Abstract
Ph.D. (Education)
This study was designed to explore professional leadership development by examining the
Advanced Certificate in Education: School Leadership and Management (ACESLM), which
is currently offered to school principals as a professional leadership development
programme. Literature on leadership development highlights the importance of virtuous
school leadership for effective schools. Principals, as leaders and managers can function
in turbulent school environments if they are committed, dedicated, receive the appropriate
training and development and remain efficacious in the execution of their work. In the 21st
century, the top challenge for principals is to become leaders for learning. This is possible
if principals are provided with the necessary skills, values and attitudes to manage the
responsibilities associated with leading and managing schools. On an international level,
many countries have leadership development programmes in place for both practicing and
aspiring principals. The consideration of leadership development in the South African
context has an important historical dimension, where the apartheid regime undermined
principals in three core functions, namely budgetary authority or influence over the flow of
resources such as textbooks in schools; influence over the hiring and firing of staff; and
curriculum decision making powers. However, changing South Africa’s education and
training system for school leadership is only possible if there is harmony between the
vision for transformation and the day to day realities of principals leading and managing
schools.
Through leadership development programmes, principals are able to enhance their
professional self-managed growth, they are able to encourage collaborative learning, and
work within a continuum of personal and collective experience. Principals can also draw
from effective school leadership practices to address essential questions concerning
problems of practice relating to management and leadership issues as well as teaching
and learning matters. In addition, leadership development programmes assist in
addressing significant problems related to principal and teacher effectiveness and student
learning, thereby improving schools and the district’s goal for overall school improvement
and student learning.
This investigation was framed within a pragmatic paradigm using a mixed methods
research design. An exploratory sequential strategy was preferred where the qualitative
phase of data collection and analysis of data preceded the quantitative phase. For the...