Abstract
This study investigates how school principal leads school culture evolution in a Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) world. The theoretical framework underpinning the study is culture evolution, which is premised on how cultural traits, beliefs, and practices change over time through a process of cultural transmission from one generation to the next. Cultural evolution is a Darwinian process that operates through variation, selection, and transmission of cultural traits. Cultural evolution is a process by which ideas, beliefs, customs, and technologies are transformed and transmitted from one generation to another through social learning.
This study adopts a qualitative, phenomenological design situated within an interpretivist–constructivist paradigm with a critical edge. It forms part of a wider Sandbox intervention in ten low-quintile primary schools in Limpopo. The study is sited in ten Limpopo primary schools (quintiles 1–3) participating in the Sandbox project’s culture stream. The population of the study were school principals as formal leaders of school culture. Purposive sampling was adopted to select the ten Sandbox principals as information rich cases with direct, prolonged experience of leading culture evolution in a 4IR world. Data were generated through a focus group dialogue embedded in metaphor drawing and one-on-one semi structured interviews. Inductive data analysis was used to analyse the data generated from the focus group dialogue and one-on-one interviews.
The findings revealed five interrelated dimensions that collectively explain the evolution of school culture in the context of the 4IR. The study recommended that to foster evolutional change in the 4IR era, school principals should institutionalise open door communication policies that allow educators, learners, and support staff to access school leadership without rigid hierarchical barriers. It also recommended that department of Education should develop comprehensive digital integration policies that emphasise the normalisation of technology in daily school routines rather than limiting technology use to occasional or supplementary activities.