The role of distributive leadership as strategy to ensure effective schools : a comparative case study within selected South African schools

Abstract

The researcher investigated whether leadership is not held by one leader only, but by a leadership model where decision making is distributed among to the rest of the senior leadership team and leaders within the school. The researcher’s aims emanate from the research problem, what is the role of distributive leadership as strategy to ensure effective schools in South Africa. The researcher also attempts through the study to define effective school leadership, leadership strategies and distributive leadership and explore how distributive leadership supports change and improves schools effectively. The focus of the study was to obtained data that could facilitate an understanding of the participants’ experiences on the role of distributive leadership as strategy to ensure more effective schools in South Africa. It is the understanding that this data will form the basis for the conceptualising for school management and other leaders that will facilitate the successful management of the implementation of this approach. In order to achieve the aims of this study, a qualitative research design was adopted and the main form of data collection method was interviews. A total of 28 interviews were conducted. Eight themes were identified from the literature and the in-depth interviews and discussed in detail. The study found out that leadership should be managed through the distributed leadership strategy and that the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the OSCAR coaching model as distributed leadership strategy would ensure more effective schools in South Africa. The theoretical clustering of the leadership styles items and the distributed leadership model resulted in the identification of the shared leadership with elements of democratic leadership as significant contributors to the distribution of leadership and the OSCAR coaching model to facilitate meetings. This information is of importance for educational managers as they will be able to provide schools with suggestions for developmental programmes for leaders and managers in order to increase positive perceptions regarding the role of distributed leadership to ensure effective schools in South Africa. The study arrived at the conclusion that the core coaching skills are most likely to promote a successful coaching outcome. The challenge that lies ahead is for leaders to acquire these coaching skills so that they can make the transition to become a coaching leader and develop schools in such ways.