A participatory approach to improving the instructional leadership of heads of department in underperforming schools
Abstract
Based on existing literature, teachers in underperforming schools would benefit from receiving instructional leadership to improve their quality of teaching. However, teachers seldom receive such support on an ongoing basis. I have argued that Heads of Department (HODs) are best placed to provide such support, but little has been written on how this could be done in a way that develops the capacity of HODs to provide instructional leadership support to teachers working in under-resourced contexts. This study addressed this gap in knowledge by engaging with HODs in a participatory manner to find ways that they could better provide instructional support to teachers. My main aim in this study was to work in a collaborative manner with HODs to: investigate their instructional support roles to teachers; explore how they could improve their instructional leadership practice to support teachers to improve quality teaching and learning; and construct theoretical guidelines or a model of instructional support that could help heads of department to improve their instructional leadership practice in order to improve teachers’ quality of teaching.
A participatory action research design was followed to enable HODs to identify their own problems, plan the way they would instructionally support teachers, implement their plans, observe and reflect on their actions as a way of evaluating change and restart the cycle again until they were satisfied that sufficient improvement has taken place. The participants in this study not only implemented improvements during the study, but they also learnt a strategy which encourages lifelong learning. Data generation and analysis followed a qualitative approach. Two iterative cycles of participatory action research are discussed in this thesis.
The findings indicate the value of a participatory approach to develop HOD capacity for providing instructional leadership in under-resourced and under-performing schools. An action learning model to improve instructional support, designed by the participants and based on the findings, is presented. This study aimed to strengthen the instructional leadership role of HODs at schools. Through this study, HODs were empowered to provide better instructional support to teachers, in order to improve the quality of teaching, especially in low-performing schools. Therefore, scientifically, this study expanded instructional leadership theory by explaining how HODs’ instructional support to teachers in schools can be strengthened in a sustainable and contextualised way. The guidelines are more meaningful, relevant, and effective for HODs, as they are theories that emerge from meaning-making dialogues between them, using concepts, terminologies, and formulations that make sense to them. Therefore, through this study HODs did not only acquire knowledge about supporting teachers instructionally, but they also improved their practice and learnt how to sustain improvement through an action research approach. A participatory approach to improving instructional leadership has not, to my knowledge, been documented in the literature in South Africa and therefore this study produced new theoretical and methodological insights in this field
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