Using electronic services offered by ministry of national education in the scope of management information systems as decision support systems: A grounded theory

This study aims to develop a theory for transforming electronic services in the scope of management information systems offered by Ministry of National Education to be used in schools to decision support systems. Study is, at the same time, a grounded theory which is one of the methods of qualitative researches and is also based on interpretive paradigm. On volunteer basis, research group consists of school directors and teachers of school's psychological counseling and guidance services whose permission were granted. 6 school principals, 5 assistant principals, 6 guidance counselors' who are working in 4 official secondary schools, 3 official Anatolian high schools, and 2 official primary schools participated voluntarily to the study. In this research, semi-structured interview form which is one of the most common data collection tool of qualitative researches was used, answers of participants were recorded, these records were decoded and transcripts of the records were obtained. Applying to these documents content analysis and open coding, axial coding and selective coding that are the steps of grounded theory using software NVIVO 10.0, themes were reached. By the help of these themes, a general model and three sub-models that are explaining transformation of management information systems to decision support systems and how this new system processes in schools were obtained. Analyzed the findings of the research, it was seen that model obtained has some similarities with open system theory. Accordingly, the "Active User Interface" corresponding to the "input" element, "Collective Participation Based Monitoring System" corresponding to the "process" element and the "Statistical Reporting" corresponding to the "output" item in open system theory, constitutes the cornerstones of the decision support systems that will be applied in schools.