School Administrators' Perceptions of Competency in Managing Change

The purpose of this research is to reveal the competence perceptions of school administrators working in public schools at the basic education level (primary and secondary school) in Çanakkale in the 2021-2022 academic year. Since the research describes an existing situation, it is organized as a "relational screening model". The population of the research consists of a total of 198 school administrators working in public schools at the basic education level in Çanakkale. Since all schools at basic education levels (primary school, secondary school) in Çanakkale province can be reached, sampling was not used in the research. In the study, the "Change Management Competencies Scale of Primary School Administrators" developed by Ak (2006) was used as a data collection tool. All data obtained as a result of the research were analyzed through SPSS 26.0 program and while analyzing the data; Percentage, mean, t-test, frequency one-way analysis of variance (One-Way ANOVA) calculations were used. Research findings show that school principals' perceptions of competence in managing change are largely sufficient in all dimensions. Research findings show that school principals consider themselves largely competent in all dimensions of their perception of competence in managing change. While school principals' perceptions of competence in managing change create a significant difference according to the gender variable, it does not show a significant difference according to the variables of years of service and the number of teachers in the school they work in. Since there is no program to train school administrators in our country, the findings of the research can serve as a source for future studies in this direction. In the study, the competencies of school administrators in managing change were found to be high, but the subject can be examined in more depth with applied action research studies.