Perceptions of secondary education school principals on geography teachers and lessons

The objective of this study is to determine the perceptions of secondary school principals’ on geography teachers and geography lessons. For this purpose a semi structured interview form containing some open ended questions was given to the participants consisting of school principals working at various secondary schools in Istanbul. The answers to these questions were examined via text content analysis method and various results were obtained. Results revealed that school principals mostly define geography lessons using natural phenomenon. They emphasize the importance of geography lessons in secondary schools based on the fact that the necessity of the students to learn about the environment they live in. The principals also emphasize that the number of geography lessons at schools and the number of teachers are sufficient. In addition they think that geography teachers generally do not have a habit of collaborating. The importance of supporting geography lessons with visual and technological materials along with field applications is emphasized. School principals draw attention to the fact that geography teachers cannot meet the expected performance criteria and that this is due mostly to environmental reasons and sometimes due to individual reasons. It has been observed that even though school principals mostly think along similar lines to geography teachers regarding the solution of problems faced in geography lessons they sometimes think differently. More rational solutions to the problems faced in geography lessons can be provided by this study that aims to determine the perception of school principals on geography lessons and geography teachers in an attempt to determine the place of geography lessons and teachers in corporate culture.

Geography lesson ,

geography teacher ,

school principal ,

secondary school ,