THE ROLE OF SECONDARY SCHOOL PRINCIPAL IN THE SUPERVISION OF INSTRUCTIONS IN PUBLIC SECONDARY SCHOOLS
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION.
1.1 Background of the study
Educational leadership was constructed by Anglo-American scholars as which include moral, interpersonal, instructional and administrative dimensions (Sergiovanni, 1991; Law & Glover, 2000) Current literature on instructional leadership falls into four broad areas. First, prescriptive models describe instructional leadership as the integration of the tasks of direct assistance to teachers, group development, staff development, curriculum development, and action research (Glickman, 1985). However, professional norms which call for principals to engage more actively in leading the school’s instructional programme and in focusing staff attention on student outcomes are prevalent (Hallinger, 1992; Southworth, 2002).
Currently, there are experiences of rapid change in environment with various shifts in every domain of human activity. Technological, scientific and economic advancements, globalization and immigration movements are just a few of the areas giving rise to complexity and uncertainty in the modern world. These societal changes have inevitably transformed the school environment into a more dynamic and complex one than in the past (Crow, 2006). In this novel school environment, where various pressures and external challenges are identified, there is an increasing recognition of the importance of school leadership in supporting change and providing for educational quality. In fact, school leadership has been identified by a number of researchers as a key element in the effectiveness of school organizations, for instance, (Brauckmann and Pashiardis, 2009; Marzano, Waters and McNulty, 2005; Kythreotis and Pashiardis, 2006; Kythreotis, Pashiardis and Kyriakides, 2010). Hence, principals in western countries are urged to deal with educational change, to anticipate and respond to new initiatives, challenges and opportunities and to adapt to the market-like environment of education (Bredson, 1995; Hall & Southworth, 1997; Oplatka, Foskett & Hemsley-Brown, 2002). While principals in western countries were observed as engaging in some aspects of instructional leadership (Murphy, 1990; Southworth, 2002), they also spend a considerable amount of time on instructional tasks when compared to principals in developing countries, presumably because of the different environment in which their schools operate (e.g. scarce human and physical resources. In South East Asian countries, but to a much lesser extent than in other developing countries, principals, like their counterparts in the west, were found to attach great value to instructional leadership. In Singapore principals are expected to provide instructional leadership to staff (Bolman & Deal, 1992; Zhang, 1994). Chinese principals perceived excellent instruction as a key to student success and school prestige (Ligget et al., 1997).
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