Reviews of study suggest that successful school leaders influence learner achievement in several important ways, both through their influence on other people or features of their schools, and through their influence on school processes are leadership strategies. Leithwood et al. (2004) outline three sets of core leadership practices. The development of people are enabling teacher and other staff to do their jobs effectively, offering intellectual support and stimulation to improve the work, and providing models of practice and support.
The setting of directions for the school such as developing shared goals, monitoring school performance and promoting effective communication are effective leadership strategies to promote school development.
The redesigning of the school through creating a productive school culture, modifying school structures that undermine the work, and building collaborative processes are leadership strategies which can develop and improve the school as a learning school.
25 1.8.3 Effective schools
Effective schools are learning communities, the core element of which is a culture of collaboration and collective responsibility for the development of effective teaching practices and improved learner achievement. Teachers cannot be expected to create vigorous learning communities among learners if they have no parallel community that nourishes them professionally (Department of Education & Training, 2004).
Learning communities of practice define competence by combining three elements (Wenger, 1998). Firstly, members are bound together by their collectively developed understanding of what their community is about and they hold each other accountable to this sense of joint enterprise. To be competent is to understand the enterprise well enough to be able to contribute to it. Secondly, members build their community through mutual engagement. They interact with one another, establishing norms and relationships of mutuality that reflect these interactions.
To be competent is to be able to engage with the community and be trusted as a partner in these interactions. Thirdly, communities of practice have produced a shared repertoire of communal resources— language, routines, sensibilities, artefacts, tools and stories.
An extensive study base supports the view that leadership is the most important element of an extensive school (Sergiovanni, 1984; Elmore, 2000; Stoll, 2004). Effective leaders articulate the types of improvements required to achieve agreed goals and expectations, as well as develop a common language for describing good teaching and learning practices. They have a clear understanding of the change process and a deep, current and critical understanding of how people learn. According to Senge (1999:1) to meet today’s challenges of globalization, changing work forces, evolving competition, and new technologies, the only hope for building and sustaining momentum in a learning organization requires a fundamental shift in thinking and actions. Creating an organization with an emphasis on developing personal mastery, creating mental
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models, building shared vision, improving team learning, and understanding systems thinking will have the potential of allowing organizations or schools to be more convivial and creative. Effective leaders engage their staff in professional discourse, drawing on external ideas and study to inform their thinking and actions and encourage them to reflect on what they are trying to achieve with learners, as well as how they are doing it. The learning community is as an organization in which all members acquire new ideas and accept responsibility for developing and maintaining the organization. The focus is on harnessing experiences of the members. In a learning organization, members work together, mutually understanding each other, yet respecting the diversity of one other. Every individual’s contribution is significant to the life and well-being of the organization (Argyris and Schon, 1996). Therefore, in an effective learning community, there should exist a tight connection between the energy of its members and the organization’s direction.
1.9 CONCLUSION
In this chapter, the background of the problem was discussed and the study questions were developed in accordance with the study problem. The aims and the objectives of the study were stated and the study design and methodology were outlined. A breakdown of the six chapters of this study was given and certain key concepts have been clarified.
The following chapter will explain effective school leadership, leadership strategies and distributed leadership in more detail. An explanation will also be given of how distributed leadership can support change and improve effective schools.
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2.1
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 2 is a literature review of the theories and practices of distributed leadership and how distributed leadership can be utilised as leadership strategies in schools. The chapter addresses the question of effective school leadership and distributed leadership. Furthermore, the question of how distributed leadership supports change and improves leadership of schools is explained.
The theoretical framework of distributed leadership is conceptualised and defined. The relationship between change and school improvement is be put in context. The chapter also discusses the leadership strategies that could be used to improve schools and concludes by highlighting the relationship between distributive leadership, leadership of schools and improvement of schools.
Harris and Lambert (2003) argue that leadership is about learning together and constructing meaning and knowledge collectively and collaboratively. Leadership involves opportunities to surface and mediate perceptions, values, beliefs, information and assumptions through continuing conversations. Leadership means generating ideas together, to seek to reflect upon and make sense of work in the light of shared beliefs and new information; and to create actions that grow out of these new understandings.
Leaders must work in ways that meet the needs of the schools they lead. The question remains, however: -
What is the role of distributive leadership as strategy to ensure effective schools in South Africa?