Exploring a culture for teacher growth in a Turkish high school

Abstract

This thesis reports on research that explored principals' as well as teachers perceptions of professional development in a Turkish high school as well as teachers perceptions. The study also investigated the leadership practices in a Turkish high school as they relate to teachers professional development. This study aims to contribute to fill a gap in the understanding of Turkish teachers embedded, continuous professional development. A Survey instrument and a semi-structured interview schedule were designed to identify both principals' and teachers perceptions of professional development and related leadership practices in a Turkish high school. The findings from the analysis of the data from both data gathering instruments reveal that the participants in this study have an intuitive awareness of the importance of embedded, continuous professional development and the administrators have instinctive understanding of some leadership practices that can promote embedded professional development. However, the findings also highlight the conflict between the participants perceptions of this concept and the highly-centralized system as run by the Ministry of National Education (MONE) in Turkey.