Collegiality among members in schools has been deemed necessary. Principals are the key figures in developing collaborative school environment. Their roles in creating a positive school climate are essential (Özer & Dönmez, 2007) and include but, are not limited to, leadership, developing schools, coping with changes, supervision and “some further issues, not named yet, following new developments in educational contexts as well as other settings” (Beycioglu & Aslan, 2007). Relationships between principals and teachers which have been widely debated in literature on school leadership are other issues in schools (Blase and Blase, 1999, 2002; Yariv, 2004). One of those debates is the interaction between principals and new teachers. Nagy and Wang (2007), for example, state that “the role of the principal is essential to the development of a new teacher” (p. 105). In all those processes, novice teachers’ attitudes about principals and expectations from principals are critically important. However, there are not many studies in related literature on prospective teachers’ beliefs about the educational leader and about principal-new teacher relationship. In Hong Kong, for example, Lee et al. found that prospective teachers carried with them firm beliefs about principals that could influence their initial actions in school. The authors also explored that many prospective teachers have negative conceptions about principalship (cited in Oplatka, 2004). In addition, Eliophotou-Menon (2002) indicated that candidate teachers in Cyprus were negative in their assessment of school principals. Oplatka (2004) found that “prospective teachers hold conceptualizations of educational leadership and a range of ideas and beliefs about the ways that the principal should behave during their induction stage which are consistent with ‘‘androgynous’’ leadership style” (p. 37).

This qualitative study aims to explore prospective teachers’ beliefs about principals and leadership in schools. Qualitative data from interviews with semi-structured questions will be used to reveal participants’ beliefs on principals. Data will be gathered in May and June, 2009. Prospective teachers will be interviewed to obtain further information about their opinions on principalship and leadership and following each question they will be asked about the reasons. Fifteen prospective teachers, who were studying at a faculty of education of a university in Turkey, were selected for the study. Five of them were studying in social science education departments, five were in science and maths education departments, and five were in fine arts and physical education departments.

Based on findings from other studies about the variation in teachers’ beliefs on school leadership, this study suggests that prospective teachers will be likely to have various opinions about principals and educational leadership.