Perceptions of the School Principals about Visionary Leadership

The aim of this research is to identify the opinions of the school administrators about visionary leadership. This research is seen important as it demonstrates the way how being a visionary leader, a phenomenal concept, is perceived by school administrators, and the way how it can be put into practice in schools. For this purpose, the study was organized by using quantitative and phenomenological research design, and the data were obtained by using semi-structured interview form. The workgroup of the research consists of 22 school administrators selected from different types of schools according to the maximum variety sampling method. The content analysis method was used for the analysis of the data. After the data were coded, they were grouped under common categories, and digitized. According to the findings of the research, the visionary leader is defined as the one who plans his institutions with a new perspective looking ahead, improves the conditions by motivating the workmates, and has the representational skills. To design the vision together with the workmates, and to turn the vision of the leader into the vision of the institution are also claimed. Also, it has been revealed that the school administrators apply various methods of motivation to carry out the predefined vision, but they don’t inform their workmates in detail about the steps of the transformation.