The perceptions of the teachers regarding the innovation management competences of the primary school principals (The sample in the town of avcilar in İstanbul)

The management of educational organizations by qualified leaders is very important in order to improve the quality of education. It is needed to do this study in order to improve qualities in education and contribute training of the school principals in the future according to the necessary competences in the light of these evaluations. In addition to this, it was also aimed to give teachers an opportunity to evaluate the competence levels of the primary school principals according to the teachers' perceptions that work in primary schools in terms of innovation mangement. With this study, it was aimed to find out how the teachers that work at primary schools perceive the innovation management competences of the primary school principals in the town of Avcılar, İstanbul. There are 1070 teachers in the town of Avcılar in İstanbul and the sample of the study composed of 398 teachers chosen from the 22 officicial primary schools that consists of 17 public primary schools and 5 private primary schools. The teachers were chosen voluntarily and randomly in order to contribute to the study. In the study, the form for teachers about the "Innovation Management At Schools Scale'' developed by Bülbül (2012a) was used as the data gathering tool. In this study the total dimensions and the sub-dimensions of the scale Croanbach-Alfa coefficients were calculated and given below: Input management: .91, Innovation strategy: .94, Organizational culture and structure: .96, Project Management : .97, The innovation management for schools' scale : .98 The scale was organized so that it could be answered in the 5-points Likert-type rating scale format. Rating took place with scoring based on a grade designed with five options such as: "1-Strongly Disagree," "2-Agree a Little," "3-Fairly Agree," "4-Strongly Agree," "5-Totally Agree." The scale for innovation management at schools was first developed by the researcher who has done the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis for school administrators Bülbül (2012a) and the teacher form was developed by Göl ve Bülbül (2012). The test questionnaire which consisted of 32 items and 4 sub-dimensions was applied to 398 school teachers by the author of this study. In the first stage of the scale, there was the personal information form in which the demographical information like gender, educational status, school type such as private or public school, professional experience, branch, the numbers of the teachers and students in the school and how many years a teacher works at that school were gathered. The Statistical Package Program for Social Sciences (SPSS 17.0) was used to analyze the data collected by the scale. In order to determine the perceptions of the teachers about the principals' innovation management competences; percentage, frequency, arithmetic mean, standard deviation values were determined in the analysis of the data. In order to determine the perceptions of the teachers about the principals' innovation management competences; the Kruskal Wallis analysis was used to determine whether or not there are any differences between their professional experiences. In addition, the Mann Whitney U test was used in order to maintain differences between the public and private primary schools, the gender and branches of the teachers. The main research findings of this study are follows: The perceptions of the teachers about the principals' innovation management competences of the total scale is the level of 'I agree very much'. Except for the input management; all sub-dimensions are the level of 'I agree very much' whereas input management sub-dimensions is the level of 'Fairly agree'. According to the average findings it is considered that the perceptions of the teachers about the principals' innovation management competences are listed in order like this: first; Organizational Culture and Structure; second Project Management, third Innovation Strategy and the last one is Input Management. Regarding the perceptions of the teachers about the primary school principals' innovation management competences; the school type is a variable that creates a difference in innovation management according to the teachers perceptions that they work in public or private primary schools. It is found out that the perceptions of the teachers who work in private primary schools are higher both in the total scale and all of the sub-dimensions of the scale than the teachers who work in public schools about the innovation management competences of the primary school principals. It has been found out that the teacher perceptions regarding the innovation management competences of primary school principals show a significant difference only in the innovation strategy sub-dimension according to the branch type variable. There is no significant difference in total scale score and other subscale scores. According to this result, the perceptions of the other branch teachers are seen to be higher only in the innovation strategy sub-dimension according to the branch type variable regarding the innovation management competences of primary school principals than the perceptions of the class teachers. Gender and the professional experience aren't a variable that create a difference in innovation management regarding the perceptions of the teachers about the primary school principals' innovation management competences. However, when considering the averages; the perceptions of the male teachers are higher than the female teachers about the primary school principals' innovation management competences; such as the perceptions of the teachers with 1-10 years of professional experience are higher than the other seniority teachers. According to the findings it can be suggested that the perceptions of the teachers about the primary school principals' innovation management competences which is 'I agree very much' should be provided up to the highest level. In order to contribute literature, there should be done more studies in order to analyize in detail about the school type variable between public and private school such as secondary school and higher schools in education regarding not only the perceptions of the teachers but also the parents and the students all together as well. Finally, there should be done more co-operative studies between the public and the private schools and there should be done more common projects and conferences in order to improve the qualities in our educational system. Key Words: Innovation, Innovation Management, Leadership, Innovative Leadership, Innovation Management In Educational Institutions