Constituency leaders serving as partners in school governance

Do their leaderships portray democratic constituency representation or selfish opportunism?

Abstract

This paper reports on findings emanated from three principals, three school governing body chairpersons and three teacher-union site stewards. (who also happened to be teacher representatives in the school governing bodies at their schools). According to Quan-Baffour (2006) school governing bodies are democratically elected to represent their constituencies. Hence, they are referred to as constituents’ leaders in this study. The role of these constituents’ leaders is to work as partners to promote the best interest of the school and to ensure its development through the provision of quality education for all learners at the school (SASA 20.1(c). The study sought knowledge as to whether these democratically elected leaders represented their constituencies or saw such representation as a selfish opportunism in the school partnership based in Durban South area. Discovery of this nature was going to provide a useful information and understanding of school governing bodies’ input in school partnership. Knowledge of this nature was needed since Khuzwayo (2007) reveals that during the first decade of an introduction of the school governing body (SGB) in South Africa, some SGB leaders often were at loggerheads. The study adopted two theoretical lenses, namely: participative theory and transformational leadership theory. Furthermore, a qualitative approach, entailing semi-structured interviews on purposively selected constituent leaders served as guidance for this study. Findings show that constituent leaders worked collaboratively.