CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW
2.7 EMERGING OPPORTUNITIES FOR LEADERSHIP
There has long been teacher leaders in schools, many traditionally accepting positions as department chairs, team and grade leaders, curriculum committee chairs and heads, amongst others. With the advent of school and teacher education restructuring efforts, new leadership roles are emerging (Lieberman and Miller, 1990). Arguably though, these teacher leaders were often seen as those in formal positions, at times deputising for the principal due the overload and demand placed on such school heads. Teacher leaders then, according to Howey (1988), are firstly full-time (or part-time) teachers that emerged as leaders by simply taking on new roles just by doing the job daily. No formal training, either pre-service or in-service, prepares teachers for these leadership roles, hence my emphasis on the emergence of teacher leadership, either because of their skill, confidence, experience, or interest in a particular
‘faculty’ at school.
Within the USA, Ohio and California in particular, opportunities for teacher leadership arise from programmes such as the identification of experienced master teachers appointed to work
with newly appointed incumbents (Zimpher, 1988). Their chief task is to mentor the juniors, and thus they must have skills in continuing to be expert classroom practitioners, as well as the acumen to teach adult teachers. This is not dissimilar to the model used in South Africa, although the appointment to such master teacher positions lies with the Department of
Education authorities, thus no open competition previously existed for such posts. This could well change with the newly developed OSD (Occupation Specific Dispensation, Collective Agreement 1 of 2008) that encourages career mobility and recognition based on academic and broad leadership ability amongst teachers not in any formal management positions.
District opportunities arising from the decentralisation of decision-making equally afford teachers the opportunity to lead. Such site-based management allows teacher involvement in decisions about structures and programmes in their schools (Sirontnik and Clark, 1988).
Although very much a USA initiative, South African school districts, by virtue of legislation and policy of the South African Schools Act (Act 84 of 1996), view schools as juristic persons, and attempt to allow schools to become self-managing institutions. In such circumstances, schools then democratically at best elect and form their own structures, amongst which are the School Governing Body (SGB) , school-based Finance Committees, infrastructure and stock committees, sport and cultural committees, each being driven by teacher leaders in conjunction with school governors, but not unduly controlled by them.
Similarly, Professional Development Schools (PDS) in the USA call for links between schools and universities wherein teacher leaders demonstrate their skills. In the school in which I conducted my study, evidence of this existed in the form of public notice boards for example, that the school is an off-campus learning site for the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University. The principal of this school then alone cannot claim a successful relationship with the university if it were not for teachers that receive training on new leadership courses on site, while others serve as tutors and researchers at the same venue. The enduring success lies with teacher leaders advocating and attending such off-campus sites , both from within and beyond the schools, in other words district-wide ownership, as well as teachers being given the opportunity to influence academic programmes and pedagogy relevant to their individual school contexts.
It is Devaney (1987) that pursues this matter of emerging teacher leadership and she briefly identifies five roles that include:
• Continuing to teach and improve one’s own teaching.
Devaney (1987) states that the largest category of staff are those that deal with subject matter knowledge, and as such it becomes critical for teachers to be expert in their fields, beginning firstly with their own subject knowledge. Maeroff (1988) describes several programmes to enhance teacher leadership and their subject matter knowledge, thereby professionalising teaching and allowing them to set their own well-informed classroom agendas around curricular matters, having gained the requisite skills. Naturally then, in a developing democracy such as that of South Africa, the introduction of the National Curriculum Statement of 2005 (NCS) resulted in teachers experiencing large gaps in content and methodology of this new challenging system. District offices alone cannot cascade all the new prescripts to the masses of teachers, and therein lies the opportunity for teacher leaders to shape and lead such programmes.
• Organising and leading peer reviews of school practice.
Programmes for the development of teachers’ ability to examine school practices have been widely used in the USA. Pine (1986) suggests a form of action research to be undertaken by teacher leaders with the view to making recommendations for improvement at the core.
Again in the South African context, it is not extreme to compare these two opportunities as afforded in the Integrated Quality Assurance Management System (IQMS). For example, ample opportunity exists in the formal structures of the panels that review peer teaching such as the DSG (Developmental Support Group) comprising of at least one teacher leader and a senior staff member.
• Providing curriculum development knowledge
The assumption that undergraduate and graduate courses adequately address all concerns of classroom practice, as well as blue-prints on achieving school effectiveness, is a false claim, according to Klein (1985). I agree with this critique in that the very nature of the changed curriculum in South Africa demands new training on the current NCS, for example, and again teachers who have expert knowledge may be called to lead. In fact, anecdotal evidence at district level points to exactly this issue: teachers are seen to be driving quarterly cluster moderation committees ahead of Subject Advisors and other technocrats, who remain administrators of the system.
• Participating in school-level decision making
Wit the exception of the Pittsburgh Public School District (Jonstone et al.1990) in the USA, it is generally accepted that one learns decision-making primarily by carrying out the tasks authorised or volunteered by teacher leaders. Ideally, schools should become flatter
structures, allowing for full participation of decision-making by teachers on site, rather than only permitting top-down decisions only. Senge (1990) alternatively describes this as the learning organisation where the organisation exercises team learning, shared vision, professional development, and where people continually expand their capacity to create the result they truly desire. Similarly, the South African Task Team Report on EMD (DoE,1996) captures this succinctly by stating that in order for schools to overcome resistance, there must be lines of communication, participation by all stakeholders, and an atmosphere of facilitation and support.
• Leading in-service education and assisting other teachers
I am of the view that teacher leaders are generally well read at postgraduate level, but this does not imply that those who have not achieved such a level are incapable of leading in our schools. Zimpher (1988) indicates that the creation of graduate professional programmes serves to enhance the skills of teacher leaders, of course laying a sound platform for others to be inspired and follow suit. Such teacher leaders ought to use their new postgraduate skills for the mentoring of peers, all in an effort to realise school improvement initiatives and, as such, they should not simply gather such expertise only for personal gain through seeking career opportunities beyond their schools.