Thinking styles of school administrators in the context of mental self government theory

In this study, it is aimed to determine the thinking styles of school administrators working in pre-school, primary school, secondary schools and high schools. In this context, the thinking styles of the managers in public schools were examined according to the title, type of school, working time, gender, seniority and appointment. General survey model was used in the study. Thinking Styles Scale which was developed within the framework of Mental Self-Management Theory was used in the study. According to the results of the analyzes, it was observed that the preferences of the thinking style differed in the conservativeness dimension according to their gender and the difference was in the direction of the males. From here, the genders of the school administrators' influence their thinking styles in the field of management trends preferences, the male administrators' tendency towards conservatism is more intense than the women managers, according to the titles (statute) , their thinking styles differed in the dimensions of executive, monarchical, anarchic and conservative, while the difference was on behalf of school principals in executive and anarchic dimensions and in monarchical and conservative dimension for vise principals has been observed. Based on this finding, it can be said that school principals and vice principals have similar preferences in terms of execution, monarchy, anarchy and conservatism dimensions, and different preferences in other dimensions. According to the type of school they work, preschool principals have the highest mean scores from the subscales of the thinking style scale in legislative, judicial, monarchic, hierarchical, oligarchic, global, internal, exterior and liberal sub-dimensions high school principals in executive, anarchic, and local sub-dimensions, and middle school principlas in conservative sub-dimension. It was observed that the participants' thinking style preferences did not differ according to their professional experience. The differentiating levels of the managers' thinking style preferences according to their tenure in the school they work in favor of the managers working in the same school for 5 years or longer. It was observed that the thinking styles of school administrators, who were appointed by passing the exam or assigned directly were not differentiated according to the way they were assigned respecting to the appointment. According to this finding, the way in which school administrators were assigned was not effective on their thinking style preferences. It was concluded that the thinking styles of the administrators of the educational institutions from pre-school to high school vary in some dimensions. Keywords School, administrators, thinking styles.