Creating and Sustaining Conditions for Improved Teaching and Learning: An Ethnographic Case Study of One Secondary School

There are substantive external demands for improved learner achievement, particularly in secondary schools in South Africa. Increasingly, school principals have to bear the pressures that accompany these demands. Given this background, a qualitative case study was undertaken to explore the instructional leadership practices in Umlazi District in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The study sought to understand how the principal who had recently joined the school, managed to create conditions wherein improved learner outcomes could be achieved. It also sought to ascertain strategies the principal used to sustain the conditions for improved academic achievement of the learners. Purposive sampling was used to identify the school. A school principal, a head of department and a teacher participated in the study. Semi-structured interviews were used to generate data. A documents review was also conducted to triangulate data from semi-structured interviews. The findings suggest that the principal enacted instructional leadership in five dominant ways, and also that learner outcomes improved.