Principles of Professionalism in School Principalship

The aim of this study is to determine the fundamental principles required for school principalship that has been defined as a profession. Sequential transformative research design was adapted as the research approach of this study. Sequential transformative research design is a kind of mixed method in which the qualitative data is prior to quantitative data. Firstly, focus group interview with 33 participants were conducted with the participation of a school principal and ten teachers from three different schools. Data were analyzed through content analysis technique. Secondly, Professional Principles for School Principalship Scale (PPSPS) was developed and administered to the members of seven different non-governmental professional organizations founded by educators. The survey was administered to 328 participants. As a result of this study, 30 professional principles were identified in two groups expected to attribute to the school culture. Ten principles in first group are general assumptions (beliefs) and twenty principles are value-based personality standards (values) and the principles of the practice. School principals are expected to base their thoughts, views, attitudes, decisions and actions and take them as reference while performing the school principalship.


Introduction
The professional educators, who work at schools in Turkey, are referred to as "teacher" in the National Education Basic Law [7] and are considered in "education and teaching services" class of Civil Servants Law No. 657 [6]. Some of the teachers fulfill "managerial" duties, a secondary task, within the framework determined in the law. The executives of local and centralized upper administration are also selected mostly from teachers.
The undefined and unspecified position of the task of school principalship as a profession in Turkey was one of the reasons for the lack of a special preparing program for school principals. Moreover, the lack of appropriate personal rights of school principals as employees in terms of qualifications and job difficulties are also due to undefined condition of the profession. Recently, even though many of the developed countries have taken teaching profession as the basis for principalship, most of them have accepted that the role of school principalship requires different qualifications to teaching qualifications. So they have described the profession of school principalship and standardized professional qualifications and professional principles. Thus, those who aspire to the position of school principalship, should know before entering the profession which special qualifications they hold, what kind of preparation program should be engaged and which ethical principles should be committed.
The aim of this study was to determine the fundamental principles required for school principalship to be defined as a profession. The determination of professional principles for school principals would set up an infrastructure regarding principals' comprehension of the personality type that they should possess, the preparation training program they should take and norms they should depend.

Profession and Professional Principles
Profession is depicted as "a job with specified rules, based on a certain level of training, acquired systematic knowledge and skills, carried out in order to produce useful goods, to provide service and to earn money in return" [37]. Vocational Qualifications Authority (VQA) clarifies profession as "the name of the title which people work for in order to sustain their lives, generally requires an intensive training, work, accumulation of knowledge and to develop abilities depending on the chosen occupation and which they acquire at the end of all these processes" [28].
As it is understood by above-stated clarifications, characterizing a job as a profession depends on systematic knowledge and skills gained through education and principles to be followed during staging the job. Which types of knowledge and skills and what principles the profession requires are occurred during the development of that profession. That profession is therefore acknowledged by the society. The competencies, values, principles, standards required for a profession are systematized by the professional organizations created by the members of the profession. Indeed, each profession's definition, fields of work, tools and equipment, working conditions, job opportunities, professional training programs, entry to the profession, career opportunities and supporting professional organizations show different characteristics [27].
The right and authority to perform a profession requires having certified competence. Competence for a profession is earned when a person's qualifications is determined by an authority as a comprehensive standard of knowledge, skills, personal and ethical attitudes. Knowledge, which forms the basis of professional competence, covers conceptual and/or factual knowledge related to cases, principles, processes and general concepts. The second basis of professional competence is skills. Skill is defined as the cognitive (logical, intuitive and creative thinking) and practical (manual dexterity and method, use of materials, tools and equipment) ability in order to show performance at a certain matter or task. Personal competence, which is another basis of qualification and can be defined as autonomy and responsibility, include practice principles, ethical competence and personal and professional values showing the person how to manage himself at a certain environment [17].
While the duties and responsibilities of a profession and knowledge, skills and attitudes required by that profession are often included in official or corporate documents, it is relatively a new practice to announce ethical codes and principles required by the profession, provide guidance for employees or organizational behavior and include ethical standards as a written document. The common definition of professional ethical principles is as follows: "a set of professional principles which are created with regard to profession and protected by a particular professional group. Those principles order its members, force them to behave in a certain way, limit their personal tendencies, exclude incompetent and unprincipled members from the profession, regulate vocational competition and aim to preserve the ideals of the profession" [31]. According to Pehlivan, the principles of professionalism that are commonly shaped around the concept of accountability [32], are justice, equality, honesty and righteousness, objectivity, respect for human rights, humanism/ becoming humane, loyalty, the rule of law, love, tolerance, secularism, respect, frugality, democracy, positive human relations, openness, rights and freedoms, recompensing the labor, and resisting illegal orders.
Professional principles and codes of ethic began to be discussed further within the framework of public reform debates which have been on the agenda since the 1990s in line with the developments in Turkey and world. Even though the focus of the debate is on improving the functionality of state institutions and reducing corruption [2,16,38] the professional organizations, whose numbers increase rapidly, began to feel the need to determine professional principles and codes of ethic when exposed to public pressure regarding the unaccepted processes and activities of their members [22].

Rationale for the Development of Professional Principles for School Principalship
School principalship is a position directly related to people and affects the lives of young people. A school principal's primary responsibility consists of all works and activities in the school [29]. While S/He focuses on the academic achievement of students on the one hand, on the other S/He is obliged to provide a safe and healthy environment that would enable them to continue with their mental, physical, psychological growth. School principal, who has to realize these goals, are in constant relationship with his/her superiors, students, teachers, staff, parents and the community. S/He must guide them in a way to ensure the success of students, and to balance the conflicting expectations. S/He should provide financial resources to achieve these objectives and to use available substantive and human resources efficiently and effectively. He should use his authority to monitor, evaluate, or penalize as a disciplinary authority and in charge of education in a manner that would not restrict the rights and freedoms of other people and disturb their peace [29]. In addition, he must act in accordance with the law while doing these. Finally, they must be accountable because they perform a public service [9]. People who carry out school principalship duties, which is directly related to humans and required for the realization of educational and administrative purposes, should naturally perform their duties in accordance with some basic principles.
On other hand, the social structure forces educational phenomenon to change. Modern education systems were structured within the framework of industrial society and nation state principles. After the Second World War, they tried to keep up with the social structure in which post-material values began to dominate. From the 1980s onwards, they were faced with a new situation with globalization, which had a more intense impact. According to Hesapçıoğlu [20], this was the period in which post-fordist production became widespread. Murphy and Forsyth [30] determined the factors of the new period directly affecting education as industrial economic structure and changing social/political dynamics. These changes required new approaches in educational management, restructuring of educational organizations and the rediscovery of learning and teaching processes. Balcı [5] stated that the change in the powers forming the contemporary context of education requires knowledge, skills, and understanding that have not been possible until now -perhaps unnecessary -from educational leaders. On the other hand, while the inevitable wave of change in the social life comes through deeply, another problem is spesific to Turkey: The theoretical knowledge and practical approaches to educational administration is not based on national and cultural resources. Turan and Şişman [36] express this claim out loud. According to them, rather than imported western knowledge and experiences regarding the efficacy of educational administration and school principalship in Turkey, approaches based on local cultural codes and experiences should be addressed.

Efforts to Develop Professional Principles for School Principalship
Many studies were conducted on the professional ethics and principles of school principalship. Some countries determined the professional principles of school principalship and included them into job descriptions [1,4]. Calabrase [15] listed the ethical principles under 10 items that school principals must adhere to: 1. School principals should develop a proper vision of the educational philosophy. 2. School principals must be a strong moral leader and create a moral atmosphere at school. 3. School principals must condemn discriminatory behavior. 4. School principal should consider effective teaching as a task and should act by considering the interests of students and society in this regard. 5. School principal should establish the school community. 6. School principal oversees a balance among the rights of different groups within the school community. 7. The decisions, desired by everyone, are not always the right decisions. 8. Doing the right thing for members of the school community lies on the basis of the decisions of school principal. 9. Moral courage is a part of the role of principal. 6. Pursues appropriate measures to correct those laws, policies, and regulations that are not consistent with sound educational goals or that are not in the best interest of children. 7. Avoids using his/her position for personal gain through political, social, religious, economic or other influences. 8. Accepts academic degrees or professional certification only from accredited institutions. 9. Maintains the standards and seeks to improve the effectiveness of the profession through research and continuing professional development. 10. Honors all contracts until fulfillment, release or dissolution mutually agreed upon by all parties. 11. Accepts responsibility and accountability for one's own actions and behaviors. 12. Commits to serving others above self.
Hargreaves and Fink [19] identified seven principles for sustainable leadership at school in the US and Canada as a result of their research they designed by also taking the changes experienced within a time period of over 30 years. According to these authors, the sustainable leadership (1) provides and preserves sustainable learning, (2) ensures success, (3) shares leadership with others, (4) puts social justice at the center, (5) does not consume human and other resources, but develops them, (6) develops environmental diversity ad capacity and (7) takes the role of an activist in the protection of the environment.
In Turkey, studies on the professional principles of the school principalship, the values that the school principals should have and the professional competencies of the school principalship have increased in recent years. Carrying out one of the pioneering studies on this subject, Erçetin [14] listed the professional principles of ethics for school principalship prepared by Kouzes and Posner [14] in terms of perceptions of school principals, teachers and staff in Turkey. The personality traits that school principals should have in Erçetin's study were listed as righteousness, honesty, open-mindedness, reliability, cooperation, persistence, self-control, showing interest, being dynamic, being supportive, courage, maturity, foresight, intelligence, creativity, being reasonable, independence, expertise, and being passionate. Conducting a comprehensive study on ethical principles that school principals should have in Turkey and developing a scale, Pehlivan [31] listed the ethical principles for school principals under six headings namely (1) tolerance, (2) justice, (3) responsibility, (4) honesty, (5) democracy and (6) respect. Turan and Şişman [35] compiled a list of beliefs and values that educational leaders should adopt. According to Turan and Şişman [35], there are six belief and value areas for educational leaders. They can be summarized as believing in student's ability to learn and ensuring learning of students, focusing constantly on developing oneself and institution, responsibility in decision-making and taking risks, knowing the society and being in constant cooperation with stakeholders, respecting diversity and differences in society and complying with the laws and ethical rules.
Küçükkaraduman [25] collected the ethical principles expected to be obeyed in the management under 20 items: justice, equality, honesty and integrity, objectivity, accountability, human rights, humanism, commitment to the rule of law, love, tolerance, secularism, respect, prudence, democracy, positive human relations, openness, rights and freedoms, recompensing the labor, and resisting illegal orders. Conducting a qualitative research on the values school principals should have, Arslanargun [3] identified four values in the management, namely justice, trust, diligence, and school rules. In the same research, Arslanargun concluded that leadership, career and competence should be taken as the basis in the appointment of school principals. Carrying out a study related to the values that school principals should have in order to manage the diversity in the organization, Polat [33] identified 27 values that school principals should have. According to Polat, school principals should be open to innovation, self-developing, democratic, fair, respectful of differences, valuing human beings, empathetic, tolerant, playing fair, equitable, interested, reliable, responsible, compassionate, creative-productive, having team spirit, open to criticism, friendly, patient, courageous, participant, acknowledging diversity, helpful/ sharing, liberal, optimistic, universal and easy-going in order to manage diversity in the organization.
Some professional disciplines of ethic were also seen to have been brought to the forefront in legal documents containing the job descriptions of school principals in Turkey. It was stated in Article 77 of MEB Secondary School Directive that school principalship is expected to constantly renew and improve the school or institution in accordance with scientific and technological developments, efficiency and transparency principles and would use time and all facilities in order to achieve the objectives of the school or institution [29].
Generally negative results were obtained in the studies conducted on school principals' adherence to professional principles. The ethical leadership practices of school principals were not found, at any extent, to be at high level in the study conducted by Şimşek and Altınkurt [34] on teacher views regarding the ethical leadership practices of school principals. School principals' ethical leadership applications in responsibility, honesty, and democracy extents were found to be generally successful, but their ethical conducts in tolerance and justice extents were the least successful. In the study conducted by Erdoğan [15], the findings show that according to perceptions of teachers and principals, school principals behave according to ethical principles, but according to the perceptions of inspectors, principals behave only in accordance with ethical principle of respect. Inspectors stated that school principals acted less in conformity with ethical principles in tolerance, responsibility, honesty and democracy extents, but new teachers and inspectors, unlike seniors, indicated that school principals acted more in conformity with ethical principles. Again, in the study conducted by Yılmaz [39], the teachers showed a lower level participation than school principals related to their management of schools according to values. Despite teachers perceive that school principals fulfills acts related to management at the level of "much" in accordance with values, school principals percieve themselves at the level of "completely".

Objectives
The aim of this study was to determine the fundamental principles required for school principalship to be defined as a profession. By addressing following questions the goal of the study was tried to be attained:  What are the professional principles of school principalship according to school principals and teachers?  Do the professional principles of school principalship identified by school principals and teachers differ by age, gender, position, NGO and city variables of participants?
School principalship is not yet a profession with an official definition in Turkey. Their realization of qualifications specific to their professions will develop the professional awareness in them and will acquire the power to consciously defend their demands for the recognition and definition of the work they perform. The biggest task falls on school principals themselves in the formation of this awareness. School principals' realization of the responsibility of the work they perform is only possible by acting in accordance with the professional principles of ethic that they will formulate with their own efforts. In addition, school principals' assumption of internal auditing role as much as defending the rights of the members of professional organizations established by themselves depend upon the determination of professional principles and the adoption and dissemination of these principles by organizations [22]. Furthermore, it is considered that this would also be the basis of activities that members of professional organizations will realize in order to ensure their professional development.

Research Design
In this mix method study, sequential transformative design was used. In the first step of the study favoring a qualitative orientation, focus group discussion was conducted with the participants. Focus group discussion is a systematic data collection method including semi-structured interviews and discussions between the leader and the group. Furthermore, it is a thinking tool by which one can use dynamics of a group and achieve bound and thick descriptions characterizing scope, limits and specifications a study [8,13,23]. In the second phase of the study, quantitative data were collected by the Professional Principles for School Principalship Scale (PPSPS) developed from the findings of focus group interviews.

Participants
In order to determine participatory schools where the focus group interviews were conducted, an invitation was sent to the principals of 10 schools, one of which was a preschool, three primary schools, three secondary schools and three high schools in Istanbul. One primary and two high schools accepted to participate to the research. Three school principals who agreed to participate in the research were given detailed information about the research and asked to identify ten teachers who will participate in the focus group interview. In order to increase the representation power of the group, gender, seniority and branch distribution of the teachers in the study group were asked to be balanced. After the study groups were determined, three focus group interviews were conducted with 11 participants from each school with the participation of a principal and 10 teachers.
In the second phase of the study, quantitative data were collected by the Professional Principles for School Principalship Scale (PPSPS) developed from the findings of focus group interviews. Quantitative data was collected from school principals, educational administrators, supervisors, teachers and academicians. The PPSPS was applied to the members of the seven non-governmental organizations established by the teachers in Istanbul, Ankara, Gaziantep, Corum, Konya, Aksaray and Afyon. The universe in which the PPSPS is applied consists of 3336 members of these non-governmental organizations (NGOs) according to the information written on the web sites. The PPSPS was delivered in December 2012 to the members via the managers of the NGOs. The PPSPS was sent by email and filled online. There were 483 participants and 328 of these were put into process. The information of the participant listed below (Table 1).

Data Gathering Tools
Qualitative data was collected through an interview protocol by the active participation of the participants. The researcher prepared written informative directions regarding current research's goals for the sake of the participants. Moreover, prior to the focus group negotiations, an initial presentation was delivered in order to inform the participants. All participants were mainly required to response verbally to that question: "What should be the principles for school principalship?" After focus group discussions participants were asked to fill the "Principles of School Principalship Form". Three focus groups did three times 90 minutes meetings and discussed the principles for school principalship and at the end of these discussions school principals also composed his/her own list via Principles of School Principalship Form.
In the quantitative part of the research the PPSPS was used. The PPSPS consists of 30 item and 2 sub-item which are beliefs (10) and values-practices (20). The maximum point for the PPSPS is 210 and the minimum point is 30. The PPSPS also has a demographic information part which consist of gender, age, position, NGO and city. The duration of answering the PPSPS is between 5 to 10 minutes.

Data Collection Procedures
The data which were collected by focus group discussions are analyzed by content analysis method which is the most appropriate one according to Kitzinger and Farquhar [23]. The participants in focus groups listed and explained professional principles for school principalship. These statements and expressions coded and thematized. Then all the statements and expressions were clustered according to their frequencies. Finally, the determined professional principles have been subjected to a second classification under the headings of "the beliefs", "the values" and "the principles of practice". At this stage, the beliefs, the values and the principles of practice that were titled by Turan and Şişman [35] has been taken as the basis. Some of the statements proposed by the participants are expressed in different words under the headings of the beliefs, the values or the principles of practice. Since some of the statements of professional principles proposed by the participants were included in different thematic classifications with different words, the relationship between these themes and their relationship with each other was checked and the integrity was ensured. A total of 30 items were determined. These items are determined in three sub themes: (1) the beliefs, (2) the values and (3) principles of practice.
In the quantitative part of the study, exploratory factor analysis was carried out to examine the factor structure of the PPSPS. Thus, the construct validity of the PPSPS was examined. Exploratory factor analysis aims to reach a small number of identifiable meaningful structures that can be explained together by a large number of variables (items) [10,11]. Items that give a high load value with a factor are called items that measure the structure defined by the factor. Factor load value is usually 0.45 and higher, although the items with factor load value of 0.30 can be kept on the PPSPS. In order to determine the reliability of the PPSPS, Cronbach Alpha internal consistency coefficient was examined. Finally, one way ANOVA and independent sample T Test were applied in order to find out whether the scores obtained by the PPSPS showed a significant difference according to age, gender, position, NGO and city variables.

Reliability of the Study
In the focus group discussions to provide the reliability, all the data and codes were listed in detail and were archived by the researcher. In the quantitative part of the study, The PPSPS was used. The construct validity of the PPSPS was analyzed by factor analysis. KMO test was significant (0.92). As a result of factor analysis, the factor load values of the items in the PPSPS were between 0,68 and 0,40. The reliability of the PPSPS was analyzed with Cronbach Alpha coefficient. The alpha value for the whole PPSPS was 0.91. These results indicate that the factor structure of the PPSPS is valid and the PPSPS is reliable.

Results
The research findings which is done to identify the professional principles for school principalship are listed below in two parts. In the first part, the findings of qualitative data, in the second part, the findings of quantitative data were indicated.

Qualitative Findings
According to the findings obtained from qualitative analysis, participants specified 253 principles and listed them in 90 different ways. In the content analysis it is showed that all these 90 different statements gathered in 30 statements of professional principles. Specified professional principles are themed as beliefs for school principalship profession, values that school principals should have and principles of practice while performing as a school principal.
Participants expressed their opinions about the first theme (the beliefs) of professional principles for school principalship, by focusing on the terms like human rights, democracy, law, being scientific, respect for diversity, respect to students and family. There are some examples: K28: "Values more to students and his/her profession. Do not discriminate religion, language, race while performing his/her profession" K20: "We have to believe in our profession and our work and behave according to these beliefs." K8: "S/He has to be democratic." K13: "To perform truly in education, school managers should have democratic behaviors." K25: "School managers behaving against to the human rights cannot be accepted. School managers have to prevent human rights violations and interfere if it is necessary." K30: "School Managers has to respect fundamental rights and freedoms. They should prepare the positions where they put and prevent the rights." K10: "Secularism should be the base but if we think about an education foundation we should also think about moral and conscience values." K17: "School managers should like his/her profession, people, to educate in case he or she can damage the environment." K25: "Manager should know that they should not force people about their beliefs." Participants expressed their opinions about the second theme (the values) of professional principles for school principalship, by focusing on the terms like justice, honesty, tolerance, understandings, kindness, sincerity. There are some examples: K11: Trust is the basis condition for communication between people. People should trust their managers on private issues." K13: "A school manager cannot be liar, thief, imposter. If the manager has one of this behaviors, she/he should be fired out." K21: "School manager should be tolerant and should be a good example to the students." K24: "In every step of life justice should be everywhere. If there is no justice, there will be no order." K12: "School manager should take risks and responsibility on problem solving if she/he feels any problem etc." K18: "Everybody should be evaluated with his/her works, adaptation to legislations laws not with individual sympathy." K14: "School managers should be impartial with every decision, should not have any political idea, should not reflect his/her union's opinions, his/her first aim should be the school." K22: "I want sincerity in my relationships. We should be sincere while we are loving or hating. We should not forget that the most important values for humankind is personality. We should not hurt human beings. We should not forget that our values are inarguable. We should manage and control anger." Participants expressed their opinions about the third theme (the principles of prectice) of professional principles for school principalship by focusing on the terms like being open to learn, transparent, clear, accessible, supportive, respective, visionary. There are some examples: K2: "School managers should always improve themselves about school management and should follow every development. School managers should provide and follow innovations for school managing." K3: "School managers should dedicate themselves to their professions ambitiously." K33: "School managers should support the people in the school by looking them from good sides." K21: "School managers should be in relations with everybody to solve the problems and to create a school culture. S/He should be a coordinator between teachers, students and stakeholders if it is necessary to create school culture." K26: "School manager should behave like they can account to everybody, and behave according to openness philosophy."

Quantitative Findings
According to results of the focus group discussion and the exploratory factor analysis, the PPSPS was used. In this context, professional principles for school principalship grouped as (1) the beliefs, and (2) the values-practices. The principles are listed as The Beliefs; including fundamental universal assumptions (beliefs) that are expected from school principals to base their thoughts, views, attitudes, decisions and actions on, and The Values and The Practices consist of fundamentals of value-based personality standards (values) that they should take as reference in their decisions and actions and principles (of practice) which they rely on while performing their job and which they are expected to attribute to the school culture.
Factor analysis of the PPSPS is indicated in Table 2.
As seen in Table 2, the PPSPS developed from the focus group discussion have two factors and its variance is 43%.  Table 3 indicates the means and the standard deviations of the PPSPS.
According to participants responds, the less important principles are listed as "School is a life" (M= 5,80/7; SD= 1,38), "Every student can learn" (M= 5,86/7; SD= 1,36), "Future depends on savings" (M= 5,90/7; SD= 1,28), "Change is the only fact of life" (M= 6,09/7; SD= 1,24) "Democracy and law are the guarantee of social peace" (M= 6,22/7; SD= 1,14). The statistical results of independent T-test and one way ANOVA are shown below. The results indicate that there was no significant difference between women and men, t (328) = 0.084, p = .933. That is, the average performance score of women (M = 195.9, SD = 6.84) was not significantly different from that of men (M = 196.06, SD = 9.60). Table 5, the results indicate that there was no statistically significant difference by ages among groups as determined by one-way ANOVA (F(3,324)= 0.35, p= .0.786). As in Table 6, the results indicate that there was no statistically significant difference by position among groups as determined by one-way ANOVA (F(3,324)= 4.06, p= .0.007). As in Table 7, the results indicate that there was no statistically significant difference by foundation duties among groups as determined by one-way ANOVA (F(3,324)= 0.34, p= .0.8). As in Table 8, the results indicate that there was no statistically significant difference by city among groups as determined by one-way ANOVA (F(3,324)= 1.74, p= .0.178).

Discussion
School principalship is no longer a bureaucratic task, instead, it has become a responsibility based on value and principle [3,12]. The development of a school principalship based on value and principle and the clarification of it as a profession primarily depend on the determination of professional principles.
This study has tried to determine the professional principles of school principalship in Turkey. The most important feature of this research is that professional principles are determined by school principals and teachers. As a result, 30 professional principles have been determined under the headings of the beliefs and the values-the practices.
These results are similar to results of researches from Turkey [12,14,24,26,32,35] and also from other countries [1,4,15]. These similarities are important to identify that professional principles of school principalship are universal [30]. The differences come out from the social structure and culture depending on the location of the school and education system [18,21].
The principles determined by this research will be meaningful by determining the knowledge bases and skills required for the profession. In this way, school principals training programs will be able to create content based on the competencies and qualifications required by the school principalship profession.
In addition, effectiveness of those principles and defining the school principalship as a profession, depends on the school principals' professional organizations to adopt and disseminate these principles and to use them in the internal audit processes.
It would be possible to revise and reorganize professional development processes, contents and methodology by means of extensive and multidimensional investigations of the incumbent school principals in terms of those professional principles.
With the help of the new researches, it would be easier to mature and spread those professional principles.
In addition, the investigation of the opinions of parents and students on the professional principles of school pincipalship would be an important complement to the review and revision of the results obtained with this research.