La relación de las concepciones sobre la escritura con otras variables: autoeficacia y rendimiento.

To discuss leadership practices to guide the work of principals, I am drawing from the work of Leithwood, et al. (2012) and Jensen (2013). I begin by discussing the work of Leithwood and colleagues (2012) who propose four core leadership practices. This is followed by a discussion of Jensen (2013) who proposes five factors that are critical for turning around organisations that are underperforming. There are four core leadership practices which were developed by Leithwood, et al. (2012), which can assist principals of schools to transform their schools performances. The four core leadership practices are (a) Setting direction (b) Developing people (c) Redesigning the organisation and (d) Improving instructional practice, and each of these practices is outlined next.

(a) Setting direction

According to Leithwood et al. (2012), setting direction refers to the principal’s ability to provide focus on the work of individuals and groups within the school. This is realised by building a shared vision, fostering the acceptance of group goals, creating high performance expectations and communicating the school’s direction (Leithwood, et al., 2012). This is useful in analysing how school principals set the direction of the new direction that the school should take and reverse underperformance.

(b) Developing people

The principal has to ensure that his/her educators’ knowledge and skills base is improved. He/ she has to promote their application through the following means of supporting the instructional practice; motivating educators and celebrating their accomplishment, providing individualised support and consideration, modelling appropriate values and

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practices, being aware of the individual educator strengths and the needs of the staff within the school and then offering intellectual stimulation to the staff (Leithwood, et al., 2012).

(c) Redesigning the organisation

I have emphasised elsewhere in this thesis the notion that leadership is about creating and redesigning future realities for the organisation, rather than just maintaining what is already there. Maintenance is the duty of managers (Clarke, 2007). Therefore, the principal has to create conditions that promote collaboration and that allow individuals to maximise their talents (Leithwood, et al., 2012). The principal can facilitate this by promoting a collaborative culture. This could be realised by putting up structures that support collaboration between the school, parents and the wider community.

(d) Improving instructional practice

One of the core functions of the principal as an instructional leader is to ensure that effective teaching and learning occurs (Mkhize & Bhengu, 2018). The principal has to focus on the staffing programmes, provide instructional support, monitor school activities, protect the staff from distractions from their work and organise resources for the staff (Leithwood, et al., 2012). These scholars further provide a framework that I hope, can assist underperforming schools to transform their performances. The aspects presented here can assist the principal to direct his/her school towards an effective teaching and learning path and this can result in high learner academic attainment.

I am now turning to discussing Jensen’s (2013) five factors for turning around underperforming organisations. Jensen (2013) argues that the five factors are critical to the successful turnaround process. These factors are (a) Strong leadership that raises expectations (b) Effective teaching with an emphasis on professional collaboration (c) Measurement and development of effective learning behaviours and outcomes (d) Positive school culture and (e) Engaging parents and the community. In the section below, I discuss each of the five factors.

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According to Jensen (2013), the principal has to practice distributed leadership by creating a team of people who will assist him/her to drive change. The staff has to be given additional and clearly articulated responsibilities. The principal has to foster a spirit of high expectations from the staff, learners and parents and these parties should work towards the goals of high quality learning and teaching that produces strong student outcomes. The school should adopt continuous evaluation of programmes in order to timeously, identify learners who are struggling and adapt their teaching accordingly rather than blaming the learners. Learners should be motivated as they come from poor backgrounds and nearly suffer from low self-esteem. The school has to role model success by inviting former learners who had performed well in the past and who are in higher education institutions to address learners (Jensen, 2013). The school should also encourage professional collaboration between educators, as this will enlarge their teaching practices.

(b) Effective teaching

The provision of effective teaching and learning remains the core duty of the school principal (Leithwood, et al., 2004). Therefore, the principal has to, amongst other things, ensure that the following activities are happening; namely, providing the staff with development sessions, ensuring that educators work together and practice team teaching, ensuring that poor performing learners receive adequate attention and that content is delivered in smaller packages with rapid assessment, evaluation and feedback taking place (Jensen, 2013).

(c) Measurement and development of effective learning

It is always important that teaching or any planned activity for that matter should be assessed in order to measure the level of achievement of the goals (Nicol & Macfarlane‐ Dick, 2006). The principal, in the context of a school, has to facilitate the creation of a positive school culture (Jensen, 2013). The school should practice continuous assessment. Educators should be taught data retrieval handling techniques and its application. The school should reduce truancy and work closely with parents. The school should improve

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learner and educator attendance. The principal should provide emotional support to educators and facilitate peer support programme. The guidelines that Jensen (2013) provides are useful as measures that school leaders use to ensure that their schools are on course to achieving their set goals.

(d) Engaging the community and parents

The principal together with his/her SMT members has to organise classroom visits. These visits should further accommodate parents-teacher meetings, in which parents visit class teachers to be appraised about their children’s progress in academic performance. The principal should develop partnership with the community as this could assist the school in its fundraising projects and community leaders can also raise funds to pay stipends to volunteer educators in order to turnaround the school’s performance. The school can also collaborate with universities (Jensen, 2013). The views expressed above address a variety of critical aspects of the school such as its relationship with communities around it, business community and keeping parents appraised of progress that their children are making. These activities may form a crucial part of accountability.

(e) Positive school culture

The fifth factor is about the creation of an effective school culture. According to Jensen (2013), the school should inculcate and sustain a positive discipline culture. The notion of a positive school culture has been highlighted by various scholars such as Dimmock (2005), Durant and Holden (2006), O’Neil (1994) and Preedy (1993), to mention a few. At the core of what all these scholars say is that there should be a positive working relationship between educators and learners in order for the school to be effective in its operations. To have all stakeholders working closely with the schools helps the learners to value their education and will ultimately encourage regular attendance and assist to improve the academic performance of the school (Jensen, 2013). The school should also provide emotional support to learners through non- academic programmes like, mentoring schemes, community service and peer support programmes. Lastly, support programme should also address practical issues that might affect learning; for example, running breakfast clubs for children (feeding) and support for uniforms and other school equipment (Jansen, 2013).

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