The Relationship between Teachers’ Political Skills and Work Engagement

The purpose of the present study is to ascertain the relationship between teachers’ political skills and work engagement. Correlational design is employed to complete the process of this research. The population of this study is composed of 4494 teachers working in Usak Province of Turkey. Convenience sampling was used in this study. The sample size of the study was made up 297 teachers. The data were collected through ‘Political Skill Inventory’ and ‘Work Engagement Scale.’ The data analysis was conducted via arithmetic mean, standard deviation, Pearson Moment Correlation Analysis and path analysis. According to the results, the levels of teachers’ political skills and work engagement were high. Another finding of the study revealed that there was a moderate, positive and significant relationship between the dimensions of social astuteness, interpersonal influence skill, networking ability and sincerity and the level of work engagement. The research has also showed that the fact that teachers’ political skills had the dimensions of interpersonal influence skill and sincerity had a positive, high level and significant effect on their work engagement. In addition, it was concluded that teachers’ level of social astuteness and networking ability did not predict their levels of work engagement. In light of those results, it is recommended that certain activities to improve teachers’ political skills must be organized in schools