School administrators' competence in management of special education services

The purpose of this research is to determine the competences of school administrators regarding the management of special education services. This research used casual comparison method based on "associaitional survey model" because it aims to describe an existing situation. The population of the work consists of 408 school administrators and 813 teachers working in kindergarten, primary school, junior high school and high school in central districts of Malatya. The "School Manager Special Education Services Proficiency Scale",that was developed by Johnson (1990) and adapted into Turkish by the researcher, was used in order to collect data. For the analysis of the obtained data, descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentage), significance tests such as t-test, variance analysis and Mann-Whitney-U (depending on the normal distribution of the data) were performed using SPSS package program. As a result of the research, it was found that teachers perceive school administrators "moderately" enough about special education services. School administrators also stated that they had "moderate" competence in special education services. In the qualifications of the school administrators regarding the special education services, there was a difference between the average scores of the school administrators and the average scores of the teachers. In other words, the independent groups that made this difference meaningful were determined by t test. According to this result, school administrators consider themselves more adequate than teachers. Some suggestions were made based on the results obtained from the research in order to increase the competencies of all school administrators, especially administrators who have graduated from faculty of science - letters and high school administrators. These suggestions were directed to the managers to receive in-service training and to open the support training rooms which are required to be opened in schools and to increase the interest and competence of managers about special education.