A program proposal based on the educational needs for the training of principals via distance education

The purpose of this study is to develop a certification program for the training of school principals via distance education based on the opinions of experts in the field of Educational Administration and Distance Education Technologies as well as the opinions of school principals regarding educational requirements. A survey was applied on two separate sample groups and data was gathered from these samples. The population of the study consists of 40775 school principals stationed at formal primary and secondary schools connected to the National Education Ministry in main districts of the regions in Turkey, in the 2008-2009 educational year.Multistage cluster sampling, a probabilistic sampling technique, was used to determine the sample population of the study in a two-stage process. In the primary stage, educational institutions in Turkey were separated into 7 geographical regions, and in the secondary stage, provinces were randomly assigned. From seven provinces (Aydın, Çanakkale, Çorum, Eskişehir, Malatya, Mersin, Gaziantep) in the seven regions of Turkey, a total of 1164 school principals assigned at random constitute the primary sample of this study. After the removal of 31 surveys which were left out of assessment, data was gathered from 1033 (88.74%) surveys.For the determination of the second sample group, convenience sampling was used. 43 teaching staff who constitute the Educational Administration Professors Board, established for the advancement and enhancement of collaboration in the field of educational management in Turkey, as well as 20 experts in the field of Distance Education Technologies attending the 2nd International Open and Distance Education Symposium between 13-15 September 2006 at Anadolu University were included in the qualitative data analysis process via 14 open ended data gathering tools.Data for the study was gathered by the ?School Principals? Competences? survey developed by the researcher, and by the open ended data gathering tool ?Expert Opinions Regarding the Training of School Principals Using Distance Education?.Throughout the data analysis process of the study, descriptive statistics, internal consistency coefficients, matching variance tests, t tests and one- way between- groups analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used. To prevent type I and type II errors, a pseudo-Bonferroni adjustment was conducted and the value of significance was determined as 0.01. For the analysis of quantitative data, the Statistical Package Program SPSS 15 was used. For the analysis of quantitative data, content analysis was used.According to the findings of the study, there is no significant difference found between the opinions regarding the competences that school principals should have depending on variables of instructional rank , branch, and teaching seniority. Opinions regarding the importance given to competences required from school principals, and principals? opinions regarding ?The Importance of Effective Use of School Resources? in the context of administrative seniority displayed significantly difference, showing that contributors with 6 to 10 years of experience provided more positive responses than those with 21 years or more experience.Also there is no significant difference found between the opinions on educational requirement regarding competences that school principals should have, depending on the variables of instructional rank, branch, and administrative seniority. It can be seen that opinions regarding educational requirements significantly differ mainly by the variable of teaching seniority. This difference was caused by the responses of principals with 5 or less of years of experience who claimed to need more training than principals with 6-10 years and 16-20 years in terms of the dimensions that are organizational communication, professional development and effective use of school resources.The opinions of experts in the fields of Educational Administration and Distance Education Technologies regarding the management, content, participants and evaluation dimensions of the program model were unified on the 16 themes.