A critical review of Instructional Leadership for South African Schools

1. A critical review of Instructional Leadership for South African Schools Geeta Motilal & Zakhele Mbokazi School of Education University of Witwatersrand EMASA 2011 Cape Peninsula University of Technology March 11-13

2. Context • current leadership models may well be inadequate in explaining the practices of successful school leadership facing the challenges of today’s schools. • Past research : a principal as someone who spends a lot of time solving instructional problems in the school, and whose performance in solving those problems has a tangible effect on the results of the students at the school.

3. Challenges • difficulties that school leaders in challenging contexts face - focus on solving instructional problems may not show the extent to which successful leaders also have to set direction and model values and practices consistent with the contextual variables of the school.

4. Intro…… The core purpose of principalship : • is to provide leadership and management in the school • a high quality teaching and learning takes place • promote the highest possible learner achievement in any context • creation of a safe, nurturing and supportive learning environment • effective teaching and learning to take place. The South African Standard for Principalship, 2005.

5. Definition of Instructional leadership • Bush and Glover’s (2003) - actions directly related to teaching and learning such as classroom supervision, whereas a broader view incorporates all leadership activities that affect student learning • Hallinger and Murphy (1985) state that instructional leadership comprises three broad categories: • defining the school mission, • managing the instructional programme and • promoting school climate

6. KeyQuestion • “How do South African school principals manage teaching and learning in different social contexts?”

7. Introduction • Bush and Glover, 2003) instructional leadership is a very important dimension of leadership because it targets the school’s central activities, teaching and learning.

8. Definition • Hallinger and Murphy: three broad categories: • defining the school mission, • managing the instructional programme and • promoting school climate • Leithwood (1994) heavy classroom focus, it does not address “second order changes”, such as organization building shows signs of being a dying paradigm

9. Problemstatement • leadership models may be inadequate in explaining the practices of successful school leadership facing the challenges of today’s schools (Day et al, 2000)

10. SouthAfricanresearch Kruger (1992- five functions of IL) • Defining and communicating a clear mission, goals and objectives • Managing curriculum and instruction • Supervising teachers • Monitoring learner progress • Promoting instructional climate

11. Question • How can leaders across the length and breadth of our country whose schools failure are based on narrow test-based measures of student achievement, chair a meeting of a parent advisory council, work with a unionised labour workforce, walk through the corridors of a school and enter a classroom without coming face-to face with growing diversity, multiple and conflicting goals, changing realities, competing values and alternate perspectives on the purpose and aims of education today?

12. Questions • How can any education department and leadership argument assert that these realities are irrelevant or peripheral to the work of school leaders? • What is the “real” work of the educational leader that does not affect teaching and learning? • Can instructional leadership be successful without this work taking place?

13. Purpose • The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the necessity of paying explicit attention to the complex issues of our time, and of leading with vision, integrity, and moral purpose in order to ensure that public education opens doors of opportunity and windows of understanding to all students in our diverse and multi-cultural school communities. • We discuss three issues which we considered important but were not included in the literature that was reviewed.

14. Weber’sframework (1996) • Defining the School’s Mission • Managing Curriculum and Instruction • Promoting a Positive Learning Climate • Observing and Improving Instruction • Assessing the Instructional Program .

15. Issues Three issues that this paper seeks to highlight are: • The first issue of conceptual and methodological considerations • The second issue is that of the relationship between instructional leadership and school outcomes • The third issue is that of context-sensitivity.

16. Conceptual and methodological considerations • Heck (1996) proposes first to identify some of the salient conceptual and methodological issues involved in cross-cultural research • Heck (1996) notes that while there have been periodic calls for comparative work in educational leadership, few empirical studies have been designed specifically to compare principal leadership practices between contextual and cultural settings. • Heck suggests that conducting such studies raises several conceptual and methodological problems with respect to underlying assumptions about knowledge, appropriate conceptualizations of principal leadership, and methods of inquiry.

17. “space” and “performance” • South African studies, Fataar (2007) uses the lenses of ‘space’ and ‘performance’ to analyse what he calls “the pedagogical practices” (p.5) of three principals in a South African township. As problematic as the term ‘pedagogical’ might be, Fataar labels principals’ spatially engaged practices in this township as Area of investigation

18. Relationship between instructional leadership and school outcomes

19. Context-sensitivity

20. Conclusion • a model of effective instructional leadership in schools. Weber’s instructional leadership framework was explored. • not been empirically tested - not clear that if a principal demonstrates behaviours from Weber’s model, high levels of student achievement will result. • Weber’s framework does not and cannot identify the specific needs of each context. • instructional leadership models have assumed characteristics which can be modelled or check-listed.

21. In closing • This paper has argued that many reviews have thrived on assumptions about the applicability of instructional leadership models in various contexts. Insofar as the sources identified for this paper are concerned, the challenge was accessing the South African research domain on instructional leadership. Thank you