School Principals' Learnings from COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic, which broke out in late 2019 and which we are still facing today, has caused an extraordinary disruption of many systems globally, including educational ones, and affected the lives of many students and families. Various measures were abruptly taken in order to ensure that students, teachers, and school principals continued their educational processes safely and also to lessen the crisis situation and chaos. One of these measures was country-wide school closures, and along with Turkey, most countries chose to close schools and make a quick transition to remote learning. During those weeks, several policy responses aimed at making sure that students attended online classes regularly and that they felt well. In the meantime, diverse stakeholders of educational systems (students, teachers, educational leaders etc.) have learned some lessons from this situation. The purpose of this study is to emphasize the lessons that Turkish school principals learned during the school closure period in Turkey. Within the scope of maximum diversity sampling, a purposeful sampling method, a sampling frame was established, and 105 school principals working in primary, secondary, and high schools in different provinces participated in the study. In the study, in which a qualitative online survey method was used, a Google drive form with open-ended questions was employed. Based on the findings obtained in the study, main themes have been created. These are personal, organizational, and educational lessons learned.