The leadership role of principals in parental engagement to address learner indiscipline: a case study of four secondary schools in Harry Gwala District.

Abstract

Learner indiscipline is a major challenge that obstructs teaching and learning it also disrupts other stakeholders at schools from carrying out their work smoothly. The various stakeholders must rely on the school code of conduct to respond to the challenge of learner indiscipline. Yet, they continue to battle with learner indiscipline. Learner indiscipline has new complications that the Department of Education has not amended. While reviewed literature shows that a leadership role of a principal is to collaborate with parents to deal with learner indiscipline. Hence, this study explored principals’ experiences on parental engagement in addressing learner indiscipline. The study explored the various challenges by adopting an interpretive qualitative case study approach comprising four secondary schools in Harry Gwala District, KwaZulu-Natal. The qualitative approach was adopted because it allowed the participants to share their views and experiences. Semi-structured interviews were conducted face-to-face as a data generation method. The findings showed that principals had not had a pleasant response from parents when engaging them in learner indiscipline. At the same time, principals view them as key in addressing this challenge. Furthermore, they showed less seriousness and motivation on the part of parents to be fully active and engaged in addressing the challenge of learner indiscipline. The recommendations in this study were that principals needed to improve their strategies by developing the right attitude and should prepare themselves psychologically for any eventual embarrassment that might happen during efforts to promote parental engagement.