Abstract:

Background. The principles of professional ethics are classified thus: to separate incapable and unprincipled members, to balance in-service opposition, and to protect the ideals of the service (Pehlivan, 2001). The code of ethics is of great importance in terms of the development of the profession, carrying out aims, provision of discipline within the profession and its prestige. Still, it makes the practice of the code of ethics more necessary and important for Educational Administration and Supervision to have its own aspects. In our education system, inspectors carry out inquiries, supervision and guidance duties altogether. It is crucial that they obey the code of ethics as they execute their three roles of prosecutor, judge and guide. To have an educational supervision system based upon ethics, inspectors have to be consistent with all cases. Likewise, the behaviour of the inspectors has to be standardised. Every incident, event and relationship happening between inspectors and the inspected has to be appropriate to the code of ethics of educational supervision. This required code of ethics is indispensable and postponed for the inspector working the duration and the scope of the educational supervision (Aksoy, 1998). Although the code of ethics is very important in educational supervision, findings have shown that the scope of educational supervision presents some difficulties in terms of the practice of the code of ethics in the Turkish Education System. For example, according to Dağlı and Akyıldız (2009), teachers find the inspectors inadequate in terms of objectively evaluating them and knowing about them. It is very important that inspectors are investigated to determine at what level they are carrying out a code of ethics in their educational supervision (Taşar, 2011). Purpose. The purpose of this research is to determine what code of ethics primary school inspectors are expected to obey and to evaluate the views of primary school inspectors; administrators and teachers on the extent to which primary school inspectors obey these principles. For this purpose, the following questions were addressed: 1. To what extent do inspectors, school administrators and teachers care about ethics in educational supervision? 2. Which of the codes of ethics do inspectors, school administrators and teachers accept as privileged? 3. At what level is a code of ethics in educational supervision being practised by inspectors according to inspectors, school administrators and teachers? 4. According to inspectors, school administrators and teachers, what are the codes of ethics that the inspectors have difficulty in practising? 5. According to inspectors, school administrators and teachers, what ethical behaviour is acceptable for the inspectors? Method. This research was conducted by qualitative research. In qualitative research subjects, it is done to have a closure with the searched people by entering their world (Mayring, 2000). Population and Sampling: In the study, maximum variation sampling was used within the methods of purposive sampling. The working group of the study was composed of 12 inspectors with ten years' experience from 8 different regions, school administrators again with ten years' experience from the same 8 regions and 18 primary school teachers with at least seven years' experience. Data Collection Procedure: In this study, a semi-structured interview form was prepared and used by the researchers as a tool for data gathering. The interview form comprised of 14 questions. With every five of the inspectors, administrators and teachers (a total of 15 participants) face-toface and in-depth interviews were conducted by means of the semistructured interview form and standardised open-ended interviews were used with the rest. To make the interview form credible, practices have been carried out, the experts have been consulted and later on the final interview form was prepared. The external validity of the study is boosted by the fact that the opinions of inspectors from different regions and cities have been taken. Two researchers took part in this study, presenting the duration of the study clearly and keeping the raw data secret. The observation of the teachers with twelve years' experience, being consistent with and approved by the research data, meets the credibility criteria for qualitative research (Şimşek Yıldırım, 2008). Data Analysis. The analysis of the 2nd, 4th and 5th sub-problems in the study is qualitative data based on open-ended questions. The data composed of open-ended questions and the data obtained by using semistructured interview technique were analysed by using the content analysis technique. Coding the data of the study, the agreement percentage of the researchers coding the same data was calculated as 97 per cent. This formula on agreement of Miles and Huberman (1994) for the credibility of the study is applied: Agreement Percentage (p)=Consensus (Na) / ((Consensus (Na) + Dissidence (Nd)) X 100 Findings and Comments. The findings show that all of the participants believed that ethics in educational supervision were important (45 per cent) or very important (55 per cent). Ten codes of ethics have been determined by the participants. These codes are justice, mentality, independence, democracy, honesty, tolerance, respectfulness, love, responsibility and neutrality. Justice (50 per cent), tolerance (50 per cent), respectfulness (40 per cent) and responsibility (40 per cent) are the most often repeated and accepted by the participants as the most privileged codes of ethics. According to the participants, with reference to the level of practising the codes of ethics practiced by the inspectors adequately implemented (15 per cent), implemented less (60 per cent) and not implemented (25 per cent) codes have been resulted. The code of implemented less is the most repeated with a percentage of 60. Only 15 per cent of the participants believed that the inspectors adequately implemented the code of ethics and the rest, 85 per cent, believed the other two options. This shows there is a problem implementing the code of ethics adequately. According to the participants, the 12 problematic codes of the ethics faced while implementing by the inspectors have been extracted. Of these codes, justice (40 per cent),reliability (35 per cent), honesty (25 per cent), respectfulness (25 per cent) and responsibility (25 per cent) are ranked first. The ethical behaviour of the inspectors expected by the participants is to make use of human relations and communication skills (45 per cent), to supervise according to the current conditions (45 per cent), to supervise according to a standard of rules (30 per cent), to advise teachers how to improve (30 per cent), to refuse to eat and offer in school (30 per cent), not to use the headmaster's room as a headquarters (28 per cent), to spend sufficient time on supervision (28 per cent) and to follow the improvements (25 per cent). Conclusion and Suggestions. The teachers, administrators and inspectors participating in the study believe that the code of ethics in educational supervision is of great importance or is important. The most privileged codes accepted initially by the participants are “justice”, “tolerance”, respectfulness” and “responsibility.”As a result of the study, ethics in educational supervision are seen as very important. However, the code of ethics is not fully or properly applied, and there are also some problems implementing the code. According to this study, the ethical behaviour of the inspectors expected by the participants is to make use of human relations and communication skills, to supervise according to the current conditions, to supervise according to a standard of rules, to advise teachers how to improve, to refuse to eat and offer in school, not to use the headmaster's room as a headquarters, to spend sufficient time on supervision and to follow the improvements. In terms of the code of ethics in educational supervision, inspectors should take in-service training and should behave more sensibly in complying with this code. The code of ethics should be formalised and these rules should be obeyed by providing the supervision of the institutions and inspectors' union and the people not complying with the code should be put leverage on. Inspectors should eat neither at school nor in an institution, nor with the administrators of the inspected institution, meet the stationery materials by their own institution, etc.

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