Abstract
Orientation: Invitational leadership (IL) is consistent with current leadership trends and, because South African schools are in need of sound leadership, it is necessary to have a framework that can guide principals to act in accordance with the expectations of their educators.Research purpose: This study challenges the internationally accepted ‘Four Corner Press’ of Purkey and Novak (1984) as a framework for IL in the South African school context.Motivation for the study: IL appears to be a comprehensive model for successful school leadership. This necessitated an investigation to determine whether the ‘Four Corner Press’ reflects the expectations of teachers and, if so, whether it could serve as a valuable leadership tool.Research design, approach and method: A questionnaire containing 31 Likert-scale items, underpinned by the principles of IL, was disseminated to 600 educators conveniently drawn from the population of 88 828 teachers in Free State and Eastern Cape schools.Main findings: The data obtained from the survey enabled the researchers to perform a factor analysis, which revealed that South African educators’ expectations of leadership aligned with the ‘Four Corner Press’.Managerial implications: The ‘Four Corner Press’ can be used as a plausible framework for IL in South African schools, which has implications for the development and training of principals.Contribution/value-add: The ‘Four Corner Press’ can be regarded as a reliable prototype of IL expectations within the South African context, which contributes to extending the body of knowledge of education leadership in South Africa.
Highlights
This study challenges the ‘Four Corner Press’ of Purkey and Novak (1984) as a framework for creating an invitational environment in South African schools
As effective leaders have a great impact on the attitudes and beliefs of their followers, South Africans are in need of leaders who are able to create an environment in which education will flourish in order to save the South African education system from a crisis (Morrow, 2008)
A principal component analysis (PCA) formed part of the factor analysis to reduce the data to a few significant clusters, after which a varimax rotation assigned eigenvalues to the significant clusters, enabling the researchers to determine that the South African teachers’ expectations of invitational leadership (IL) in their schools are similar to those reflected in the ‘Four Corner Press’
Summary
This study challenges the ‘Four Corner Press’ of Purkey and Novak (1984) as a framework for creating an invitational environment in South African schools. Invitational leadership (IL) is consistent with most current leadership trends by being less hierarchical and following a more collaborative, human-directed approach to the leading of organisations. Research by numerous researchers, such as Sergiovanni (1992), Schein (2000) and Yukl (2005), revealed that the educational leader exerts a greater influence on the school than any other factor. This notion is further extended by Bruffee (1999) and Furman (2002), who emphasise good leadership for the successful creation of a wellbalanced and healthy organisation. As effective leaders have a great impact on the attitudes and beliefs of their followers, South Africans are in need of leaders who are able to create an environment in which education will flourish in order to save the South African education system from a crisis (Morrow, 2008)
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