INSTRUCTIONAL LEADERSHIP BEHAVIOURS OF SCHOOL PRINCIPALS IN TERMS OF TEACHERS’ OPINIONS
Journal Name:
- Turkish Studies
Keywords (Original Language):
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Abstract (2. Language):
According to some researchers, instructional leadership are described as “educational or pedagogical” leadership while some prefer to say “instructional” (Southworth, 2002). Therefore, these three terms can be utilized interchangeably. To make a definition, McEwan (1994) described instructional leader as a person who has in depth knowledge about educational processes and learning theories, and holds specific goals (Serin, 2011). Similarly, De Bevoise (1984) labelled instructional leadership as a set of behaviors exhibited by school principal itself or someone school principal make to do so. Moreover, instructional leadership was identified as focusing of leadership functions related to learning and teaching (Hallinger & Leithwood, 1998, as cited in du Plessis, 2013: 81), following professional dialogue and discussion (Southworth, 2002).
After describing the instructional leadership, following question arises in the context of this study: What behaviors do instructional leadership include? Therefore, “the characteristics and behaviors of instructional leader” may help to the term be more concrete. For instance, Park and Ham (2014: 4) remarked that instructional leadership may vary since it is the focus point of the every school principal’s key role in conceptual level. That is, those roles are “improving school effectiveness”, “facilitating school alteration”, “improving teaching profession”, and “focusing on development of students’ output”. Therefore, it can be conceivable that instructional leadership may be shaped on the basis of school culture, school climate, and school’s specific characteristics.
Existed research indicated that there are not so many qualitative studies investigating school principals’ instructional leadership roles and behaviors based on teacher opinions (Blasé & Blasé, 2000; Halverson, et al., 2007; Msila, 2013; Prytula, Noonan, & Hellsten, 2013; Summak & Şahin, 2013; Timperley, 2006). In line with this situation, this study mainly aims to understand how school principals’ instructional leadership behaviors in schools are determined and shaped according to teachers opinions. In addition, the study also propose to scrutinize what teachers observed or experienced as well as problems they come across. With these objectives and (1) three dimensions of instructional leadership which are talking to teachers/conference, encouraging/supporting teachers’ professional development, and fostering/reinforcing teachers’ opinions (Blasé & Blasé, 1998, as cited in Blasé & Blasé, 2004), (2) the dimensions of instructional leadership scale, which are determining and sharing school aims, managing of educational program and teaching process, evaluating of teaching process and students, supporting and improving teachers, and creating regular learning-teaching environment and climate, developed by Şişman (2004), following semi-structured questions were prepared to obtain answers:
1. Can you explain what kind of leadership role your school principal has in the school?
2. In your opinion, what is the role of school principal in structuring your school’s future objectives and missions? How much is school principal effective in this process? What do s/he do?
3. How does your school principal include himself/herself to educational process? (Or what is his/her role in educational process?)
4. How does your school principal effect your teaching process? (in terms of your classroom, students, your educational methods and techniques)
5. What kind of suggestions does you school principal give you about educational process? (Or what does s/he do about this?)
6. How does your school principal make the teacher-student evaluations related to educational process?
Method
The study group of this study that is designed as qualitative research is constituted from 52 primary, middle, and high school teachers working in Nizip district of Gaziantep province. A guideline explaining how to fill the interview form, a demographic information page, and semi-structured interview form developed by the researchers were given to participants as data collecting tools. Obtained data was analyzed through content analysis with NVivo software.
Discussion and Conclusions
According to the findings of the study, the school principals’ instructional leadership behaviors were categorized under six themes. Accordingly, the themes of determining school’s aims, managing educational program and teaching process, evaluating of teaching process and students, supporting and improving teachers, and creating regular learning-teaching environment and climate were probed one by one so that school principals’ instructional behaviors were tried to determine. The results showed that the school principals at primary, middle, and high schools were perceived as leading and instructional leader. Especially, the positive themes of “leading, guiding, sharing experiences, student-teacher centeredness” were often repeated and coded.
Firstly, in the theme of determining school aims, it was detected “impressing, noticing teacher-student opinions, opening dialogue, leading, motivating, giving confidence and encouragement” as positively; and “behaving apathetic” as negatively. Second, directly observed behaviors in the theme of managing educational program and teaching process were reported positively as “visiting the classroom, providing materials, taking into consideration of teachers’ recommendations, presenting practical examples, and inspecting the process”. In terms of indirectly observed behaviors, “leading, sharing experiences, presenting innovative ideas, behaving to encourage the success, holding teacher-student-centered approach” were formed. Third, the positive codes “making inspection, following the process, providing motivation, sharing original ideas, sharing experiences, guiding, pursuing teacher-student-centered approach, and organizing working environment” and negative codes “remain ineffective and leaving the control of the process to teacher” were labelled in the evaluating the teaching process and the students theme. In the fourth theme, which was the supporting and improving teachers, “exhibiting positive approach, guiding and diverting, sharing experiences, supporting personal development, collaboration of parents-teachers, and assessing all requests” behaviors were found as contributing suggestion and approach while “giving no recommendations and nitpicking” were reported as behaviors leaving negative impression. Lastly, it was detected in the theme of creating regular learning-teaching environment and climate that “making classroom inspections, general observation on student, classroom, and school, making motivation-strengthening assessment meetings, supporting active teachers and students” positively; and “weakness in assessing style, assessing in only according to exam results such as SBS and TEOG” negatively.
The results of this study seems parallel to some previous research related to instructional leadership behaviors. Bhengu and Mkhize (2013) reported five themes that were an invitatory school environment, following and supporting teaching, and increasing teachers’ professional development. These themes are close to the current study’s themes and subthemes. Moreover, motivating, encouraging, leading, and determining aims roles in the second theme were consisted with Şişman’s (2004) items in the dimension of school objectives in instructional leadership. In addition, the findings related to school principals’ behaviors related to instructional leadership show similarity in Blasê and Blasê’s (2004) results in their study, which were walking (becoming visible), intervention/collapsing the class, quitting behaviors, and Hallinger’s (2005) becoming visible in the school of school principals. The negative behaviors of school principals which are remaining ineffective, leaving the control of the process to teacher, giving no recommendations, nitpicking, weakness in assessing style, and assessing in only according to exam results may be considered as hindering behaviors in coming in sight of school principals’ instructional leadership characteristics. Bhengu, Naicker, & Mthiyane (2014) stressed that the reason why school principals are not able to fulfill their instructional leadership roles are resulted from recklessness/carelessness, workload of administrators, inadequate support from shareholders, directing and managing alteration, teacher unionization, and resource shortage. Thus, those negative behaviors obtained from this study’s findings may help to shed light into future studies aiming to overcome the barriers of school principals to fulfill their instructional leadership roles.
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Abstract (Original Language):
Günümüzde liderlik, üzerinde en çok tartışılan konulardan biridir. Liderliğin çeşitli türlerine yönelik yoğun araştırmalar sürmektedir. Öğretim liderliği de bu çalışma konularından biridir ve önemli bir liderlik boyutudur. Öğretimsel liderlik, okulun öğrenci başarısını arttırmak için müdürün bizzat kendisinin gösterdiği ya da başkaları tarafından gösterilmesini sağladığı davranışlar olarak tanımlanmaktadır. Öğretimsel liderlik, kavramsal düzeyde her okul müdürünün anahtar rolünün odak noktasına göre bir dereceye kadar farklılaştığını göstermektedir. Bu anahtar roller, “okul etkililiğini geliştirme, okul değişimini kolaylaştırma, öğretmenlik mesleğini geliştirme ve öğrenci çıktısının gelişimine odaklanma” şeklinde sıralanmaktadır. Bu durum, öğretimsel liderliğin okul kültürü ve iklimine ve her okulun kendine özgü yapısına göre şekillenebileceğini de akla getirebilir. Bu çerçeve içerisinde bu araştırmanın temel amacı, öğretmen görüşleri açısından, okul müdürlerinin okullarda öğretimsel liderlik davranışlarının ne şekilde ve nasıl belirlendiğini irdelemektir. Nitel araştırma yaklaşımı çerçevesinde tasarlanan araştırmanın çalışma grubunu, Gaziantep Nizip ilçesindeki ilkokul, ortaokul ve liselerde görev yapan 52 öğretmen oluşturmaktadır. Veri toplama aracı olarak, formun nasıl doldurulacağına yönelik yönerge ile katılımcılara ait kişisel bilgilerin yer aldığı ve araştırmacılar tarafından geliştirilen “yarı yapılandırılmış görüşme formu” kullanılmıştır. Görüşme formlarından elde edilen veriler NVivo nitel veri analizi programına aktarılarak içerik analiziyle çözümlenmiştir. Araştırma bulguları, öğretmenler tarafından okul müdürlerinin özellikle “yol gösterme, rehberlik etme, deneyimlerini paylaşma ve öğrenci-öğretmen merkezlilik” gibi olumlu davranışlarının ön plana çıkarıldığını göstermektedir.
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