Opinions of Administrators’ Humor Use in School Administration

Although, there have been many research conducted on duties, responsibilities and roles of school administrators, there is limited research on school administrators’ personality traits. There is also limited research on humor which is one of the important characteristics of successful school administrators, and the effect of school principals’ humor understanding on administration. The aim of this study is to determine the opinion of school administrators’ use of humor in school administration. This research was conducted in Mamak, Town of Ankara by using qualitative research. The participants included 15 volunteer school administrators from elementary, middle and high schools in Mamak. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed by using descriptive and content analysis. It was found that school administrators attribute positive meaning to humor. Participants relatively use affiliative humor style more compared to others, and use aggressive humor style the least. When school administrators’ humor styles are grouped as positive and negative, it seems that school administrators use positive humor style. It was found that there are positive effects of using humor in school administration such as; humor using in workplace increase the productivity and motivations, relaxing the people in stressful situations, causing disappear of anger and burdens, enhancing the communication, helps to discuss problems more easily and facilitates the solution for the problems. It was also found that the negative effect of using humor in school administrations are causing, the misunderstanding, lessening the power and reputation of school administrators, causing the lacking the discipline, causing insulting and hurt of the employees, administrators who are not taking the duties as seriously and perceived as incompetent and insufficient in doing their jobs. Informing school administrators about humor styles may be beneficial for them to use positive humor style at work