Instructional leadership structure in Singapore: a co-existence of hierarchy and heterarchy
| Pages | 147-167 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-05-2016-0060 |
| Date | 10 April 2017 |
| Published date | 10 April 2017 |
| Author | Dong Thanh Nguyen,David Ng,Pui San Yap |
| Subject Matter | Education,Administration & policy in education,School administration/policy,Educational administration,Leadership in education |
Instructional leadership structure
in Singapore: a co-existence
of hierarchy and heterarchy
Dong Thanh Nguyen, David Ng and Pui San Yap
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to explore the instructional leadership practices and structure in
Singapore primary schools.
Design/methodology/approach –The study employs a qualitative approach. Data were collected from
interviews of 30 Singapore primary school principals and 25 working-day observations of five principals.
A grounded theory method was utilized to analyze the qualitative data.
Findings –The instructional leadership roles of principals can be categorized into four key themes: vision
development and implementation, physical and organizational structure, professional development, and
leading and managing instruction. Importantly, the study illuminates a hybrid structure of instructional
leadership in which both hierarchical and heterarchical elements exist.
Originality/value –The current study expands the global knowledge base on instructional leadership
by providing indigenous knowledge of how instructional leadership is enacted in Singapore schools.
Simultaneously, this study suggests an agenda for future research on instructional leadership.
Keywords Singapore, Instructional leadership, Hierarchy, Heterarchy, Hybrid leadership structure
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
For the past seven decades, the research on educational administration and leadership has
built a comparatively rich knowledge corpus with prominent contributions from empirical
enquiries in Anglo-American societies such as Australia, Canada, the UK, and the USA.
While the exercise of school leadership needs to account its particular cultural, political,
economic, and societal perspectives (Bossert et al., 1982; Hallinger, 2016; Hallinger and Ko,
2015), empirical research in non-Anglo-American contexts is still of relative infancy
(Dimmock, 2011; Hallinger and Bryant, 2013; Walker and Hallinger, 2015). Specifically
taking instructional leadership into account, the enquiry on this prominent model still lacks
empirical evidence surfaced in Asian societies and other non-Anglo-American contexts,
despite its longevity. Bush (2014) argues that instructional leadership knowledge has been
underpinned by research and practice in (partly) decentralized contexts, while little is
known about how instructional leadership is practiced in (more) centralized systems in Asia,
African, and Eastern Europe.
Singapore is a city-state located in Southeast Asia. Singapore is reputed to possess a
high-achieving school system in Asia (Mourshed et al., 2010), which may stimulate the
research interests in the education scene of the country. However, the volume of publications
on school leadership is still modest. The 2013 review of Hallinger and Bryant identified only
16 articles relevant to educational leadership and management in Singapore published in
leadership journals. Ng et al. (2015a) highlighted deficiencies in the empirical research
on school leadership and particularly instructional leadership with a few exceptions
(e.g. Ng, 2015; Wang et al., 2016).
The present study was conducted to address the calls for more empirical research on
instructional leadership in Singapore and Asia. This is part of an international project
on instructionalleadership that comprised HongKong, Mainland China, Malaysia,Singapore,
Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. The findings are hoped to enrich the comparative
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 55 No. 2, 2017
pp. 147-167
Emerald Publishing Limited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/JEA-05-2016-0060
Received 27 May 2016
Revised 30 November 2016
Accepted 7 December 2016
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
147
Instructional
leadership
structure in
Singapore
knowledge base on instructional leadership in non-western societies by providing
indigenous knowledge of how instructional leadership is enacted in Singapore schools.
Equally importantly, our study seeks to highlight possible directions for a further scrutiny
on instructional leadership. To fulfill these objectives, we set out three key questions:
(1) What are the main instructional leadership roles of Singapore principals?
(2) How do Singapore principals exercise those instructional leadership roles?
(3) What is the overall instructional leadership structure in Singapore schools like?
2. Literature review
2.1 Historical perspectives of instructional leadership
Principals have been expected to concurrently assume multiple roles in leading school
improvement. The emphasized roles of principals have functionally changed over time from
“values broker”in the 1920s to “democratic leader”in the 1940s and “bureaucratic
executive”in the 1960s (Beck and Murphy, 1993). In the 1970s, several empirical studies
captured a scrutiny of factors determining school achievement (e.g. Brookover and Lezotte,
1977; Madden et al., 1976; New York State Office of Education Performance Review, 1974;
Weber, 1971). These four studies aimed to investigate determinants to the success of
high-achieving schools. Synthesizing these studies, Edmonds (1979) suggested six
hallmarks of effective schools: strong administrative leadership, high expectations for all
students, orderly environment conducive to teaching and learning, academic emphasis,
flexible resource mobilization to better teaching and learning activities, and frequent
monitoring of student progress. These claims illuminate the importance of an optimal
balance between effective management and instructional leadership of school leaders.
However, no substantial attempts in conceptualizing the construct of instructional
leadership could be seen in the studies at that time. It was not until the 1980s that the
competing and alternative conceptualizations on instructional leadership burgeoned in
the scholarly works (e.g. Andrews and Soder, 1987; Glickman, 1985; Hallinger and Murphy,
1985). Of these early conceptualizations, Hallinger and Murphy’s (1985) model has been the
most fully tested and widely adopted in the research on instructional leadership
(Southworth, 2002). This model proposed three dimensions of the instructional leadership
construct: defining the school’s mission, managing the instructional program, and
promoting a positive school-learning climate. Reviewing studies conducted in the 1980s,
Hallinger (2003, 2005) suggested a generic set of principals as effective instructional leaders:
principals as “strong, directive leaders,”principals as managers of instructional and
curricular activities, principals as “culture builders,”principals as “goal-oriented leaders,”
and principals leading from “a combination of expertise and charisma.”The first two
characteristics have aroused criticism for instructional leadership owing to its being heavily
directive, hierarchical, and centralized. These instructional leadership models seem to
consider the principal as a sole source of influence and expertise and downplay the influence
of other leaders such as middle managers or teacher leaders.
Due to these concerns and school restructuring initiatives in the USA in the
1990s, scholars shifted attention to other models such as transformational leadership,
distributed leadership, shared leadership, and teacher leadership (Gronn, 2000; Harris,
2007; Leithwood, 1992; Leithwood and Jantzi, 2005). The 2005 review of Hallinger
indicated an intermediate drop in the number of studies on instructional leadership between
1991 and 2000.
Instructional leadership regained its prominence in the leadership discourse in the early
2000s. We conducted a review of articles relevant to instructional leadership published in
eight core journals[1] on educational leadership from 2000 to 2015. The review revealed a
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