School Administrators’ Perceptions of Educational Leadership: Strengths and Areas for Development

This study aims to examine the perceptions of school administrators working at preschool, primary, secondary and high school levels about educational administration, their strengths and aspects that need to be developed. In the study, in which phenomenological design, one of the qualitative research designs, was used, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 school administrators determined by maximum diversity sampling, and the data obtained were evaluated by content analysis. As a result of the research, it was determined that the participants defined the concept of educational administrator in three main themes: “educational leader”, “a professional occupation” and “a person responsible for school functioning”. The most frequently emphasized characteristics in the context of educational leadership are effective communication, fairness and willingness to change. While some participants identified educational administrators as the implementers of policies, others stated that they could not fully assume the role of educational administrators due to their limited authority. While the participants had difficulty in identifying the strengths of educational administrators in Turkiye, weaknesses such as lack of qualifications, lack of communication and being resistant to change were highlighted. While participants expressed their strengths more easily, they expressed their weaknesses in a limited way. The findings reveal that educational administration should be defined as a professional occupation, merit-based selection processes should be strengthened, and comprehensive in-service training programs should be made compulsory for administrator candidates.