Promoting inclusiveness through an inclusive leadership framework in culturally diverse South African schools

Abstract

Appropriate leadership practices that could move South African schools beyond highly diverse entities to inclusiveness and aimed at creating more culturally desegregated schools, have not accompanied post-apartheid policies since 1994.This discrepancy between policy, leadership practices and realities in schools have created issues that have made cultural integration, social cohesion and performance in schools wanting. The need for research that contributes both in theory and in practice to leadership suitable for engendering inclusiveness in culturally diverse schools became axiomatic. The Social Identity approach, Symbolic Interactionism as well as Maslow's human motivation theory was used as the lens to understand the potential role and importance of diverse cultural groups and leadership in these schools. Diversity and cultural inclusivity were used in an organisational context to explain the complexity of the South African context and the expected role of leaders to ensure inclusivity in schools. The main research question for the research was: Which leadership framework can be provided for inclusive leadership in culturally diverse South African schools? The aim of the research was to have a better understanding of the leadership role in complex and diverse school context to ensure inclusivity and to this seems unique to South Africa, and must be in a framework that provide guidelines for improving current situations in schools where potential problems with regard to inclusivity are frequently experienced. The phenomenological qualitative research paradigm, in congruence with the interpretivist philosophical orientation was employed. Use was made of semi-structured interviews with principal as principal data collecting tool and focus groups interviews with teachers and learners, for triangulation, as well as qualitative content analysis was employed. 53 volunteers made up of principals, teachers, and learners from different South African cultural groups, and immigrants from other African countries, from purposively sampled private and state high schools with dominant cultures, participated in the study.