Examining Department Chairs’ Needs in Performing Academic Leadership in Turkish Universities

Abstract

While the educational leadership literature is replete with studies focusing on leadership practices at K-12 level, higher education institutions all over the world do not receive their share from this intense scholarly interest. This is the case with Turkish higher education institutions too. Starting from this point of view, the purpose of this study is to examine department chairs’ needs in performing academic leadership. To this end, the study was designed as a qualitative inquiry. In order to reveal a range of leadership experiences, maximum variation sampling was employed to address the diversity of chairs’ academic leadership experiences. Accordingly, semi-structured interviews were conducted with the study group of 16 department chairs who varied in terms of their province, university type (public and foundation), teaching field, gender, and years of service in chairship position. Findings emerged in the phase of content analysis revealed that needs of department chairs can be categorized under the themes of: (a) More autonomy for decision-making in staff recruitment, monetary, and curricular issues (b) Additional academic and clerical personnel, and (c) Training for leadership and orientation for administrative duties.