Session Information
26 SES 13 B, The Imposition of Government Education Policy Initiatives and School Enactment: Responses in Mediterranean Countries
Symposium
Contribution
The recent large-scale governmental change interventions in Turkish Education System make it one of the most vibrant systems in world. Adapting the constructive curriculum, changes in teacher/principal training and selection, changes in the transition from primary to secondary levels, restructuring educational levels (known as 4+4+4) and the huge technology integration project (known as FATIH project) are some of the transformational changes as each of them touches upon vision, mission and the basic strategy of the schools. Basically every single decision in the system is made by the Ministry of Education in any kind of intervention which reflects its highly centralized nature. Structural characteristics leave a very limited space for school principals to participate in the design phase of these change interventions. More importantly, the Ministry of Education demonstrates limited accounts on the repercussions of these interventions on individual schools. Despite the fact that school principals are supposed to play a very critical role in realizing these changes, in Turkey they have limited authority over the resources necessary for the attainment of these changes. In that sense, the perceptions of school administrators on large scale changes and their coping strategies in this respect become very important to be investigated. School principals play a mediating role in the system between the Ministry of Education (design phase) and individual schools (implementation phase). This study specifically aims to reveal Turkish school principals’ perceptions about the large-scale changes imposed by the Ministry of Education and the strategies they generate/adopt in coping with these changes. Turkish principals in many cases usually find themselves trapped between imposed changes and maintaining the regular conduct in their schools. The results of this study is expected to document the opinions of school principals about the effectiveness of large scale changes and conduct they follow to mediate between policy formation and policy practice.
References
Darling-Hammond, L & Rothman, R (2011) (Eds.) , Teacher and Leader Effectiveness in High-Performing Education Systems .Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education and Stanford, CA: Stanford Center for Opportunity Policy in Education. Garratt, D., & Forrester, G. (2012). Educational policy unraveled. London: Continuum. Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2011). Globalizing education policy. London: Routledge. Bernhardt, V. (2004). Data analysis for continuous school improvement. Larchmont: Eye on Education.
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