School leadership, which is generally equated with principalship, is a vast and widely researched area. However, under the effects of recent change roles in schools and school improvement initiatives, there are some other current issues that are focused on members in school leadership such as teacher leadership, student leadership and vice-principalship.  Those studies have put teachers, students and vice-principals other than principals in the spotlight of leadership. Off them, vice-principals have been the least issued school members in the literature of school leadership.

Vice-principals or deputy heads or deputy principals or assistant principals are, for Cranston, Tromans and Reugebrink (2004), forgotten leaders in our schools. Similarly Ribbins (1997) claimed that they have been ignored and that “the literature on deputies and deputy headship is far more modest than that available on heads and headship” (p. 296). On the other hand, as Clerkin (1985, p.17) implied nearly two decades ago, “it is generally assumed that deputy heads are recruited as potential headteachers.” Vice-principals have been supposed to be the principals of the future. In a similar view, Daresh and Arrowsmith (2003) explained that “deputy headship has traditionally been a regular and critical step in the long-term process of becoming a headteacher” (p.45). Harvey (1994), on the other hand, stated that vice-principals are historically supposed to act as the administrative assistant of the principals. However, the concept of vice-principalship has not been widely debated in the field. This may be the sign of ambiguousness or paradox of the term and the perception of/expectation from vice-principalship.

Although they are vital to a successful school (Armstrong, 2009), there have been an unclear understanding of what roles and responsibilities vice-principals have in schools and how their attitudes toward their career affect their desire to become principals. As Weller and Weller (2002) denoted, “the role of the assistant is one of the least researched and least discussed topics in professional journals and books focusing on educational leadership” (p. xiii). That is why; conducting a study on vice-principals was deemed necessary by the researchers because there is little research on vice-principals and vice-principlaship in Turkey, too. We decided to, as Kwan Yu-kwong and Walker (2009) phrased, “contribute the literature by simultaneously taking both facet and overall job satisfaction together by further exploring the respective influence of the various job facets on overall satisfaction” (p. 2) among vice-principals.

Armstrong, D, E. (2009). Administrative passages: Navigating transition from teacher to assistant principal. Dordrecht: Springer. Clerkin, C. (1985). School-based training for deputy heads and its relationship to the task of primary school management. Educational Management Administration Leadership, 13(1), 17-28. Cranston, N., Tromans, C. & Reugebrink, M. (2004). Forgotten leaders: what do we know about the deputy principals in secondary schools? International Journal of Leadership in Education, 71(3), 225-242. Daresh, J. & Arrowsmith, T. (2003). A practical guide for new school leaders. London: Paul Chapman Publishing. Harvey, M. (1994). Empowering the primary school deputy principal. Educational Management Administration Leadership, 22(1), 26-38. Kwan Yu-kwong, P. & Walker, A. (2009) 'Secondary school vice-principals: commitment, challenge, efficacy and synchrony', British Educational Research Journal, DOI: 10.1080/01411920903018026 Ribbins, P. (1997). Heads on deputy headship: Impossible roles for invisible role holders? Educational Management Administration Leadership, 25(3), 295-308. Weller, L. D. & Weller, S. J. (2002). The assistant principal. Thosan Oaks: Corwin Press.