From housewife to school leader: lived experiences of late-entry teachers.

Abstract

The research explored the lived experiences of late-entry teachers who transitioned from housewives to school leaders. Five participants from diverse backgrounds were selected. Silences on late-entry teachers' to school leaders’ experiences have led to bafflement about how the common housewife becomes a school leader (i.e. Departmental Head, Deputy Principal, Principal). The study created a knowledge base in the South African education leadership field by addressing the gaps and exploring the life stories of the vulnerable group’s transitions. The study explored the evolution of their multiple personal and professional identities. The purpose of the study was firstly, to understand who the women were and are and what they did and do, personally as housewives and professionally as school leaders; secondly, it explored the meanings of self, which informed the housewives’ movement to school leader; thirdly, it made visible the affordances and constraints as the housewife transitioned through liminal spaces to become school leader. The study utilised the Identity Theory, the Theory of Liminality, and the Feminist Intersectional Theory as ts lens. The study used Narrative Inquiry as its methodology and purposive sampling to select participants. Narrative Interviews, Photo-walk-talk Inquiry, and Object Inquiry generated field exts. The analysis used concept mapping and found similarities and particularities of experience. The findings demonstrated that late-entry teachers possessed multiple selves, working in tandem, to influence transitioning and emphasised the dynamic state of flux the identities had undergone during the transition. The research highlighted the leaders' affordances and constraints throughout their journey. The study provided significant and novel unveilings about late-entry teachers' multiple selves (personal and professional) and how these entangled selves intra-acted to either serve as a catalyst or constrain their movement into school leadership positions. It filled a research gap by making visible and theorising the experiences of late-entry teachers as they professionalised themselves and transitioned to positions as school leaders. It contributed to a novel participatory visual method, the Photo-walk-talk Inquiry, to research vulnerable participants in Education Leadership. The study contributed to an original phenomenon in Educational Leadership researchon the housewife’s transitions from late-entry teacher to school leader positions.