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The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between school administrators' power sources and teachers' organizational trust levels.

The sample of the study, which employed a survey research method, consisted of 376 primary school teachers in Kutahya, a city in western Turkey. The data gathering instrument of the study incorporated “School Administrators' Organizational Power Sources Scale” and “Organizational Trust Scale”. Descriptive statistics and regression analysis were used to analyze the data.

According to the research findings, the participant teachers' organizational trust levels were high. When power sources used by school administrators were considered, they positively correlated with the teachers' organizational trust perceptions at a moderate level. However, only referent power was the significant predictor of organizational trust perceptions, while referent power, expert power and reward power were significant predictors of trust in administrator. Although the other power sources were highly preferred, they did not have an influence on employees' organizational trust perceptions. Power sources used by administrators explained approximately two‐fifths of total organizational trust perceptions of the teachers and three‐fifths of trust in administrator perceptions.

The research was limited to state primary school teachers' perceptions.

The research findings could be used to analyze primary school teachers' organizational trust environment. To increase the organizational trust levels of the staff, school administrators can prefer the power of expertise, charisma and awards. In this respect, conducting studies especially to develop the expertise of the administrators can contribute to the development of the trust perceptions of the staff.

Although there are studies on organizational trust, research connected to the relationship between power sources preferred by administrators and organizational trust has not been found. Furthermore, organizational power at schools is one of the disregarded fields of education.

Mentoring can improve novice teacher effectiveness and reduce teacher attrition, yet the depth and breadth of mentoring can vary greatly within and between schools. The purpose of this paper is to identify the extent to which a school’s administrative context is associated with the focus and frequency of novice teacher-mentor interactions.

By estimating logistic regression models, the author identified the association between novices’ perceptions of their working conditions and the content and frequency of interactions with their formally assigned mentors.

When novice teachers perceived positive administrator-teacher relations in their schools and reported that administrative duties did not interfere with their core work as teachers, they were more likely to frequently interact with their mentors around issues of curriculum.

Studies of new teacher induction need to more fully account for elements of school-level organizational context which influence novice teacher-mentor interactions, specifically related to administrative decision making and climate. Future research should seek to identify the extent to which formal policy related to new teacher induction is supported by broader elements of the organizational context.

In addition to implementing sound formal policies related to teacher mentoring, school administrators should seek to foster a school climate that promotes administrator-teacher and teacher-teacher collaboration to promote improved teacher mentoring.

This study builds upon previous research by drawing attention to the association between broad measures of school-level administrative context related to the quality of working conditions and teacher mentoring.

In what way is administrators’ perceived role vulnerability (PRV) related to the organization’s structural characteristics? A comparison of administrators’ PRV is made of “domesticated” centralized public schools and “undomesticated” self‐governed community centers, both operating and serving children and parents in the same neighborhoods. The findings obtained indicate that school administrators perceive vulnerability to be greater than do community center administrators. These findings are rather surprising considering that public schools are not involved in competition for clients. It is therefore argued that much depends on the degree of autonomy and flexibility that administrators have and that introducing competition to schools has to be synchronized with the autonomy and freedom of action delegated to school administrators.

While facing challenges and crises in the leadership of schools, school administrators need to have three vital characteristics: up-to-date knowledge, relevant skills, and sound dispositions. Self-referent dispositions that refer to thoughts and feelings about one's knowledge and skills play a key role in the success of professionals in carrying out day-to-day activities. One self-referent construct is self-efficacy, which pertains to a person's confidence in their knowledge and skills. This chapter discusses social cognitive theory, in general, and self-efficacy, in particular, to describe how the self-efficacy construct is relevant to school administrators’ ability to lead schools.

Although it is assumed that school district governance by districts leaders can impact schools’ capacity to improvement and educational quality, there is little systematic evidence to support this claim. The purpose of this paper is to discuss how governance goals and interventions affect school districts’ social capital.

The empirical enquiry used quantitative data on district leaders enacting governance as perceived by their school principals. These data were collected among 399 school principals of 23 Dutch school districts in elementary education, using a survey. Social network data on social capital within school districts were collected using a social network survey among educational administrators (i.e. district leaders, central office administrators and school principals). Additionally, examples of the relation between school district social capital and governance at six school districts were described.

Results suggest that district leaders can promote the organizational social capital of their school districts through focusing on educational goals. In addition, the findings show that they can reinforce their impact by using interventions varying in coercion level, of which offering support to school principals appears to be “a golden button” to make organizational social capital thrive.

Limitations to the study are the generalizability of the findings (they can be questioned because “convenience sampling” was used) and warrant a longitudinal design to examine how organization social capital develops over time.

The study is unique as it addresses the impact district leaders may have on their districts’ social capital by focusing on social network approach in the study of school district governance.

Much has been written about student accountability, teacher accountability, and school accountability. More limited research is available on administrator accountability. Recently there have been substantial initiatives undertaken world‐wide to increase educational accountability. With increasing demands and changing expectations in the role of school administration, researchers, practitioners and policy makers and departments of education have become socially preoccupied with educational accountability. The purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive literature review on accountability of school administrators over the last two decades to demonstrate how aspiring, new and practicing school administrators understand and meet the demands of accountability in a time of tumultuous change when the stakes are high.

The issue of training and appointment of school administrators has consumed substantial attention from educational scholars for several decades. The literature has witnessed a growing amount of research effort in investigating and identifying the effective ways of training and appointing school principals. However, there are also political, social and cultural aspects to this endeavour, which potentially influences the practices pertaining to training and appointment of school principals. This chapter represents scholarly efforts to discuss issues on the training and appointment of school administrators in Turkey within its historical and political background. Thus, first, it focuses on the historical journey of the field of educational administration in Turkey. This journey has been categorised under three phases: The Ottoman Era, Early Years of Turkish Republic and the 1950s Onwards. Second, this chapter discusses school principalship in Turkey with a specific focus on political and legal dimensions. Finally, the chapter ends with an overall evaluation of the practices and policies pertaining to school administration curriculum in Turkey.

This study presents data and discusses the relationship between occupational stress and organization theory for school administrators. Classical organization theory, focusing upon organizations as primarily bureaucratic in nature, and person‐environment P‐E fit theory, viewing the employee within the context of a work environment, are two broad theoretical frameworks that serve as bases for analysis and discussion. The objectives of the study follow: to report descriptive data about perceived levels of occupational stress, sources of stress, symptoms and coping strategies for building administrators from differing school settings; to provide comparisons between dependent variables of stress for specific independent variables such as school level and type; to apply organization theory to explain differences and relationships among variables; and to present a conceptually sound basis for further research on stress in education. A factorial ANOVA was used to test for main effect differences for the group dependent means for perceived occupational stress and the independent variables of level of school and school type. Several discriminant analyses were performed to determine the nature of discriminant functions for the dependent variables. Theoretically, highly bureaucratic schools should exhibit less stress than less bureaucratic schools. This was not supported. Person‐environment fit theory was better able to predict levels of perceived stress for school administrators.

A study of the published statements of Australian school administrators revealed that two distinctive configurations of power and service relationships are projected in their publically presented images of state school administration as it relates to government and the public. A previous Traditional Centralist‐Unity configuration is now being replaced by an Emergent Devolution‐Diversity conformation. Analysis was directed to (a) understanding the significance of the two images in terms of their function as public communications, and (b) accounting for the shift in the imagery in the light of pressures for change, the way administrators are interpreting change as turbulence, and the projection of counter images incorporating critiques of government school systems. To help organise analysis, it was assumed that images of system administration have the potential to communicate: 1. information, 2. explanation, 3. judgements and value positions, 4. statements designed to advance sectional interests, and 5. themes and persuasive symbols. It was also assumed that the shift in the public images of administrators may be studied in the way their images relate to three basic sources of administrative tension: tensions which arise from problems of meaning, problems of aspiration, and problems of practice.

Administrator support has been identified as a key factor in deterring teacher turnover. Yet, the specific ways school principals directly or indirectly influence teacher retention remain underexamined. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This study includes a survival analysis to examine when beginning mathematics teachers turned over and the extent to which teacher quality and administrative support was associated with the turnover, and an analysis of exit surveys explaining teachers’ decision to turn over.

New teachers with more supportive administrators are less likely to turn over. The influence of administrative support on teacher turnover does not appear to be driven by more supportive administrators improving a school’s professional community, increasing teacher autonomy, or increasing the frequency of professional development and mentoring. While both increased administrative support and teaching quality independently predict reduced turnover, the strength of the association of administrative support on turnover does not appear to be related to the level of teacher quality nor mediated through teacher quality.

Results suggest that the presence of high levels of administrative support are more influential in deterring new teacher turnover than more direct supports, such as the assignment of mentors or recommending professional development.

The use of in-depth data on beginning teachers’ induction supports and teaching quality collected over multiple years shows distinct ways administrators influence new teachers’ decision to remain in their first school.