Abstract:

Although there are different stages in the career development of the individual, this development is a wide process lasting from pre-birth to the end of life. School administrators go through scientifically identified career stages during their professional experience and encounter several challenges throughout those stages.  The current study, which aims to examine the perceptions of school administrators about the challenges they encounter in career stages and solutions to overcome, was conducted in phenomenology design, one of the qualitative research designs. Data were obtained through face-to-face interviews by utilizing a semi-structured interview form developed by the researchers. 20 school administrators including 15 males and five females participated in the interviews. The data were analyzed through content analysis and codes based on five sub-themes were created. Results demonstrated that the difficulties that school administrators encountered in their career stages were primarily related to bureaucracy, attitudes of teachers, administrators in higher positions, states of schools, pre-service education. The results revealed that some administrators improved themselves and kept themselves up to date with in-service training whereas some others took help from more experienced administrators to overcome challenges. It was concluded that past experiences had an effect on school administrators’ endeavors to overcome challenges, in that, it was observed that administrators holding administrative positions for a long time and experienced teachers overcome those challenges easily.

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