The Reasons Why School Assistant Principals Leave Their Careers

The purpose of the study is to examine the reasons why assistant principals leave their positions voluntarily. The phenomenology pattern, which is one of the qualitative research methods, was used in data analysis and the data were collected using a semi-structured interview form. Through the criterion sampling method, 21 teachers who had resigned from the assistant principal positions and turned back to teaching positions in different districts of Istanbul were interviewed. The data obtained from the interviews were coded and subjected to content analysis under themes. In the study, it was observed that most of the people who resigned from assistant principal positions were male and they resigned in the beginning phase of their careers (1-3 years). Most of those who resigned were elementary school teachers and most of them resigned from the school with 1000- 1999 students and 31-70 teachers. At the same time, most of them resigned in the first three years of their managerial positions and 11 years or more of their teaching positions. The majority of those who resigned from assistant principal positions stated that administrative paperwork was too much, they had been engaged in non-duty jobs, they had been forced to encounter recruitment interviews and political-ideological barriers and they did not consider the assistant principal position as a career. As an external factor, family factors were observed to be effective in resigning. When the internal factors were examined, the following reasons were observed: workload, having difficulty in having teachers and other staff make things, being caught in the middle of the principal and the teachers, the littleness of the income of the assistant principal position, minimum annual leave, being obliged to use less time than the annual leave period and long working hours. At the same time, they stated that they were experiencing mental-emotional exhaustion in the assistant principal position and that the majority of them (12 / 21) did not consider returning to that position. In this respect, it is noteworthy for the research that the factors within the school and career rights are more dominant in terms of reasons for and dimensions of resignation.