The role of leadership in addressing school violence : a case study of two South African schools.
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Date
2014
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Abstract
This study sought to understand the role of leadership in addressing school violence in
the context of two South African high schools. School violence is a stumbling block to
proper functioning of South African schools. Leadership is regarded as essential for the
success or failure of schools.
This study was a multiple case of two schools which was couched within the
interpretivist paradigm. This paradigm was suitable because it allowed me to study and
understand multiple interpretations which the participants attached to the dynamics of
violence and their understanding of how leadership tackled school violence. The study
adopted qualitative methods of data generation which included document analysis,
observation and interviews. For the interviews, a purposive sampling of the participants
was adopted. Informed by distributed leadership theory which is based on the
assumption that there are multiple leaders in a school, I selected as participants, the
principals, the deputy principals, the Heads of Department, teachers and learners.
The study was informed by a three pronged framework involving distributed leadership
theory, social learning theory and ecosystemic theory. Distributed leadership theory was
used to explain the findings on how leadership practices influence school violence. The
dynamics of violence were explained through the lens of social and systemic theories.
The findings suggest that school violence is a complex, multi-dimensional and dynamic
phenomenon. The insights into the dynamics of violence revealed that teachers and
learners in the two schools experienced different forms of violence ranging from serious
incidents such as physical violence to mild forms like verbal violence. The dynamics
also included causes of violence which it was found emanated from different sources.
Such sources included, inter alia, learners’ peers, parents and socio-economic factors.
With regard to variation and gravity of violence between the two participant schools, it
was found that some forms of violence were high in one school while they were low in
another school. The last aspect of the dynamics of violence which emerged from this
study was relationships within and between forms of violence. The findings showed, for
instance, that there was relationship between learner-on-teacher and teacher-on-learner
violence because some learners reacted violently to teachers in response to teachers’
violent acts against such learners.
This study found that the manner in which the dynamics of violence were addressed in
the two schools generally illustrated a dearth of leadership. As a result, teachers were not
succeeding in their efforts of tackling violence. Some initiatives taken to address
violence tended to be targeted at managing violence. However, some management
approaches, such as administering corporal punishment, were also violence and,
therefore, had the potential to promote violence instead of reducing it. The study also
shows that there were few teachers who exercised leadership and as such some learners
did change their violent behaviour. However, the efforts of such teachers were isolated
and not co-ordinated hence, the impact of their leadership was limited. I, therefore, argue
that leadership is crucial for the reduction of school violence. Violence cannot be
reduced if teachers and learners do not exercise leadership.
Description
Ph. D. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban 2014.
Keywords
Educational leadership--South Africa., School violence--South Africa., Theses -- Education.