Teacher leadership for supporting learners in an Islamic school context

Abstract

Teacher leadership is an essential research focus area in wealthy nations with well-established democracies. In South Africa, teacher leadership research is still emerging. The focus has been on shifting the role of the principal to more distributed forms of leadership which recognises the informal roles that teacher-leaders play including addressing contextual and cultural issues. Teacher leadership for supporting learners1 with regard to their learning in an Islamic context does not feature in South African literature. Therefore, this study aimed to explore how teacher-leaders lead to support children’s learning in an Islamic school environment. The conceptual framework underpinning this study was informed by an Islamic worldview and education priorities in a secular democracy. The study was conducted in the Pretoria West region with three private schools that catered for predominantly Muslim children. Eight teacher-leaders from these schools participated in the study. The data was generated through semi-structured interviews.

The findings revealed that teacher-leaders supported children’s learning through different context-related dimensions. As God’s trustees and active agents of knowledge generation and skills development, the teacher-leaders utilised their Islamic theological frame of reference to guide their work. They enacted the principles of distributed, spiritual, and servant leadership to execute their responsibilities. Additionally, they positioned themselves as communicators, motivators, monitors, confidence-builders, mentors and knowledge disseminators to have impact on the school community. Moreover, they were enabled to lead effectively and efficiently via collaboration and relationship-building processes based on trust and intrinsic motivation. Although they were constrained in their work through bureaucratic processes that affected innovation, heavy workloads that reduced time for individual attention, and incorrect techniques of interventions, teacher-leaders were resilient. The study concludes with a call to Muslim scholars and educationists to give more attention to teacher-leadership in the Islamic school context. This meeting of minds and learning exchanges can positively influence teacher-leaders' shared understandings, programmes, and professional development.