All of the primary school students spend much school time by interacting with their teachers. While they are learning new knowledge and skills they are also being influenced by their teachers’ affective responds, values and habits (Gürkan and others 1998:160). So, it is thought that teachers’ perceptions, feelings and opinions about their schools they work for have an important effect on students’ attitudes about their schools. Teachers’ perceptions, feelings and opinions about their schools are tried to define as concept of “organizational identity”. Organizational identity refers broadly to what organization members perceive, feel and think about their organizations (Hatch and Schultz 1997). Identity is essentially the set of beliefs or meanings that answer the question “who am I?” or in the case of an organization “who are we?” In their classic definition of organizational identity, Albert and Whetten (1985) defined organizational identity as that which members believe to be central, enduring, and distinctive about their organization. The significance of the notion of organizational identity is clear: For an organization to understand its identity is to understand its very essence, and is to know the answer to the question. “Who are we as an organization?” (Gioia, Schultz, & Corley, 2000). According to Hatch and Schultz’s (2002) the most cited Organizational Identity Model; organizational culture is an important dynamics of organizational identity which is embedded in an organization’s culture. Furthermore, organizational identity expresses cultural understandings. As an organization, the organizational culture of school is an important variable which affects the school effectiveness positively or negatively (Balcı, 2002:187). School culture can be considered as a belief system which emphasizes academic achievement of their students in every effective school. This belief system also takes into account high goal performances, positive learning conditions and safe and orderly environment. So, when the organizational culture changes or takes other directions, the organizational identity is expected to change in an effective school as well. In effective schools, it is expected that organizational identity makes a difference as organizational culture which is a dynamics of organizational identity. Dutton and Dukerich (1991) asserted that organizational members respond the situations in work place consistently with organizational identity they perceived. Organizational identity is closely related to members’ performance (Blackmore 2004) and effects the actions and behaviors in an organization (Tobin 2002:65). Similarly, the teachers who perceive an effective school identity are expected to respond consistently and adaptively with this perception. Because organizational identity is accepted as a strong impact on organizational processes (Tobin, 2002:65; Foreman and Whetten, 2002; Blackmore, 2004; Garmon 2004; Elsbach and Kramer 1996), it is also expected to effect school effectiveness. According to Gustafson (1995:20) even though organizational identity has so important impact on organizational effectiveness, there is limited research on the subject-matter. For these reasons, it can be thought that perceived organizational identity is an important variable for school effectiveness and perceived differently by teachers in related to schools’ effectiveness level. So the purpose of this research is to analyze how teachers perceive organizational identity in relation to effectiveness level of primary schools.

The sample of the study consists of 595 teachers working for 12 primary schools in Denizli, Turkey. These participants were selected by cluster sampling method. The School Effectiveness Scale and Perceived Organizational Idedtity Scale developed by Cobanoglu (2007) have been administered in order to collect data. The School Effectiveness Scale (SES) includes seven correlates of the effective schools defined by Lezotte (1991) such as (1) safe and orderly environment, (2) clear and focused mission, (3) climate of high expectations, (4) opportunity to learn and student time on task, (5) frequent monitoring of student progress, (6) positive home-school relations, and (7) strong instructional leadership. The Perceived Organizational Identity Scale (POIS) has four domains such as (1) school management, (2) teacher, (3) student, and (4) school environment. In order to analyze the data collected, descriptive statistics techniques including mean scores, standard deviations and t-tests have been used.

After the statistical analysis the following results have been reached: (1) The teachers working for “more effective” schools have different perceptions than teachers working for “less effective” schools. (2) According to teacher perceptions, the distinctive characteristics of effective schools were cooperation, planning, democratic rules, focused mission, stability, maintaining clear and well-cared school building, intimacy, paying attention to personal development and research, proper classroom environment, good reputation, and being more successful.