Educational leadership roles of primary school administrators and problems they face

The study aims to identify administrator and teacher perceptions regarding the educational roles of primary school administrators, degree of facing problems during the implementation of these roles and the problems that are faced during the process.The universe of the study consisted of 2792 primary school administrators and 48875 teachers working in 1387 official primary schools in 39 districts of Istanbul during 2008-2009 educational year. 15 districts out of these 39 districts were selected through ?simple random sampling?. The study was implemented with groups of 1783 teachers and 102 school administrators from three schools selected by ?simple random sampling? method in each district in the sample. Qualitative methods were utilized in collecting the views of 10 school administrators in order to identify the problems faced during the implementation of their roles as educational leaders.The study is both qualitative and quantitative. ?Semi-structured Interview Form? developed by the researcher in line with expert views and ?Educational Leadership? assessment tool developed by Şişman (2004) were used in the study to collect data.Results of the sub problems of the study are summarized below:1. According to administrator and teacher perceptions, all items in the ?Educational Leadership? assessment tool that cover the educational leadership behavior of school administrators are true ?most of the time?,2. There is a statistically meaningful difference between the perceptions of primary school administrators and teachers regarding the realization of school administrators? educational leadership roles,3. There is no statistically meaningful difference among the variables of seniority, gender and level of education in school administrators? perception regarding their own educational leadership roles,4. Although there are no meaningful differences in the perceptions of primary school teachers regarding the educational leadership roles of their administrators according to gender; seniority and level of education variables create meaningful differences in perception,5. According to both qualitative and quantitative findings of the study, school administrators face the highest number of problems in the ?Management of the Educational Programs and Teaching Process? dimension while administrating their educational roles. However, they face the least number of problems while they are administering their educational leadership roles in ?Supporting and Developing Teachers? dimension.