Investigation of feedback strategies of private and public preschool education institution administrators

People contribute to various organizations throughout their lives. One of these organizations is school settings. Two significant factors affecting the success of schools is management and communication. While individuals communicate in order to transfer information, thoughts and experiences, feedback is an indispensable element of it. In order to be effective during the communication process within preschool education settings, which is the basis of educational life, to be able to reach to the intended aims and behaviours and for the success of organizations, feedback provided by the school principals in school management processes is significant. The aim of this study is to analyze and compare the feedback strategies of the school administrators working in private and public preschool education institutions within the scope of effective communication processes. In this research, qualitative research method was used. For this purpose, 11 administrators and 11 teachers, who are working in Ankara province Çankaya, Yenimahalle and Etimesgut districts, voluntarily participated after obtaining the necessary permissions. The study relied on the multiple data sources (teachers and adminitars) because of the need to know the opinions and the forms of practices of school administrators and teachers working in preschool education institutions about the concept of feedback. Data were collected through personal information forms and a semi-structured interview guide. Content analysis technique was utilized by the researcher in order to analyze the data from the interviews. The findings showed that the opinions of the school administrators and teachers working in preschool education institutions about the principals' feedback strategies are positive, neutral and negative and their perceptions are mostly positive. Schools are constantly interacting with their internal and external environment. Training administrators convey feedback from internal stakeholders to teachers, to assistant directors and to other staff. The results demonstrated that they needed to give feedback to the teachers regarding instructional processes such as "education plans and practices, students with special needs, regulation of the physical environment, projects, seminars, meetings, training supervision" and problems. While private school administrators give more feedback to parents among the external stakeholders, it was determined that public school principals give feedback to Provincial-District National Education Directorates. The methods used by the school administrators while giving feedback are: written-formal, verbal-informal and non-verbal.The used language and approach are positive, negative, constructive and there are alternative strategies if the problem could not be solved. It was concluded that the frequency of giving feedback varies, but they do not give feedback systematically, and they do not use a specific strategy or method. It had been also concluded that according to the aministrators the feedback process was affected by personality, language of communication, school objectives, subject, personal intimacy and professional background, as for the teachers; personality and personal intimacy affect the feedback process. This situation can be explained by the Social Capital Theory. Because, social capital contains emotions, feelings and perceptions experienced in the organization. Thus, the theory of social networks and the concept of feedback are closely related to each other. In addition, the common expectations of administrators and teachers to improve the feedback process are related with the personality, professional competence and school culture. The results of the study had been discussed in the light of networking, culture and exchange theories. Keywords: Feedback, effective communication, school administrators, preschool education