The Significance of School Leadership for Primary School Children's Learning and Health in Rural Contexts — Part 2

• In Event: Schools as Enabling Spaces to Improve Learning and Health Outcomes in Rural South Africa — Part 2

Abstract

"Objectives
Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted and exacerbated the challenges for rural schools (Gross & Opalka 2020). This underlines the importance of reviewing and rethinking school leaders’ role in securing an environment for learning and improvement in the challenging times (Arar & Örücü 2021). This paper examines how and why leadership quality is of significant importance for the learning and healthy development of primary school children living in remote rural communities.

Methods
Systematic reviews of published empirical studies in the areas of school leadership, school improvement and early childhood development were carried out to explore the role of schooling in supporting young children’s learning and healthy development in rural contexts and middle-and-low-income countries. In addition, the research also collected complementary survey data from 300 teachers and school leaders from schools in different contexts across the country to explore their experiences in the current challenging times.

Results
The results of the systematic reviews and the teacher survey point to two interrelated key findings. First, despite the significance of leadership in addressing education quality in schools, there is limited empirical research on leadership practice and effects in rural schools, and in low-and-medium-income countries especially. Amongst the 32 papers that are included in the review, there are only two of them have an explicit focus on school leadership (Miller 2015; Nekongo-Nielsen & Ngololo 2019). Miller’s case study (2015) on four small primary schools in rural Jamaica found that principals often struggled to benefit from leadership training either because of their reluctance to be away from the school or the lack of relevance of the training contents to their specific needs. The research by Nekongo-Nielsen and Ngololo (2020) in 10 primary and combined-phase rural schools in Namibia reported how teacher learning is significantly affected by principals’ leadership.

Although some of the remaining papers reported why leadership mattered to teachers (Manwa, Mukeredzi, & Manwa 2016; Mudumbi 2017; Anasız1 & Püsküllüoğlu 2018), cultures of isolation (or collaboration) (Wang et al. 2017), and the implementation of intervention programmes in rural schools (Albers, Seely Flint & Matthews, 2019), they provided limited evidence on how leadership had worked (or not worked) to make a difference in these schools. The results of the teacher survey, and the structural equation modelling analysis especially, add important empirical evidence to explain how leadership had impacted on teachers’ commitment and job satisfaction in schools with different student intake characteristics.

Second, quality early childhood development and education are fundamental to future health, well-being, and long-term human development. Research shows that the integration of health, nutrition and education in early childhood interventions can lead to improved educational and developmental outcomes (Britto et al., 2017; Richter et al., 2016). However, conceptualisations of what constitutes ""quality"" early childhood provision is often variable and hard to define, and many would argue, best understood within the social and cultural context of children and families (LeVine & New, 2008). The findings have important implications for understandings of the challenges as well as opportunities to contribute to impact on policy and practice."

Authors

• Huiming Ding, University of Leeds

• Qing Gu, University College London Institute of Education

• Lynn Ang, Institute of Education - London

• Patrick Callaghan, London South Bank University

• Liesel Ebersohn, University of Pretoria

• Hannelie Du Preez, Wageningen University & Research

• Peet du Toit, University of Pretoria