Abstract
The South African education system is characterised by numerous challenges and inadequacies that constitute a crisis. These challenges include ineffective school leadership, teaching incompetency, inequality, and poverty, among others. However, studies exploring intersections of communication and competent leadership development in South Africa’s education system are rare. The case of Partners for Possibility (PfP) explores how constitutive communication allows for the emergence of leadership capabilities in public school principals through social initiative partnerships. Theoretically, the study is grounded in the Communicative Constitution of Organisations (CCO) framework. This study is qualitative and interpretive in approach. A purposive sampling method was used to select participants for the study. In-depth, semi structured interviews were conducted with nine PfP programme participants, namely four public-school principals and four business leaders from the Partners for Possibility programme. A co-founder of the PfP programme was also interviewed. The participants were drawn from the Western Cape Province, specifically Cape Town, Cape Winelands municipality. An analysis of documents fromPartners for Possibility leadership programmes was conducted in order to get clarity on constitutive communication before conducting the interviews. Thematic content analysis was used to analyse the data. Findings show that the Partners for Possibilityprogramme is grounded in the transformational leadership model; the programme uses a 70:20:10 model. In this model, the school is at the centre of the community. The programme was commended for nurturing listening leaders who valorise the views of stakeholders. The Partners for Possibility programme operates within ‘leadership circles’, sustained by communication. Such circles are viewed as sites of learning. PfP programmes provide room for critical reflective engagement through platforms such as meetings, workshops and reports. Critically, due to its grounding inthe transformative model, the PfP programme embraces delegation of responsibilitiesas well as constant monitoring and dialogue. Thus, the study advances an argument that guided by the theory of change, the PfP programme is informed by the principle of mutually beneficial, respectful and co-learning partnerships. The study concludes that PfP contributes greatly to developing competent leadership in South Africa’s public schools.
M.A. (Strategic Communication)