Exploring the role of the principals in promoting professional development activities in schools : a case study of three secondary schools in Pinetown District.
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Date
2014
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Abstract
Democratic changes in South Africa necessitated a new curriculum which was going to
redress the past inequalities through improving the quality of education; although research
points to the direction that the cascade model of professional development is ineffective, the
department of education, apparently for the sake of expediency, relies on the workshops to
convey information on curricular changes. Research also suggests that there is a need for
principals to work together with all stakeholders to come up with professional development
activities in a school context which are going to address problems identified by teachers; this
will put teachers in a position to develop one another and contribute meaningfully to
curriculum development. The department of education in collaboration with Higher
Education Institutions designed Advance Certificate in Education (ACE: SL) to, as one of its
purposes, capacitate principals to run their schools as learning organisations. The hallmark of
a school which is a learning organisation is professional development, the aim of the study
was to explore if principals who completed ACE: SL between 2007 and 2009 promoted
professional development activities in schools that they head.
Three schools which were headed by principals who completed ACE: SL from 2007 to 2009
were purposively sampled due their close proximity, the principals were the main
participants, HoDs and teachers were interviewed for the purpose of triangulation and to get a
balanced view. Semi-structured interviews and document review were used as methods of
data collection. The information which was collected during the interviews was audio
recorded and transcribed verbatim; participants were requested to supply documents i.e.
minutes of the meetings for the years 2012 and 2013. The method of data analysis that was
employed was content analysis. Data was classified into the nine main themes.
The findings were that schools could not produce policies on PD, there were no formal
induction and mentorship programmes, there were very few workshops which were organised
in a school context and their focus was also limited to computer literacy, filing and classroom
management; teachers wanted to do PD during normal teaching time, there was little
collaborative teaching and learning.
Description
M. Ed. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2014.
Keywords
Career development--South Africa--KwaZulu-Natal., School principals--Training--South Africa--KwaZulu-Natal., Professional learning communities--South Africa--KwaZulu-Natal., Educational leadership--South Africa--KwaZulu-Natal., Theses--Education.