Leading Ladies: Portraits of Principals: The Leadership Styles and Practices of Women Secondary School Principals Reflected within a Principal Professional Learning Community

<p>Recent New Zealand Ministry of Education documents highlight the challenge to provide professional learning opportunities for principals and the current initiative to support and strengthen school leadership through the Professional Leadership Strategy. There is a need for professional development strategies and opportunities that help principals more effectively understand their school contexts, responsibilities and their own competencies, leadership styles and practice. To transfer and be sustainable, effective leadership practice requires the building of principal leadership learning communities within individual New Zealand school contexts. This thesis builds on previous studies of New Zealand women principals' experiences of leadership, contributing to a greater insight into the identities, role and practice of women principals while modelling a framework for reflective practice as a tool for professional and educational leadership development. As an iconographic study of three New Zealand women secondary school principals this thesis exhibits the life stories and experiences which have impacted upon their personal theories about leadership styles and practice. Composed through a métissage (merging) of image and dialogue to create portraits of the principal's leadership identities it is set in situ within a principal professional learning community. A qualitative, multiple-case studies methodology was employed. The design was informed by a reflective practitioner approach and action learning orientation underpinned by arts-based inquiry, a methodological and theoretical genre that proposes a reinterpretation of the methods and ethics of human social research. The findings indicate that the personal development, self-awareness and growth of a leader are a catalyst to stimulate collective development and accomplishment.</p>

Leading Ladies: Portraits of Principals: The Leadership Styles and Practices of Women Secondary School Principals Reflected within a Principal Professional Learning Community

<p>Recent New Zealand Ministry of Education documents highlight the challenge to provide professional learning opportunities for principals and the current initiative to support and strengthen school leadership through the Professional Leadership Strategy. There is a need for professional development strategies and opportunities that help principals more effectively understand their school contexts, responsibilities and their own competencies, leadership styles and practice. To transfer and be sustainable, effective leadership practice requires the building of principal leadership learning communities within individual New Zealand school contexts. This thesis builds on previous studies of New Zealand women principals' experiences of leadership, contributing to a greater insight into the identities, role and practice of women principals while modelling a framework for reflective practice as a tool for professional and educational leadership development. As an iconographic study of three New Zealand women secondary school principals this thesis exhibits the life stories and experiences which have impacted upon their personal theories about leadership styles and practice. Composed through a métissage (merging) of image and dialogue to create portraits of the principal's leadership identities it is set in situ within a principal professional learning community. A qualitative, multiple-case studies methodology was employed. The design was informed by a reflective practitioner approach and action learning orientation underpinned by arts-based inquiry, a methodological and theoretical genre that proposes a reinterpretation of the methods and ethics of human social research. The findings indicate that the personal development, self-awareness and growth of a leader are a catalyst to stimulate collective development and accomplishment.</p>

Changing cultural norms through education: voices from Ghanaian women principals

PurposeThis study examined how cultural factors positively or negatively influenced women's access to the principal role and influenced their leadership experiences. The researchers used Hofstede (2011) six dimensions of national culture as a conceptual framework. The Hofstede (2011) model of national culture consists of six dimensions (6D) that the investigators utilized to interpret and code the data. This framework allowed the researchers to comprehend the impact of cultural norms and values on women leaders and how women leaders work within those behavioral patterns. Utilizing this framework to map women educational leaders' experiences provided nuances in the dimensions within this region.Design/methodology/approachUsing a qualitative research paradigm and a phenomenological approach, this study explored the experiences of 12 women principals in the Komenda Edina Eguafo Abrem District (KEEA) of the Central Region of Ghana. The phenomenological approach is represented in cultural and social experiences. It enables researchers to describe the meaning of individuals' experiences (Creswell, 2007). This approach helped the researchers describe the participants' perceptions and experiences as Ghanaian women school leaders. This study sought to answer the following research questions: What are the experiences of women principals in Ghanaian K-12 public schools? What challenges do these women encounter in their work as principals? What support exists for these women to effectively execute their leadership roles? A criterion sampling was used to select principals. Data collection included one-on-one in-depth interviews and field notes.FindingsFindings revealed that these women navigated cultural norms and beliefs in order to exercise their own leadership style and pursue their careers in education. These women leaders were also able to gradually change the teachers' and community members' mindsets on women and leadership.Research limitations/implicationsThis study took place with 12 women within one district in one region of Ghana. While this is a limited sample, this study is significant because it increased one's understanding of how women leaders in patriarchal societies navigate cultural beliefs and norms in order to execute their responsibilities. This study informs educational reforms on gender equity and leadership preparation programmes and sheds light on culturally informed leadership practices unique to women.Practical implicationsBased on the study's findings, the researchers offer some recommendations for practitioners, policy makers and scholars.Social implicationsGiven the global call to promote equity in all aspects of social, economic and public life, the question is not whether we should support women educational leaders but rather how we can better support these professionals navigate cultural norms embedded in patriarchal and traditional societies.Originality/valueCurrently, majority of scholarly articles written on the experiences of women educational leaders come from South Africa (Diko, 2014; Mestry and Schmidt, 2012; Moorosi, 2010). In Ghana, quantitative studies have focused on factors accounting for gender disparity in education leadership in specific districts (Segkulu and Gyimah, 2016) and stereotypical perceptions of women principals (Pwadura, 2016). However, there are a limited number of qualitative studies that explore the experiences of women principals. This study is designed to fill this knowledge gap by employing a qualitative design to explore the experiences of 12 women school principals located in the KEEA municipality in the Central Region of Ghana. Thus, the gap in knowledge that this study seeks to bridge is both methodological – in terms of the use of a qualitative approach – and topical – in terms of exploring the experiences of female principals.

ANALYZING THE EXPERIENCES OF WOMEN PRINCIPALS IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS IN LIMPOPO PROVINCE, SOUTH AFRICA THROUGH SOCIAL JUSTICE THEORY

School leadership research has provided extensive empirical evidence which shows that women as school leaders face challenges on many fronts. The objective of this study was to provide insight regarding the challenges that female primary school principals face, in the Waterberg Education District, Limpopo Province, South Africa. These challenges were in respect of the perception of staff members towards women as school principals. This study was qualitative and interpretive in nature. The theory of social justice was used as a theoretical framework. Social justice theorists argue that social institutions have the responsibility to dispense justice, fairness, and equity. The researcher used semi-structured in-depth interviews to gain rich descriptive data on the experiences relating to the leadership roles of the principals. Findings indicate that female principals face challenges, such as insubordination by male staff members, frustrations of not progressing beyond the position of principalship and sexual harassment. This study is of great value as it extends the body of knowledge on the challenges that primary school women principals face in their leadership practices. Key words: social justice, women principals, sexual harassment, primary schools, insubordination, self-esteem, self-image

Women Principals' Career Paths

The managerial career has always been perceived as a man's realm, but this perception is changing. It is the same for schools like other organizations. The number of women principals is increasing, and perceptions are changing in a way that women can also take up such positions. However, women teachers face more difficulties and barriers compared to men when they take up an administrative career. This chapter looks into the career planning and pre-career process of women school principals, their stages of the career development, the barriers and difficulties they encounter during the career development, and the strategies they employ to cope with them within the framework of the career construction theory.

Black Women: Perceptions and Enactments of Leadership

This critical in-depth interview study examined four Black women principals’ perceptions, descriptions, and enactments of school leadership as it relates to their intersectional identities as being both Black and women. The tenets of Black feminist epistemology and the theory of intersectionality form the conceptual framework of this study. Research demonstrates that Black women leaders’ multiplicative identity as Black and women influences their experiences and perceptions of leadership. The principals’ perceptions of school leadership developed into several categories and two themes: student-centered leadership and perceptions of racial stereotypes and deconstructing perceptions about Black women.

Poststructural Temporalities in School Ethnography

Poststructural temporalities, as the ways subjects (humans) and objects (non-humans) become in relation to the idea of time we hold on to, are critical to the ways that contemporary ethnographic practices produce knowledge. Ethnography, as a complex research practice not only ascribed to anthropology, has provided a rich theoretical space to think of the ways we know and who we are as knowing subjects. Poststructural temporalities imply being critical about dominant (humanist) notions of time that allow for specific social orders and hierarchies to persist as real, intelligible, and easily available to be described in schools: Only certain bodies and identities make sense (teenagers, adults, children, teachers, women, principals, etc.), their relations (student/teacher, men/women, White/Black), and representative concepts to be lived as real (deviant, normal, progress, future, mature, gifted, etc.). Poststructural temporalities, as action and force, allow for the appearance of truths awaiting to become intelligible. Poststructural ways of thinking time promise to move away from traditional frames to understand the social, biological, cultural, and affective school subject, which might turn into a political experience of the now. Uneven time, meaning something different from the traditional concepts of linearity, regularity, and the exhaustive and restricted units of prescribed segments, allows us to decline the regular idea of “telling an experience.” Sites, experiences, subjects, and objects become connections and entanglements to write about. Definitely, the now cannot be inhabited by the Cartesian subject. With these ideas in mind, poststructural temporalities in school ethnographies are political in such a way that those unintelligible relations between humans, matter, and affects being produced in schools right now might show up.