The socialisation and leader identity development of school leaders in Southern African countries
| Date | 03 September 2018 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-01-2018-0011 |
| Published date | 03 September 2018 |
| Pages | 643-658 |
| Author | Pontso Moorosi,Carolyn Grant |
| Subject Matter | Education,Administration & policy in education,School administration/policy,Educational administration,Leadership in education |
The socialisation and
leader identity development
of school leaders in
Southern African countries
Pontso Moorosi
University of Warwick Centre for Education Studies, Coventry, UK, and
Carolyn Grant
Education, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to explore the socialisation and leader identity developmentof school
leaders in Southern African countries.
Design/methodology/approach –The study utilised a survey of qualitative data where data collection
primarily involved in-depth interviews with school principals and deputy principals of both primary and
secondary schools.
Findings –Findings revealed that early socialisation to leadership transpired during childhood and early
schooling at which points in time the characteristics and values of leadership integral to the participants’
leadership practice were acquired. Initial teacher training was found to be significant in introducing
principalship role conception. Leader identity was also found to develop outside the context of school through
pre-socialising agents long before the teaching and leading roles are assumed.
Originality/value –The study presents an overview of the findings from four countries in Southern Africa,
providing a complex process with overlapping stages of career socialisation. Existing research puts emphasis
on formal leadership preparation as a significant part of socialisation –this study suggests alternatives for
poorly resourced countries. Significantly, the paper improves our understanding that school leader identity is
both internal and external to the school environment.
Keywords Leadership development, Leadership preparation, Leader identity development,
Leadership socialisation
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Leadershippreparation has been identifiedas an important factor in the socialisation of school
principals, particularly as the latter are faced with mounting global and local challenges.
However, preparation for principalship has been foundinadequate in many African countries,
and this deficiency has been closely linked to ineffective leadership and poor performance in
many schools (Bush and Oduro, 2006; Mathibe, 2007). In this regard, challenges confronting
newly electedprincipals have been compoundedby the lack of induction training into therole
and limited opportunities for extended and consistent in-service training, acute shortage of
resources and othersocial and contextual challenges in schoolsin Southern Africa (Bush and
Oduro, 2006; Eacott and Asuga, 2014; Maringe and Moletsane, 2015; Stevenson, 2006).
Some more recent studies (Asuga et al., 2015; Bush et al., 2011; Naicker and Mestry, 2015;
Pansiri, 2011) provide evidence of the presence of leadership preparation and development
programmes in some African countries, such as Botswana, Kenya and South Africa.
However, these programmes are often judged inadequate and their impact on practice is
yet to be established.
Thus, there is an emerging body of research on school leadership preparation and
development in sub-Saharan Africa (Bush and Oduro, 2006; Eacott and Asuga, 2014;
Moorosi and Bush, 2011; Onguko et al., 2008; Otunga et al., 2008; Pheko, 2008), which
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 56 No. 6, 2018
pp. 643-658
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/JEA-01-2018-0011
Received 16 January 2018
Revised 27 April 2018
20 July 2018
21 July 2018
Accepted 22 July 2018
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
643
School leaders
in Southern
African
countries
consistently notes a gap in the research into school leadership preparation and development
in African countries. This literature argues for more localised knowledge that would help
school leaders in this region continue to perform within their contexts while they, at the
same time, meet the demands, challenges and accountability pressures faced by school
principals across the globe. Given the apparent shortage of leadership preparation
programmes and their perceived inadequacy where they exist, our study sought to examine
experiences of school leaders’socialisation across four Southern African countries, guided
by the following questions:
(1) How do school leaders become socialised into the principalship role?
(2) What factors shape school principals’leadership identity development and how?
(3) How do leadership identity development and socialisation processes inform
leadership development?
This study was premised on our understanding that leadership practice and leadership
socialisation processes are informed not only by what occurs formally within the school, but
also by what happens in the school leaders’broader local and social contexts. We were keen
to examine how African school leaders are socialised into the leadership role, and asked
questions that enabled a broad focus, encompassing all forms of socialisation and leader
identity development processes. We envisaged that answers to these questions would help
us work towards a better understanding of local and contextual practices, which could
inform national policies and practices and a shared intercultural learning for improved
school leadership preparation and development initiatives in Southern Africa and beyond.
We therefore framed the study on an existing framework –career socialisation theory,
taking on board the criticisms advanced by Eacott and Asuga (2014) and Pansiri (2011) on
the problematic nature of applying western theories to non-western contexts. However,
we regard the use of an existing analytical framework (albeit western) as a helpful starting
point that enabled us to ask relevant contextual questions that facilitate the understanding
of local practice.
School leadership socialisation: a theoretical framework
Career socialisation theory with specific focus on school leadership has been used and
developed by several authors over the years from Brim and Wheeler (1966), Merton (1968),
Van Maanen and Schein (1979), Greenfield (1985), Browne-Ferrigno (2003) and Crow (2006)
in the USA to Gronn (1999), Ribbins (2008) and Cottrell and James (2016) in the UK.
In sociological terms (career) socialisation theory suggests that in order for one to perform a
social role (which is how we understand leadership) adequately, one has to acquire the
necessary knowledge, skills and dispositions needed for the role (Brim and Wheeler, 1966;
Greenfield, 1985). Brim and Wheeler (1966, p. 5) have suggested that the acquisition of
“habits, beliefs, attitudes and motives”enables individuals to perform the roles expected of
them satisfactorily. Gronn (1999) went further on the socialisation processes of being and
becoming a school leader and developed a life and career-based framework for the study of
educational leaders. More recent studies examining the socialisation of new principals have
identified other factors of influence, including various socialising agents (Crow, 2006),
socialisation tactics (Bengtson et al., 2013) and critical incidents (Cottrell and James, 2016)
that facilitate socialisation into the new role. From this literature, the key enablers of
socialisation are found to range from leadership training programmes to interaction with
teachers, parents and students as agents (Crow, 2006) and principals’own personal
characteristics and how they interact with the school contexts (Steyn, 2013). Crow and
Glascock (1995) found that the conception of the principal role could be identified through
principal observation, teacher experiences and non-education work experiences, while
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