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The purpose of the research was to explore the decision-making strategies that school principals employ while dealing with the challenges faced during the change process at schools. The study was conducted in two cities located in Central and Southeast Turkey, with a sample comprising 29 primary, middle and secondary school principals, selected via a purposive sampling technique. Q methodology, a qualitative-dominant mixed methods research design, was used in the study. The researchers developed and used a concourse of 24 specific items that target school principals’ decision-making strategies about change-related challenges in schools by taking a perception-driven decision-making model as the theoretical framework. The statistical software PQMethod was used for data analysis. The findings revealed that school principals shared similar views via the item configurations provided regarding decision-making during times of change, and had a similar profile in terms of decision-making and related strategies. The behavioural decision style was found to be the preferred style. The principals had a profile featuring a high focus on people and low cognitive complexity. The dominant beliefs driving their decision-making strategies seemed to incorporate comprehensive evaluation of the current situation, ethical concerns and organisational values, assessment of technical details, and thorough data collection. Some implications are drawn for researchers and practitioners.

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The primary aim of this study is to design a valid and reliable measurement tool to be used in the assessment of supervisory approaches employed by school principals. In the scale development process, the supervision stages suggested by DeVellis (2017) have been taken as basis. The scale to be developed is based on three different school types that are defined by by Glickman et al. (2014) in the book titled "Supervision and Instructional Leadership A Developmental Approach". In course of development process, firstly the problem has been defined and the main features to be measured have been identified. After the relevant literature has been examined, the sub-dimensions of the scale were formed and the items to measure these sub-dimensions were produced. The scale draft has been primarily created on the basis of the literature and has been presented to the experts to get scholarly feedback Based on this feedback, some items have been removed from the draft and the 43-item preliminary scale has been administred to a total of 357 teachers working in primary and secondary schools, and the data obtained have been analyzed by using SPSS. As a result of the exploratory factor analysis (EFA), a 4dimension and 23-item scale structure, namely "Authoritarian-Focused Supervision Social Network-Based Supervision, Development-Oriented Supervision, and Operational Supervision" as emerged. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses within the scope of the validity of the measurement tool; Cronbach's Alpha coefficient and item total correlations have been calculated within the scope of reliability. Confirmatory factorial analysis, executed following the exploratory factor analysis, has also displayed acceptable levels of fit indices. The analysis revealed that the scale, being developed for the assessment of principals' school-based supervisory approaches, has become a valid and reliable tool.