The power of game-based learning in developing school leadership skills

The purpose of this study was to examine the development of school leadership skills with game-based education. The effectiveness of seven different leadership skills (communication, intervention, trust, decision making, problem solving, taking responsibility and group skills) was tried to be measured with a game-based training. In this study, the game-based education was planned and implemented in three stages as the examination of the educational outcomes. In order to develop the seven leadership skills planned within the scope of the research, a total of 32 hours of game-based training activity was applied with 24 participants. In the research, one group pretest-posttest relational research setup, one of the experimental research setups, was used. Youth Leadership Traits Scale developed by Cansoy and Turan (2016) and Player Type Scale According to Bartle Taxonomy developed by Erümit, Şılbır, Erümit and Karal (2021), which determines the behavior of participants in a group activity, were used to observe the differences. After the training activity; Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test, one of the non-parametric tests, was used to compare the pre-test and post-test scores of the participating school administrators. In the conclusion of this study, it was tried to be put forward qualitatively based on interview and observation reports as well as statistical significance between pretest and posttest. When the data of the training program were analyzed and the results were examined, a significant difference was observed between the leadership skills pre-test and post-test averages of the participants. The result of this study indicated that game-based learning was an effective approach to develop leadership skills of school administrators and that the primary skills developed were problem solving and responsibility skills.