Opinions of technology teachers about the technological leadership skills of school principals

The aim of this study is to determine the opinions of technology teachers about the technological leadership skill portrayed by school principals. In this research both qualitative and quantitative research techniques were used. The data of the research were collected by "Technology Leadership of School Principals Scale" according to quantitative method and by semi configured interview technique according to qualitative method. According to quantitative method IT teachers working in primary, secondary and high schools in city of Antalya were taken as sample. Data collection tool responded by 308 teachers were evaluated. Parametric analysis techniques were used in order to determine whether the opinions of participants about the leadership skills portrayed by school principles differ according to independent variables such as gender, school type and school level or not. According to the opinions of IT teachers it was determined that the technology leadership behavior of school principals are at high level in "efficiency and professional application" dimension, at medium level in "leadership and vision, learning and teaching, support, management and operations" dimension and at lowest level in "assessment and evaluation, social, legal and ethical issues" dimension. 16 IT teachers participated to the semi structured interviews in the qualitative data collection dimension of this study. The analysis of qualitative data was performed by content analysis. It was also observed that the findings obtained by quantitative research techniques were supported by findings obtained by qualitative research techniques. When t test resultswere examined, which were applied in order to test whether teacher opinions differ according to gender variable or not, it was observed that there was no significant difference between teacher opinions in all three dimensions. When t test resultswere examined, which were applied in order to test whether teacher opinions differ according to school type variable or not, it was observed that teachers working in private enterprises consider the technological leadership skills of school principals to be much more sufficient compared to teachers working in public enterprises. When variance analysis resultswere examined, which were applied in order to test whether teacher opinions differ according to school level variable or not, it was observed that teachers working in primary school think more positively in all three dimensions. When the opinions of teachers were generally evaluated, it was observed that they expect school principals to be people who use technology efficiently, who follow up to date technologies, who spare budget for technology and who support technology usage in education. It was concluded that teachers assume the education technology usage of school principals to be insufficient and that they are closed to usage of new technologies except necessary situations. It was also concluded that the most commonly used education technologies by school principals were computers, projectors, phones and software necessitated by the ministry (such as e-okul, KurumNET, MEBBİS) Key words: School Principals, Technology Leadership, Education Technologies, Information and Communication Technologies