İlkokul Öğretmenlerinin Mesleki Yeterliklerine ve Okul Müdürlerinin Onların Mesleki Gelişimine Verdiği Desteğe İlişkin Algıları

Teaching as a profession has an important place in all societies. The most important task of teachers is to instill life-long learning in their students. However, teachers who fail in life-long learning cannot be expected to successfully instill this in their students. It is crucial for the quality of teahing and learning that teachers‟ be aware of their developmental needs, and spend time and effort to meet these needs. The aim of the study is to determine elementary school teachers‟ perceptions regarding their professional competencies and the support given by their schoool principals for professional development. In order to increase the validity and reliablilty of the study a mixed method approach was adapted. Findings from qalitative data were used to validate, support and clarify quantitative findings. From a population of 405 elementary school teachers teaching in Famagusta District in TRNC, 309 participated in the quantitiative part of the study, and 12 of these teachers teaching at different schools took part in the qualitative data collection process. For quantitative data collection three different tools were used: demographic questionnaire asking personal information, Self-sufficiency Measurement Tool develeoped by Woolfolk Hoy (2001) and adapted to Turkish by Çapa, Çakıroğlu and Sarıkaya (2005). School Principals‟ Support for Proffessional Develeopment, developed by Bekir Bilge (2015). For qualitative data collection one-to-one semi-structured interviews with 12 teachers were carried out. Date collected form the interviews were analysed using a content analysis approach. Data were arranged into segments, categories were identified, key concetps under each category thus the themes and sub-themes were determined. Phrases used by interviewees were placed into typologies and propositions were generated. Analysis of quantitative data proved that teachers‟ perceive themselves to be considerably high self-sufficient and their school principals to display high level of support for teacher develeopment. However, analysis of qualitative data depicted that eventhough teachers perceive themselves to be self-sufficient in their teaching endeavour, they have certain developmental needs. While analysis of qualitative data indicated that teachers perceived their school principals to display high support for proffessional development, qualitative data analysis proved just the opposite. Teachers believed that shcool principals do not give adequate support for provessional development and that they should implement some action for encouraging teahcers in their efforts for professional development. It could be concluded from the findings of the study that elementary school teachers in the Famagusta District of TRNC are very well aware of the importance of professional develeopment and school principals should increase their support, take action and create opportunities for meeting developmental needs of these teachers.