Teacher leadership in South African schools

Makoelle, Tsediso; Makhalemele, Thabo

doi:10.1504/ijmie.2020.107056

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…South African schools operate within a hierarchical structure, with power dynamics and accountability heavily influenced by bureaucratic systems. The Department of Education and district offices wield significant power, controlling policies and that trickle down to schools (Makoelle & Makhalemele, 2020). Principals, Management Teams, and SGBs lead implementation efforts at the school level, while teachers have less power within this hierarchy.…”

Section: Discussion Of Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Autonomy and participation play crucial roles in organizations by fostering active engagement among their members (Gagné & Bhave, 2011), granting individuals feelings of inspiration and emancipation. Makoelle and Makhalemele (2020) submit that South Africa's hierarchical and bureaucratic educational structures and systems limit teachers' agency, hindering their ability to exercise autonomy. Drawing on critical theory for a theoretical foundation, the study sought to answer the research question, "What are school leaders' and teachers' experiences of powerlessness in preparing learners for the 4IR?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Challenges in Equipping Learners for the Fourth Industrial Revolution: School Leaders’ and Teachers’ Powerlessness

Mlangeni,

Seyama-Mokhaneli

2024

RESSAT

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The work landscape is evolving with the advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), potentially rendering current jobs obsolete and necessitating new skills or retraining of existing occupations for future employment. This revolution is disrupting nearly every sector, including education, highlighting the need for education to address issues like unemployment, poverty, and inequality. However, to adequately prepare learners, this can only be achieved with sufficient material and human resources. Understanding these dynamics is crucial in determining whether school leaders and teachers possess the power or autonomy to develop the necessary knowledge, skills, and competencies to empower learners for the 4IR. Power, the ability to achieve organizational objectives, is essential for school leaders and teachers responsible for information and communication technologies in schools to acquire the resources and competencies needed for the 4IR. Drawing on critical theory, this qualitative study explores how school leaders and teachers experience powerlessness due to the challenges they encounter in preparing learners for the 4IR. Semi-structured interviews facilitated participants’ reflections and meaning-making of their experiences in this regard. The critical analysis of data yielded themes that underscore the complexities of preparing learners for the 4IR in underserved contexts ill-equipped for such endeavours: time constraints; teacher uncertainty; insufficient infrastructure, incapacitating influence of powerful top management; and detrimental control of district circuits. Participants felt constrained within their job descriptions, lacked the freedom to exert authority over their work, and faced obstacles in making independent decisions and implementing necessary changes.

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Section: Discussion Of Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges in Equipping Learners for the Fourth Industrial Revolution: School Leaders’ and Teachers’ Powerlessness

Mlangeni,

Seyama-Mokhaneli

2024

RESSAT

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“…Therefore, the names of the schools as well as the names of the principals have been replaced with the code ‘School / Principal A’ to ‘School / Principal J’. In addition, participation in this study is considered voluntary with withdrawal being possible at any time (Makohelle and Makhalemele, 2020).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Through the teacher leadership concept, principals should be able to distribute and share their leadership responsibilities throughout all of a school's communities, especially teachers (Mangin, 2007; Murphy, 2005). However, Makohelle and Makhalemele (2020) argue that to succeed in teacher leadership practice, principals should insist on implementing shared leadership practices, that is sharing leadership between principals and teachers, facilitating teachers’ performance of their leadership responsibilities and de-prioritising certain procedures and hierarchical structures in schools, which can hinder the implementation of teacher leadership.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implementing teacher leadership in Malaysian schools: Exploring secondary principals’ perspectives

Tahir

Samah

Anis

et al. 2021

Management in Education

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Objective: The purpose of this study is to explore principals’ perspectives on the concept of teacher leadership, the strategies that they employed to support teacher leadership practice and the challenges and issues that principals faced while implementing teacher leadership. Methodology: This qualitative case study uses interview sessions with 10 purposely selected principals from various types of secondary schools. All schools are public schools that are administered and funded by the Ministry of Education, Malaysia. Findings: The study reveals that principals had a comprehensive understanding of the concept of teacher leadership; in fact, principals were able to list teacher leaders’ characteristics and provide definitions for the concept of teacher leadership. In exploring principals’ strategies to support teacher leadership practice, five themes emerged: developing future leaders, a mentoring programme, involving more teachers as teacher leaders, practising an ‘open door’ policy and providing more opportunities for teachers to offer mutual assistance. In terms of the challenges for teacher leadership practices, principals shared particular issues such as the unwillingness of teachers to become teacher leaders due to their heavy workloads and challenges in eading senior teachers. Significance: This study supplements the literature that explores teacher leadership within the Malaysian schooling context, which has hitherto been understudied. Thus, the concept of teacher leadership needs more in-depth investigation and evaluation to ascertain its suitability within Malaysia's educational system. For the Ministry of Education, this study notes some practical implications for improving teacher leadership in Malaysian schools.

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“…Consequently, when schools provide opportunities for teachers to step into leadership responsibilities, as well as to extend your own learning and to take risks to lead, possibilities to grow as teacher leaders may become a reality. Makoelle and Makhalemele (2020) have highlighted that, in South African schools, teacher leadership is described mainly from two points, namely, the dialogue of practised teacher leadership and the dialogue of administrative teacher leadership. These views denote that teachers would do things differently than they are used to develop teacher leadership in schools.…”

Section: From Teachers To Teacher Leadershipmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transformative Intervention Strategies for Teacher Leaders During the Pandemic and Beyond

Klerk

Smith

2021

IJLTER

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The Covid-19 pandemic has created an unparalleled catastrophe with significant challenges for leadership in schools all over the world. The efforts that schools have put in place for training and preparing for teachers prior to Covid-19 seem to be out of step, thus requiring a reimaging and significant transformation to remain relevant for aspiring teacher leaders. This conceptual paper aims at providing transformative intervention strategies (TIS) to empower teachers to become leaders during Covid-19. Having applied transformative leadership theory and integrative literature review (ILR) as method, this paper suggests that teachers should start with transformative listening and learning, whilst taking advantage of opportunities to be empowered to become leaders. To empower teachers to become leaders during the pandemic and beyond, prospective teacher leaders should embrace opportunities which might come from adjustments and which may enable them to better understand the reasons for transformation. As such, this paper aims to provide transformative intervention strategies to empower teachers to use opportunities afforded to them to become leaders in their schools amid the pandemic and beyond. TIS may assist schools in cultivating an environment where teachers actively work together to display transformative emotional intelligence, transformative autonomy and transformative inclusive leadership. The finding revealed that, if purposefully implemented, TIS may encourage teachers to see the value in growth towards leadership, making the process of transformation in schools that much easier.

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Teacher leadership in South African schools

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Challenges in Equipping Learners for the Fourth Industrial Revolution: School Leaders’ and Teachers’ Powerlessness

Challenges in Equipping Learners for the Fourth Industrial Revolution: School Leaders’ and Teachers’ Powerlessness

Implementing teacher leadership in Malaysian schools: Exploring secondary principals’ perspectives

Transformative Intervention Strategies for Teacher Leaders During the Pandemic and Beyond

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