School Administrators’ Opinions on Frequently Changing Regulations Related to Appointments and Relocation: A New Model Proposal

Abstract

Recruitment, selection, training and retention of school administrators have great importance for all education systems because effective educational leadership is vital to provide improvement in all educational activities and processes for schools that foster student learning. Appointments based on traditional in-service training fail to meet the learning needs of increasingly diverse student bodies. In recent years, there has been a growing consensus that school administrators should be selected and trained in leadership programmes and theory and practice should be combined in the training process.Typically, each school has a principal who is responsible for the school's operation (Degenhardt, 2006; Lashway, 2003; Portin, Alejano, Knapp, & Marzolf, 2006; Salazar, 2007). In many countries, the school principal is an elected administrator (Lunenburg, 2010). School principals are generally decided by an official representative, multimember committee or school board (Bolivar & Moreno, 2006). The most frequently used selection criteria are management and/or leadership experience (in Austria, Denmark, Ireland, Israel, Northern Ireland, Portugal and Spain), additional academic or other qualifications (in Austria, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Portugal and Spain), interpersonal and personal skills (in Austria, Denmark, Ireland and Northern Ireland), vision/values for school leadership (in Austria, Denmark, Ireland and Israel) and quality of work proposals for the school (in Austria, Denmark, Ireland and Israel) (Pont, Nusche, & Moorman, 2008).In Turkey, it cannot be said that an effective and sustainable project related to school principals' training and appointment is available yet. In addition, many studies related to in-service training and the appointment processes for school administrators have been conducted. While some of these studies suggest a new model, e.g. Altin and Vatanartiran (2014), Balyer and Gunduz (2011), Cemaloglu (2005), Celenk (2003), Eres (2009) and Isik (2003), some of them analyse the current situation and offer solutions to problems, e.g. Akcadag (2014), Demirtas and Ozer (2014), Helvaci and Aydogan (2011), Karip and Koksal (1999), Korkmaz (2005), Okcu (2011), Ozmen and Komurlu (2010) and Turan, Yildirim, and Aydogdu (2012). According to Isik (2003), although there are some important developments in the selection and employment of school principals and some developments encouraging the establishment of such programmes in the Turkish Educational System, the Ministry of National Education never requires a certificate for school principal appointment.An appointment and relocation regulation published in the Official Gazette in September 1998 had brought a two-phased examination system for candidates seeking to be school administrators. According to the regulation, candidates who pass the first exam need to complete a 120-hour in-service training programme, and they can obtain a management certificate if they score at least 70 points out of 100 on the post-training evaluation exam. This ended the master-apprentice system that had long been used for school administrators' training. According to Tas and Onder (2012), the 1998 regulation can be regarded as the beginning of professionalism in educational management.In the process starting with the regulation published in the Official Gazette on April 1999, school administrators' selection and appointment were performed in a framework of a series of instructions that changed frequently (Sisman & Turan, 2004). Within the last 25 years, the Ministry of Education has made many changes to regulations related to the appointment and relocation of school managers. From 2004 till 2010, approximately 30 regulations or public mandates were implemented to solve problems related to appointment and relocation. The appointments based on regulations frequently changed by the Ministry have not satisfied school administrators and have led to court cases (Tas & Onder, 2012). …