Education in Turkey is an effective and wide field within public administration (Bursalıoğlu, 2002; Taymaz, 2003), and in the organization of education, the principle of central administration is dominant (İlikli, 2004; Özdemir, 2008, Başaran, 2008; Memduhoğlu, 2008). The Constitution of Republic of Turkey dated 1982 constitutes the legal basis of education in Turkey.

As public administration is related to law in terms of both organization and operation (Gözübüyük, 2002), education administration should also be in parallel with the rules of law. According to the Civil Servants Law (put into effect in 1965) in Turkey, fundamental and permanent duties of public organizations are conducted by civil servants. In Article 129 of the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey, it is stated that civil servants and the other public officials are “liable to act abiding by the Constitution and the laws”. It is an obligation for administrators who are responsible for the administration of public institutions and organizations, and thus for education administrators, most of whom are civil servants, not to exercise the power given to public administration arbitrarily, and to conduct their duties uninterruptedly and appropriately; in short, to perform their tasks within the boundaries drawn by laws.

According to Law on Organization and Duties of Ministry of National Education (no. 3797), administrators that are affiliated to the ministry in Turkey are accountable for “organizing and fulfilling their duties in accordance with the regulations, plans, programs and instructions to their senior executives” (Article 56). As per this decision, school administrators' receiving training on educational administration and on education law within this scope is unfortunately ignored, as explained above, at present day and training of school administrators on education regulations is generally left to their own individual efforts. Consequently, it was observed that teaching based school administrators have difficulties in administering the schools they work at according to the education regulations (Karaman-Kepenekci, 2004).

Education administrators need training in law for them to have the command of and interpret the educational regulations, and to perform their duties within the rules set by the educational regulations. Such law training is given under the title “education law” and/or “school law” (Hudgins and Vacca, 1985; Menacker, 1987; Shoop and Dunklee, 1992; McCarthy and Cambron-McCabe, 1992; Imber and Van Geel, 2005).

Although there are few studies in Turkey on the general training of school administrators (Balcı, 1988; Ataklı, 1991; Balcı and Çınkır, 2002; Çelik, 2002, Çetin and Yalçın, 2002; Şimşek, 2002; Şişman and Turan, 2002; Balcı, 2003), no studies were found on training in law for school administrators.

This study was conducted to determine whether elementary school principals in Turkey received training in law, and if they did, through which ways such training was received, and to define elementary school principals' views on how their training in law should be. 

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