Analysis of students' perception of school principal in primary and secondary schools through pictures

One of the issues that needs to be researched and analyzed is how school principals, who are of great importance to schools, are seen through the eyes of pupils. In this study, students' perceptions of principals in primary and secondary schools were analyzed through pictures. The phenomenological design method, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the research. The study group of the research consists of students studying in public and private primary schools (2nd, 3rd and 4th grades) and secondary schools in Düzce Central and Çilimli districts. A convenient (simple) sampling technique was used to form the study group. A total of 12 different schools (2 private and 10 public) were identified as the study area and a total of 724 students in these schools were included in the study group. The research data were analyzed using the content analysis technique. These themes are 'Social Principal', 'Hardworking Principal', 'Democratic and Fair Principal', 'Authoritarian and Oppressive Principal', 'Protective Principal' and 'Principal with Physical Characteristics in the Forefront'. The pictures drawn by the students were transferred to MAXQDA 26 software, where codes were created according to the characteristics attributed to the figure of the 'principal', and from there themes were identified. According to the results of the analyses, while the majority of primary school pupils perceived the headteacher as a 'social leader', the fact that secondary school pupils generally perceived the headteacher as an 'authoritarian and oppressive leader' clearly shows the differences in experience and perception between the different levels of education. An expert drawing teacher and artificial intelligence applications (ChatGPT 4) were also used to analyze the data. Keywords: School principal, perception, metaphor, image, picture