Abstract
The thrust of education policy and legislation in South Africa points to a quest for democracy, equity and social justice throughout the education system. Notwithstanding, research suggests that different stakeholders experience schools as socially unjust and marginalising in some way. This article reports findings of a follow-up qualitative case study of one purposively sampled Soweto secondary school. The study sought to explore the principal’s social justice leadership strategies which account for the school being perceived as democratically transformed and socially just. Data were collected through a series of in-depth semi-structured interviews and observations. Data analysis followed Tesch’s steps for open coding. Findings suggest that the principal’s personal values and commitment to social justice principles account for his resilience in the face of resistance and systemic barriers. The principal’s social justice leadership practices and barriers that he encountered are outlined.
Highlights
School Management Teams (SMTs) processes overseen by principals are often characterised by undemocratic and socially unjust practices [1, 20, 28, 29 and 32]
Being a township secondary school, it falls in the category of schools that are generally considered to be dysfunctional [30;33;35], and which are characterised by, among others, violence, corporal punishment for learners, poor quality of teaching, low learner achievement, poor discipline from learners and teachers and, drug and alcohol abuse [17 and 33]
This study focused on one case, an individual secondary school principal who was purposively selected
Summary
SMTs processes overseen by principals are often characterised by undemocratic and socially unjust practices [1, 20, 28, 29 and 32]This study was a follow-up on two earlier studies of five and three public secondary schools from the Soweto section of Johannesburg West District (D-12). The second study examined the nature and manifestation of transformative leadership for social justice in township schools. More than any other school in these studies, this school was perceived by the majority of respondents as responsive, democratically transformed and socially just. It is reasonable to expect these features to pose social justice challenges to school leaders, especially when a school has an informal settlement as one of its feeder areas. In the case of this school, the informal settlement which is its feeder area is ranked among the seven most deprived wards out of 109, in the City of Johannesburg (Patel, Korth & Forrester, 2008). The significance of outlining this background lies in that both leadership [26] and social justice [23] are context-specific and how leaders discharge their responsibilities is reportedly influenced by student background factors like socio-economic status, ethnicity and culture [2]
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