Psychological Unsafety in Schools: The Development and Validation of a Scale

Work related psychological unsafety defined as the degree to which employee perceive the risky work environment that hinder them to behave comfortably or to speak up what they think without fear of its possible negative consequences. The importance of psychological unsafety has already been laid down for organizational viability and development, but the main problem is lack of instrument to measure psychological unsafety in schools. So the aim of this study is to develop valid and reliable instrument. We developed it in line with the procedures suggested by AERA (The American Educational Research Association). Based on the literature review, we wrote 27 draft items, then we piloted it on 164 school staff and we implemented factor and item analyses. We finally conducted it in the main application with 393 school staff who randomly selected from schools located in different geographical regions of Turkey. Results of EFA displayed that the 19 items loaded on three factors explaining .73 of total variance and the factor loadings ranged between .59 to .85. In addition, corrected item-total correlations ranged from .51 to .86. The internal consistency reliability coefficient was .96 and CFA confirmed the structural model. At the end of the study, we obtained a valid and reliable scale to measure psychological unsafety in schools

Determining the Leadership Potential of School Administrators Based on Data Triangulation

Aiming to describe the leadership potential (LP) of school principals who are currently in office, this study was carried out using the triangulation design of the mixed method. The study was carried out among 15 school administrators who were recruited using the purposive sampling method. Data were collected using an analytic graded measurement tool through a case-based semi-structured interview. In this study, the LP of the participants was found to be low, and the main sources of this situation were determined to be maintaining the current situation, avoiding complexity and uncertainty, and inadequacy in managing decision-making processes

Course supervısıons carrıed out by educatıonal inspectors and school managers

The purpose of this study is to determine the superior and inferior features of course supervisions carried out by educational inspectors and school managers in formal primary schools. The study was conducted with qualitative research method and the participants consisted of 8 primary school managers and 22 teachers working in Kadınhanı, Sarayönü, Selçuklu and Yunak districts of Konya in 2015-2016 academic year. According to the results, school managers and teachers think that course supervision carried out by educational inspectors is superior in terms of “objectivity” and is inferior in terms of “being short-term”. It is found that course supervision carried out by school managers is superior in terms of “continuity and closeness” and is inferior in terms of “insufficient information and experience”, “personal relationships” and “subjectivity”. The managers think that course supervisions should be conducted respectively by school managers, inspectors, parents and students. However, the teachers believe that the course cupervisions should be conducted respectively by school managers, students, branch teachers, parents and inspectors. Some of the teachers stated that conducting course supervisions in order to evaluate the teachers is not necessary. Suggestions were made based on these results. © The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology