Abstract

• This study specially focused on relationship between teachers’ perceptions of their school structure and their empowerment. A total of 147 teachers from five basic education high schools participated in this study. Two research instruments, ''School Structures Questionnaire'' adapted from Hoy & Sweetland (2001) and ''School Participant Empowerment Scale (SPES)'' developed by Short & Rinehart (1992) were used to collect quantitative data. Descriptive statistics such as means and standard deviations, and Pearson product-movement correlation coefficient were calculated through SPSS software. The findings of the study indicated that there were high levels of enabling school structures and moderate levels of hindering school structures in Basic Education High Schools according to teachers' perceptions. Similarly, the levels of teacher empowerment were at high levels in those schools based on teachers’ perceptions. When studying the correlation between school structure's dimensions and teacher empowerment, it was found that enabling school structure was positively and moderately correlated to teacher empowerment (r=.486, p<0.01). However, it was also found that there was no relationship between hindering school structure and teacher empowerment.