It is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Finally, I would like to thank the Ministry of Education and Culture in KwaZulu-Natal Province for permission to conduct this research.
ORIENTATION TO THE STUDY AND POLICY CONTEXT
- Introduction
- Decentralising schooling in South Africa
- Why study rural school principals?
- The significance of the study
- Decentralisation and devolution
- Strategic Management
- Leadership and management
- Why do school principals not use strategic management?
- Statement of the problem
- Critical questions
- Conceptual frameworks
- Layout of the study Chapter 1: The policy context
- The personal context
- Literature review
- Research design and methodology
- The principals in their schools
- Patterns in the data
- Conclusions and recommendations
The concepts of self-governing schools and school governance are at the heart of the South African Schools Act (SASA; Act 84 of 1996). At the same time, principals are not just agents of the Ministry of Education; they are directly accountable to their communities (where they are expected to express the wishes and expectations of the community), and they are accountable to educators and educational programs as professional and administrative leaders of their schools.
PERSONAL CONTEXT AND MOTIVATION FOR THE STUDY
Introduction
My personal journey
The school's entire leadership team left the school within months of each other and a leadership vacuum was created. In addition to the principal and vice principal, the school had five heads of departments (HODs) and five non-teaching staff.
Methodological Choice
Find out to what extent principals' supervisory strategies have improved the professional development of their teaching staff. The research showed that the principals of the schools in the sample wanted to play a constructive role in the professional development of their teaching staff, but were unable to do so.
LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Introduction
Transformative schools and principals
Senge (O'Neal, 1995), furthermore, asserts that the idea of learning organizations is unthinkable without organizational learning. Only when individuals and groups in the organization are continuously learning can a learning organization situation exist.
The Role of the Principal in learning organisations
In other words, schools can be significantly improved by doing the same old things in new and more determined ways; it is 'more of the same' and yet it is not. It is possible that leaders may think that their organizations are on the way to becoming learning organizations, only to find that they are simply walking the beaten path and what they are doing is more of the same, but in the name of a learning. organization.
Schools as Open systems
First, the school can be considered an open system in the sense that it is open to outside influences and must learn to adapt to outside demands and pressures. It can be argued, for example, that some information in the school (such as personal data about children and educators) should not be openly available.
Bureaucratic schools and principals
Second, schools can be considered open systems in the sense that they are transparent, nothing is hidden from outsiders (or insiders) to see and understand. The concept of principals as chief executive officers (C.E.O.) is fairly new in the South African context, but in countries like the United States it is.
Strategic Management
One of the assumptions of this study is that strategic management is a sine qua non for school improvement (Knight, 1997; Wong, Sharpe and McCormick, 1998; Cheng and Cheung, 1998). There are two indicators of the direction of the organization's movement, namely the organizational mission and the organizational objectives.
Structure research-Devolution and Accountability
In these ways, success depends on available resources and the capabilities and willingness of the workforce. They can create opportunities or remove barriers, but what happens depends on the people (Brown, 1990).
International perspectives
To achieve this, principals must understand the desired changes and the nature of the change, and be willing to change themselves (Tate, 2001; Fullan, 1991). The other position is quite negative, pointing to increased anxiety and workload and a lack of empirical evidence that School-Based Management improves students' educational outcomes.
Multi-Model and Multi level Perspectives Solution
It is useful when there is a clear connection between the school process and educational outcomes. This model is useful when the survival or demise of the school needs to be assessed.
Case studies: Thailand and United Kingdom
- Four rural Schools of Thailand
S There appeared to be little conscious management activity to link the school's strategic goals and objectives with the resources needed to implement the priorities identified in the School's Development Plans. S School development plans were dominated by a list of 'to-do's' dominated by curriculum content, rather than a list of agreed priorities for improvement and development linked to a strategic vision of the future, among others.
South African Research- General and Rural
75 percent of South Africa's poor live in rural former homelands and TBVC states (the former nominally independent states of Transkei; Bophuthatswana; Venda and Ciskei). These studies point to the need for research in rural areas: the less you know about them, the less likely it is that their needs can be met.
Conclusion
Two-thirds of South Africa's poor live in three provinces, namely Eastern Cape 24 percent, Limpopo 18 percent and KwaZulu-Natal 21 percent. However, the findings and recommendations have national significance, especially because what is happening in the Sea Lake district is in many ways indicative of what is happening in other rural communities in South Africa.
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
- Introduction
- Methodological choices
- Participants
- Sampling
- Ethical issues and access
- Data elicitation procedures
- Problematising methodology
- Measures to ensure trustworthiness
- Analysis and interpretation
- Limitations of the study
- Conclusion
Her presence in the lives of the participants invited to be part of the research is fundamental to the paradigm. Part of that reality is the setting of the school and community, and the various participants involved.
PRINCIPALS TELLING STORIES OF THEIR SCHOOLS
Introduction
Site by site stories
One of the unusual features of the school is a new nursery within the school grounds. The principal shares his vision with educators and other stakeholders about the future of the school and.
Different priorities
Principals of School-C and School-D did not mention the pregnant girls policy at all, nor did they talk about HIV/AIDS during our conversation. This is surprising, especially since educators and SBS members have often pointed to deaths resulting from pregnant girls giving birth alone at home and not receiving timely medical attention.
Issues principals raised
They only provide moral support in that they do not oppose what we say, which is in the interest of the school. Their concept places the Ministry of Education in the position of final, summative evaluation, instead of being a partner in the formative development of the school.
Conceptions of rurality in rural Zulu communities
They attach a deeper meaning to it, arising from the practical experience of being marginalized. When they say that they are not receiving the support they feel they deserve, they are talking about the images attached to the indigenous (Zulu) meaning of the term 'rural', and, in a sense, they expect no real not change; the marginalization they live with has become a 'normal' way of life.
SUMMARY
And somehow they say they are not surprised that they are receiving the treatment they are receiving from officials of various government departments. These tensions are not resolved, but work themselves out in different ways, according to the particulars of the situation.
Conclusion
In that situation, the principal takes action according to his personality, perceptions, leadership styles and philosophy. In this situation, the policies and the department lose their legitimacy or credibility: some principals use 'devolution' to claim power for themselves.
EMERGING PATTERNS FROM THE DATA
Introduction
The language of the school is not the language of the community, nor is the content of the curriculum the knowledge of the community. For example, in some communities, even though educators are outsiders, they feel welcomed by their communities and therefore part of the communities, while in others they do not feel part of the communities.
Similarities and differences between schools
Regarding the issue of school governing bodies and their functionality, most principals in the study felt that SGBs are not supporting their schools properly. Just as principals and their educators came together on some issues, principals and parents at SGB combined on others.
Similarities and differences between principals
In these cases, teachers often struggled to challenge the principal because of the "outsider" stigmas they carry in the community, and the fact that the teaching unions are so distant. For example, one school principal emphasized that to earn respect from teenage boys, you must prove your competence in the school.
Personal styles and choices
As with the 'closed participatory' approach, structures are set up for the participation of teachers and students in management and school governance. Old beliefs that “the Governing Body are parents” (see chapter five) may be a factor in principals forgetting to invite teachers and students to Governing Body meetings.
Principals doing things their own way
Personality, history and role definitions
In the following sections, I will argue that the principal's personal history, style, priorities and skills are key determinants of what happens in the name of school development and transformation.
Principals' individualism
What has eluded principals and educators is that policy, by its very nature, is not only intended to be prescriptive, but also to provide a framework for people and organizations to work and make their own policy: they are more likely to see policy as bureaucratic, to be implemented, struggled or circumvented. Innovators are more ready, proactive and more willing to be creative about change, willing to confront a situation with their own initiatives without nullifying the original, intended change (Merton, 1983).
Conceptions of schools as learning organisations
Although he has not made any formal strategic plan for attracting the community to the school, he has undoubtedly pushed the boundaries regarding the conception and role of the school in these African communities. Directors' leadership and management styles, their knowledge of the government's transformation agenda and the philosophies behind various pieces of legislation, and their conceptions of their roles in the scheme of things are intertwined, and reflected in the extent to which the environment around the school was interpreted as hostile, benign or fertile.
Issues of transformation, agency and strategic management
Data has shown that commissioners in the Sea Lake district have generally not engaged in serious, careful planning in the large-scale sense of the word. For many, strategic management is about the survival of the organization, without the clear rational and systematic orientation of strategic management in the usual sense of the word.
Individualism, contexts and policies
The principal is strict, but they are proud of the school's performance - some educators attribute good results to the work ethic introduced by the principal, while others attribute it to the staff's commitment to their work, regardless of the principal's presence or absence . 34; While the principal was away, the educators devoted themselves to proper teaching, even more seriously, in order to prove that they could do a better job without the principal.
Complexity and chaos
From the government's perspective, this comes, for example, from expressed when policies of corporal punishment and pregnant girls are magnified at school. They are also strongly drawn to the opposite extreme of unstable equilibrium by the forces of fragmentation and decentralization, human desires for excitement and innovation, and isolation from the environment (Stacey, 1996a, cited in Fullan, 1999: 4).
Conclusion
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Introduction
Critical questions restated
- How have changes in education policy impacted on rural school principals' management and leadership practices?
- How do principals in rural secondary schools manage their schools and why do they manage them the way they do?
- What management ideas and strategies can principals develop in order to overcome the problem of change and policy overload?
However, responses to the workshops, like so many dimensions of principals' work, tend to be individualistic. Many principals in the study appeared to be preoccupied with basic functionality of their schools, rather than developing and transforming their schools in the sense implied by fundamental policies such as C2005, Whole School Development, Norms and Standards, and the Development Assessment System.
Recommendations
- Recommendations to the Department of Education
- Recommendations to secondary schools' principals
Radical changes that have occurred in education have placed school leaders at the forefront of social transformation. As such, they must be aware of the different roles they are expected to play and prepare accordingly. School leaders' views on HIV/AIDS and its impact on schools and communities need to become clearer.
DEMWCPAMfATION
Conclusion
Instead, as the directors see it, the department, through its policies, has pretended to be able to praise certain actions and predict the resulting changes. The policy itself must be better tailored to rural schools and with respect for life in rural areas.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Theory and Concepts in Qualitative Research, Perspectives from the Field, New York: Teachers College Columbia University. Researching lived experiences: Human science for action sensitive pedagogy, London: State University of New York.
