The principal’s roles as manager and instructional leader are complementary terms for
explaining what s/he does daily in the school to direct the mission towards its
fulfilment. However, these roles are often in tension, especially in the context of
school self-management. This scenario has led to an overemphasis on routine
(administrative) tasks by school managers, leaving them over-worked and with little
time to devote their efforts to the core technology of schooling, the most critical and
essential responsibility of school management namely, instructional leadership.
Employing a qualitative case study approach, this report explored the day-to-day
instructional tasks of leaders in two primary schools in the Johannesburg East District
in the Gauteng Province. It is argued, in the study, that it is necessary for school
principals to distribute, collaborate and involve other SMT members in executing
their instructional leadership responsibilities to enhance quality delivery of C2005.
The deputy principal and school level HoDs, it is argued, should be the immediate
arbiters of the tension between the principal’s functions as manager and instructional
leader. They should be enabled and encouraged to create a balance between meeting
the school’s educative goals and sharing in the instructional duties of principals. The
lack of time and commitment to instructional improvement on the part of principals
seriously hampers and compromises their effectiveness, teaching and learning, and
student achievement.
Consistent with the Department of Education’s policy framework on instructional
leadership practices in schools (DoE, 2000), the findings in this study reveal that the
effective implementation and reaping the benefits of Curriculum 2005 (C2005)
requires collaborative practices among the SMT members (the principal, deputy
principal and the heads of departments).
This study also found that instructional improvement should be regarded as core to
everybody’s job and not as a specialised function for an individual, the principal. This
is consistent with Alvarado (in Elmore & Burney, 1997), who asserts that anyone with
staff responsibility has the duty to support others directly involved in staff
development. The deputy principal, the heads of department and subject heads in
primary schools as formal leaders, all have an instructional responsibility to assist the
principal in meeting the school’s instructional goals.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:wits/oai:wiredspace.wits.ac.za:10539/5261 |
| Date | 06 August 2008 |
| Creators | Gandeebo, Cyprian Bankakuu |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 11432 bytes, 405674 bytes, 69499 bytes, 425902 bytes, 15094 bytes, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf, application/pdf |
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