Thinking style affects how individuals perceive, interact, absorb, memorize, organize, and process information. Thinking style can be defined as one's preferred way of using the abilities one has and of processing data (Sternberg, 1997). Thinking styles affect an individual’s creativity as well as his outlook and path in life.  Since the 1960s various theories of thinking styles have been used to investigate people’s intellectual functioning (Dunn and Dunn, 1978; Gregorc, 1985; Holland, 1973; Kagan, 1966; Witkin et al., 1962).  Traditional theories are limited to one-dimensional styles (e.g., impulsive style versus reflective style). Recently, more general theories of cognition, learning or thinking styles have been proposed (Biggs, 1987; Entwistle, 1981; Kolb, 1976; Stenberg, 1988, 1997;  Riding,   1991).  This  study  was  based  on thinking styles constructs that have been defined by Sternberg (1988, 1997) in his theory of mental self-government.

Sternberg’s thinking style construct is considered a general and parsimonious style because it has brought together various style constructs (e.g., cognitive style, learning style) (Zhang and Sternberg, 2005). Also, the theory of mental self-government provides a thinking style profile for each person instead of a single thinking style (Zhang, 2010). Sternberg (1988,1997) asserted that people govern themselves and their mental process and form a system and constitution for this governance.

Sternberg (1997) claims that knowing students' learning style enables teachers to provide the right educational environment  for students.  Sternberg (1997) also asserts  that the compatibility between students’ and teachers’ thinking styles will promote both learning and teaching at school. Such a concept may also be generalized for other school staff (e.g., school principal, inspector), and as long as students' and teachers' learning style matches, an educational environment will flourish.

Many of the existing studies (Ate? and Altun, 2008; Bulu?, 2005; Can, 2011; Grigorenko and Sternberg, 1993; Stenberg and Wagner, 1992; Zhang, 2010) are limited to the investigation of the thinking styles of students and teachers. Thinking style of school administrators and inpectors is equally as important if one wishes to under-stand the underlying culture of the school.  Although  empirical findings for the effects of demographic variables on styles (Arslan and Babado?an, 2005; Grigorenko and Sternberg, 1997; Koçako?lu, 2010; Zhang, 2010; Zhang and Sternberg, 1998) are abundant for  students and teachers, it is not the case for that of school principals and inspectors. Therefore, this study was designed in order to identify the thinking styles of teachers, school principals, and inspectors working at primary education institutions. Answers to the following questions were explored in accordance with this overall purpose: (a) What are the thinking styles of teachers, school principals, and inspectors working at primary education institutions? (b) Do the thinking styles of teachers, school principals, and inspectors working at primary education institutions vary? (c) Do the thinking styles of teachers, school principals, and inspectors working at primary education institutions differ across variables such gender, affiliation, educational background, and age?

Conceptual framework

Theory of mental self-government

Sternberg’s theory of Mental Self-Government (1988, 1997) offers the opportunity to view internal (such as personality and skills) and external qualities (such as setting and environment) from a wide perpective. Sternberg’s theory is actually a theory of thinking styles. Developed by Sternberg (1988), the Theory of Mental Self-Government is based on the assumption that humans are in need of  cognitive skills that will allow them to organize and run their daily lives and activities. The thinking style of an individual is the information processing method that s/he has developed either consciously or unconsciously in order to perceive the world and actualize his/her goals. Individuals are somewhat flexible in their use of styles  and  individuals with a style of preference in one situation may have a different preference in another situations.

Sternberg   examines   mental  self-government  across five different categories which include a total of 13 thinking styles. These categories are function, form, level, scope, and leaning. Thinking styles within function category are further divided into three sub-groups; legislative, executive, and judicial. This category is mainly related to creativity and planning. Although each human being has these three functions, one of the three is generally more dominant than others. The Legislative individuals like to set their own rules and do things in their own ways. The Executive individuals obey the established rules, follow the already established ways to do things, and prefer problems that are examined beforehand. Judicial thinkers also obey the rules, like judging, criticize the application process of tasks, generate and assess new ideas, and prefer problems that require analytic skills.

The form thinking style contains four sub-groups: monarchic, hierarchic, oligarchic, and anarchic. This category shows if an individual is motivated by a single goal or by multiple goals. The monarchic thinker mentally focuses on only one goal, and aims to eliminate every obstacle likely to occur. The hierarchic thinker is keen on dealing with more than one goal, s/he likes to set priorities, and s/he tends to adapt a systematic approach for problem solving. The oligarchic thinker, on the other hand, is fond of doing multiple tasks simultaneously, but has troubles in setting priority. S/he feels confused since everything is equally important for him/her; therefore, s/he generally cannot catch up with his/her work. Lastly the anarchic thinker likes doing things carelessly, and is constantly engaged in a struggle against authority.

Local and global thinking styles are two sub-groups within the level category.  Global thinkers enjoy working on big abstract tasks, and are easily bored with detail while the local thinker prefers working on concrete detail oriented tasks.

The scope thinking style is divided into two sub-groups: external and internal. The internal thinker is an introvert, is topic-oriented, distant, indifferent, and asocial.  S/he usually likes to work on his/her own in the way s/he wishes.  The external thinker is an extrovert, and prefers working on collaborative tasks.

Learning thinking styles are divided into two sub-groups: liberal and conservative. The liberal thinker chooses to complete tasks in new ways and challenges traditional methods whereas more conservative thinkers prefer obeying the established rules and prefer to avoiding vagueness. 

Much cross-cultural research from a theoretical stand- point has  been  conducted  (Grigorenko  and  Sternberg, 1993; Sternberg, 1988; Sternberg and Wagner, 1992; Zhang and Sternberg, 2002; Zhang 2010). Likewise, studies based on theoretical analysis have also been on the rise in Turkey. Many of these studies are based on Sternberg’s thinking styles inventory (Bulu?, 2005; Balk?s and I??ker, 2005; Balgalm?? and Balo?lu, 2010) and Kolb’s learning styles inventory  (A?kar and Akkoyunlu, 1993; Ate? and Altun, 2008; Can, 2011; Koçako?lu, 2010).  Also, empirical findings for the effects of demographic variables (e.g., gender, age, income) on styles are abundant (Zhang and Sternberg; 2002). What follows is a summary of some of the studies conducted on thinking styles.

In the United States of America, Sternberg and Grigorenko (1995) conducted a series of studies to investigate thinking styles of school teachers using the Thinking Styles Questionnaires. They showed that teachers’ thinking styles were statisticaly different in their characteristics from the ideologies of the schools. They found that older teachers tended to be more executive, local, and conservative compared to younger ones. They also found that science teachers tended to be more local than were teachers of the humanities. Additionaly, teachers in urban public and Catholic schools were more conservative compared to teachers in an elementary private school. Furthermore, students from families of higher socioeconomic status and who are older siblings tended to be more legislative.  Zhang et al. carried out several studies using the theory of mental self-government (Zhang, 1999; Zhang and Sachs, 1997; Zhang and Sternberg,1998) in Hong Kong.  They used the Thinking Styles Inventory (Sternberg and Wagner, 1992) for data collection. These studies showed that Thinking Styles Inventory was a valid and reliable measurement for Hong Kong university students.  They also found that students’ thinking styles were statistically different, depending on age, sex, college class, college major, work and travel experience. Zhang and Sternberg (2002) investigated the relationship between thinking styles and teachers’ characteristics. The results showed that Teacher Candidate Forms in the Thinking Styles Inventory was a valid and reliable tool to determine thinking styles of Hong Kong teachers working at primary and secondary education institutions. Multiple regression analysis pointed to six characteristics of teachers that significantly correlated with their thinking styles. Those six characteristics were; gender, professional experience outside the school, willingness to use new instructional materials, tendency to use group projects in order to assess students’ success, perceived flexibility in choosing instructional content, and assessments regarding students’ qualifications.

It is also important to summarize studies undertaken in Turkey. Bulu? (2005) conducted a  reliability  and  validity study of Sternberg’s Thinking Styles Inventory on teacher candidates, and examined the relation between thinking styles and other variables such as academic achieve-ment, gender, class, department, and perceived parental styles. Results proved that Thinking Styles Inventory was a reliable and valid instrument that could be used to determine the thinking styles of teacher candidates in Turkey.  Moreover, findings pointed out that the anarchic and conservative categories had a negative relation with academic success, and thinking styles varied across gender, class, department, and perceived parental styles. Boys scored higher than girls on the judicial, anarchic, global, internal, and liberal categories. In addition, senior students scored higher on the internal category but lower on the conservative category. Analysis of differences across departments revealed that students in primary school education, social studies education, physical sciences education, and physical education scored significantly higher than students in arts and crafts education department in terms of the executive thinking style. Balk?s and I??ker (2005) studied the relationship between thinking styles and personality types of undergrade students using Sternberg’s Thinking Styles Inventory and Holland, Powell, and Fritzsch’s Personality Inventory. Results of their study pointed to a significant relation between thinking styles and personality types. Moreover, another finding indicated that thinking styles differed across several variables such as gender and field of study. Y?ld?zlar (2010) studied the relationship between culture and thinking styles of candidate teachers who attended Atatürk Teachers Academy and at the Cyprus International University studying in the Turkish Language Teaching Department. Thinking Style Inventory (Sternberg and Wagner, 1992) was used for data collection. The study showed that the thinking styles of the candidate teachers were different for the parameters of culture and gender.

Although studies on thinking styles of teachers and students are ample, studies on thinking styles of school managers and inspectors are scarce at the global level.  Cheng et al. (2001) examined the thinking styles and the relevant variables of junior high school principals in Taiwan on the basis of the theory of mental self government. They also compared the thinking styles of principals and deans. They found that junior high school principals in Taiwan preferred more executive, hierarchic, global, external and liberal thinking styles. Furthermore, the study indicated principals tended to choose teachers of with the executive thinking style as deans. Lastly, teachers with a similar thinking style to the principal tended to give more credit to their principals’ leadership. Sofo (2005) examined how Chinese leaders view the thinking process, what thinking styles they value and how they   prefer   to   think.   He  used  Sofo’s  Thinking  Style Inventory and three forms of Sternberg's thinking style Inventory for the study.  He also compared non-education leaders’ thinking styles with educational leaders’ thinking styles. He found that Chinese leaders have strong preferences for executive, judicial and legislative styles and high preferences for independent and exploring styles.  He also found that the leaders have moderate preferences for inquiring and creative styles and low preference for the conditional style. Jones (2006) conducted a study to explore thinking style preferences of female college and the university president  in the USA. Jones examined the thinking style of female college and the university president varied over the Carnegie classification, institutional control, highest academic degree earned, academic background, age, and total years of presidential experience. Jones found that idealist and analytical thinking styles were preferred more than the other thinking styles among female college and university presidents.  Also, female college and university presidents had a neutral preference for the Pragmatist, Realist, and Synthesist styles. Balgalm?? and Balo?lu (2010) examined the primary school principals' thinking styles in Turkey. They found that  the most preferred thinking styles were hierarchic, executive, and external while the least common styles were conservative, oligarchic, and local. Furthermore, the researchers also found out that thinking styles of school principals differed in terms of several variables such as gender, age, branch, and school type. Legislative thinking style was determined to be positively correlated with the female principals whereas oligarchic, conservative, and local thinking styles were found to vary across age. Results also indicated that judicial and local thinking styles differed across manager’s branch, and conservative and oligarchic ones varied across professional experience and seniority. As well, executive, judicial, oligarchic, anarchic, global, and conservative thinking styles all varied across school type. Y?ld?z (2012) studied the relationship between the social skills and thinking styles of primary school administrators in Turkey. Y?ld?z found that the social skills level of school administrators are at a moderate level. Furthermore, primary school administrators mostly preferred the hierarchic style and the anarchic thinking style was preferred the least.  Finally, social skills and thinking styles of primary school administrators were correlated.

To summarize, a great deal of the literature is limited to the investigation of the thinking styles of students and teachers. Only a few studies were conducted with regards to primary school principals' thinking style and there are no studies reported involving school inspectors. An understanding of the thinking style of school administrators and inspectors is important if achievement at schools is to improve.  Furthermore, to our  knowledge,  there is no known study that compared the thinking styles of teachers, school principals, and inspectors working at primary education institutions. The current study was conducted for this purpose. Specificaly, this study was designed in order to identify the thinking styles of teachers, school principals, and inspectors working at primary education institutions and  compare their styles across different variables.

Measures

The Thinking Styles Inventory (Sternberg and Wagner, 1992) and a questionnaire designed to obtain some demographic information (such as age, gender, school type and seniority) about teachers, school principals, and inspectors were administered as data collection instruments. Thinking Styles Inventory (1992) was developed by Sternberg and Wagner based on  the theory of Mental Self-Government (Sternberg, 1988), and adapted for use in Turkey by Bulu? (2005). The Turkish version of the inventory consists of 65 items and 13 sub-groups. Sub-groups are categorized as legislative, executive, and judicial in terms of function; monarchic, oligarchic, hierarchic, and anarchic in terms of form; global and local in terms of level; internal and external in terms of scope; and liberal and conservative in terms of leaning. Each item is scored through a 7-point scale, with 1 denoting  that the statement does not describe the participant at all, and 7 denoting that the statement describes the participant extremely well. Some examples of items used include: ''I like projects that I can complete independently'' (internal), ''I like to challenge old ideas or ways of doing things and to seek better ones'' (external), and ''When faced with a problem, I like to solve it in a traditional way'' (conservative). The internal consistency coefficient of the sub-groups was between .66 and .93.

Participants

The total number of participants was 737. This consisted of teachers, school principals, assistant principals and inspectors who were employed in primary schools within the provinces of Tokat and Samsun in Turkey. Among the participants, 542 were teachers, 77 were school principals and assistant principals and 55 were inspectors.  Among them 352 were women and 322 were men. Of these, 685 participants worked at public schools, and 46 of them were employed by private schools. Participants’ ages ranged from 21 to 62, with a mean of 40. The participants' mean length of professional experience was 16.7 years, ranging from 1 year to 43 years.

Analysis

Thinking styles of teachers, school principals, and inspectors were analyzed through descriptive statistics to find out the first sub-problem of the research.  One way ANOVA was employed for the second objective of the study to investigate whether thinking styles of teachers, school principals, and inspectors working at primary education   institutions   varied.   Also,   a   LSD  post  hoc  test  was performed to examine pairwise differences. The third objective of the study was to find out whether the thinking style of teachers, school principals, and inspectors varied across age, education (highest academic degree earned), tenure, gender, and affiliation.  One way ANOVA was used to examine whether thinking styles differed in terms of age, education and tenure. Again, after running one way ANOVA analysis, LSD post hoc test was used to determine the difference between averages. Further, t-test has been employed for each aspect of thinking styles to check whether thinking styles differed across gender and affiliation. The statistical software SPSS was used for all data analyses. 

 

The first question of the  research was examined through means and standard deviations. Analysis of what teachers, school principals, and inspectors prefer across the 13 sub-groups of thinking styles has revealed that , hierarchic (=27.20; SS=5.20), executive (=26.27; SS =5.05), and legislative (=26,22; SS=5,11) are the most prefered, while conservative (=17,32; SS=6,94), local (=19,47; SS=5,84), and global (=21,08; SS=5,68) were the least (Table 1).

 

 

One way ANOVA was used to investigate whether thinking styles differed across status of participants (Table 2).  Analysis of sub components of each thinking style across participants’ status separately has revealed that mean scores for teachers, school principals, and inspectors are all close. ANOVA results have indicated a significant difference among teachers’, school  principals', and inspectors’ preferences for executive (F(1, 670)=5.14, p<.01), hierarchic (F_(1,674) =3.94, p<.05), anarchic (F_(1,650)=5.35,   p<.01), local  (F_(1,648) =4.18, p<.05),  liberal (F(1,665) =3.54, p<.05), and conservative (F(1,679) =6.91, p<.01) categories.

 

 

 

Multiple comparisons have revealed that teachers, school principals, and inspectors significantly differed in terms of their preferences for the executive category. Examination of the difference has shown that inspectors had relatively low scores for the executive thinking style than teachers and school principals. Moreover, teachers’ scores for the same category were lower than those of school principals. In addition, teachers and inspectors have been found to significantly differ from each other in terms of their scores for the hierarchic category. Teachers’ scores were higher than those of inspectors for the hierarchic category. Another result is that teachers and school principals have a significant difference in terms of their scores given to the anarchic classification with teachers gave relatively low scores for anarchic thinking. Besides, school principals have also been shown to have a significant difference from teachers and inspectors in terms of their scores in the local category; school principals’ scores for the local category are considerably higher than those of teachers and inspectors. Results obtained from multiple comparisons have revealed that inspectors’ scores for the internal thinking style are significantly higher than those of teachers and school principals. Furthermore, teachers’ scores for the liberal category were significantly lower than those of school principals and inspectors. Likewise, scores given for the conservative category by the school principals were also significantly higher than those given by teachers and inspectors.

The second goal of the research was to determine if thinking style preferences of teachers, school principals, and inspectors varied across several demographic variables (such as age, education, gender, tenure, and affiliation). One way ANOVA was employed to determine if thinking styles differed in terms of age variable (Table 3). ANOVA results revealed that age is a significant variable that influenced the preferences over monarchic (F_{(3, 642)}=2.93, p<.05), oligarchic (F_{(3, 633)} =10.10, p<.01), local (F_{(3, 624)}=4.31, p<.01), liberal (F_{(3, 642)}=2.77, p<.05), and conservative (F_{(3, 651)}=6.27, p<.01) thinking styles. 

 

 

 

Multiple comparison results indicated that the age group between 41-50 had significantly higher scores compared to that of 31-40 and 51-60 age groups in terms of their preference for the monarchic thinking style. Similarly, results have also shown that the mean for the oligarchic thinking style of the age group of 21-30 was significantly lower from that of the age group of 31-40, 41-50, and 51-60.  Further, examination of the differences displayed that the group between 21 and 30 gave significantly lower scores for liberal, local, and conservative thinking styles than the other groups. Another difference has also been detected between the 31-40 and 51-60 year age groups in terms of the conservative thinking style, suggesting that participants who are 51 years of age and over demonstrate a conservative thinking style more than the other groups.

 

One way ANOVA was utilized to determine if thinking styles differ in terms of the education level achieved (Table 4).  ANOVA   results   indicated   that   educational background is a significant factor in the preference of local (F_{(3, 628)}=4.16, p<.01) and conservative (F_{(3, 656)}=4.51, p<.01) thinking styles. Results of multiple comparisons have shown that scores given by teachers, school princi-pals, and inspectors, all of whom had either associate or training institution degrees, to local thinking styles were significantly different from those of participants with a graduate degree. The difference was that the ones with associate and training institution degrees prefered local thinking style more than those with higher degrees. Similarly, the conservative thinking style has been selected significantly more by teachers, school principals, and inspectors with associate and training institution degrees than those with a graduate degree. 

 

 

 

One way ANOVA was used to find out if thinking styles differed in terms of tenure (Table 5). ANOVA results pointed out that tenure is a significant variable influencing the preferences over executive ( F_{(3, 602)} =3.49, p<.05), oligarchic ( F_{(3, 593)} =7.69, p<.01), local ( F_{(3, 581)} =3.44, p<.05), external ( F_{(3, 599)} =5.72, p<.01), liberal ( F_{(3, 597)} =3.25, p<.05),  and conservative ( F_{(3, 607)} =7.67, p<.01) thinking styles. The results from the multiple comparison indicated a difference between the means for conser-vative and  oligarchic categories were higher comparing to that of local, liberal, and external. The results indicated as the teachers', school principals' and inspectors' work experience  increased,   they   tended    to    prefer   more oligarchic, conservative, external, and local thinking style. Also, participants with 11 - 20 years work experience had lower scores for the executive thinking style than the other groups.

 

 

 

T-test has been employed for each aspect of thinking style to control for differences in thinking style by gender (Table 6). T-tests indicated that gender is a significant variable for legislative (t₍₆₈₄₎ =-3.83, p<.01), hierarchic (t₍₆₇₃₎ = -2.56, p<.05), anarchic (t₍₆₄₉₎ =3.58, p<.01), global (t₍₆₄₁₎ =3.06, p<.01), local (t₍₆₄₇₎ =4.03, p<.01), internal (t₍₆₅₈₎ =4.37, p<.01), liberal (t₍₆₆₅₎ =2.47, p<.05, and conservative (t₍₆₆₇₎ =7.37, p<.01) thinking styles. Analysis of differences pointed that women scored higher on anarchic, global, local, internal, liberal and conservative thinking styles whereas men scored higher on legislative and hierarchic thinking styles. 

 

 

 

T-tests were used for each category of thinking style to check if they differed across affiliation (Table 7). The means obtained from participants working at public and private primary education institutions have been found to be close. T-test results for legislative (t₍₆₈₅₎ =-3.93, p<.01), judicial (t₍₆₈₀₎ =-3.05, p<.01), anarchic (t₍₆₅₀₎ =2.98, p<.01), local (t₍₆₄₈₎ =3.17, p<.01), and conservative (t₍₆₇₆₎ =3.79, p<.01) thinking styles were significantly different across types of affiliation. Participants working at public schools scored significantly high on the anarchic, local, and conservative   thinking   styles  while the participants at private schools highly preferred legislative and judicial thinking styles. 

 

The present study examined  the  differences  in  thinking styles among teachers, school principals and inspectors. Also, thinking styles were compared in terms of age, gender, tenure, and school type. Findings of the research indicated that teachers, school principals, and inspectors prefered hierarchic, executive, and legislative thinking styles  the  most,  and   conservative, local, and global across status, education, gender, affiliation, and age. Participants' status was determined to be influential over executive, hierarchic, anarchic, local, liberal, and conser-vative thinking styles. Inspectors were less executive than teachers and school principals. The reason why inspectors were more legislative and judicial, and why school principals were more executive can be explained by the variation in their responsibilities. The study also showed that inspectors’ scores for the internal thinking style were higher than those of the other participants. We can conclude that inspectors prefered to work independenty when dealing with a task. The study showed that teachers’ scores for the hierarchic category were higher than those of inspectors. These findings indicate that teachers can deal with several prioritized assignment simultaneously. Teachers also had low scores for the anarchic category compared to that of principals. One can infer that principals prefered flexibility when they were achieving objectives. The study also showed that principals' scores for the local thinking style were higher than those of the other participants. We can also conclude that principals prefer to undertake tasks involving much detail. With regards to the liberal thinking style, teachers had significantly lower scores than those of school principals and inspectors. This finding indicated that teachers did not like to be engaged with a task that has considerable novelty and ambiguity. Furthermore, school principals were more conservative than teachers and inspectors. We can infer that school principals prefered to follow rules and procedures when they govern a school. Again, the reason why school principals were more conservative can be explained by the differences in their responsibilities.

Participants' age has been determined to be related to the monarchic, oligarchic, liberal, local, and conservative styles. Earlier, Balgalm?? and Balo?lu (2010) noted that oligarchic, local, and conservative thinking styles of school principals varied across different age groups.  Participants aged between 41 and 50 had significantly higher scores compared to that of the 31-40 and 51-60 age groups with regards to the monarchic thinking style. This finding indicates that teachers, principals and inspectors between 41 and 50 years of age prefered to focus only on one goal. The study showed that local, liberal, conservative, and oligarchic thinking styles were preferred less by people under the age of 30 than those of over 30. Similarly, Sternberg and Grigorenko (1995) also demonstrated that older teachers were more executive, local, and conservative than were younger teachers. Therefore, one can state that teachers, school principals, and inspectors under 30 can view things from a broader perspective, do not enjoy dealing with details, do not prefer established rules and prefer working on one project at a time.  This result is not surprising and reflects the character of younger participants.

Education has  also  been  determened  to  be  a  more influential factor than preferences for the local and conservative thinking styles. Participants with an asso-ciate degree have been shown to prefer the local thinking style more than the training institution or graduate degrees. Thus, one can infer that participants with an associate degree have a more pragmatic tendency and are drowned within details that waste a lot of their time. Also, a conservative thinking style has been found in significantly more participants with associate and training institution degrees. This finding is not suprising as we would expect participants with lower education levels to prefer local and conservative thinking styles. Jones (2006) did not find a significant difference in terms of academic degree earned. The difference between the two studies might be due to population difference. In other words, Jones' study investigated thinking style preferences of female college and university presidents where as our study explored thinking style of teachers, principals and inspectors. Thus, the aforementioned groups are very different in terms of their education level.

This study indicated teachers', principals’ and inspectors' thinking styles differed in terms of tenure. Our research regarding tenure is similar to that of Balgalm?? and Balo?lu (2010). The result indicated that teachers, school principals and inspectrors who had more work experience tended to prefer more oligarchic, conservative, external, and local thinking styles. This finding indicates that as teachers', principals', and inspectors' tenure increases, they tend to reduce their idealistic behaviors and expectations. Also, they work toward several objectives at the same time without prioritizing the tasks and prefer familiar tasks/activities that allow for interaction with others. Furthermore, they like specific and concrete details. This finding is not suprising in that as the person is aging he/she tends to drop his/her idealistic behaviour and prefers conformity. Also, participants who had 11 - 20 years work experience had lower scores for the executive thinking style than the other groups. This result suggests that novice and experienced teachers, principals and inspectors may be more likely to follow the guidelines set by their school authorities.  This finding is a also in harmony with our expectations; people with mid tenure levels are braver and prefer clear instructions.

Legislative, hierarchic, anarchic, global, local, internal, liberal, and conservative thinking styles have been shown to vary in terms of gender. Balgalm?? and Balo?lu (2010),  Zhang and Sternberg (2002), Balk?s and I??ker (2005) also found out that gender was a variable affecting choice over thinking styles. Women generally prefer legislative, hierarchic, anarchic, global, local, internal, and conser-vative thinking styles whereas men mostly select legis-lative and executive ones. Our findings regarding gender are compatible with those of Balgalm?? and Balo?lu (2010), Zhang  and  Sternberg  (2002),  and   Uygun  and Kunt (2014). According to Balgalm?? and Balo?lu, men prefer legislative thinking style more than women. The reason for this discrepancy might be because their study was limited to school principals and our study included teachers, principals and inspectors. These findings suggest that women participants  are  individuals who are conscious about how and what to do, can handle many goals simultaneously, are sometimes not systematic, tackle problems randomly but can acquire a broader perspective when necessary, are detail oriented, are internal and less social, follow the rules and procedures, and do not like change.  Men participants are individuals who like setting their own rules, are innovative, can make rational decisions, follow the already established rules and can develop new alternatives. However, these results did not agree with that of Can (2011), Grigorenko and Sternberg (1997), and Zhang (1999) in that there is not a significant difference with respect to gender in their studies.

Affiliation of participants was another variable investi-gated in the research. Participants working at public institutions have been shown to prefer anarchic, local, and conservative thinking styles whereas participants affiliated with a private educational institution have been shown to select legislative and judicial thinking styles. One can infer that public workers like procedures more, do not like authority and change, do not act systema-tically, are disorganized, and like working on details while private sector members know what and how to do, like setting their own rules, are braver in expressing their opinions, and like analyzing events and circumstances. The difference between public and private sector workers in terms of their thinking style can be explained by the culture of the workplace. In the private sector, legislative and judicial thinking styles might be encouraged. On the other hand, teachers and principals with anarchic, local, and conservative thinking style might be not welll suited and dispensable in private schools because they can reduce overall performance and achievement of the school. Research findings regarding the affiliation variable are similar to that of Sternberg and Grigorenko (1995). They reported that teachers in urban public and Catholic parochial schools were significantly more conservative in their thinking style than were teachers in an elementary private school. 

This study investigated thinking styles of teachers, school principals and inspectors who work in primary education in terms of several demographic variables. Participants' status was found to be influential over executive, hierarchic,  anarchic,   local,   liberal,    and   conservative thinking styles. This finding indicates that the differences in thinking styles of teachers, school principals and inspectors may be explained partially by the nature of their responsibilities. Furthermore, participants' age, education, gender, tenure, and school type were influential contributors to thinking style.

This research introduces practical implications for both school principals and educational managers.  Educational managers should investigate thinking style profiles for schools and inform schools on a regular basis for their thinking style profile. In other words, teachers, school principals and inspectors working at primary education institutions should be informed about their thinking styles.  In addition to teachers, school principals and inspectors should also be educated about thinking styles and encouraged to form their methods of teaching and assessment according to their students’ dominant thinking style. Consequently, the academic achievements of students can be increased by raising awareness of thinking styles of all the actors that play a critical role in education.

Limitations to this study and suggestions for future research are as follows. The sample of this study was not suitable for any other statistical technique other than one way variance analysis. It was not possible to determine if the thinking style of teachers, school principals, and inspectors working at primary education institutions differs across gender and educational background through two-way ANOVA. Increasing the number of women, school principals and inspectors in the sample will give the opportunity to do two way ANOVA or MANOVA analysis. This study is limited to the primary education level of the national education system of Turkey. Further studies can be conducted on different levels such as secondary and higher education.

The fact that women participants mainly prefer conser-vative thinking style is worth thinking about. Factors preventing women teachers from taking managerial positions at primary schools should thoroughly be investigated and managerial positions should be made more appealing. This research has indicated that edu-cation is one of those factors that could make managerial positions more attractive to women.  Therefore, primary education personnel should be encouraged to pursue post-graduate degrees. This study has also indicated that age is an important factor that affects the way changes are accepted and applied; thus, managerial positions should be made avaliable to young people. The results of this study are limited to the the provinces of Samsun and Tokat so the need for a larger sample may be a advisable for future studies.

In conclusion, the various findings of this research suggest that status, age, education, gender, tenure, and school type are significant variables  with  regards  to  the thinking style profiles of teachers, principals and inspectors. The significant contribution of this study is that it compared thinking styles of teachers, school principals and inspectors for the first time.  Given that this work is exploratory, it could be useful to carry out further research to explain the findings. This study can be regarded as a foundation for further studies in this nature. 

The authors have not declared any conflict of interests.