Leadership for quality teaching and learning in challenging contexts: perspectives of secondary school principals in Pinetown district.

Abstract

The purpose of this qualitative study was to have an in-depth understanding on how secondary school principals enhance leadership for quality in challenging school context. This study explored how secondary school principals understand leadership for quality teaching and learning in challenging school context. The study also highlights the challenges that secondary school principals experience while they practice their leadership for quality teaching and learning in challenging school context. It also investigated how secondary school principals navigated some of the challenges they encountered while ensuring quality teaching and learning in challenging contexts. The research paradigm that was employed in this study was interpretivism. The research design of the study adopted qualitative approach. The study selected four secondary school principals; all four secondary school principals are from Pinetown education district. In this study, semi-structured interviews were utilised as the only research method to generate data. Then data was generated from the participants through semi structured individual interviews. Thematic abstraction was utilised to analyse data and to provide meaning to the data. Scholastic works across the globe on leadership for quality teaching and learning on school principals were used to pick out similarities and differences in the existing literature and with what has been obtained in the field. The research findings revealed that secondary school principals that participated in this study have a reasonable understanding of leadership for quality teaching and learning. Their practices in ensuring that quality teaching and learning in challenging context also revealed reasonable understanding. However, their schools are inundated with some challenges rooted from lack of parental co-operation, late coming, and COVD-19 related issues. The study suggested the following recommendations: school principals need to broaden up their understanding in leadership for quality teaching and learning in challenging context, assess the rate of quality looking at the whole school, and school principals need to keep themselves abreast of all the latest developments relating to life threatening conditions in their schools.