This research explored the understandings and perceptions of teacher leadership in the Year 8 classroom, as expressed by teachers and students at a Catholic school, and the relationship between this leadership and boys’ academic motivation. The researcher assumed that the classroom is an organisation (Cheng, 1994) where all teachers, perhaps even unknowingly (Crowther, 1996), exercise leadership and, furthermore, that this leadership results in positively influencing boys’ willingness to learn. The research was targeted at Year 8, the first year of high school in South Australia, because academic motivation is considered most problematic during and after transition into high school (Maehr & Midgley, 1991). The research was interpretivist, with symbolic interactionism as the theoretical perspective. The methodology adopted was case study, and data were collected using: a) Focus group interviews with eight members of the Year 8 ‘core’ teaching team on issues pertaining to teacher leadership in the classroom and how this positively influences boys’ academic motivation. b) A survey questionnaire about academic motivation, distributed to thirty-nine specially identified Year 8 students. c) Interviews with five key Year 8 student informants about teacher leadership and its impact on boys’ academic motivation. Data were analysed using a “general analytic strategy” (Yin, 1994, p.102), which included the adoption of a method of “successive approximation” (Neumann, 1997, p.427). Five categories of teacher leadership in the Year 8 classroom were identified: service; authenticity; transformation; empowerment; and community. The research also established that each category involves an array of qualities that help teacher leaders strengthen relationships in the classroom, and a set of actions that enable teacher leaders to help boys complete classroom tasks. Further, results indicate that by strengthening relationships and supporting boys to complete tasks, teacher leaders positively influence boys’ academic motivation. In addition, the research presents a framework for understanding and discussing the relationship between teacher leadership and boys’ academic motivation. This framework draws attention to the relational qualities and task specific strategies in each category of classroom leadership that positively influence boys’ academic motivation.

The aim of the study is to elucidate how primary school teachers perceive the relationship between classroom leadership and multicultural environment. This is done through focus group interviews with primary school teachers from two multicultural schools that serve as representative cases. The result suggests that teachers consider it challenging and instructive to lead groups in multicultural environments. They underline that a leadership competence that emphasizes both good structure and clarity is fundamental to both the learning process and to giving students the right opportunity to perform and feel comfortable. Furthermore, teachers believe that intercultural competence is of particular importance so that misunderstandings in different teaching situations can be prevented. The study therefore points to the importance of multicultural competence or intercultural sensitivity among teachers in such environments as a prerequisite for good classroom leadership.

An increasing number of studies suggest that a positive teacher-student relationship is an important element of successful education. Yet, resources and awareness about how teachers in Sweden can develop skills for supporting positive teacher-student relationships seem to be limited or lacking in popular teaching training programs where almost all focus is put on subject-knowledge and didactics. One potential means of promoting a leadership that endorses a positive teacher-student relationship is through the development of relational competence. Briefly, relational competence can be understood as how the teacher meets a student on a level where the teacher plans his or her actions by knowing the students’ experiences and life situation. This is connected to the teachers' communicative, differentiation, and social-emotional competence (Aspelin, 2018). Such an approach has been demonstrated to be successful in Denmark, where it has been introduced in teacher training programs as well as in the school system. In this paper we investigate to what degree current English teachers in Swedish compulsory school are aware of relational competence as a tool, what features from relational competence do the teacher currently use in their classroom leadership, and what aspects of relational competence teachers perceive as difficult to adopt or implement as a concept. Results show that Swedish English teachers work with relationships in connection with leadership and didactic competence, but that a majority of the informants do not have sufficient knowledge, terminology, time, or training to work with relational competence. Additionally, the teachers find it a challenge to implement the concept when it comes to significantly changing their view in the classroom to include not only the student or situation but the whole interactional situation between teacher and student.

This study compares an effective school and ineffective school, in terms of how internal leadership and management of each school contribute its effectiveness. As a result, the study explores why one of two schools located within the same socio-economic environment, funded uniformly and controlled by the government at same levels of commitments is effective, while the other seems ineffective. Therefore, this thesis raises questions to know how internal school stakeholders’ leadership and management practices contribute to school effectiveness in each of the schools. A comparison was undertaken by firstly exploring how school leadership and management practices of School Leadership and Management Teams (SLMT) and secondly, understanding how teachers’ classroom leadership and management contribute to school effectiveness respectively. Therefore, in an attempt to answer the main research question: How do leadership and management dynamics contribute to school effectiveness? Other identified sub-questions were raised. Furthermore, a review of relevant literature uncovered what makes good and quality school leadership, management and; classroom leadership and management in ensuring school effectiveness. Data was collected from identified key role players within the two sampled schools. They include a school principal, vice-principal, Head of Departments (HOD), a teacher and classroom student leader (class captain) each, making-up a total of ten participants in the study - (five participants from each school). The researcher utilised one-on-one semi-structured interview, observations and document analysis or review in order to obtain rich qualitative data. By adopting the a-priori approach of data analysis, codes were generated manually from the interviews, observations and documents analysis/reviewed and measured against identified school leadership and management and; classroom leadership and management sub-themes/criteria in the literature reviewed in this study. From the data obtained, analysed and discussed, it was found that School A was exceptional in terms of leadership and management practises compared to School B. Although School A and B showed similar, but negligible characteristics in school planning, organising, management of change and; coordination of school teaching and learning, School A’s strength in terms of management of the school, lies in its availability of school policy on teaching, decision-making, delegating, control, motivating, communicating, management of interpersonal relationships, school climate, culture, change, management of conflict and school school-community relationships. In addition, even though School A and B teacher exhibited similar elements like, teaching methods ability, planning of their teaching and they both lack written classroom policy in their classroom leadership and management practices, differences like classroom leadership, motivation, communication, classroom climate and control exhibited by School A teacher during teaching and learning makes him far better, in comparison to School B teacher. Conclusively, the exceptional leadership and management practices by the School Leadership and Management (SLMT) of School A and its teacher in comparison to School B brought about multiplicity of other findings in this study. In the overall, it is believed that the interrelatedness of the exceptional leadership and management behaviour and practices of school A SLMT and teacher, is a consequence of the culture of the school, which has been built and maintained over the years and thus, influenced its climate in contributing to school effectiveness. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted