Instructional leadership perspectives and practices of heads of departments for science in Lesotho secondary schools
| dc.contributor.advisor | Jita, L. C. | en_ZA |
| dc.contributor.author | Lisene, Lucia Nthooa | en_ZA |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2025-01-10T14:19:50Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2025-01-10T14:19:50Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2024 | en_ZA |
| dc.description | Thesis (Ph.D.(Mathematics, Science and Technology Education))--University of the Free State, 2024 | en_ZA |
| dc.description.abstract | Successful leadership is one of the strongholds of a high-quality education system. Instructional leadership is an important factor affecting classroom activities because principals ensure that all decisions target the enhancement of instruction. However, principals are no longer sole instructional leaders because they cannot effectively monitor and support instruction. Therefore, decision-making in schools is the responsibility of many people hence, a distributed perspective rather than an individualistic view of instructional leadership is necessary. It is against this context that subject departments have become the centre of interest. However, the significance of HoDs as instructional leaders has not been fully acknowledged in practice and research for secondary schools. This study recognises this gap in scholarship and therefore, explores the perspectives and practices of heads of science departments, aimed at improving instruction. This mixed-methods research of a convergent parallel design is based on the distributed instructional leadership (DIL) framework which is a product of two complementary concepts, namely the instructional leadership model and the distributed leadership theory. Instructional leadership models highlight the leaders' functions while the distributed leadership philosophy acknowledges the contribution of all members towards leadership. Data were collected from a multi-stage concurrent nested sample of 67 schools through a questionnaire, interviews and document analysis. Responses from the questionnaire were analysed through statistical analysis software (SAS) whereas qualitative data were thematically analysed. Descriptive data reveal that sampled HoDs had an above-average engagement with instructional leadership. However, these HoDs were most active in having high expectations about their department’s performance (M=4.6) and least active in assessing teachers’ professional development (M=2.64). The HoDs who held permanent positions were also more actively engaged with leadership (M=3.31-4.03) than their counterparts who were temporarily employed (M=3.20-3.87)) and they had significant differences linked to providing materials (p=0.01, F=7.05) and supervising instruction (p=0.02, F=5.36). Qualitative data disclose that selected HoDs knew instructional leadership even though they neglected some subjects due to a lack of content knowledge, large workloads, and lack of confidence, among other challenges. The recommendation is that the leadership responsibility needs to be distributed beyond the HoDs to include leaders for each subject to promote effective instruction in all the areas within the science department. | en_ZA |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11660/12968 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.publisher | University of the Free State | en_ZA |
| dc.rights.holder | University of the Free State | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | Curriculum implementation | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | Distributed instructional leadership | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | Heads of departments | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | Integrated curriculum | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | Principal’s Instructional Management Rating Scale | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | Science departments | en_ZA |
| dc.subject | Secondary school education | en_ZA |
| dc.title | Instructional leadership perspectives and practices of heads of departments for science in Lesotho secondary schools | en_ZA |
| dc.type | Thesis |