(2010), advance that the doctrine of distributed leadership enactment is consistent of reciprocal relations existing amongst leaders, their followers, and circumstances.
In congruence, Harris and Spillane (2008) advance that distributed leadership is primarily employed in education research, suggesting that in focusing on leaders’ characteristics, it examines their enactment in portfolios that span across the organisation. It is similarly associated with ideas such as shared, democratic, or collaborative leadership. Taking the above into consideration, instructional leaders are advised by Wing (2013) to take accountability for ensuring a sound COLT prevails through their attempts at putting plans in place that has the potential to motivate, inspire and empower their teachers, thereby creating a conducive environment. One of the avenues that this might be done, is through the facilitation of PD activities by these members of the SMT (Wing, 2013). These members of the SMTs’
contemplation of their role in the CPD of their teachers, will now be deduced.
…there are many teachers who don’t know how to set different levels of questioning.
They set the whole paper with level one questions and no challenging questions. So I show them what level two questions are, what level three questions are, how to slot them in, and what percentage to assign to these questions. I show them my own papers, and how I grade questions.
Mrs Lloyd similarly professed to have held a reading workshop where she exposed teachers to pre-reading skills, which included the introduction of high-frequency words. Expounding this notion, Mrs Lloyd argued that this was spurred on by her observation that many of their learners, even from the intermediate phase, could not read simple books. She argued that most were not members of the library, and due to many being poverty-stricken, their homes rarely housed books for their parents to read to them. Mrs Lloyd volunteered that because she was passionate about reading, she likewise wanted to instil in her learners the love for reading.
Therefore, her aim of facilitating a reading workshop was to develop and empower her teachers, anticipating that this initiative will have a ripple effect and filter into the classroom.
In enhancing the above, Mrs Lloyd posited:
…because I’m an avid reader, I expect my learners to be too. That is why I held a workshop where I explained to teachers that they first needed to prepare their learners for reading by introducing them to flash-words, where all the difficult words from the story are written on cardboard…and learners must say these out loud…then they can move on to reading the story…getting the children to read the story thereafter…I must say…in our school we are very fortunate because our principal always gives us an opportunity to share our ideas, whether it’s at management level, or whether it’s with the whole staff…
Taking into consideration the concern posited by Mrs Lloyd with respect to their learners’
academic performance, especially in English, research confirms that her fears are not unfounded. Correspondingly, assessing the influence of the home environment and the lack of parental involvement in promoting reading literacy achievement in South Africa, findings from research carried out by Howie, van Staden, Tshele, Dowse and Zimmerman (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), 2012), reveal that there was no significant difference in the overall English achievement in 2011 as compared to 2006. It was found that
learners were still performing below the international centre point, with children of parents who liked reading achieving higher scores than those whose parents who showed no interest in reading.
In relation to Mrs Lloyd’s protestation about learners not belonging to the library, possibly referring to a public library, from my personal observation whilst walking around both schools, I noted that GPS and DPS had clean, fully-stocked libraries housing innumerable books, with no foot traffic, even during break-times, suggesting that learners do not visit their school’s library. I advance that schools do not lend learners books from their libraries for fear that learners may lose them, ‘dirty’ them, leave them at home and so on. I suggest that learners be allocated at least one period a week, during their English lesson time, or during their lunch- breaks, to go and sit in the school’s library and read. This would make a tremendous difference to learners’ reading proficiency. This pre-occupation by Mrs Radebe, Mrs Ally and Mrs Lloyd at helping their teachers acquire the necessary skills, is aligned to the practice of instructional leaders, who serve to empower their teachers with the aim of improving learner outcomes (McFarland, 2014).
These members of the SMTs’ leadership enactment is likewise congruent with the instructional leadership model designed Sebastian and Allenworth (2012), as evident in Section 3.16 of Chapter Three who advocate the deliverance of PD activities by SMT members, to help build on of teacher’ knowledge and their capacity, thereby improving the quality of instruction. In further promulgating that standardised testing, such as ANA, heavily influences today’s public schools, this in turn compels members of the SMT to be accountable for learner achievement.
In pursuance, McFarland (2014) submits that in order to promote teachers’ participation in lifelong learning, SMT members are urged to furnish such an environment that teachers’ PD efforts may be supported and introspection encouraged, without viewing teachers as being individuals who execute duties merely to fulfil their personal needs.
Taking the above postulations into consideration, I advance that the members of the SMT from GPS and DPS are agents of transformation, as they deliberately embarked on their mission of creating schools to become learning organisations by encouraging, motivating and inspiring teachers to continuously learn and acquire new skills through their professional develop participation. In highlighting the value of leading with a mission, this is true to Murphy’s
(1990) model of instructional leadership. In light of this, Mrs Ally’s determination at developing teachers’ knowledge base, is found in the following contention:
…if a teacher comes to me and says “look, I’m having a problem with teaching ‘time’
in Maths,” I either show the teacher on a one-to-one, or I ask the teacher permission to go into the class and demonstrate how to teach time. The teacher sits as an observer and makes notes, so for their future lessons she is able to do it better….
These concerns of Mrs Ally, particularly in accordance with the teaching of Mathematical concepts, are congruent with the findings of the DBE (2014), which reveal the prevalence of learners’ underperformance in the subjects of Mathematics and English, more especially in the previously disenfranchised South African primary schools. In attempting to address these shortcomings, the DBE (2014) advocates that the fundamental responsibility of members of the SMT lie in their management of the curriculum, and therefore task SMT members with the mission of adapting the curriculum to suit the needs of their learners. In appreciation of the above efforts by these members of the SMT to constantly engage in professional development initiatives, Wing (2013) recognises that successful SMT members concern themselves with raising the standards of their school’s COLT and thus, learners’ academic achievements. These members of the SMTs’ opinions of the current CPTD management system, will now be examined.