction is that all variables that may affect students' perceptions of leadership haven't been examined.

Data Analysis and Assessment
For the statistical assessment of the data, SPSS for Windows (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) 21.0 package program has been used in the research.The descriptive statistical techniques such as frequency, arithmetic mean, standard deviation and percent have been used for the data analysis.The significance level has been taken as p<0.05.The suitability of the data for normal distribution has been tested by One Sample Kolmogorov Smirnov Test.Non-parametric tests have been used for advanced analyses.Of the non-parametric tests, Mann-Whitney U test has been used for two independent variables; Kruskal-Wallis test for multiple independent variables and Spearman's correlation analysis for the analysis of relations.The lowest and highest means have been obtained by male students among the participants.The lowest mean is 1 while the highest one is 4.97.The difference between the means is 1 ≤ ≤ 4.97.

Results
Table  In Table 5, differences have been seen between the male and female participants in terms of sub-scales of Leadership Orientation Survey.In Table 6, there is a significant difference between Transformational Leadership and Charismatic Leadership.This difference can be explained by the fact that male students consider themselves more competent compared to the female students in these two sub-scales.In Table 7, there are significant differences between the points of sub-scales of Leadership Orientation Survey displayed by "female" participants (Table 5).
Among the students receiving sports education in Turkey, Charismatic Leadership is an approach that is mostly associated with people's works, positions and self-expression and it is more developed among male students.However, the fact that female participants have had the highest point in the item of "I'm a model leader with my personality for the surrounding people" under the sub-scale of "Charismatic Leadership" needs to be addressed separately.The fact that females are more consistent and more loyal to their promises compared to males supports this conclusion.On the other side, sports are more common among males and male sportsmen are generally successful, which is again a criterion for charismatic leadership.
When the environment and other factors are examined in the framework of the responses given by females under the sub-scale of "Transformational Leadership", it has been seen that females are less competent and decisive in terms of persuasion and problem-solving compared to males.The fact that males have had the highest point in the item of "I accomplish despite conflicts and oppositions" under the sub-scale of "Transformational Leadership" and females hesitate in such situations shouldn't be ignored.Women have limited skills to overcome problems and act according to the course of problems compared to men, which also supports this conclusion (Table 6).
According to the variable of departments, it has been observed in the research that the item of "I'm open to others and help them consistently" under the sub-scale of "People-Oriented Leadership" is a leadership behaviour displayed by the participants from the department of "Recreation".Also, it has been observed that the items of "I highlight the importance of careful planning and timely completion of the planned works" and "I identify clear and measurable objectives and hold people accountable for the results" under the sub-scale of "Structure-Oriented Leadership" are the leadership behaviours exhibited by the participants from the department of "Recreation".The item of "I'm successful and skilful to persuade the people having opposing views" under the sub-scale of "Transformational Leadership" has been found out to be a leadership behaviour displayed by the participants from "physical education teacher" department while the items of "I'm a model leader with my personality for the surrounding people" and "I instil a strong and challenging sense of vision and mission" under the sub-scale of "Charismatic Leadership" are exhibited by the participants from the department of "Recreation" (Table 7).
The fact that the behavioural traits of the students from the recreation department differ from those of the students attending other sports education departments in Turkey results from the fitness of the student selection criteria of these departments for the leadership training and from the leadership course practices included in the curriculum of the recreation departments.
There is a relation between the sub-scale of people-oriented leadership and departments (χ2kw=98.69;p<0.00) while a relation is available between the sub-scale of structure-oriented leadership and departments (χ2kw=103.175;p<0.00).Also, there is a relation between the sub-scale of transformational leadership and departments (χ2kw=17.82;p<0.00) while a relation is available between the sub-scale of charismatic leadership and departments (χ2kw=84.19;p<0.00).Moreover, there is a relation between "Recreation" department and other departments according to the sub-scale of "People-Oriented Leadership".By the sub-scale of "Structure-Oriented Leadership", a relation is available between "Recreation" department and other departments.There is a relation between "Recreation" department and "Trainer" departments and between "Physical Education Teacher" and "Sports Management" according to the sub-scale of "Transformational Leadership".By the sub-scale of "Charismatic Leadership", a relation is available between "Recreation" department and "Trainer" departments and between "Physical Education Teacher" and "Sports Management" (Table 8).

Conclusion
In conclusion, the fact that the curriculums of the sports education departments include leadership training supports the affinities between the departments in Turkey.The professional groups of Physical Education and Sports Teacher, Trainer Education, Sports Management and Recreation Leadership have courses with similar content for leadership training, which provides the students attending different departments with the opportunity to have common traits.
The fact that sports has human and social characteristics in any field and the students who have received sports education and will be a leader in many areas within society after graduation are endowed with the traits of "people-oriented leadership" and also the fact that they display these behaviours will contribute to the human and social development highly in terms of sports education and practices in Turkey.
Following identification of the leadership orientations of the students receiving sports education in advance according to their sexes and departments and consideration of the professional acquisitions of Physical Education and Sports Teacher, Trainer Education, Sports Management and Recreation Leadership departments, the leadership formation trainings included in the course content of each department should be given in accordance with their intended purpose and these students' deficiencies and insufficiencies specific to their leadership orientations should be eliminated by applied trainings.

Table 1 .
Distribution of the academic units that give sports education in universities in Turkey 2. The findings on the demographic characteristics of the students having participated in the research In Table2, examining the personal traits of the students receiving sports education in universities in Turkey, a great majority of students (77.9%) are female.The students that have participated in the research are mostly (56.7%) studying in School of Physical Education and Sports.Of these students, 38.6% attend teacher department and 26.1% are graduate students.

Table 3 .
The relation between the points of variables and leadership orientation survey means , when the means of the sub-scales of leadership orientation survey obtained by the students receiving sports education are compared, a significant relation has been seen in terms of the direction and strength of the relation between sex, class, department and school.

Table 4 .
Distribution of leadership orientation survey points

Table 6 .
Mann-Whitney test results of the sub-scales of leadership orientation survey points by departments

Table 7 .
Distribution of the leadership orientation survey points by departments