Time management abilities of primary school administrators

Developments in science and technology make life more complicated. Knowledge accumulation is increasing; the way of solution of the problems is changing, and in the process, in the age of speed, it is becoming more and more important for an individual to self-supervise taking "time" into consideration. The management of schools and the attitudes and behaviors of the administrators who teach students to manage themselves according to time are of importance in terms of effectiveness and efficiency of schools. Time management is not about managing people's time, but managing events and organizing them when using time. Time management becomes more important at the point of evaluating the concepts of time planning, performance of employees, efficiency of working environment and quality of the institution that is being studied. This research aimed to determine the level of time management skills (time planning, effective use of time, not falling into time traps) and to examine them according to demographic and occupational variables. The aim of this study is to examine the time management skills of a study group of elementary school administrators in Ümraniye Municipality of İstanbul, according to the variables of; age, gender, marital status, seniority (years of service spent on administration), type of school and size of school. The study group consists of 112 administrators, who are in charge of 46 public and private schools in the second term of 2013-2014 Academic Year in Ümraniye Municipality of İstanbul. School administrators' opinions were gathered by Murat Süsin (2012) 'Time Management Questionnaire Survey of Elementary School Administrators' developed by using different time management questionnaires. 138 managerial surveys were applied and 115 surveys were returned. Depending on the preview, three surveys that had not answered to at least one more than half of the survey's items were eliminated and the remaining 112 surveys were taken into consideration. The data has been transferred via SPSS 20 for Windows computer program. Among the descriptive statistics techniques of the program, frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation techniques have been used. Since the data showed parametric distribution, Independent Sample T-test has been used in the analysis of two categorical variables. In addition, the Levene F test and the Tukey or Tamhane test were applied to multiple comparison tests according to the equality status of variances in order to see whether the independent variables showed normality distribution over the sub-dimensions. In the situations when more than two groups are taken into account, One Way ANOVA among the parametric tests has been used and .05 significance level has been based depending on the sub-problems of the study. The data obtained from the surveys has been examined under three main categories; time management, using time effectively and not falling for time traps. According to the result of the evaluation of the data, it has been shown that the administrators are at a good level in time management, using time effectively and not falling for time traps. However, when the average of these three dimensions is compared, the averages of using time effectively and not falling into time traps observed to be slightly lower when compared to time planning. The opinions of primary school administrators on time management skills do not differ according to their gender. The opinions of the managers differ according to their age. Managers under the age of 30 do not see themselves as sufficient in their ability to use time effectively and not fall into time traps, even though they may think that they are more successful in terms of time planning. According to the marital status, it was determined that single managers could not show the same competence in terms of the ability to use time effectively and to be able to fall into time traps when they found themselves adequately in terms of time planning ability. Similarly, although private school administrators are relatively more successful than public school administrators in terms of time management, it has been pointed out that there is no difference between public and private when the remaining aspects are examined. According to the seniority variable, there was no difference in the dimension of the ability to fall into time traps. When size of the school is taken into consideration, it has been deduced that the administrators of the schools that have 500 or less students and the schools that have students between 1001-1500 are more successful than the administrators of the schools that have students between 501-1000 and more than 2001. Given the seniority variable, there is no variation in falling for time traps aspect; the administrators with the experience of 11-15 years are more successful in time management aspect than the administrators with the experience of 5 or less years; the administrators with the experience of 11-15 years are more successful in using time effectively when compared to the administrators with the experience of 5 or less years, 6-10 years and 16-20 years. As a result, it can be said that the administrators in the study group are better at time management aspect in comparison with aspects of using time effectively and not falling for time traps. It is suggested that, in order not to fall for time traps and to use the time effectively, administrators should take in-service training, and qualitative and quantitative studies that examine time management in different variables should be conducted.