Leadership in the eye of the beholder: stakeholder’s perspectives on principals as leaders improving schools in challenging contexts in South Africa

ABSTRACT

The article explored the characteristics of principals as leaders in schools in deprived socio-economic contexts in South Africa. The qualitative research was conducted in four provinces; four schools per province were purposefully sampled, and in each school, individual interviews were conducted with the principal, one member of the school management team, one senior teacher and a focus group with grade 12 learners. The research concluded that leadership characteristics such as motivation and creating a vision are important. Many principals were described as strict but they were taking care of specifically the learners in very difficult situations and that makes the difference that the schools in difficult socio-economic contexts are also able to perform. Principals are able to lead schools to improve the academic results by focusing on a people-orientated leadership approach with strong relationships between leaders and followers and intrinsic motivation as the key factors.

KEYWORDS:

• Leadership
• school improvement
• deprived context
• change
• follower

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work is based on research supported wholly or in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (NRF) [grant number 98926]. Any opinion, finding, conclusion, or recommendation expressed in this material is that of the authors, and the NRF does not accept any liability in this regard.

Notes on contributors

Jan Heystek

Prof. Jan Heystek was appointed as senior lecturer at the University of Pretoria in 1995 he was a deputy principal is a secondary school. He continued his academic work at the Stellenbosch University (2006 to 2012) and is currently research professor as the director of the education in leadership research entity at the North West University. His initial research focused on school governance (from a leadership perspective) with the potential contribution of parents as partners to improve the standards of education. His recent focus is on the role of principals and school management teams to take responsibility to improve the quality of education in underperforming schools in deprived context. Prof Heystek is the co-author of two textbooks: Human resource management in education (2005) and People leadership in education (2008), as well as the author of nine chapters published in different international, supervised 13 doctoral and 34 master's degree students and authored or co-authored of 43 articles in nationally and internationally refereed and accredited journals. His research focus on school leadership and school improvement in schools in low socio-economic context, school leadership development, school governance and school leadership in general. He is a C2 rated academic.