Examining the understanding and enactment of instructional leadership among the school management team in a rural secondary school in the Limpopo province: a qualitative study.

Abstract

The study reported in this thesis aimed to examine the understandings and practices of instructional leadership the School Management Team (SMT) at one rural school I named Crocodile High School located in Moletsi in the Limpopo Province, South Africa. The study was premised on the understanding that if schools such as Crocodile High School are to overcome the multitude of challenges they experience, the SMT must play a vital instructional leadership role. Thus, the study sought to understand how SMT members understood their instructional leadership roles and enacted them, and how rurality, impacted on their understandings and practices of instructional leadership. The study was located in the interpretive paradigm and adopted qualitative research methodology. The SMT members in the school made up the primary study participants, with a group of six teachers making up the secondary participants. To generate data I used in-depth semistructured interviews with each of the seven members of the SMT, a focus group discussion with the group, and week-long observations of each SMT member. I also carried out a focus group discussion with the six teachers to understand their perspectives on the SMT’s instructional leadership roles. To analyse the data, I used the inductive content analysis approach in which the analysis of data comes from a detailed reading and breaking down of raw data into categories, patterns and themes to explain it. The findings suggest that in many ways, members of the SMT do not have an adequate understanding of their instructional leadership role. This negatively impacts their ability to provide effective instructional leadership needed in the school. Moreover, the findings revealed that rurality had a negative impact on the SMT members’ understandings and enactment of their instructional leadership roles. They tended to focus on the lack of resources and failed to mobilise the school and community to develop or access available assets to benefit teaching and learning. Further, negative influences also came from teacher unions in the form of teacher strikes, leading to negative relationships between the SMT and teachers in the schools. However, some members were able to build rapport with teachers, and thus created a positive environment for teaching and learning. These findings have implications for professional development initiatives that target the SMT in the rural context and focuses on their understanding and enactment of instructional leadership roles. Such programmes could motivate the SMT and other participants to seek continuous professional development opportunities in order to improve their leadership. Lastly, the findings also point towards the need for teacher unions to play their part to improve their influence in schools, including on teacher professionalism and effectiveness.