The term ' servant-leadership' was coined by Greenleaf(1970), stating that ' it begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead ' (p.13). Servant-leadership focuses on the development of others for their betterment. This belief is in alignment with the purpose of education in schools. Therefore, this mixed-methods study aims to explore learners' perceptions of servant-leadership as practiced by teachers in classrooms of a Hong Kong school. It is a sequential design consisting of three phases grounded in pragmatism. Metzcar's (2008) survey instrument, the Teacher Leadership Assessment (TLA), was contextualized and administered to 271 students aged 11 to 18. Quantitative data collected were analyzed by descriptive statistics in terms of modes, percentages, and rank orders. By the end of phase one of the study, it was concluded that servant-leadership was often observed by learners of this study. Four focus-group interviews were conducted with selected students usmg stratified purposive sampling as described by Ritchie et al. (2003). Subsequently, half of the interviewees spoke highly of a specific teacher. It was possible that this teacher exhibited servant-leader character traits. As a result, a written reflection was collected from this teacher. These qualitative data constituted phases two and three of the study. They were collected and analyzed thematically using Miles and Huberman Framework (1994). Thereafter, sources triangulation consisted of a comparison between learners' transcripts and the teacher's reflection. Methods triangulation was also employed to validate quantitative and qualitative data. It was concluded that the practices of servant-leadership could meet the needs of learners in classrooms of the studied Hong Kong school.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:689600 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Chan, Kong Wah |
| Publisher | University of Bristol |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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