The Assessment of secondary school administrators and their management practices in terms of contemporary management approaches (South Anatolia district)

The purpose of this study is to assess the appropriateness of secondary school administrators' management practices in terms of contemporary management approaches and to define the impact of their personal traits of administrators on these practices. This research is conducted at 51 high schools in Southern Anatolia Region selected through random and cluster sampling. The population of this research comprises the total at these schools. 166 administrators and 1 152 school teachers fall in the scope in this study. VIThe questionnaire that is used to collect data is composed of two parts. The first part is for personal traits of teachers and administrators and the second part is for the teachers' and administrators' perspectives concerning managing practices. The second part contains 78 items that are designed to assess the qualities of the contemporary management approaches. The significance of differences between means is analysed using "t" test and Anova, the significance of relations is analysed using Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient Procedure. The validity (content and construct) is assured using factor analysis procedure and the reliability is assured using Cronbach Alpha and Guttman Split Half Reliability measures. All these statistical procedures are carried out using SPSS software (9.0 version) in windows for IBM platform. Some of the findings may be summarised as follows; 1. Crucial differences are observed in the management practices of the school administrators from the contemporary management point of view, especially in terms of In-Service Training, Motivation- Directing, Human Resource Management, and School Environment Management. 2. Statistically significant differences are observed between the assessment of the administrators themselves and assessment of the teachers for all management processes. VII3. Almost 95 % of the school administrators neither take any management related course leading to a degree nor attend any in-service training program after graduation. 4. According to the findings obtained from the responses related to Human Resource Management and Motivation-Directing which focuses on human side of organizations, it is observed that school administrators do not effectively try to convince or satisfy teachers who are considered to be internal clients. It means that they don't accomplish an important role according to contemporary school management approaches. 5. And, for all management processes, it is observed that the school administrators neither let the teachers be involved in school decisions about school nor inform them about such decisions. Key Words: Secondary School Administrators, Contemporary Management Approaches, Management Practices Science Code. EB 685 VIII