Instructional leadership roles of primary school administrators

Educational administration is the application of the public administration to aspecific area. However, school administration is the application of publicadministration to schools, the basic systems of educational administration. The basicduties of the school administration are to realize general and specific objectives ofTurkish National Education and to apply the educational policy. This duty given toschools is performed by the school principals who are responsible for keepingschools alive and improving them in accordance with its objectives.In recent years, the concept of ?leader-manager? has become an importantone in the administration literature. The administrators are expected to be botheffective managers and effective leaders. It is now an obligation for theadministrators of primary schools to prove the skills of leadership and management.The main goal of this study is to determine from the teachers? point of view inwhich level the primary school administrators in the city center of Aydın realize theirinstructional leadership roles. The questionnaire form which was used by Mr Şişman(2004) for his study on the instructional leadership behaviors of the primary schoolprincipals has been determined as the data collection tool. Mr Şişman wasinterviewed for the permission to apply his questionnaire named ?The InstructionalLeadership Behaviors of School Principals?. With the permission taken, thequestionnaire developed for the instructional leadership behaviors of the schooladministrators has been used as the data collection tool. The information form of thequestionnaire which was prepared in order to get information about schools andadministrators has been improved by the researcher.The SPSS statistical package program was used to analyze the collected data.The frequency, percentage, mean about the data; and average standard deviationvalues of teachers? perceptions concerning fifty behaviors throughout schools havebeen found and charts have been prepared. Then, the said perceptions have beencompared according to the genders, seniorities, branches, participation in in-serviceiiitraining conditions about the school administrators and also according to the variableof the school size (concerning the number of students and teachers). Varianceanalysis has been used in the comparisons made according to the determinedvariables. The probable differences between the said variables and the teachers?perception for instructional leadership roles have been examined by ?t? test.The results of the study are as follows: the levels at which the primary schooladministrators realize their instructional leadership roles have not been low. Theeducational program and the administration of the training process of the primaryschool administrator, and training process and the evaluation of students showsignificant differences in accordance with seniority and branch in the scope ofinstructional leadership. Significant differences in all dimensions of instructionalleadership have been found between the principals who participate in in-servicetraining and those who do not. The school size is not effective in presenting theadministrator?s instructional leadership role.iv