Teachers' opinions on the instructional supervision behavior of school administrators

The purpose of this research; It is an examination of the instructional supervision behaviors of school administrators based on teachers' experiences. For this purpose, the simultaneous variation design, one of the mixed method designs, was used. In the quantitative phase of the research, using the survey method, data was collected from 630 teachers who were selected by simple random sampling technique among the teachers working in primary schools. In the qualitative phase of the research, opinions were taken from 16 teachers using the phenomenological design and the maximum diversity technique. In the study, data were collected using the "School Principals' Instructional Supervision Behavior Scale" and a semi-structured interview form created by the researcher. The data was analyzed with the SPSS 26.0 Package program, and descriptive statistics, t-Test, and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) were used in the analysis of the data. Deductive content analysis was used to analyze the interviews. According to the findings of the research, it was found that teachers perceived school principals' instructional supervision behaviors at a "high" level, classroom visit and feedback behaviors at a "medium" level, and teaching and teacher development behaviors at a "high" level. Among the demographic variables, significant differences were found in the number of teachers in the school, who should supervise the course, the educational background of the school principal, and the seniority of the school principal. During the interviews with the teachers, findings were found that the school principals informed them that there would be lesson visits, but mostly one-on-one interviews were not held with the teachers before the visit, the focus was on student performance rather than teacher performance during the visit, and feedback was provided after the visit. In addition, it has been observed that school principals monitor the academic achievements of students and carry out activities to ensure the development of teaching and teachers. However, teachers generally expressed the opinion that course inspections did not contribute to their professional development and that teachers were not encouraged to visit each other's classes. In the research, it was concluded that school principals exhibited instructional supervision behaviors, but especially course supervision was not carried out to improve teaching and was insufficient to increase the professional development of teachers. Key words: Instructional supervision, Lesson supervision, Teaching and teacher development, Professional development.