Leading Secondary School Teachers for Organizational learning: A Comparative Case Study of Government and Private Schools in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
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Date
2017-02
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
School leadership is not merely getting hold of the status, but it is having dependable theoretical and
practical attributes the status demands. In order to fulfill the demands of leadership, it is normal to
challenge followers in scholarly ways and to be challenged by followers for the good of the organization.
This is one possible way of differentiating a leader from a manager. Thus, the study was targeted to
explore how the actual school principals’ actions enhanced/discouraged the commitment of teachers to
organizational learning in the selected schools. The study was initiated because of two basic reasons.
The primary reason was that lack of research evidence’ of how leadership actions and competencies
inspire teachers for organizational learning. Second, although leadership actions are decisive for
schools’ success, the school principals’ roles as a leader were not recognized by the society. In a similar
way, management functions are more credited than leadership roles by the actors themselves in
Ethiopia. Qualitative case study was used as a research design and semi- structured interview,
observation, and document analysis were the data gathering tools. The findings show that the school
principals and teachers have similar perception of the importance of organizational learning. Although
they have similar insights about the concept and importance of organizational learning; its
implementation was not the same in the studied government and private secondary schools. The major
finding of the study reveals that the government school principal was perceived by teachers as ineffective
in leading OL. They felt that CPD as one of the strategies for organizational learning is top-down by its
design and it does not match to the realities in the school. The school principal used transactional
leadership approach to achieve the school’s goals and applied his legitimate power in leading the
teachers for work place learning. The teachers complained that their ideas were not given attention and
not valued. Senior teachers considered themselves as master minds of the school because of their long
years teaching experience and they discouraged novice teachers when they come up with new ideas.
Sense of "we" and "they" was deep-rooted between the school management and teachers. A culture of
working together was not well developed; teachers blame the school administration and the school
administration accuses the teachers. On the contrary, leadership actions in the private school were
transformative. The school principal had shown adequate potential to motivate and persuade the
teachers to learn new things and he had been willing to listen to teachers' voices, to read teachers'
interests and needs. He served as a role- model by making himself life-long leader-learner in his
retirement ages, valued collective endeavors and an individual’s contributions. The teachers were also
open to accept new ideas, professional comments and they visited each other’s classrooms and tried
together new pedagogical arts. At the institution level new ideas were welcomed regardless of power
and position. The teachers solved the school problems together, valued collective endeavors and an
individual’s contributions, visited each other’s’ classrooms and tried together new pedagogical
practices.
Key words: leadership, transformational leadership, organizational learning, and learning culture
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Keywords
leadership, transformational leadership, organizational learning, and learning culture