Instructional leadership in Turkish primary schools: An analysis of teachers’ perceptions and current policy

School leadership, one of the most important aspects of school improvement, has not received much attention from either policymakers or researchers in Turkey despite many countries embrace creating and developing effective leaders as one of the important first steps to improve their education. This research looked at the instructional leadership skills of Turkish principals from the teacher's perspective measured through a survey collected from primary school teachers in five different cities in Turkey, first, to describe the current situation and, second, to find out if teachers’ experience and gender affect their views. The results show that Turkish principals practice their instructional leadership roles only occasionally and teachers’ gender significantly affects their perception.