School Principals’ Opinions on the Schooling in Turkey During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

During the pandemic process, an education crisis emerged, and the purpose and existence of the school began to be questioned again. For this reason, in this paper, the opinions of school principals regarding the changes in the school process during the COVID-19 pandemic were discussed. The research was designed as the phenomenology design. The participants of the research consist of school principals. The data were collected by semi-structured interview technique. Content analysis was used to analyze the data. According to the findings of the study, it was determined that school principals had difficulties in the fields of strategic, instructional, and social leadership during the pandemic process. The important benefits of the pandemic process for the school were emphasized in the themes of school-related capacity building, social, and goal-oriented achievements. Administrative, social, and developmental priorities themes have emerged regarding the reduction of adaptation problems to the school process during and after the pandemic process.

Keywords

• COVID-19
• crisis management
• challenges of the pandemic
• achievements
• school principals

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