Succession Culture in the Schools: Identifying Solutions Affecting It (A Mixed-Use Research in Iranian Public Schools)

The aim of the present study was to identify strategies and solutions that affect it in Iranian public schools. This study was based on a mixed data collection method (qualitative-quantitative) with a deductive-inductive approach, with regard to its applied purpose. The research population in the qualitative section was experts and professors of educational management and senior managers in the field of human resources in education, of whom 20 people were selected as the research sample using purposeful snowball sampling. The statistical population in the quantitative stage was all school principals and deputy principals of public schools in Tehran, of whom 466 people were selected using cluster sampling based on the Morgan table. In order to collect qualitative data, a semi-structured interview was used, and for quantitative data, a researcher-made questionnaire was used. The reliability of the interview data was confirmed by the participant feedback method and the validity of the interviews was confirmed by the agreement coefficient and test-retest method. The face validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by experts and the reliability of the questionnaire was obtained using Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.89. Open and axial coding method was used to analyze the data in the qualitative part and exploratory factor analysis was used in the quantitative part. The results showed that the strategies and solutions that affect succession planning in public schools are: transformation, involvement and career enrichment, creating a culture of succession planning, systematic evaluation and monitoring, and training and improvement of human resources.