APPLICATION OF TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT IN TEACHER UNIONS FROM THE PERSPECTIVES OF UNION MEMBERS Bagci, Abdullah M.S., Department of Educational Administration and Planning Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Hasan SimSek September 2009, 123 pages The purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding of the functioning of teacher unions and provide feedback to union managements, members of the unions, teachers, academics and education officials concerning TQM applications in teacher unions by investigating the implementation degree of TQM principles in teacher unions in Ankara. Several studies have been done on the implementation of TQM in the field of education mainly for state/private schools and state/private universities / nevertheless, no researches have been carried out regarding TQM applications in teacher unions which is an important stakeholder in Turkish education system with more than 400.000 members. A Total Quality Management Questionnaire was developed by the researcher based on the existing literature on basic TQM principles to be applied to union members in state schools in Ankara. Descriptive statistics and Mann-Whitney U test were used to analyze the data obtained. The results revealed no difference between Egitim-Sen and T&uuml / rk Egitim-Sen members&rsquo / perceptions concerning the application of 38 TQM proposals in their unions. However, Mann-Whitney U results yielded significant differences on the application of 16 TQM proposals included in the questionnaire. Descriptive statistics results also revealed that more than half of the union members were not aware whether the TQM proposals were applied in their unions or not and about 40% of the members participated in the study perceive that TQM principles are implemented in their unions. Keywords: Total Quality Management, Teacher Unions, Egitim-Sen and T&uuml / rk Egitim-Sen