Chronicling the Barriers to Translating Instructional Leadership Learning into Practice

This paper presents and discusses the barriers that some school principals experience when translating instructional leadership learning into practice at their respective schools. The paper is based on research that was conducted among school principals that had completed the Advanced Certificate in Education: School Leadership at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Weber's model of instructional leadership for school leaders was utilised in trying to understand the principals' leadership practices. Qualitative questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used to generate data. Krueger's' framework analysis was used as a tool to analyse the data. The results show that the barriers to translating instructional leadership learning into practise comprise educator apathy, high workloads, lack of support from various stakeholders, poor parental involvement, challenges in leading and managing change, teacher unionism and lack of resources.