Influence of school contexts on leadership practices: putting deputy principals under the microscope

Abstract

The study reported herein examined the influence of school contexts on leaders’ leadership practices in South Africa. To this end, deputy principals were put under the microscope to scrutinize the relationship between their leadership practices and the school contexts in which they operate. The narrative inquiry—a qualitative methodology—was adopted to engage with deputy principals’ lived experiences. Five deputy principals were purposively and conveniently sampled, each representing a different school context. Narrative ways of generating and analyzing field texts were utilized. The findings revealed disparities in the influence of school contexts on the deputy principals’ leadership practices. While lower Quintile schools appeared to subject deputy principals to a state of leadership deficit, higher Quintile schools appeared to be springboards that enable the leadership endeavors of deputy principals. These disparities reflect inconsistencies in South African communities, mostly characterized by social and economic inequality.