Determining the amount of elementary school principals? performances at doing their duties of managing the curriculum

The subjects of people, physical environment and program have been the duties of educational management.(Aydın, 2005, 189). In addition to this, researches show that the efficient administrators are the efficient leaders; especially instructional leaders. For this reason, the management of the program is the most important and basic duty of the school principal. School principals in Turkey are in charge of implementing the curriculum which is prepared by Ministry of Education in the scope of instructional leadership. The success of the school principal with his duty is the key of high quality education and an efficient school.The main objective of this study is to determine the amount of elementary school principals? performances at doing their duties of managing the curriculum in respect of teachers? perceptions and to discover whether their perceptions about the principal differ in their personal characteristics. Hence survey method which is the most appropriate method for this research is used. Questionnaire technique is used as data collection instrument. The survey which was develeloped by the researcher was applied to 225 teachers who work in Sarıyer.According to the results of the research, teachers believe that school principals occasionally perform their duties of auditing and evaluating, providing teachers opportunities for professional development, following students? academic progress closely and managing the curriculum. When we put these sub-duties in an order according to the amount of being performed, teachers? perceptions show that their principals mostly perform their duties of providing teachers opportunities for professional development secondly they follow students? academic progress closely. Next they manage the implementation of the curriculum and the last one is that they audit and evaluate the education.As a result, about the performances of the school principal at doing his duties of managing the curriculum; there is no statistical difference existed in the levels of the perceptions of the teachers according to their sex, experience, their duty period in school where they work now, teaching approach of the school, the number of the students, the type of the schools where teachers graduated from. It was found that between the variables of the number of the teachers where they work and the perceptions about the performances of the school principal at doing his duties of managing the curriculum, 0.5 level caused a significant difference.Key Words: School management, instructional leadership, school principalship, curriculum, curriculum management, curriculum leader.