Principals’ perceptions of the motivation potential of performance agreements in underperforming schools

Deconstructing Leadership: Engaging Leading through a Socially Constructed Process

“…Sources about leading and leadership in education repeatedly point to the significance of leading successfully and detail ideal types of leadership for various reasons, stemming from habits and social phenomenon [13], socialisation and leader identity [14], leadership in extreme contexts [10] and values driven leadership for improvement of performance [15][16][17]. In order for us to probe the context of this purported success, we need to identify the constructs associated with this achievement.…”

“…Leading in extreme contexts largely remain a path for deeper exploration. Contexts that are extreme can be categorised as environments that exist under difficult conditions and are mostly characterised by chaos [11], intolerable circumstances [10], underperforming contexts [15,16] and challenging contexts [9,35]. In all these situations, the contexts are fraught with negative social issues that, to a great extent, contribute to the situation.…”

“…In light of the above, the circumstances under which leaders in these contexts' work is discouraging. Resulting into low level of motivation and inability to account for occurrences and poor performance in their institutions [16]. They often have a sense of powerlessness and are not able to turn their situation and performance around [9].…”

“…They often have a sense of powerlessness and are not able to turn their situation and performance around [9]. Apparently intensifying the performance agreement of leaders can enable the correct improvement because such agreements are linked to development [16]. Sadly most of such performance agreements in these contexts are said to be superficial [11], implying that whatever development scheduled from such outcomes, may equally not address the real areas for development for these leaders.…”

Informing principal policy reforms in South Africa through data-based evidence

“…Increased accountability for principals goes hand-in-hand with improvements at a district level to support and monitor schools (Elmore 2000). Finally, performance management is likely to be met with considerable resistance not only from teacher unions, but from principals themselves if they feel that the system is unfair or that there are too many variables affecting their performance that they feel are outside of their control (Heystek 2015). These concerns are expressed in a context where they have no control over hiring and firing of those they are appointed to lead.…”