The core role and responsibility of the school principal is to be an instructional leader. The principal sets the tone in terms of teaching and learning in the school. In this study I focus on school principals at independent schools in Gauteng and explore their instructional leadership practices. To understand these practices I drew on Weber’s instructional leadership model and distributed leadership. In this interpretive, qualitative, phenomenological study I purposively sampled three independent schools in the Gauteng province based on exceptional academic achievement. I selected their school principals as participants. Data was generated using semi-structured interviews, collage inquiry and artefact inquiry. The findings indicate that the day-to-day instructional leadership practices of the participants are quite expansive and are geared towards ensuring quality in teaching and learning. Furthermore, they receive the requisite support from stakeholders and mediate the challenges they experience in their instructional leadership in multiple ways. / Educational Management and Leadership / M. Ed. (Education Leadership and Management)

Denna avhandling handlar om ledarskapet i skolan. Skolan är en sammansatt verksamhet och i ledarskapet handlar det om att hantera många olika uppgifter på olika nivåer. Samtidigt som skolledare och lärare skall leva upp till samhälleliga förväntningar på skolverksamheten skall de också hantera kulturella villkor inom skolan. I avhandlingen studeras hur ledarskapet formas i och av samspelet mellan skolledare och lärare i vardagsarbetet. En fråga fokuserar på hur skolledare och lärare ser på varandra och hur de influerar och förstår varandra i vardagsarbetet. En annan fråga uppmärksammar vilken betydelse skolsammanhanget har för samspelet. För att belysa samspelet används fallstudier som forskningsstrategi. I studien ingår tre F-6-skolor med förskole-, fritidshems- och grundskoleverksamhet. Det empiriska materialet består av intervjuer och observationer. Teoretiskt har studien en socialkonstruktionistisk utgångspunkt i betydelsen av att skolledarskap ses som ett socialt fenomen. Intresset riktas mot att belysa skolledares och lärares utsagor om hur de förstår varandra och varandras ord och handlingar i det vardagliga arbetet. Resultatet ger anledning att fråga vem som egentligen leder vem. Avhandlingen visar tydligt att ledarskap är något som skolledarna och lärarna oundvikligen formar tillsammans – därav titeln Samproducerat ledarskap. Studien visar hur sociala, kulturella och politiska dimensioner i samspelet influerar skolledarnas och lärarnas agerande och ledarskapet. Konsekvensen blir ett ifrågasättande av den allt populärare bilden av ledaren som med stark hand förväntas styra sin organisation. En förståelse för att skolledarskapet är samproducerat, och att sociala, kulturella och politiska dimensioner har avgörande betydelser för hur det utövas medför en mer realistisk syn på skolledarskapets förutsättningar. / This thesis is concerned with aspects of school leadership. School work is characterised by its complexity, and school leadership requires the ability to deal with many different tasks at different organisational levels. At the same time as school heads and teachers are expected to respond to social expectations, they must also be able to deal with and respond to existing cultural considerations and prerequisites. The present study focuses on the formation of leadership during and as a result of the interplay between school heads and teachers in everyday educational practice. One research question concerns how this is formulated in heads’ and teachers’ statements, and how they perceive, influence and understand each other in their daily work together. Another research question highlights the importance of school contexts in the interplay between school heads and teachers. The underlying research strategy applied in order to illustrate the interplay between school heads and teachers is based on three case studies of so-called ‘F–6 schools’, i.e. three comprehensive schools including years 1–6, as well as pre-school classes, and leisure-time activities. The empirical research material consists of interviews and observations. This study takes a social constructionist point of departure, in the sense that school leadership is regarded as a social phenomenon, and focuses on creating a further understanding of this based on statements by school heads and teachers on how they understand each other and each others’ verbal communications and actions. The results give reason to the question of who is in fact leading who. The thesis clearly shows that leadership is produced and formed by school heads and teachers together – hence the title Co-Produced Leadership. The study shows how social, cultural and political dimensions in the interplay between school heads and teachers influence their actions and the formation of school leadership. This leads to a questioning of the increasingly popular image of the independent leader who is expected to govern her/his organisation with a firm hand. An understanding that school leadership is a product of intimate collaboration, and that social, cultural and political dimensions are vital in the formation of leadership, leads to a more realistic view concerning the possibilities and prerequisites of school leadership.

The researcher investigated whether leadership is not held by one leader only, but by a leadership model where decision making is distributed among to the rest of the senior leadership team and leaders within the school. The researcher’s aims emanate from the research problem, what is the role of distributive leadership as strategy to ensure effective schools in South Africa. The researcher also attempts through the study to define effective school leadership, leadership strategies and distributive leadership and explore how distributive leadership supports change and improves schools effectively. The focus of the study was to obtained data that could facilitate an understanding of the participants’ experiences on the role of distributive leadership as strategy to ensure more effective schools in South Africa. It is the understanding that this data will form the basis for the conceptualising for school management and other leaders that will facilitate the successful management of the implementation of this approach. In order to achieve the aims of this study, a qualitative research design was adopted and the main form of data collection method was interviews. A total of 28 interviews were conducted. Eight themes were identified from the literature and the in-depth interviews and discussed in detail. The study found out that leadership should be managed through the distributed leadership strategy and that the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the OSCAR coaching model as distributed leadership strategy would ensure more effective schools in South Africa. The theoretical clustering of the leadership styles items and the distributed leadership model resulted in the identification of the shared leadership with elements of democratic leadership as significant contributors to the distribution of leadership and the OSCAR coaching model to facilitate meetings. This information is of importance for educational managers as they will be able to provide schools with suggestions for developmental programmes for leaders and managers in order to increase positive perceptions regarding the role of distributed leadership to ensure effective schools in South Africa. The study arrived at the conclusion that the core coaching skills are most likely to promote a successful coaching outcome. The challenge that lies ahead is for leaders to acquire these coaching skills so that they can make the transition to become a coaching leader and develop schools in such ways. / Educational Leadership and Management / D. Ed. (Education Management)