Information Technology Classrooms and Elementary ... - Springer Link

Education and Information Technologies 9:3, 255–270, 2004.  2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Manufactured in The Netherlands.

Information Technology Classrooms and Elementary School Principals’ Roles: Turkish Experience SADEGUL AKBABA-ALTUN ∗ Abant Izzet Baysal University, Turkey College of Education, Turkey E-mail: [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract The aim of this research is to explore what elementary school principals’ roles related to IT classrooms were, and how school principals perceived their roles as well as what expected from them. This research was conducted in a small city situated in the west Black Sea region of Turkey. Seventeen schools with information technology classrooms were selected for this research. The participants in this study included seventeen school principals and fifteen computer coordinators. One central office computer coordinator and a regional representative participated in the study as key informants. The primary sources of data included semi-structured interviews and official documents. The self-reported IT related roles of Turkish elementary school principals included facilitation, staff development, and communication. The expected roles, on the other hand, included leadership (instructional and technological leadership), supervision, communication, staff development, planning, coordination, public relation, empowerment, ethics, and security. Keywords: leadership

information technology, elementary school, principals’ roles, computer coordinators, technological

1. Introduction The Ministry of National Education (MNE) has received a loan, which is equivalent to 600 million US Dollars form the World Bank to invest in a National Basic Education Program (BEP). As a comprehensive educational investment program, the objectives of the Basic Education Program are to expand the eight-year compulsory education, to improve the quality in basic education, to make basic education school s become learning centers of the community. In order to improve the quality of education, one of the objectives is to ensure each student and teacher becomes at least computer literate and is efficient in using information technologies in education. Therefore, MNE opened information technology (IT) classrooms in 2802 elementary schools (K-8), which included computers, printers, scanners, TVs, videos, CDs’ and slides to be used for each separate course. This phase was completed at the end of 2000. ∗ Address for correspondence: Aibu, Egitim Fakultesi, Egitim B˙ıl˙ımler˙ı Bolumu, 14280 Golkoy – Bolu, Turkey.

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MNE also monitored the program activities in compliance with the basic components defined within the program. After the first phase, MNE decided to put the second phase in action to cover all schools to be equipped with IT classrooms. However, the success of this initiative will be highly dependent upon the school administrators as building level leaders. Moreover, the school principals’ roles are crucial to maintain the continuity of such nationwide integration. Although, general program evaluation has been carried out, there are no reported empirical studies related to IT classrooms in general, and the changing roles of the school principals, in particular. Therefore, the aim of this research is to explore what elementary school principals’ roles related to IT classrooms were, and how school principals perceived their roles as well as what expected from them.

2. Review of the Literature School principals as building level leaders are important people to make change happen and take responsibility for technology or any kind of innovations (Rockman and Sloan, 1993; Casey, 1995; Leigh, 2000; Garcia et al., 1997; MacNeil and Delafield, 1998; Bailey, 2000; Fullan, 2002). According to MacNeil and Delafield (1998) the transformation from industrial age schools into information age schools won’t happen without the active leadership of school principals. In addition, Rockman and Sloan (1993) suggest that principals as building level leaders will increasingly take responsibility for technology and other innovations in their schools. Garcia et al. (1997) also argue that the principals’ vision and leadership is an important indicator of an effective integration of technology into schools. Successful programs are those in which the principals have put into place expectations, motivations, rewards, and support components. In line with these expectations, the International Society for Technology in Education published technology standards for principals in the following categories: 1) Leadership and vision, 2) Productivity and professional development, 3) Support, management, and operations, 4) Assessment and evaluation, 5) Social legal and ethical issues. In their comprehensive review of the literature as related to standards of technology, Schoeny et al. (1999) list the principals’ technology needs under three categories: 1) understanding technology management issues, 2) understanding the impact of technology on education, and 3) knowledge of the administrative uses of technology. By understanding technology management issues, the authors refer to providing proper funding for training and support; managing software and hardware acquisition and upgrades; technology planning; budgeting for technology training and support; knowing technology standards for students and instructional personnel; participating in the development and implementation of the school district technology plan; developing personal and staff development programs; and, comprehending ethical and legal issues related to technology use. For the impact of technology on educational change, school principals have been expected to create a supportive environment for change, learn ways to encourage students to take a more active role in their own learning, and develop long range plans that adapt the vision/mission of school to include the infusion of technology across the curriculum. Finally, knowledge of the administrative uses of technology would indicate learning

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of ways to communicate with students, teachers, and parents; analyzing and organizing data to make informed decisions; encouraging teachers’ administrative use of technology; utilizing Internet recourses for personal professional development; and, staying abreast of current literature in instructional technology and related fields (Schoeny et al., 1999). Bailey (2000) claims that only a few principals would admit that they know all there is to know about technology leadership. The quest for understanding technology leadership and technology integration appears to be lifelong process rather than short-term training. Bailey (2000) reports that the technology leadership role s of 21st century school principals should cover change, teaching/learning, staff development, leadership, planning, safety and security, infrastructure, ethics, curriculum, and technology support. Leigh (2000) points out the multiple demands from school leaders. Some of these include management of people and physical resources and planning and implementation of numerous programs. These demands also challenge them to make insightful judgments about optimizing the learning environment for students to thrive in the knowledge age. Leigh (2000) goes further to claim that in the knowledge age, resource support (hardware, software, wide area network, internet curriculum sites) and system support (government expectations, leadership support, professional development, curriculum network) are needed for the best practices in teaching and learning. Casey (1995) mentions that the effective use of technology demands active leadership and commitment of the school principals as well as financial investment on hardware and software. The principal’s roles must be informed by knowledge about technology. The principal needs to understand the use of computing for educational purposes. If the principals at least recognize the potentials offered by computers and other technologies, they can support the introduction of that technology by adopting a shared leadership model and allowing interested, committed teachers to take some leadership. Reviewed literature suggests that principals are expected to display active leadership in any kind of innovation at school level, including technological changes in the process of teaching and learning. Several researchers also report that information technology influenced the role of school principals, due to the introduction of a new information management system in to the school system (i.e., Telem and Buvitski, 1995; Telem, 2001). Consequently, it is inevitable for school principals to have new roles as IT classrooms increase. In this respect, the aim of this study is to explore and determine elementary school principals’ self-perceived and expected IT roles in the context of Turkey.

3. Methodology In this study, the main concern was to identify what IT roles of Turkish elementary school principals were. The qualitative research paradigm was applied to explore these roles within its own context. It is obvious that in the last decade a tremendous amount of qualitative research has been conducted in the field of education. Maxcy (1995) explains this situation as a movement from positivistic mind-sets to more open naturalistic and qualitative research methods. Qualitative research findings are arrived at not by means of statistical procedures or other means of quantification (Strauss and Corbin, 1990), but by means of

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AKBABA-ALTUN Table 1. School type, number of students and computers at schools School type Type A Type B Type C Type D Type E Type F Type G

Number of students

Number of computers

Number of IT classroom

Less than 400 401–800 801–1200 1201–1600 1601–2000 2001–2500 More than 2500

10 + 1 15 + 1 20 + 1 2 + 30 2 + 40 3 + 45 3 + 60

1 1 2 2 3 3

“the meanings, concepts, definitions, characteristics, metaphors, symbols, and descriptions of things” (Berg, 1998, p. 3). 3.1. The site All schools in Turkey were assigned letter designations by the Ministry of National Education, according to the number of students they had. When opening IT classrooms, the size of each school was taken info consideration. Table 1 displays the characteristics of each type and IT investments in those schools. This research was conducted in a small city situated in the west Black Sea region of Turkey. Seventeen schools with information technology classrooms were selected for this research. Fifteen of those schools were located in towns and three of them were located in city centers. Among those schools were eight type A, seven type B, one type D and one Type E schools. 3.2. Participants The participants in this study included seventeen school principals, one central office computer coordinator, one regional representative and fifteen computer coordinators. The regional representative was responsible for technical maintenance and assistance as part of the warranty for the IT equipment. The school principals were all male and with the backgrounds in elementary school classroom teacher (14), Religion and Morals teacher (1), Social Studies teacher (1), and English teacher (1). Their work experience ranged from 13 years to 35 years. The average work experience for the school principals was 25.5 years. Their administrative experience ranged from 2 to 25 years, with 2–9 years of computer experience. They considered their level of computer literacy to be generally at the beginner and intermediate levels. Only two school principals stated that they considered themselves to be at the advanced level. All the school principals reported that they use computers for the purpose of administrative duties, students’ affairs, official correspondence, educational, and gathering information from the Internet. Although all the school principals attended in-service computer literacy training, they did not consider this training to be beneficial.


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The computer coordinators included thirteen elementary school teachers, one part-time computer programmer, and one graduate of computer education. Their work experience ranged between 1 and 25 years. They reported to have been using computers between 3 to 9 years. Most of them also mentioned that their first experience of using computers started with this project through in-service training sessions. The central office computer coordinator and the regional representative were the key informants in the study. The central office coordinator, K.A., was working at the National Education Directorate. He has been working as a computer teacher since 1988. After 1990, he began to install computer labs in public schools. Mr. K.A. was selected as a key informant because he was working closely with computer coordinators and school principals. He has also been attending the master program at the university with an emphasis on Educational Administration. Another key informant, the regional representative, was mainly responsible for providing support for the computer coordinators. This support included repairing and maintaining the equipment and providing software. He was responsible for four other cities in the region. The logic and power of purposeful sampling lie in selecting information-rich cases for studying in depth. A great deal can be learned about the issues of central importance to the purpose of the research with purposeful sampling (Patton, 1990). Therefore, the selection of the school principals, computer coordinators and key informants were based on purposeful sampling. 3.3. Data collection The data were collected from March 2003 through July 2003. The primary sources of data included semi-structured interviews and official documents. Because of the difficulty of entering the field for observation, interviews and documents were selected for data collection. The interviews with the participants and key informants were semi-structured interviews. The researcher interviewed the principals at their offices. Computer coordinators were interviewed in their IT classrooms. The interviews with key informants were conducted at the researcher’s office. Each interview took between 25 and 35 minutes. Bogdan and Biklen (1992) describe documents as being either personal (diaries, personal letters, and autobiographies), or official (internal documents, external communication, students records and personal files). According to Yin (1994), documentation sources can also include memoranda, announcements and minutes of meetings, proposals, progress reports, internal documents, newspaper clips and articles. For this research, many such documents related to IT classrooms, regulations, agreements, and manuals were used. 3.4. Data analysis The interview data gathered was transcribed and entered on a matrix. According to Miles and Huberman (1994), the matrix is a helpful way of organizing data for understanding the

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Table 2. School principals’ IT related roles Roles expected by the MNE

Computer coordinators expected roles

Principals’ actual performance

Data collection

Documents

Interviews

Interviews

Data analysis

Content analysis

Content analysis

Content analysis

Suggested categories

1. Leadershipinstructional and technological leadership 2. Supervision 3. Communication 4. Planning 5. Coordination 6. Public-relations 7. Ethics 8. Safety and security

1. Leadership 2. Empowerment 3. Coordination 4. Supervision 5. Staff development 6. Communication

1. Communication 2. Staff development 3. Facilitator

flow, location, and connection of events. Matrices can also help the researcher to observe and compare different roles and their relation to specific conditions by looking across rows. This way of preparing the data permitted a detailed analysis for later cross-case content analysis. Triangulations of sources and of methods were accomplished to ensure their validity and reliability (Patton, 1990). Different sources of data (semi-structured interviews and documents) were compared and contrasted. In addition, key informants were interviewed to validate what other informants narrated. Finally, two outside researchers were asked to analyze the same data separately as reviewers. Based on the recommendations from outside reviewers, the data were revisited several times and analyzed again in order to ensure agreement. A pattern coding was applied on the matrix to observe how frequently each pattern was repeated. Only the ones with more than one occurrence were included in the findings. The categories to emerge are presented in Table 2.

4. Findings Information Technology (IT) classrooms have recently been opened as part of the National Education Development Project, supported by the MNE and the World Bank. After having received the loan, the MNE determined the schools and made contracts with a firm to install IT equipments in 2082 elementary schools. Due to the centralized system in the MNE, school principal s reported that they did not take any part during this process. One of the school principals who joined the in service training at that time said: “It is good not to ask us anything. We had no idea then. Whatever we had said would not have been beneficial at all”. Only three school principals said that they asked to have IT classrooms in their schools through correspondences. In short, the IT classrooms did not seem to appear as a need driving from the school principals, and the principals did not participate in making decisions during this process.

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INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Table 3. Descriptions of roles by the Ministry of National Education Categories

Sample descriptions of roles

Leadership

• Instructional leadership: To use equipments for the purpose of teaching and learning • Technological leadership: To use technological materials as efficient, effective, productive, intensive, and extensive. To have school connected to Internet and use Internet technologies

Supervision

• To supervise repairs of breakdowns • To ensure computers are used appropriately

Communication

• Official correspondences with the MNE, National Education Directorate and warranted firm for breakdowns

Planning

• To ensure all IT tools are ready to be used • To take initial steps to plan the numbers of teachers and their in-house training

Coordination

• To sign the acceptance receipt upon receiving the equipments through a commission chaired by school principal and assistant principle

Public relations

• To provide support for other close-by schools by letting them use these equipments • To turn the school as cultural and educational center for the community • To turn the schools into learning centers in the community

Ethics

• To ensure software is licensed at schools and they are not copied illegally

Table 4. Descriptions of roles by computer coordinators Categories

Descriptions of roles

Leadership

• To ensure the effective use of IT classrooms • To support computer coordinators • Technological leadership: Having technical knowledge and do whatever necessary for effective use of IT classrooms • To be initiative to provide technological support • To take safety precautions • Instructional leadership. To help integrate those tools into instructional process

Communication

• To call for technical assistance and support • To interpret the regulations and guide computer coordinators according to regulations

Staff development

• To encourage and provide guidance for teachers toward using computers in their classes

Coordination

• To coordinate the planning of how to use IT classrooms with computer coordinators • To be a coordinator between computer coordinators and other teachers

Supervision

• To supervise IT classrooms and computer coordinators

Empowerment

• To distribute sufficient and efficient responsibility and authority to computer coordinators

Security

• To ensure security to prevent the tools being stolen • To take precautions for safety in classroom, especially with computers

However, the MNE requested school principals to have certain roles, either during the installation of IT classrooms or post-installation. Those roles were announced the school principals through official correspondences. The analysis of these documents and interview data from participants and key informants revealed the following emerged categories (see Tables 3–5). According to the norms put forward by the MNE, the expected elementary school principals’ roles are leadership, supervision, communication, planning, coordination, publicrelation, and ethics. On the other hand, the computer coordinators expect school principals

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Table 5. Descriptions of roles by school principals Categories

Descriptions of roles

Facilitator

• To provide help in sustaining the continuity of the project • To provide help in the acquisition of additional breakdowns • To provide help in getting a web space for school server and e-mail addresses for teachers

Communication

• Official correspondences

Staff development

• To encourage and provide guidance for teachers toward using computers in their classes

Figure 1. Overlapping cluster of school principals’ IT related roles.

to take on the roles of leadership, communication, planning, coordination, supervision, empowerment, and security. Despite those roles expected by the MNE, school principals actually voiced their roles to be facilitation, communication and staff development. Among those expected and actual performed roles, the only common role is communication. These roles are presented in the following overlapping cluster (Figure 1). In the light of these findings, elementary school principals’ IT related roles should cover leadership, supervision, communication, staff development, planning, coordination, public-relation, empowerment, facilitation, ethics, and security. Each of these roles, which emerged from the data, will be described and discussed below.


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Leadership The findings in this study indicate that MNE and computer coordinators consider leadership as an expected role from the school principals. On the other hand, school principals do not perceive leadership as part of their roles. According to the expectations of MNE, the school principals, who have IT classrooms in their schools, should have two different roles. These roles are: a. Instructional leadership: to use equipment for the purpose of teaching and learning to provide support for the teachers and computer coordinators. b. Technological leadership: to use technological materials efficiently, effectively, productively, intensively, and extensively. To have the school connected to the Internet and use the Internet technologies; and to the initiative to provide technological support [Regulation no. 53. MNE, 2001]. Computer coordinators emphasize that school principals should have leadership roles, especially technological leadership as indicated in the following statements: “First of all, a school principal should have a vision to promote searching and researching his/her school. In other words, s/he should be able to follow the ongoing developments, especially the new developments about IT classrooms. Secondly, s/he would be able to set support from outside sources. If these roles were not put in action, the IT classrooms remain as is since developments in IT are very rapid and tools get out-of-date.” Another computer coordinator adds: “A school principal should have knowledge about computers and willingness toward learning about computers. S/he should be able to use computers for their official purposes. Moreover, s/he should be a guide and should encourage staff.” One of the key informants also emphasizes the importance of leadership in the following statement: “How important is the attitude of a school principal? First, they can motivate and guide teachers. On the other hand, if school principals do not take initiatives, they cannot expect a progress from the teachers. In some schools, some teachers are very eager toward integrating these tools into their teaching whereas in some schools they are not. The determined leadership of school principals is very related to this outcome.” MNE and computer coordinators have similar expectations from school principals. These expectations are both at the cognitive (having knowledge) and affective (have positive attitudes toward IT) levels. School principals actually agree on the fact that they should perform technological leadership; yet they go further to admit that they do not have enough neither knowledge nor skills to realize these roles. One of the principals says: “In this century, we must have knowledge and information about computers, scanners, the Internet, and other materials in our IT classrooms. But, I must say, I do not know about them. Most of my colleagues are like me.”

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Computer coordinators and the key informants observe that principals’ lack of knowledge and skills about IT causes problems in IT classrooms. For example, one computer coordinator narrates a specific case he had experienced in his school as follows: “The school principal was asked to turn on the computer in the IT classroom when I was not there. He turned the workstations on before the server. Since the IP numbers were distributed from the server, these workstations could not get to the network. Many programs, therefore, failed to open. He did not know the problem.” One explanation for understanding why school principals do not perceive leadership as part of their roles would be that school principals were appointed by the MNE and they are mostly expected to maintain their duties as administrators rather than as leaders.

Supervision In Turkish Educational System, educational supervisors carry out supervision. Primary education supervisors are responsible for supervising elementary schools. School principals are also expected to supervise their schools. MNE expects the following IT related supervisional roles from school principals in regulation: – Supervising on accepting, installing, and maintaining IT tools. – Monitoring the effective use of IT classrooms. – Preventing inappropriate use of computers [Regulations no: 53, MNE, 2001]. On the other hand, computer coordinators expect supervision from school principals on monitoring the effective use of IT classrooms. As far as supervision is concerned, computer coordinators and MNE have almost similar expectations on the use of IT classrooms. School principals did not mentioned supervision as part of their roles at all. One of the reasons for this can be attributed to their lack of knowledge and skills about IT. Consequently, they empower computer coordinators to carry out IT classrooms. Secondly, they might leave supervision to the primary education supervisors, who are primarily in charge of supervision within the educational system.

Communication Communication is the common theme that MNE, all computer coordinators and all school principals agreed upon. MNE expect school principals to communicate effectively with City Educational Directorate and warranted firm to establish and maintain the IT classrooms. The directions for school principals are written straightforward, especially during times when claiming the breakdowns that happen in IT classrooms. Computer coordinators’ expectations are also in line with the MNE as inferred from the following two statements: – They (school principles) should be in charge of official correspondence.


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– They should be able to interpret the regulations and guide the computer coordinators accordingly. School principals have mentioned that they do a lot of paper work related to the IT classrooms, as part of their roles in the school. To sum up, official correspondence stands as a common communication role for MNE, computer coordinators, and school principals.

Staff development Since the Turkish Education is centralized, staff development is carried out by the MNE. This has been the case for training computer coordinators. First, they were trained in the Capital. When they were back home, they were responsible with training other principals, teachers, and supervisors in their provinces. Computer coordinators emphasize a need for support from the school principals. One computer coordinator summarizes these expectations as asking school principals “to encourage and provide guidance for teachers toward using computers in their classroom”. In line with these requests, school principals are affirmative toward this expected role. One of the school principals describes his role as follows: “Our role as schools principals is to support computer coordinators for their professional development and provide them guidance”. Another school principal goes further to add that “our roles are basically (a) to select volunteer teachers for being trained as computer coordinator, (b) to be fair in this selection, (c) to provide opportunities for staff development, and (d) to plan how in-service training will be organized in our schools. To sum up, school principals’ staff development roles related to IT classrooms were similar between computer coordinators and school principals”.

Planning MNE generally requires school principals to coordinate and plan the activities in IT classrooms. According to MNO, school principals should have roles in planning the IT classrooms as they “. . . are in charge of taking necessary school-wide steps to plan teachers’ education about IT”. Computer coordinators state that school principals plan the use of IT classrooms together with them. Moreover, computer coordinators suggest school principals be in charge of who will use these classrooms apart from teaching hours and during weekends. While MNE expect the roles as staff planning, computer coordinators consider these roles within the use of these classrooms.

Coordination Coordination was an expected role from school principals by MNE. In regulations, this role was defined as: “to sign the acceptance receipt upon receiving the equipment through a commission chaired by the school principal or assistant principal”.

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According to the computer coordinators, school principals should also provide coordination between other teachers and themselves. Computer coordinators indicate they experience problems with other teachers on how to use IT classrooms. Computer coordinators do not only teach IT related courses, but they also teach in their major classes. One of the computer coordinators says: “When I have classes in other rooms, other teachers use the IT classrooms. When they experience problems in IT classrooms, they would like to reach me for help. In order to minimize these problems, school principal should coordinate these activities”. It is clear that there is a lack of coordination between computer coordinators and other teachers from time to time. That is why they ask school principals to keep coordination between them.

Public relation School principals’ roles as in public relations have been defined by regulations by the MNE as follows: – To provide support for the near by schools by letting them use these equipment. – To have school as cultural and educational center for the community. – To turn schools into learning centers in the community. In this study, neither computer coordinators nor school principals have mentioned about their roles as related to public relations.

Empowerment Only computer coordinators mentioned school principals’ roles as empowerment. According to the computer coordinators, school principals should have the following roles as part of empowerment: “School principals should be aware of their responsibilities and authorities. They should not distribute their authorities and have trust relationship with computer coordinators. In addition, computer coordinators should be provided responsibilities as regarded to the IT classroom management. School principals should be supportive and encouraging.” Another computer coordinator says: “Some school principals are very protective. They are very strict with the bureaucratic procedures. Once they give you the key to these rooms, they keep you all responsible for everything. When we return the key, they check the rooms back. They need to develop a trust relationship and empower us. Otherwise, this puts pressure on us.” In general, school principals tend to share their responsibilities and authorities with computer coordinators due to their lack of knowledge and skills about IT tools. For example,


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one school principal says that “well, school principals should know about these classrooms. Since I do not have enough knowledge about them, I face problems time to time. Since my coordinators were well-trained about this, I just support them”. Although school principals mention that they frequently listen to computer coordinators and support them with their needs, it is difficult to consider this as a teacher empowerment in a real sense.

Facilitator School principals mentioned about their roles as facilitators in schools. The following statements were made by them during the interviews: – We help ensure replacing technological materials or getting the repairs done in IT classrooms. Moreover, we make sure students get the most out of IT classrooms. – We help our teachers obtain e-mail addresses and get our school website up and running. – We need to support and provide guidance for our teachers who use and would like to use IT classrooms.

Ethics Ethics is another role that school principals should consider. MNE orders school principals be responsible and cautious for copyright issues regarding the books, CD-ROMs and other software used in the IT classrooms. Neither school principals nor computer coordinators have mentioned any expected roles in this matter.

Security Computer coordinators were the only group who emphasized a need for maintaining security as a school principal’s role. They emphasize a need to protect these tools in the IT classrooms and to keep the classroom as a safe place for burglary or theft. While conducting this study, several computers were stolen from two of the schools. School principals started to consider security as a concern since then. Since the computer coordinators were primarily in charge of these IT classrooms, they were the only group of participants who raised this issue.

5. Discussion and Conclusion Effective integration of technology into education depends on active leadership of the principals (Rockman and Sloan, 1993; Casey, 1995; Leigh, 2000; Garcia et al., 1997; MacNeil and Delafield, 1998; Bailey, 2000; Turan, 2002). School principals are key leaders in large scale, sustainable educational reform (Fullan, 2002). Sheingold (1990) also claims that

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“the challenge of integrating technology into schools and classrooms is much more human than it is technological”. So, the change process is much more complex and it is in fact a journey (Fullan, 1993, 1998). Within this journey, school principals have important roles as building leaders. In this research, the self-reported IT related roles of Turkish elementary school principals were facilitation, staff development, and communication. In addition, the expected roles included leadership (instructional and technological leadership), supervision, communication, staff development, planning, coordination, public relation, empowerment, ethics, and security. Some of those roles were also reported in the literature as the components of principals’ technological leadership roles (i.e., Bailey, 2000). MacNeil and Delafield (1998) claimed that principals and other school leaders must accept the challenge to create a supportive environment in which innovative uses of computers are encouraged. In their report on the role of the principals in technology integration, Garcia et al. (1997) urged the principals and instructional facilitators to take advantage of every opportunity to become more familiar with and knowledgeable about computer hardware and software. In line with these findings, this study confirms that computer coordinators emphasized a need for support and facilitation from school principals as technological leaders. According to Bailey (2000), school principals in the 21st century should consider and embrace change, teaching and learning, staff development, leadership, planning, safety and security, infrastructure, ethics, curriculum, and technology support. Yet, leadership, staff development and ethics are three important roles to be emphasized since developing countries like Turkey need to use resources effectively and efficiently for successful technology integration. Ethics plays an important role in technology integration process. According to Bailey (2000), technology integration involves more than just teaching students how to use technological tools, but helping them deal with the ethical dilemmas, which arise when applying emerging technologies. Therefore, school principals should know how to deal with ethical issues emerging with IT classrooms. As indicated in the documents prepared by the Ministry of National Education, public awareness is needed. School principles, on the other hand, have such responsibilities in promoting this awareness, especially paying attention to the copyright issues and plagiarism. Staff development has been identified in many studies as a key component in the successful implementation of technology (see, Costello, 1997). MacNeil and Delafield (1998) found that one of the inhibitors of technology implementation in the classroom is lack of time for professional development and planning. Bailey (2000) reports that one of the 21st century technology leaders’ roles is staff development. MacNeil and Delafield (1998) also caution the planners to “. . . provide higher-level support to the school faculty when preparing them in integrating technology into the curriculum” (p. 299). To sum up, there must be closer alignments between the amount of time for professional development with technology and its degree of perceived importance. In line with current literature, The MNE expected Turkish elementary school principals to direct teachers toward computer-assisted instruction as part of the Basic Education Project. The first trained group, within this project, was computer coordinators. After-


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wards, they were expected to train all teachers and principals in their schools about how to use a computer. Yet, teachers are still in need of further training on the integration of computers into their courses. This study showed that there are not well-matched components in expected and perceived roles between the Ministry of National Education and school principals. This discrepancy was also seen in the expected roles of computer coordinators. The unexpected result is the actual performance of the elementary school principals’ roles related to IT classrooms. One reason for this could be attributed to the centralized organization of the Ministry of National Education; hence, changes are expected from the top down. Similarly, the emergence of IT classrooms in the schools was one of the changes that came out of the centralized system. Therefore, school principals did not have an explicit role in organizing such IT classrooms. They were mainly asked to select teachers to be trained as computer coordinators at their schools. Additionally, they simply determined which rooms should be used, etc. Consequently and expectedly, they internalized the way correspondences are made, the planning of those teachers to be trained, and their pioneering roles in making this change smoother for their schools. Another research looking at the school principals’ roles in a different system (namely, in a bottom-up or decentralized system) would provide another perspective to describe the roles in these settings. In addition, since school principals’ attitudes toward change and IT tools are crucially important, affective dimensions should be investigated. Several recommendations can be made based on the findings of this study. First, the school principals should be provided with a guidance to increase their awareness toward IT classrooms in order to optimize the effective uses of IT tools in their schools. Secondly, MNE has provided a set of structures that reflects a commitment to technology. Organizationally, MNE has a directorate of Technology Education and Head of Projects Coordination. This directorate should not only provide the master plan for wiring, purchasing, and installation of hardware, but also provide curricular and staff development support for teachers and principals. Thirdly, school principals need to be informed through provision of an in-service training about what roles await them in order to effectively integrate IT classrooms into their schools. Finally, there is a need to have standards to cover certain roles, such as a set of guidelines on security and safety. Further studies and examination of cross cultural experiences dealing with using and integrating IT into education would contribute to our understanding of these roles. References Bailey, G. D. (2000) Technology leadership: Ten essential buttons for understanding technology integration in the 21st century. [Online] Available at: http://www2.educ.ksu.edu/Faculty/BaileyG/html/currentbuttonart.html 1996–2000. Technology Leadership Center (11/20/2000). Berg, B. L. (1998) Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences, 3rd edition. Allyn and Bacon, Boston, MA. Bogdan, R. C. and Biklen, S. K. (1992) Qualitative Research for Education: An Introduction to Theory and Methods, 2nd edition. Allyn and Bacon, Needham Heights, MA. Casey, P. C. (1995) Presenting teachers with a model for technological innovation. Technology and Teacher Education Annual. pp. 855–858.

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