THE ROLES OF THE SCHOOL PRINCIPALS ON PROMOTING RESILIENCE IN NOVICE TEACHERS AT SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Abstract

School principals have a great responsibility to the novice teachers in order to regulate their professional development processes and to be effective in classroom management. For this reason, school principals are an important factor in the continuous self-improvement of new teachers and the effective progress of their professional development processes. Teacher is believed to be a resilient person who develops human values, leads society, thinks scientifically, is socially and politically effective, successful in human relations, prone to problem solving, understands the social and cultural situations of the students, questions the existing inequalities and is an expert in the field. The aim of this study is to evaluate the views of the school principals over promoting resilience in novice teachers working in various Secondary Schools and determine their roles on this issue. We asked two open ended questions to the participant principals to obtain the data: “Why is the resilience important for teachers to be effective in teaching?”, “What do you recommend novice teachers to be resilient in classroom environment?”. We used a qualitative research method to evaluate and compare the views of the principals, and to determine their roles on promoting resilience in novice teachers in classroom environment. The research was carried out with the participation of six secondary school principals working in various high schools in some cities in Turkey. According to the data obtained from principals, we can argue that the principals have the most important roles for novice teachers to be resilient in teaching process through bringing new teachers together for formal coaching opportunities, talking about strategies to manage strong emotions, and increasing awareness of interpretation