School principals' leadership in managing low and high performing teachers: a South African case study

There is a plethora of literature on what makes schools high performing, on what reduces the performance of schools, and on the causes of teacher ineffectiveness. However, little is known about how school principals manage low- and high-performing teachers to ensure and sustain high learner performance. In this paper, I focus on the role played by the principal in leading and managing low- and high-performing teachers. I draw from the findings of a study on eight primary school principals from Limpopo Province in South Africa. This multiple-site, case study design used semi-structured interviews to generate data. The analysis of the findings shows the 'hands-on' and 'hands-off' approaches of the principals in managing low-performing teachers, while high-performing teachers were recognised, motivated and encouraged to both develop leadership skills and work collaboratively to improve the performance of low-performing teachers. The paper argues that school principals need to develop transformational leadership characteristics, as is evident in this study, to lead and manage low- as well as high-performing teachers, and it concludes by suggesting a collaborative, professional development relationship between principals and teachers.