Qualifications required by distance education applications in school managers

The aim of the research is to determine the opinions of teachers about the competencies required by the distance education practices in school administrators and the level of school principals having these competencies. The research was designed as an exploratory sequential design, one of the mixed research methods. School administrators and teachers working in the central districts of Siirt and Osmaniye in the first and second terms of the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 academic year constituted the study group of the research. The data of the research were first obtained by qualitative methods and the maximum diversity sampling method was preferred. In this context, 43 interviews were conducted with 25 administrators and 18 teachers. The data obtained from the interviews were analyzed with a computer package program and codes, sub-categories, categories, and themes related to the research problems were created. According to the results obtained from the qualitative data of the research, it has been concluded that school administrators have six competence areas in distance education under the headings of providing support, personal characteristics, coping with crisis, coping with uncertainty, creating a healthy school environment, and managing technology. Within the scope of the determined competencies, a measurement tool was developed for the competencies required by the distance education applications in school principals by scanning the literature. "The Scale of Competencies Required by School Principals by Distance Education" was applied to 1025 teachers working in the central districts of Siirt and Osmaniye. The collected data were analyzed using computer statistics package programs. According to the analyzes, it was seen that the scale consisting of 35 items represented a 3-dimensional structure. As a result of the validity and reliability analyzes of the scale, it was determined that the developed scale could be used to measure the competencies of school principals in distance education. When the opinions of the teachers regarding the level of the school principals' proficiency in distance education were taken, it was concluded that the teachers evaluated the proficiency level of the school principals in distance education as "Mostly Agree". The mean score of x̄=3.81 in the dimension of "Providing Support", x̄= 3.72 in the dimension of "Coping with Crisis and Uncertainty" and x̄= 3.69 in the dimension of "Technology Management " were obtained on the five-point scale . When the scores obtained from the dimensions related to the competencies of school principals in distance education are compared in terms of gender; there was a significant difference between the scores of male and female teachers in the dimension of providing support. The mean rank score of male teachers is significantly higher than the mean rank score of female teachers. In this respect, it can be said that female teachers' perceptions of support from school principals in distance education are lower than male teachers' perceptions. The scores obtained from the dimensions related to the competencies of school principals in distance education were discussed in terms of teachers' participation in the information technologies course. When the scores of the teachers in the sub-dimension of managing technology are examined; it was concluded that the mean rank scores of the teachers who attended the information technology course and those who did not attend the course differed significantly. It was observed that the teachers who attended the course evaluated the technology management competencies of the school principals at a higher level than the teachers who did not attend the course.