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CHAPTER THREE RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 2 constitutes the theoretical framework for the research. It explores what literature exposes about shared school leadership and its relevance for school discipline. This chapter describes the research aims, the research design and methods applicable to this investigation. A research design indicates the general plan of the research. This includes when, from whom and under what conditions the data will be gathered. It indicates how the research is set up, what happens to the subjects and what methods of data collection are used (McMillan & Schumacher, 2006:22). A research design is a procedural plan that is adopted to answer questions validly, accurately and objectively. This chapter explains the approaches and methodology that are used in finding answers to the research questions that are stated for this investigation.
RESTATEMENT OF THE RESEARCH QUESTION
The main research question of the study is: What are secondary school principals’ perceptions of shared school leadership and what is the relationship between shared school leadership and the exercise of sound school discipline in Mpumalanga secondary schools? Out of this main research question, the following sub-questions were formulated (cf section 1.3):
i. What is the nature and rationale for shared school leadership?
ii. What are the practices and perceptions of principals of shared school leadership in Mpumalanga senior secondary schools?
iii. How is shared leadership related to school discipline?
iv. What effects does the school principal’s leadership style have on educators and learners in the school and classroom situations?
v. What recommendations can be made on the basis of this research in order to make the implementation of sound school discipline to be successful?
AIMS OF THE RESEARCH
The main purpose of this study is to extend the knowledge and widen the understanding of shared school leadership and its relevance for school discipline. The study attempts to provide specific answers to the research question alluded to.A researcher has to clearly indicate what (s)heintends achieving with a research project. As mentioned in Chapter 1 (cf section 1.4), the aims of this research are to:
i. Describe key issues and strategies of effective shared school leadership with a view to producing a conceptual framework within which this study will be located.
ii. Determine the nature and rationale for shared school leadership
iii. Explore the participation of stakeholders within the school organizational structure
iv. Determine the practices and perceptions of school principals in the Mpumalanga secondary schools in terms of shared school leadership as they confront the challenges of school discipline.
v. Design a model for exercising sound school discipline through shared school leadership.
A detailed discussion of the research design and methodology that was used in this study is presented in the following section.
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
The following research design has a bearing on the study.
Research design
Research design refers to the detailed plan of how a research project will be undertaken (Fouche& De Vos 1998:124, McMillan & Schumacher, 2006:20). It provides the basis according to which the data is to be collected to investigate the research question. According to Hopkins (1976:237), the collection and analysis technique that best suits the problem and is expected to provide the most reliable and valid data should be employed. The researcher should select the research approach after the consideration of the aim of the research, the nature of the research question and the resources (informative subjects) available to him or her (Schurink, 1998b:253). In this study the researcher used a qualitative research design, amongst other things, because he wanted to obtain insights into the perceptions and views of school principals with regard to shared school leadership and its relevance for school discipline. The participants were directly involved in the educational context and were able to provide valid information which the researcher was able to use for the final suggestions and recommendations on shared school leadership and its relevance for school discipline.
According to Rubin and Babbie (as cited by De Vos, 1998a: 46),to compile a research design, the researcher should commence with examining the relevant literature, filing his or her knowledge of the subject, and learning what others say about it.
Qualitative research
Qualitative research is one of the approaches that researchers use when they want to expose information and knowledge and analyze data about the nature of reality or the world. According to Kvale (1996:31) the qualitative research interview seeks to describe and understand the meaning of central themes in the life-world of the participants. The main task in interviewing is to understand the meaning of what the interviewees say. A 67 qualitative approach requires that the researcher interpret the real world from the perspective of the participants of his or her investigation. Mason (1997:4) supports this view by stating that qualitative research is concerned with how the social world is interpreted, understood or produced. This is a naturalistic or interpretative enquiry undertaken within the habitat of the subjects so that meanings and intentions that underlie human actions are understood and interpreted in relation to their context (Schurink, 1998a:240).
According to Hittleman (1997:43) the issue of context is at the core of qualitative research. The researcher collects the data within the natural setting of the informants. He is concerned with understanding people’s experiences in context. The natural setting is where the researcher is likely to reveal what is known about the phenomenon of interest from the perspective of those studied. In this study the context was a number of secondary schools and participants werethe principals employed at these secondary schools. The researcher was the main data collecting instrument (Ary, Jacobs, Razavieh& Sorensen, 2006: 449-450). He was engaged in different types of interviews with carefully selected subjects, whom he believed would provide “rich, contextual and detailed data” (Mason, 1997:4) based on their experiences of and opinions related to the phenomenon, namely the phenomenon of shared school leadership and its relevance for school discipline. The setting and the people to be studied was anticipated, planned and carefully selected. Principals of secondary schools in the Nkangala district of Mpumalanga were interviewed. Sampling was purposive.
The main purpose of qualitative research, according to Hittleman (1997: 42) is to describe, interpret, verify and assess data. In this study the researcher collected the data in an attempt to understand the subjects’ experiences and insights about the phenomenon, that is, shared school leadership and its relevance for school discipline. He described topics, themes and categories that emanate from words and meanings that form the data and then report the findings in a descriptive way. This is further discussed in Chapter 4.
This research is also interpretative in nature. According to Hittleman (1997:43), the concept ‘interpretative analysis’ denotes that from the insights given, the researcher develops new concepts or elaborates on existing ones. It can also be utilized to develop new theories. Here the insights provided were used to formulate a number of guidelines and recommendations on how shared school leadership can be implemented successfully in the secondary schools.
The researcher entered the world of the participant, analyzed the conversation and interaction he had with the participants so that he could understand and interpret the meaning of their experiences and perspectives about the phenomenon. The data was systematically collected and analyzed within a particular context (De Vos&Fouche: 1998a:80). The phenomenon focused on here is shared school leadership and its relevance for sound school discipline. Principals explained how they share leadership with different stakeholders and how relevantthe sharing is for sound school discipline. The researcher studied their perceptions, attempted to gain deep insight and knowledge and described their understandings of the alluded phenomenon being investigated.
Descriptive research
Descriptive research deals with questions based in the current state of affairs (McMillan & Schumacher. 2006:22). According to Allison, Owen, Rothwell, O’Sullivan, Saunders and Rice (1996:14) a descriptive approach sets out to seek precise and adequate descriptions of the activities, objects, processes and persons involved in the study. The aim of a descriptive approach is to provide a detailed description of the phenomenon. Kvale (1996:32) corroborates by stating that descriptive approach requires subjects to describe as precisely as possible what they experience and feel, and how they act. In view of this claim, a descriptive approach was used address the fundamental research question that was posed (cf section 1.3). This study sought to provide an accurate description of how the principals experience shared leadership in the Nkangala district, in order to develop and describe principles and guidelines for principals to effectively implement shared leadership in secondary schools. The researcher was expected to facilitate this process by following an open and flexible research strategy. According to Mouton 69 (1996:102) the researcher should be aware of the idea that to describe accurately would vary with the context.
Explorative research
According to Mouton and Marais (1996:43) an explorative approach to the research helps to lead to the insight and comprehension of the phenomenon. A qualitative exploratory approach enables the researcher to share in the understanding and perceptions of others and to explore how people structure and give answers to their daily lives (Berg, 1995:7). This implies that the researcher has to be willing to discover new ideas and suggestions and not permit pre-conceived ideas as well as hypotheses to influence the research. This study was explorative in that it attempted to understand how principals share leadership in secondary schools.
Contextual research
Contextual research focuses on participants within a particular context so as to gain an understanding of the participants within that context. This study was contextual in nature because it was concerned with the unique context of shared leadership in secondary schools in the Nkangala district of Mpumalanga. Principals provided an extensive description of their experiences in their specific context. In this way the researcher was able to uncover the true behaviour shown by people when observed in their own real life context (Maykut& Morehouse, 1994:45). The study employed descriptive, explorative and contextual research designs, as aspects of qualitative research, due to their applicability to the nature of the general research question, namely: What are secondary school principals’ perceptions of shared school leadership and what is the relationship between shared leadership and the exercise of sound school discipline in Mpumalanga secondary schools?
Having discussed the broad research design, it is now necessary to give an exposition of the specific research methods to be employed.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
According to Mason (1997:35) research methodology refers to the method of collecting data in a study. It focuses on the sources and the methods to be used in generating the required data. Schurink (1998b:252) states that it includes identifying and setting the boundary for gathering information as well as subjects to provide relevant and valid information. The researcher and the participants interact so that the researcher gains deeper insight, knowledge and understanding of their experiences about the phenomenon (Bailey, 2007:63).
The strategies for collecting data for this research were individual interviews, observation and literature study.
Individual interviews
An interview is a purposeful interaction between two or more people focused on one person in an endeavor to get information from the other person (Gay &Airasian, 2003:209). Merriam (1998:23) points out that the purpose of interviewing is to find out what is on someone else’s mind and since this cannot be directly observed or measured, the researcher has to ask questions in such a way as to obtain meaningful information. The purpose of interviewing is to understand the experience of other people and the meaning they make of that experience. The primary way a researcher can investigate an educational institution, or process, through the experience of individual people, is to interview the “others” who make up the organization or carry out the projects. Social abstractions like education are best understood through the experiences of the individuals whose work and lives are the stuff upon which the abstractions are built (Seidman, 2006:9-10, Hesse-Biber, 2006:123, Denzin, 2007:235). According to Walsh (2001:65), interviews are similar to questionnaires in that they are organized around a series of questions and rely on interviewees being able to answer and tell the “truth” as they see it. 71
Interviews in qualitative research are regarded as the dominant strategy for data collection, or they may be used in conjunction with participant observation and document analysis ( Bogda&Biklen, 2007:64).
The semi-structured interviews are used to explore the topic under discussion more openly and to allow the participants to freely express their opinions (Esterberg, 2002:87). Individual interviews were conducted with principals in order to establish their perceptions of shared leadership and its relevance for sound school discipline.
An interview as a qualitative research method has various advantages. According to Bailey (1994:174) the following are the advantages of an interview:
• It is flexible because the interviewers may probe for more specific answers and can rephrase a question when the response indicates that the respondent misunderstood.
• It tends to have a better response rate than mailed questionnaires. Persons who are illiterate can still answer questions in an interview, and others who are reluctant to expend the energy to write out their responses may be willing to talk.
• The researcher can observe nonverbal behaviour and assess the validity of the subject’s responses
• The researcher may have control over the environment by standardizing the interview environment by making sure that the interview is carried out in privacy, that there is no noise, and this is different from the mailed study because the questionnaires may be completed by various people under diverse conditions.
• The researcher has control over the questions by ensuring that all of them are answered.
• The researcher has control over the order of questions by ensuring that the respondent does not answer the questions in any way that may thwart the format of the questionnaire.
• The researcher can record the exact time, date and venue of the interview.
• In it, the respondents cannot “cheat” by receiving prompting answers from others or by having others complete the whole questionnaire for them, as often happens in mailed studies.
• The researcher can record spontaneous answers and the respondent will have no chance to retract his or her first answer and write another, as is possible with a mailed questionnaire.
• A more complex questionnaire can be utilized in an interview study.
Liamputtong and Ezzy (2005:71) also maintain that some additional advantages of interviews include the fact that they are an excellent way of discovering the subject connotations and interpretations that participants provide to their experiences.They also allow aspects of social life that could not be studied in any other way, like social processes and negotiated interactions, to be studied. More significantly, interviews allow new insight and theories to be evolved during research process.
Interviews do, however, have disadvantages. Bailey (1994: 175-176) identifies five disadvantages of the interview method. These are;
• Interview studies can be extremely expensive. The more complex studies need small bureaucracies with a host of administrators, field supervisors, interviews, and perhaps even public relations personnel. Sampling is often costly. Interview schedules can also be costly to construct and to reproduce.
• Interviews are often lengthy and may need the interviewer to travel miles. In addition, the interviewer must arrange the interview for times when the respondent is home, sometimes an interviewer can complete only one or few interviews each day, even though the actual interviewing time may be relatively short.
• Compared to the mailed questionnaire, the interview does not provide the respondent opportunity to conduct research, to check records, to consult family and friends regarding facts, or to ponder his or her reply.
• It may be necessary for the interviewer to probe a great deal, to phrase the same question differently for diverse respondents, or even to ask different questions of different respondents. While this flexibility can be an advantage, it can also be a disadvantage if it makes it difficult for the researcher to compare the respondents’ answers.
• The interviewer ensures that all of the questions are answered and that the respondent understands the instructions and the questions. The interviewer can also cause errors. He or she may understand it but make a clerical error in recording it, or may simply record an answer even when the respondent failed to answer. The respondent’s answers can also be affected by his or her reaction to the interviewer’s gender, race, social class, age, dress and physical appearance or accent.
In this study,the focus was on describing and understanding experiences as relived by the principals.(Schurink, 1998d: 307). The principals of the sampled schools were interviewed in order to discuss how shared leadership is implemented at schools. An interview schedule was prepared. Probing questions followed, emanating from the answers provided by the principals. The interview processes were audio-taped and thereafter transcribed.
Literature study
In order to establish what other researchers have already established with regard to this study’s topic, an extensive literature study was conducted. A review of books, articles, dissertations, magazines, letters and newspapers related to the topic of this investigation was conducted. The researcher used the literature study for the clarification of operational concepts of the research and to find existing information on shared school leadership and its relevance for sound school discipline.
Observation
According to McBurney (1994: 169) observation comprises the researcher observing and recording behaviour without attempting to change the observed behaviour. Walsh (2001:67) states that in a participant observation study, the researcher enters the group or the situation that he or she is studying. Participant observers try to “get to know” the group or the situation from “the inside”. They need to try to understand the motives and the meanings of the people whom they are studying from the point of view of those people. Walsh (2001:67) further states that the objective of this is for the researcher to gain deeper insight into the real way of life, beliefs and activities of the group in their “natural setting”. It is also believed that the researcher’s own experience of the group will give him or her access to data that might not be drawn out from a questionnaire or interview. Kvale (1983:175) states that during the course of an interview the researcher must also be observant of and be able to interpret vocalization, facial expressions and other bodily gestures. In this research the researcher observed how the principals implement shared leadership in their respective schools. He also observed how the other stakeholders are involved in the implementation of shared leadership.
In total, ten weeks were spent with the principals from the ten selected schools, (one week with each school) to gain first- hand experience on how these principals managed to share leadership in their schools. Comprehensive field notes were made throughout the study.
LeCompte and Preissle (1993:195-196) state that participant observers live as much as possible with the individuals they are investigating, trying to blend in and taking part in their daily activities . Participant observers look at what people do, listen to what people say, and interact with the interviewees. According to Merriam (1998:97-98), when observing the researcher can be guided by the following aspects:
• The physical situation: What is the physical situation like? What is the context and what sort of behaviour does the situation promote or restrain?
• The subjects: Describe who is in the scene, how many people are there as well as their responsibilities. What brings these subjects together? Who is permitted here?
• Actions and relationships: What is happening? Is there any sequence of actions? How do the subjects interact with the action and with one another? How are the subjects and actions interrelated?
• Discussion: What is the gist of the discussions in the situation? Who is talking to whom? Who is listening?
• Subtle aspects: During observation aspects like informal and unplanned actions, symbolic as well as connotative meaning of words, non-verbal communication like the code of dress and physical environment will be observed. What will also be observed is what would be happening and if at all it was supposed to have happened.
In this study, the researcher wasguided by the above mentioned aspects. According to Best and Kahn (1993:184) the data from observations consist of detailed descriptions of people’s activities, actions, and the full range of interpretational interactions and organizational processes that are part of observable human experience. A relationship of trust with the researcher usually develops and this encourages participants to expose what they may regard as confidential. According to McMillan (2000:166), by establishing a proper rapport with participants, a skilled interviewer can enhance motivation and thereby obtain information that might not otherwise have been offered. He maintains that more accurate responses can be obtained as the interviewer clarifies questions that the respondent may have and follows up leads through probing.
Criteria for the selection of participants and schools
The research problem involving an investigation into how leadership is shared within secondary schools requires participants such as principals. The participation of principals was mainly voluntary in this investigation. They were obviously involved on account of their schools being selected. There may be some good reasons for the researcher to be selective or purposeful in his sampling as is the case in this investigation.
The researcher purposefully selected particular participants who could be expected to provide informed, quality and reasonableresponses. Those who were willing to participate in this investigation were provided with more information about the purpose of the investigation, instructions and the procedures that were followed. It is assumed that good performing schools are characterized by principals who provide shared leadership and vice versa in bad performing schools.
Five school principals who seemed to show a lack of shared leadership and five who seemed to share all decisions and responsibilities were selected. Five schools which have been ranked by the Mpumalanga Department of Education as high performing (functional) schools and which are assumed to maintain a good standard of discipline were included in the study. These schools should have been performing in a consistent outstanding way over a period of five years based on grade twelve (12) results. Five schools which have been ranked by the Mpumalanga Department of Education as poor performing (dysfunctional schools) and which are assumed to maintain a poor standard of discipline were also included in this study. These schools should have been performing in a consistent poor way over a period of five years based on grade twelve (12) results.
The above-mentioned aspects are important because the better the discipline, the better the general performance, and vice versa (Mtsweni, 2008: 1). According to available literature, effective schools are related to effective management and shared leadership. Hopkins, Ainscow and West (1994: 153) posit that effective and efficient schools’ emphasis rests on teamwork, consultation as well as participation of all relevant stakeholders.
Data collection
The methods that were used to gather information in this investigation were concerned with seeking principals’ verbal information in relation to the way leadership is shared in their schools. The strategies used produced mainly descriptive data based on insights rather than statistical data. The semi-structured, open-ended, individual interviews were used to gather more information from the principals regarding the main research 77 question. An interview schedule was prepared with semi-structured questions and the interviews were audio-taped to provide verbatim records for subsequent analysis. The recorded information was transcribed. Observation was also done in the form of visits to the identified schools for actual field work. Field notes were recorded. Again, data was also collected by means of literature study (Cohen, Manion& Morrison, 2005: 270 – 282, Lodico, Spaulding &Voegtle, 2010: 164-165, Kumar, 2011: 26, Densecombe, 2007: 289).
Pilot study
Strydom (2002b:211) states that pilot study can be viewed as a “dress rehearsal” of the main investigation. It is similar to the researcher’s planned investigation but on a small scale. A pilot study is indispensable for the correct administering of the data. It provides evidence of possible ambiguities or inappropriate questions (Nisbet&Entwistle, 1970:43). It also helps the researcher to get an overview of how much time to plan for during the actual research. It helps the researcher to think well in advance about the analysis of the results. The researcher is also able to identify confusing and ambiguous language, and to obtain information about possible results (Oppenheim, 1992:64). A pilot study using two individual interviews was conducted with principals of selected senior secondary schools in the Nkangala district of Mpumalanga to determine if the desired information would be gained by questions posed and whether the method of questioning would be suitable to attain in-depth information. The pilot study helped the researcher to correct mistakes that may have occurred during the interviews with regard to the interview itself, the environmental setting and the recording. At the end of this exercise, the researcher took note of the time required to conduct the various interviews. The results were discussed with the participants involved to evaluate whether the conclusion arrived at by the researcher were in accordance with the observations and knowledge of the principals
