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PurposeLiterature on vice‐principals that aims to get a better understanding of their roles, role perceptions in school management, and their attitudes towards school management have revealed that the vice‐principalship is one of the least researched and least discussed. The purpose of this paper is to explore the facets of job satisfaction among Turkish vice‐principals.Design/methodology/approachData were collected via a survey administered to 159 vice‐principals working for elementary schools in a city in the eastern part of Turkey and results were gathered by May 2010. A two‐part survey questionnaire was used to elicit responses from vice‐principals. The instrument consists of 31 items and asks respondents to indicate the extent of their agreement with each of the items on a four‐point Likert scale. In this study items were designed as a five‐point scale. There is a section to collect personal information. It was included together with an item asking for their career orientation.FindingsThe results confirmed that the job satisfaction of vice‐principals had four job facets: “professional commitment”, “sense of synchrony”, “sense of efficacy”, and “level of personal challenge”. The results showed that the facets of “sense of efficacy” and “sense of synchrony” were major sources of job satisfaction, and that the vice‐principals who had any educational administration degree felt themselves more effective and more synchronic. The vice‐principals who did not plan to be a principal felt themselves less effective when coping with work stress and balancing their work and personal lives.Originality/valueThe paper provides a better understanding of vice‐principals’ roles, role perceptions in school management, and their attitudes towards school management, and extends knowledge about the facets of job satisfaction among Turkish vice‐principals.

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