Abstract
This study was undertaken to understand principals’ role in capacity development of post level one teachers for school leadership. The success of a school and high learner achievement depends largely on good leadership and it is highly unlikely that poor or ineffective school leadership will lead to successful schools. Leadership development may occur through pre-service and in-service preparation programs. Pre-service leadership preparation programs occur where a deliberate action is taken by an individual to learn about leadership skills. In-service leadership development takes place when internal processes are put in place within schools to build leadership capacity. This study argues that it is principals who need to ensure that opportunities exist for in-service leadership development programs for post level one teachers. The official tool or instrument that the Department of Basic Education (DBE) prescribes for teacher appraisal and teacher development in South Africa is Integrated Quality Management System (IQMS). However, scholars who have examined professional development in schools find that IQMS to some extent is inadequate, unsuitable and therefore “deficient” in some areas of capacity development. The Advanced Certificate in Education in School Leadership (ACELM), introduced by the Department of Education (DoE) to develop school leadership was also found to be not in compliance with international standards and subsequently the programme was discontinued. For this study, a qualitative approach was selected to understand the role that principals play in building leadership capacity in post level one teachers in their schools. The sampling in this study was purposeful non-probability, where participants were carefully chosen to reflect characteristics of the sampled population, as it provided avenues for detailed exploration and understanding of the phenomena, namely, capacity building, that the researcher wished to study. In-depth semi structured individual interviews were conducted with ten (10) participants, that is the principal and four (4) post level one teachers at each of the two schools. Data collected from the interviews and documents were analyzed by means of an analytical technique and content analysis respectively, which are used in qualitative research to describe and explain social occurrence in a natural setting...
M.A. (Educational Leadership and Management)