Bush and Glover (2003) argue that, in order for principals and other leaders to focus on the management of teaching and learning, they need to be instructional leaders. Instructional leadership focuses on teaching and learning in a school, with a major emphasis on the man-agement of teaching and learning as a key activity of the principal. This research is, however, underpinned by Lambert‟s argument (2000), cited in MacNiel and McClanahan (2005:1), that one administrator cannot serve as the instructional leader for an entire school and that the par-ticipation of all other educators is necessary. This sharing and participation is necessitated by the fact that the task of management of teaching and learning is too huge a task for one per-son to accomplish. Furthermore, Elmore, cited in Harris (2004), points out that teaching and learning is a „knowledge-intensive enterprise‟ involving many complex tasks that cannot be performed without distributing the responsibility for leadership amongst others in the school.
The inception of the new democratic dispensation in South Africa in 1994 has been associ-ated with a move to a decentralized system of schooling – a site-based education system. Thurlow (2003:27) has argued that inherent in this new model is a move towards institutional autonomy, to a more school - based management system (SBM). SBM involves the devolu-tion of power and responsibilities to principals, the empowerment of educators and increased participation of parents in the decision making process. This new system is vastly different from the „control‟ model of school leadership during the Apartheid era (Chisholm 1999), cited in Moloi (2007:466). Within the SBM system it becomes necessary for the school prin-cipal to share and distribute his/her leadership role in order to cope. Rutherford (2006), cited in Khumalo and Grant (2008:3) points out that the decentralizing of management in schools lends itself to the distribution of leadership throughout a school. Distributive leadership in-volves the view that leadership can be distributed or shared among those not only in formal leadership positions but those members of staff not in leadership positions. The movement towards a decentralized or school based management system falls within the transformation agenda of education in the new South Africa, which is committed to building democracy in schools by emphasizing the sharing or distribution of school management.
This study entailed a small scale purposeful case study of two secondary schools in Gauteng, investigating the role of the principal in managing teaching and learning. It examined how
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and to whom principals distributed the management of teaching and learning in schools. Various qualitative research methods and approaches were used to collect relevant informa-tion on the role of the principal in the management of teaching and learning, and on how the management of teaching and learning was distributed in the two schools. Questionnaires and structured interviews were used to collect relevant data from Principals, deputies and HODs.
The research findings revealed that the principal‟s role in managing teaching and learning is to create the necessary environment that will enable effective teaching and learning to take place. Principals therefore ensure that educators have all the necessary resources to teach, that educators are in class, that discipline is maintained and that educators are prepared to teach. It can therefore be argued, as Kruger did (2003:209), that the principal‟s role in managing teaching and learning is an indirect and supportive role.
The study did, however, show that the task of managing teaching and learning was predomi-nantly that of the HODs. They were involved in monitoring of educators‟ work through learner‟s books, conducting class visits on a regular basis to observe educators teaching, en-suring that educators planned for lessons and had the necessary resources to teach.
The study revealed that the leadership distribution in both schools was based either on the hierarchy of the school or distributed among staff as a whole. An important criterion for choosing who would be involved in sharing tasks was the skills and knowledge of the staff. Both schools tended to distribute tasks among those staff that had the necessary skills and knowledge to complete tasks successfully.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/12251 |
| Date | 07 January 2013 |
| Creators | Govender, Daryl Richard |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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