Cultivating Leadership into Secondary Mathematics Classrooms: Putting Belief into Practice

Abstract

Effective leadership is critical for the success of an educational organization. Leadership is also one of the key professional responsibilities of teachers. However, leadership often remains an abstract concept even for teachers in leadership positions owing to administrative tasks, day-to-day issues, problems reaching students’ achievement targets, and demanding deadlines. Therefore, this study aims to identify the most common type of leadership possessed by secondary mathematics teachers in Brunei Darussalam. We also investigated whether mathematics teacher-leaders are putting their beliefs into action in their teaching practice. There were three leadership styles identified in the study: Autocratic, Democratic and Laissez-faire. In order to meet the objectives of this small-scale case study, a questionnaire was adapted and distributed to 17 secondary mathematics teachers in two secondary schools in Brunei Darussalam. Pearson's correlation was used to identify the factors affecting teacher's leadership style. One finding from the quantitative analysis indicated that teachers are more likely to adopt the autocratic style of leadership as their teaching experience of mathematics increase. On the other hand, the qualitative part of the study involved two classroom observations and further interviews with two selected teachers from each of the participating schools. The analysis revealed that the two teachers, who practiced democratic and autocratic leadership styles respectively, do put what they believe into their classroom practices.