PERCEPTIONS OF SCHOOL ENVIRONMENT RELATIONSHIPS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPALS
Journal Name:
- Ondokuz Mayıs Üniversitesi Eğitim Fakültesi Dergisi
Keywords (Original Language):
| Author Name | University of Author | Faculty of Author |
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Abstract (2. Language):
Rapid changes in the world, as well as many areas of life affected the education and school management. As a result of these changes, significant transformations are observed in the school-community relations of public schools. First of all, to achieve and maintain the schoolfamily collaboration efforts have increased. Furthermore, pre-service training is required for assignment as a director of the school in developed countries, whereas in Turkey assignment to this position being a teacher is sufficient. Diversity in school administrators’ education and different programs carried out by different governments have resulted many school administrators appointed to primary schools in different ways.
The development of school-community relations is seen as an important part of the school improvement efforts. Studies conducted on this topic shows that developing school-environment relations can contribute to the development of the school improvement. In addition to this, these studies show that the concept of governance has a significant impact on openness of the school to external environment. Governance in public administration requires transparency, accountability and participation in decision making. In this context, the Ministry of National Education has initiated a number of modernization efforts. Whereas some of these efforts have positive effects on education system, some have not achieved initial aims. For example, Total Quality Management in Education, Training Boards Practice and Democracy Practice in Schools, Modification of Teaching Profession General Competences, Parent-Teacher Association Activities, and School-Parent Contract started to contribute to the development of relations between school and community. Some of these applications, however, have not provided a significant contribution to the development of school-community interaction.
Purpose and Significance: Undoubtedly, school administrators are one of the important factors that will contribute to the development of school-community relations. Besides being responsible for supervising and managing the schools, school administrators are seen as a leader that regulates school- community relations. In this regard, managerial education that school administrators received can be regarded as an important factor that effect to develop school-community interaction. However, studies conducted on school-community relations in Turkey are limited to school-family relations rather than focusing on the contributions of school administrators’ education on developing school-community interaction. For this reason, this study focused on to what extent school administrators’ managerial education contributes on development of school-community relations.
Methods: This study was carried out to determine to what extent managerial education affects the development of school-community relations. Screening model was used in this study. Data were collected by a tool developed within the framework of the Epstein’s model of “School, Family and Community Partnerships”. The analyses of the data include comparison of managerial education receiver and non-receiver school administrators’ opinions about improvement of school-community relations. The population of the study is administrators working in the primary schools in the city center of Samsun. Using stratified sampling method, a total of 75 administrators were randomly selected to represent the population. A total of 68 participants were returned their questionnaires and these were analyzed using descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage) and inferential statistics (t-test) methods.
Result: More than half of the school administrators were found that they did not received managerial training. Furthermore, the majority of the school administrators stated they received managerial training have only participated in short-term in-service training activities organized by the Ministry of National Education. This shows that managerial training is not considered when appointing school administrators. The analyses of school administrators’ opinions indicate that school administrators have agreed to sub-scales of “learning at home”, “parenting”, “communicating”, “decision-making”, “collaborating with the community”, and “volunteering” from the highest to the least in the school-community relations instrument. According to the results, school administrators expect families to support their children at home to work at the first place. On the other hand, school administrators do not support the involvement of the parents in school activities. In other words, school administrators’ perceptions on school-community relations indicate that school administrators expect that school should do its job and family should do its job.The data also were analyzed to determine whether the managerial training make a difference on school administrators’ opinions. The results indicate that there is a statistically significant difference between opinions of school administrators with managerial training and opinions of school administrators with no training on the “collaborating with the community” subscale. There are, however, no significant differences found on other subscales of the school-community relations instrument. Even receiving a short term “in-service training” differentiates school administrators’ opinions about school-community relations in one subscale. In other words, school administrators with managerial training believe that the importance of “collaborating with the community” in developing the school-community relations. At the same time, “collaborating with the community” was the most neglected sub-dimension in recent studies conducted on the development of school-community relations.
The results show that school administrators’ appointment without considering “managerial training” emerges as an important issue in developing the school-community relations. This is just because of that school administration is not considered as a separate profession from teaching. As a consequent of this, school administration cannot be developed as a separate profession. Although, all participants took the “Turkish Education System and School Management” course during their undergraduate education, this course is not sufficient for school administrators who are not specialized on school management to develop school-community relations. Since the Educational Administration Supervision, Planning and Economics Programs are not accepting students to undergraduate levels; it is difficult to receive managerial training before pre-service. For this reason, Ministry of National Education considers the “in-service education” given to teachers before their appointment to school administration positions as pre-service managerial education and appoints these teachers as school administrators. However, in licensing school administrators graduate programs can be helpful. In this regard, Ministry of National Education has important responsibilities. If Ministry of National Education considers the graduate level education on Educational Administration Supervision, Planning and Economics when appointing school administrators, schools would have managed by people who have sufficient education on management. After that, Ministry of National Education fulfills its responsibilities and expects school administrators efficiently develop school-community relations.
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Abstract (Original Language):
Bu araştırmada, ilköğretim okul yöneticilerinin okul-çevre ilişkilerinin geliştirilmesiyle ilgili algıları incelenmiştir. Bunun yanı sıra, okul yöneticilerinin okul-çevre ilişkilerinin geliştirilmesi alt boyutlarına ilişkin algılarının, onların yöneticilik eğitimi alma durumuna göre farklılık gösterip göstermediğine bakılmıştır. Araştırmanın evreni, Samsun il merkezindeki ilköğretim okullarında çalışan yöneticilerdir. Bu okullarda görev yapan 68 yönetici örneklemi oluşturmaktadır. Araştırmada kullanılan veri toplama aracı, araştırmacı tarafından geliştirilmiş bir anket formudur. Araştırma bulgularına göre, okul yöneticilerinin okul-çevre ilişkileri alt boyutlarına ilişkin algılarınının yeterli düzeyde olduğu görülmüştür. Okul-çevre ilişkileri alt boyutlarından “toplumla ortaklık ve işbirliği kurma” boyutuna ilişkin yönetici algıları farklılık göstermektedir. Yöneticilik eğitimi almış yöneticiler, almayanlara göre toplumla ortaklık ve işbirliği kurma boyutunu daha önemli bulmuşlardır.
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