Identifying and Prioritizing Factors Influencing the Selection of School Principals Using Meta Combination Method

Choosing managers in such a way that they can realize the missions and missions of educational systems is one of the serious and strategic issues and challenges of education. Therefore, it is necessary to know the effective and involved factors in the selection of school principals due to their meritorious selection and appointment. Therefore, the current research was conducted with the aim of identifying and prioritizing factors affecting the selection of school principals.

This research was a type of mixed research that was carried out in 1402 using the method of metacomposition and thematic analysis. In terms of purpose, it was applied-developmental and in terms of descriptive-survey method. In the first stage, by searching in various scientific databases, 357 primary sources were extracted in the period from 2000 to 2023, which were mentioned in the keywords of the research. Then, considering the desired criteria, the number of 34 articles and 7 experts were selected using the purposeful sampling method. The validity of the data was obtained by using the Kappa test of 79%. Next, selected sources were analyzed using the theme analysis technique and Max qda software.

The findings show 93 basic themes, 78 organizing themes and 13 overarching themes (competencies, skills, leadership, indigenization, stakeholders, power, collaborative management, experience, professionalism, spirituality, organizational commitment, accountability, networking), as effective factors on the selection of school principals in Iran. In order to prioritize the factors in terms of their importance, using the opinions of 7 experts from Shahid Chamran University of Ahvaz and the General Department of Education of Khuzestan province, and using SPSS software (Friedman ranking), the mentioned factors were ranked.

The results showed that the factors of "networking", "core competency" and "stakeholders" have the highest degree of importance, respectively. So; Education planners and policymakers should pay special attention to three important factors in selecting and appointing school principals in addition to other factors.