Competences of woman administrators as perceived by themselves and teachers working with them

Educational administrators are expected to have certain technical, humanistic and conceptual competences. Technical competence refers to being knowledgeable about instructional methods, techniques, processes and operations. Humanistic competence requires the ability of understanding and conditioning individuals and groups, as well as that of working with others one-to-one and in groups. Conceptual competence, on the other hand, covers the ability of recognizing the interaction between the individual pieces that make up the entire school, keeping up with and grasping theoretical developments in education, and evaluating formal educational situations with this theoretical and conceptual viewpoint. The aim of this study was to identify woman administrators' technical, humanistic and conceptual competences, and to reveal their self-perceptions about the managerial competences of woman administrators as well as those of the teachers that work with them. Data were collected from a total of 401 teachers and woman administrators who were working at the preschools, elementary, secondary and high schools located in central Elazığ and led by female administrators during the 2012 -2013 school year. Scales from 262 participants were evaluated. Confirmatory factor analysis showed the scale to have two factors: "humanistic competence" and "conceptual competence". As the instrument did not have any items on technical competence, this dimension was not included. The data obtained were analyzed by using the SPSS statistical package. The analyses were made with descriptive statistical techniques such as arithmetic mean and standard deviation, as well as frequency and percentage. Independent groups t-test was conducted when the distributions based on subject matter and gender were normal, while the Mann Whitney U test was used when not. In comparisons based on educational status and type of school, One-Way ANOVA was used in cases where the distribution was normal, and the Kruskal Wallis H test was used when not. The main findings from the study were as follows: 1. Teacher views about the factors concerning woman administrators' competences were at the level of "generally" in both "humanistic" and "conceptual competence" factors. 2. Neither the self-competence views of woman administrators, nor the views of teachers about feale administrator competences were significant in the two factors. 3. Concerning the gender variable, a significant difference in favor of women was revealed in the conceptual competences factor and the overall scale. 4. No significant difference was observed among the views of the groups representing different educational statuses about the competences of woman administrators. 5. A difference was found in favor of social sciences teachers in the overall scale and other sub factors. No previous analysis based on subject matter seemed to exist in the literature. 6. The views of teachers from different types of schools about female administrator competences varied significantly. The difference was between preschool teachers and primary, secondary and high school teachers. Key Words: Competence, Administrator competences, Woman administrators.