Developed teacher leadership in a township high school : an interpretive case study
- Authors: John, Daisy Mary
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: Educational leadership -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , School management and organization -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Teacher participation in administration -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , Teacher effectiveness -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MEd
- Identifier: vital:2052 , http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1018548
- Description: South Africa’s future success depends on a number of national priorities, amongst them the transformation of its education system. Education is the best route to follow to alleviate poverty and many other social ills. One way to overcome some of the complex challenges and crises that we face in South African schools is to pay attention to issues of leading and leadership, including the leadership of teachers. This study is done with the hope that research into teacher leadership will be one of the answers to the crisis in education. It should become a beacon of hope for all educationists who passionately want progress in the youth of South Africa. What better way than to ‘Awaken the Sleeping Giant’ of teacher leadership, borrowing the term from Katzenmeyer and Moller (2009). This study was designed as a case study, the purpose of which was to find out about the enactment of teacher leadership in an Eastern Cape township high school as well as the enhancing and hindering factors to this enactment. This study was done as a replication study of a similar study done by a group of 11Master’s students at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2010. Similar to the original study, this case study was located within the interpretive paradigm and drew on school profiling, survey questionnaires, a focus group interview, selfreflective journals and individual interviews for its methods of data collection. The study was framed by distributed leadership while Grant’s (2008; 2012) Model of teacher leadership was adopted as the analytical tool. It emerged from the data that the three teacher leaders, my primary participants, exhibited teacher leadership across all four zones of Grant’s (2008) Model. The first zone was leadership in the classroom where all three teacher leaders showed leadership to varying degrees. Zones Two to Four are about leadership beyond the classroom into the school and beyond. In Zone Two, the zone where teachers work with each other and the learners outside the classroom, substantial levels of leadership were enacted by the three teacher leaders. Zone Three, where leadership is exhibited in whole-school development, the three primary participants showed distinct leadership qualities as well. The fourth zone, which is about interaction with neighbouring schools, also revealed that all three teacher leaders demonstrated active leadership on a regular basis. Findings further revealed that there were only a few inhibiting factors to the leadership of teachers at the case study school, including limited resources and infrastructure as well as insufficient support and acknowledgement from the relevant stakeholders when leadership initiatives were made, either successfully or otherwise. However, the enhancing factors superseded the inhibiting factors. A functional committee culture guided by a shared vision existed in the case study school together with an ethos of trust which enabled the staff to work collaboratively. Though there was certainly room for improvement in leadership practices at this case study school, the enactment of teacher leadership in this school illustrated a strong case of ‘developed’ teacher leadership (Muijs& Harris, 2007) within a dispersed leadership framing (Gunter, 2005)
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- Date Issued: 2015
Empowerment of school governing bodies in selected schools, King William's Town education district
- Authors: Ronoti, Zamikhaya Sydwell
- Date: 2015
- Subjects: School boards -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , School board members -- Training of -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape , School management and organization -- South Africa -- Eastern Cape
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MPA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10948/6585 , vital:21120
- Description: This study investigates the impact of school governing bodies (SGBs) empowerment on school governance in King William’s Town. The study focuses on SGBs challenges and plights, highlights the effects of their lack of empowerment and suggests the review of the election criteria used to elect SGBs who have the potential to be empowered. Furthermore, it explores the elements and methods of empowerment that can be utilised to empower SGBs and examines the difficulties SGBs experience in accounting for finances and formulating and implementing policies. The researcher makes recommendations on the empowerment of SGBs based on the findings of the study. It was necessary to review literature on empowerment and school governance to attain the research goals. Conflicts and the mismanagement of finances indicate a noticeable gap between South African Schools Act policy intention and policy practice. The majority of SGBs, particularly the parent component in rural and semi-urban areas, have low levels of education. As a result, it is difficult to empower members because they have little or no basic knowledge, skills and expertise with regard to school governance. The manner in which SGBs function and carry out their duties, roles and responsibilities indicates that SGBs received inadequate training. SGBs lack awareness of the regulations governing the appointment of educators, hence a number of disputes arise. The increasing number of disputes (both formal and informal) in respect of appointments and promotions results from misinterpretations of or variations in legislation governing appointments in schools as well as the competency or capacity of SGBs. To investigate this problem, interviews were used as the research instrument to gather data from eight participants from selected schools. The main finding is that the majority of the SGBs studied are incapable of being empowered due to low illiteracy levels of some members. Low levels of or no education, a lack of basic knowledge and skills and other factors, such as a lack of educational insight and the inaccessibility of information and resources due to the use of English as the medium in which SGBs are serviced, compound the problem. The quality of the empowerment workshops, which are 'one size fits all', have a marked effect on their efficiency.
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- Date Issued: 2015