Abstract:
School effectiveness and improvement research has increasingly accepted that the
success of a school is to a large extent influenced by the manner in which a
headteacher perceives and performs his/her work in the school. Consequently, what
school leaders do and how they are prepared for their work have, in recent times,
become crucial. This study sought to explore, through an interpretive approach, how
primary school headteachers within one district of Ghana - the Komenda-EguafoEdina-
Agona-Abrem (KEEA) district, perceive their role as heads and their
professional development.
The study, which was based on semi-structured interviews, observation and focus
group discussion, suggests that tradition, culture and the political geography of Ghana
are crucial factors in understanding what primary school headteachers in the KEEA
district do and how they conceptualise headship. Headteachers' understanding of
headship is skewed towards the exercise of 'power and authority'. The country's
urban-rural dichotomies are characterised by teacher shortages and female
headteacher under-representation in rural schools; thereby causing rural headteachers
to lead the school and at the same time manage a full-time teaching load. These are
compounded by frequent interactions with visitors, attending to incidents in school,
collecting fees and keeping financial records and, in some cases, inspecting building
projects, which meant pupils being left on their own in the classroom while the head
attended to other matters. It is further suggested that the range and complexity of the
tasks undertaken by the headteachers and how they construed their visions are to a
large extent shaped by expectations which significant others (the Ministry of
Education, the School Management Committees, parents, the local community,
teachers and pupils) hold of them.
Coping with the challenges posed by public demands requires that headteachers
develop the appropriate 'competences' and 'competencies'. Yet the data suggest that
the headteachers, among other things, lacked competence in managing people,
managing time and keeping financial records confidently. This implies a need not
simply for more careful selection but for a more sophisticated approach to recruitment
and sustained professional development of headteachers in the district. Two major
questions emerge from my study, which require further investigation: (i). To what
extent does the under-representation of female headteachers affect the attitude of
girls towards learning in rural schools, (ii). To what extent does the indigenous
language influence the understanding of contemporary school leadership issues
among headteachers in Ghana?
