Challenges in implementing instructional leadership: Insights from Turkish school principals.

This article examines the major contextual barriers hindering the implementation of instructional leadership by school principals in Türkiye, a country with a highly centralized education system. Based on qualitative interviews with 33 principals, key obstacles identified include limited authority over goal setting and teacher recruitment due to centralized policies, heavy administrative workloads, prevailing beliefs that classrooms are private teacher domains, community socioeconomic challenges, insufficient resources, and principals' limited instructional supervision competencies. These factors collectively restrict principals' ability to engage in core instructional leadership practices such as curriculum development, teacher professional development, and instructional supervision. The study highlights the importance of considering sociocultural and systemic contexts when applying instructional leadership models and suggests that reforms granting greater school-level autonomy and targeted principal training may enhance instructional leadership effectiveness in Türkiye.