The leadership role of principals in parental engagement to address learner indiscipline: a case study of four secondary schools in Harry Gwala District.
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Date
2022
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Abstract
Learner indiscipline is a major challenge that obstructs teaching and learning it also disrupts
other stakeholders at schools from carrying out their work smoothly. The various stakeholders
must rely on the school code of conduct to respond to the challenge of learner indiscipline. Yet,
they continue to battle with learner indiscipline. Learner indiscipline has new complications that
the Department of Education has not amended. While reviewed literature shows that a leadership
role of a principal is to collaborate with parents to deal with learner indiscipline. Hence, this
study explored principals’ experiences on parental engagement in addressing learner indiscipline.
The study explored the various challenges by adopting an interpretive qualitative case study
approach comprising four secondary schools in Harry Gwala District, KwaZulu-Natal. The
qualitative approach was adopted because it allowed the participants to share their views and
experiences. Semi-structured interviews were conducted face-to-face as a data generation
method. The findings showed that principals had not had a pleasant response from parents when
engaging them in learner indiscipline. At the same time, principals view them as key in
addressing this challenge. Furthermore, they showed less seriousness and motivation on the part
of parents to be fully active and engaged in addressing the challenge of learner indiscipline. The
recommendations in this study were that principals needed to improve their strategies by
developing the right attitude and should prepare themselves psychologically for any eventual
embarrassment that might happen during efforts to promote parental engagement.
Description
Masters Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.