Abstract:

This paper reports the lessons learnt from a PhD research project that was conducted in six school in Umlazi Township in the south of Durban, South Africa. The study explored instructional leadership practices of six secondary school principals (three from rural and three from township secondary schools) in the context of multiple deprivations that prevailed in Umlazi District. Furthermore, it aimed at exploring how the enactments of the generally successful instructional leadership practices were influenced by and adapted to the schools’ multiple deprived contextual needs. Instructional leadership and adaptive leadership theories underpinned this research. Drawing from interpretivist paradigm, the study adopted a qualitative multiple case design. Semi-structured interviews, documents reviews and observations were used to generate data which was thematically analysed.

The findings suggested that multiple deprivation contexts impacted on the ways principals understood and enacted instructional leadership in their schools. The schools were overwhelmed by different technical and adaptive challenges emanating from different forms of deprivations. Values, beliefs, knowledge and experiences that leaders possessed, in varying degrees, shaped their understandings and practices of instructional leadership. These findings affirm the notion that instructional leadership, more specifically in multiple deprived contexts, is a complex and dynamic construct containing plurality of factors and perspectives that shape its nature. The findings also affirmed the appropriateness of viewing personal characteristics of principals and contextual factors as significant to understanding how principals exercise educational leadership. Through this paper, we make a case that leadership that is both responsive and adaptive to local contextual factors, and underpinned by notions of serving, has the potential to cut through challenging, multiple deprived school contexts.

Keywords:

Instructional leadership, deprived school contexts, adaptive leadership.