'n Mentorskapmodel vir die professionele opleiding van skoolleiers

Abstract

During the past decades the role of school leaders drastically changed. Growing pressure for effective school management led to a worldwide realization that the appointment of school leaders who are theoretically well trained is not enough: they need continuous support to manage and lead effectively. Formal mentorship, as a powerful stimulus for professional development, empowers school leaders with the necessary continuous assistance to manage the school in a complex environment. In South Africa the abovementioned discourse led to the development and implementing of a national professional school leaders’ training-programme with mentorship as an integral component and an indispensable part of the school leader’s and prospective school leader’s professional development. The Department of Education provided broad or general recommendations for implementing mentorship as an integral part of the school leaders’ training-programme. Because of the distinctive context and situational circumstances, the broad directions caused higher teaching institutions to each implementing a programme differentiating from the other (Bush, 2012) - from which can be deduced that the implementing in practice occurs on a trial and error base. The literature stresses the value of formal mentorship as part of professional development, but suggests that there is inadequate scientific research on school leaders’ training programmes with an integral formal mentorship component. A study done by Bush et al. (2011) in which the effectiveness of the national professional school leaders’ training programme in South Africa was researched, came to the conclusion that an in-depth reflection and revision of the integral mentorship component of the school leaders’ training programme is necessary (Bush et al., 2011). Interviews with purposefully selected participants directly involved in the national school leaders’ training-programme were conducted to investigate the position of mentorship as an integral part of the school leaders’ training-programme. These interviews yielded valuable views regarding mentorship in general and the implementation of mentorship as an integral part of the school leaders’ training-programme. I was therefore able to gather first-hand knowledge about the implementing of mentorship as integral component in a national school leaders’ training-programme. Through these findings a model for mentorship for the professional training of school leaders as integral part of a school leader training-programme was developed and recommendations were made.