Instructional leadership is characterised by the notion of teachers working collaboratively as team-players to enhance teaching and learning techniques. MacBeath and Dempster (2009) contend that instructional leadership embraces the ideology of teachers working collaboratively as members of teams in efforts to attain commonly arrived at targets. It is further submitted that developing teachers professionally and employing data to assess the opulence inherent in the teaching and learning practice, are consistent with the components of instructional leadership. In expanding on the ideas expressed above, Southworth (2009) advises that instructional leaders monitor and remain abreast of learners’ proficiency through eliciting and analysing related data. It is further maintained that monitoring ought not to be viewed as a
daunting additional aspect defined by availability of time, but should rather be viewed as a vital component in the instructional leadership practice.
It is likewise suggested by Stiggins and Duke (2008) that PD enterprises accompanied by various assessment techniques, have the potential to assist SMT members to apply their theoretical knowledge to their practical work. Suggesting that leadership entails being au-fait with assessment techniques and appropriate pedagogy, Stiggins and Duke (2008) aver that members of the SMT need to be assessment-literate, and must have an awareness of how adults learn so that improvements may be accordingly made. Instructional leadership, as defined by Bush and Glover (2008), encompasses leadership that engages with the business of teaching and learning, targeting teachers’ interaction with learners in the classroom. In a similar vein, Southworth (2009) concedes that SMT members’ impact on teaching and learning assumes the form of direct effects, which entails the impact of direct actions on the objectives of schools;
indirect effects which embraces outcomes being indirectly demonstrated through others; and reciprocal effects, whereby leaders influence teachers, and teachers in turn influence leaders.
This vital role enacted by members of the SMT is of paramount importance in the overall design of school improvement (Hayward, 2008). Hence, this study views instructional leadership as an approach to leadership that propagates active participation on the part of members of the SMT to encourage teachers to develop professionally.
In this way, empowered teachers may provide quality instruction that will allow learners to reach a high level of academic achievement. Likewise, Bush (2013) asserts that instructional leadership by SMT members’ impacts on teachers directly as these teachers participate in programmes affecting the scholastic advancement of their learners. Bush (2013) states that instructional leaders influence teachers’ professional growth by encouraging them to learn collaboratively with, and from their peers. This, according to Culatta (2012), is the most important dimension because it targets the schools’ key purpose, that of improving the COLT.
In furtherance, the DBE (2011) urges that the present South African schooling system be consciously structured in a way that allows the COLT to be improved so that the divisions of the past may be healed. It is thus advised that instructional leadership enactment by members of the SMT is a prerequisite.
Bearing this advice in mind, it is envisioned by the DBE (2011) that the portrayal of instructional leadership will foster a sense of South African nationhood and create educational opportunities that will contribute to breaking down deep inequalities that still pervade South African society. In extending the concept of increased collaboration among teachers in the school, Militello, Rallis and Goldring (2009) propose that SMT members ought to engender opportunities whereby teachers may work collectively together so that they may design common targets and standards for learners’ learning, whilst they communicate their expertise within the confines of the group, and decide as a team, the strategies to be executed in fulfilling the above expectations. Since technology defines the 21st century, Malm (2009) suggests that members of the SMT should be tasked with ensuring that learners are equipped with specific skills such as information skills and creative thinking skills. In addition, teachers under the watchful eye of instructional leaders, are motivated to extend their learners to be globally aware, whilst helping them to acquire cross-cultural skills so that they may cope with the globalised economy. Similarly, Carrier (2014) concedes that this new imperative requires SMT members to rethink how best they may exercise their instructional leadership so as to encourage teachers to create opportunities for their learners’ acquisition of these skills.
This argument is in line with the findings of educational research studies carried out by as Hoadley, Christie and Ward (2009); Bhengu and Mkhize (2013); Bush (2013); Grobler and Conley (2013) and Naicker, Chikoko and Mthiyane (2013). Through my engagement with literature in the above areas, I arrive at the conclusion that researchers have investigated some of the above-mentioned factors as bearing an influence on learner achievement and school improvement (Vesico, Ross & Adams, 2008). Nevertheless, there appears to be a dearth of literature surrounding members of the SMTs’ perspectives, and what they perceive, believe and understand their role in the CPD of teachers under their care to be. In retrospect, my engagement with the work of Blasé, Blasé and Phillips (2010), Yu (2009) and Bush (2013), amongst other researchers in the field of instructional leadership, has inspired and led me to adopt instructional leadership as the theoretical framework underpinning my study. In light of this contention, I believe this framework to be both relevant and compatible to my investigation on School Management Teams’ perceptions of their role in the Continuous Professional Development of teachers in two schools in the Umgungundlovu District. To this end, Day and Sachs (2010) view instructional leadership by SMT members to be such that it inspires,
nurtures and gently sways teachers to transform their pedagogy when new and innovative approaches are introduced to them.
From an epistemological position, I am of the opinion that my subjective perceptions of those schools under study will permit me, as the researcher, to supply an exhaustive overview of the SMTs’ personal encounters in their teachers’ CPD. In view of this assertion, literature has proposed that members of the SMTs’ extensive instructional leadership enactment, to be a viable instrument in assisting teachers to grow increasingly confident, innovative and conscious of performing exceptionally well in the classroom so that their learners become the recipients of their talents (Yu, 2009). Together with this, school leader’s inter-subjective, philosophical views and attached meanings to their actions in their interactions with teachers, their peers and learners under their care (Creswell (2014), would form part of this inquiry.
Taking into consideration the argument that premium, worthy and well-executed PD enterprises serve as a foundation for schools’ instructional change (Blasé, et al., 2010), this chapter will now focus on three areas, being the conceptualisation of instructional leadership, the enactment of instructional leaders in the professional development of teachers, and the impact of instructional leadership on learner achievement leading to school improvement.