The competencies of school principals in change management according to the perceptions of the teachers working in Anatolian high schools

The purpose of this research is to examine the school principals' competencies in change management according to the perceptions of teachers working in Anatolian high schools. In addition to this, it was also aimed to find out if there was a differentiation in the perceptions of the teachers according to their descriptive characteristics. A total of 408 teachers working in Anatolian high schools in Karabük constitute the target population of this inquiry. With the participation of 381 teachers, 93.38% of the research's target population was reached. In this inquiry, a personal information form and the 'Change Management Competence Scale' developed by Helvacı (2004) were used to collect data from teachers working in Anatolian high schools in Karabük city center and its districts. The SPSS program was used to analyze our findings. When the data is analyzed, it was obvious that the average of the teachers' perceptions of the school principals' proficiency in managing change is at the "high" level according to the sub-dimensions of the scale, and the standard error values are very low. In the light of these, it can also be seen that while the teachers' perceptions were the highest level of dimension change evaluation competencies, the lowest average was observed in the dimension of determining the need for change at school. On the other hand, the findings differ in terms of the gender of the participants, their marital status, years of service, years of service in the same institution, branch, educational status, and the generations they belong to. It can also be seen in the findings that teachers who have worked for 1-5 years in the same institution have a higher perception in all sub-dimensions of the scale compared to the teachers who have worked at the same school for 6-10 years and 11-15 years. In terms of the branches of the teachers, it was observed that the teachers of the language group had higher perceptions than the teachers of the science group in the sub-dimensions of the scale's ability to implement and evaluate change at school. As mentioned earlier, there were significant differences with the generations the participants belong to and their perceptions towards change management. It can also be seen that the perceptions of the teachers who are baby boomers were lower in all sub-dimensions compared to the teachers from other generations. Keywords: Change, change management, change management competency, anatolian high schools, teacher, school principals.