Designing and evaluating a model of difficult experiences of primary school principals in Urmia

The present study has examined the difficult experiences of primary school principals in Urmia with a combined approach. The qualitative part was performed using descriptive phenomenological method. Twenty volunteers were selected by purposive sampling, and by conducting interviews, the data were saturated in the seventeenth person. In the qualitative part, the researcher used the content analysis method, as a result, identified 88 difficult experiences of primary school principals and in the areas of "students", "parents of students", "educational colleagues", "school principals", "Departments and Educational districts", "upstream and decision makers". In Quantitative part, descriptive survey methods were used. The statistical population included 285 primary school principals in in Urmia in the 98-99 academic year. 165 people were selected as sample group by the Morgan table. Data collection tools included a researcher-made questionnaire on difficult experiences of principals, which was compiled based on the data of the qualitative section. The validity of this questionnaire was confirmed by experts. To assess the quantity of content validity, the content validity rate (CVR) and content validity index (CVI) were determined. All of items had CVR points higher than 0.62 based on Table of lawshe. CVI was calculated at 0.97, which is acceptable for this questionnaire. The reliability was calculated through Cronbachchr('39')s alpha coefficient (0.83). Structural equations modeling of path analysis, Fornell and Larker method and fitting criteria were used to analyze the data in this section. The results of the quantitative part showed the value of the goodness index equal to 0.45 overall fit and above average for the structural model. The findings emphasized the need to pay attention to the difficult experiences of school principals and try to address their challenges, as well as to document and benefit from these experiences.