Metaphoric Perceptions of School Principal Candidates: Being a School Principal

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to determine the perceptions of vice-principals and teachers, who are candidate principals, about being a school principal through metaphors. For this purpose, the candidate principals produced metaphors regarding the concept of being a school principal. In the qualitatively designed research, phenomenology the research design used. The vice-principals and the teachers attending the series of in-service training courses held for candidate principals in Nicosia during the 2018-2019 academic year constituted the study group of the study. Research data were collected using a semi-structured interview form. The semi-structured interview form included the metaphorical definition of the school principal and the reason to produce the mentioned metaphor. To analyze the data content analysis method was applied. The perceptions of the candidate principals revealed twenty-six metaphors regarding the concept of being a school principal. These metaphors were gathered under nine categories by the researchers. The produced categories namely are guiding school principal, protecting school principal, diligent school principal, negatively behaving school principal, balancing school principal, superior power user school principal, acting school principal, the school principal as the source of information and indispensable school principal. The most produced metaphor by the candidate principals is called a school principal is a conductor. A school principal is similar to a commander, an orchestra conductor, a theatre artist, a bull, a mirror, a clock, a mother/father, a bridge, an acting, a state, a lion, a nervous system and a building foundation. To determine a series of metaphors classified under eleven categories and the most repeated metaphors were classified under the guiding school principal category.