Browsing by Author "Meyiwa, Nompumelelo Priscilla."

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Ethical leadership in South African schools: learning from the experiences and practices of selected proactive school principals.
(2021) Meyiwa, Nompumelelo Priscilla.; Chikoko, Vitallis.
South African schools need ethical leadership, given the nature and level of unethical conduct that is reported on in schools, with some school principals said to be the perpetrators. Despite the sound policies that apply to the education sector, the situation still seems to persist. This study aimed to understand selected school principals’ experiences and practices of ethical leadership in their daily lives. These school principals were reliably believed to be ethical leaders. The study involved exploring and understanding what informed their experiences and practices, how they managed dilemmas and why they behaved the way they did as well as determining what could be learnt from the participants’ experiences and practices. This study adopted a two-pronged theoretical lens, specifically Greenleaf’s (1977) servant leadership theory and Bill Grace’s (1999) 4Vs model of ethical leadership. The servant leadership theory places the emphasis on the leader serving followers before leading them. The leader does this with the aim of influencing followers to also adopt the spirit of serving others. In the 4Vs ethical leadership model, leaders develop a vision for the organization and use their voices to articulate the vision. This vision stems from their own understanding and conviction of their personal values. All of this is influenced by the will to achieve the common good, which is a virtue. The study was qualitative, situated within the interpretivist paradigm. It used the narrative inquiry research design. The participants were five school principals from township primary and secondary schools in a selected circuit of the KwaZulu-Natal province. The findings reveal that the school principals experienced ethical dilemmas that were influenced by, among others, the prevailing socio-economic conditions, political interference, especially from teacher unions, and lack of support from the Department of Basic Education and other stakeholders. Their key practices included shared decision-making, leading by example, accountability and responsibility, empathy and care. They cited having a vision and foresight, empowering followers, serving others, humility, accountability, listening to others and moral decision-making as what informed their practices. These practices were underpinned by values such as integrity, honesty, justice and fairness, empathy and care as well as respect for their practice.
Teacher attrition : experiences of four school principals in the Umlazi District.
(2011) Meyiwa, Nompumelelo Priscilla.; Muzvidziwa, Irene.
Teacher attrition is common in developed, developing and underdeveloped countries. School principals are tasked with a responsibility to oversee that teaching and learning takes place as smoothly and efficiently as possible and to handle whatever disturbance that takes place in a school including teacher. Teacher attrition affects them directly as it interferes with planning and daily routine in the school. There are many factors which influence teacher attrition such as poor working conditions, poor pay, stress, pursuit of “greener pastures” and many others. This study seeks to explore and document the experiences of school principals regarding teacher attrition. It is a case study of four school principals from Umlazi district. The main research question is: What are the experiences of school principals with regards to teacher attrition? The purpose is to document the experiences of school principals and; to identify factors which influence teacher attrition. I intend to examine challenges experienced by principals with regards to teacher attrition and to find out how principals manage these challenges. This is a qualitative study from an interpretive approach. It explores the experiences of school principals after a teacher transfers, resigns or even dies. Case study is used because of the nature of the study (small scale). Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. These recorded and transcriptions were done personally. Data was coded according to emerging themes during analysis then interpreted in order to make meaning. Sampling is purposeful and school principals both at Primary and Secondary school level are the respondents as I believed their experiences would not be the same. The findings revealed that the common experiences of school principals during teacher attrition were frustration and stress; disruption of learning and compromised student performance and lack of support of the Department of Education. Resignations were influenced by job dissatisfaction and jobrelated stress. These forced teachers to pursue “greener pastures” in the business sector as well as private sector. It also emerged that school principals were experiencing a lot of frustrating and stressful challenges during teacher attrition and most of them found it hard to cope with these challenges. They also complained about the lack of support from the education department. The findings are based only on data collected during interviews. v These findings are going to help the Department of Education to devise new strategies that will help school principals cope better with teacher attrition and also find ways of speeding up the teacher replacement process in order to prevent loss of contact time. Principals also got a platform to voice their concerns whilst they shared their experiences.