Ethical leadership in South African schools: learning from the experiences and practices of selected proactive school principals.

Abstract

South African schools need ethical leadership, given the nature and level of unethical conduct that is reported on in schools, with some school principals said to be the perpetrators. Despite the sound policies that apply to the education sector, the situation still seems to persist. This study aimed to understand selected school principals’ experiences and practices of ethical leadership in their daily lives. These school principals were reliably believed to be ethical leaders. The study involved exploring and understanding what informed their experiences and practices, how they managed dilemmas and why they behaved the way they did as well as determining what could be learnt from the participants’ experiences and practices. This study adopted a two-pronged theoretical lens, specifically Greenleaf’s (1977) servant leadership theory and Bill Grace’s (1999) 4Vs model of ethical leadership. The servant leadership theory places the emphasis on the leader serving followers before leading them. The leader does this with the aim of influencing followers to also adopt the spirit of serving others. In the 4Vs ethical leadership model, leaders develop a vision for the organization and use their voices to articulate the vision. This vision stems from their own understanding and conviction of their personal values. All of this is influenced by the will to achieve the common good, which is a virtue. The study was qualitative, situated within the interpretivist paradigm. It used the narrative inquiry research design. The participants were five school principals from township primary and secondary schools in a selected circuit of the KwaZulu-Natal province. The findings reveal that the school principals experienced ethical dilemmas that were influenced by, among others, the prevailing socio-economic conditions, political interference, especially from teacher unions, and lack of support from the Department of Basic Education and other stakeholders. Their key practices included shared decision-making, leading by example, accountability and responsibility, empathy and care. They cited having a vision and foresight, empowering followers, serving others, humility, accountability, listening to others and moral decision-making as what informed their practices. These practices were underpinned by values such as integrity, honesty, justice and fairness, empathy and care as well as respect for their practice.