TY - JOUR
T1 - Ghana's basic education Headteacher leadership
T2 - critical discourse analysis of the Headteachers’ handbook
AU - Dare, Philip Saagyum
AU - Babaeff, Robyn
AU - Henderson, Linda
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2024
Y1 - 2024
N2 - The Ghana Education Service created the Headteachers' Handbook, a policy document that outlines Headteacher leadership practices. A recent review of Ghana's basic education Headteacher Leadership literature reported that these practices align within a hierarchy-horizontal leadership framework and are enacted within predetermined boundaries specific to the context. Therefore, this paper examined the Handbook's Forward, Introduction, Managing Your School, and Improving the Quality of Learning sections using Fairclough's (2001. Language and Power. 2nd ed. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education) three-stage approach to critical discourse analysis to identify how leadership is constructed and produced. The study shows that the Handbook constructs Headteacher leadership through relational authority, producing responsibilization, accountability, obligations and constraint roles. As such, Headteachers have discourse constraints and limitations when enacting leadership through this predetermined discourse. This paper provides a point of reference for present and potential researchers and Headteachers to theorize about the future of Headteacher leadership in Ghana.
AB - The Ghana Education Service created the Headteachers' Handbook, a policy document that outlines Headteacher leadership practices. A recent review of Ghana's basic education Headteacher Leadership literature reported that these practices align within a hierarchy-horizontal leadership framework and are enacted within predetermined boundaries specific to the context. Therefore, this paper examined the Handbook's Forward, Introduction, Managing Your School, and Improving the Quality of Learning sections using Fairclough's (2001. Language and Power. 2nd ed. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education) three-stage approach to critical discourse analysis to identify how leadership is constructed and produced. The study shows that the Handbook constructs Headteacher leadership through relational authority, producing responsibilization, accountability, obligations and constraint roles. As such, Headteachers have discourse constraints and limitations when enacting leadership through this predetermined discourse. This paper provides a point of reference for present and potential researchers and Headteachers to theorize about the future of Headteacher leadership in Ghana.
KW - basic education
KW - critical discourse analysis
KW - Ghana education service/handbook
KW - headteacher leadership
KW - School leadership
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85204169912&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/00220620.2024.2403502
DO - 10.1080/00220620.2024.2403502
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85204169912
SN - 0022-0620
JO - Journal of Educational Administration and History
JF - Journal of Educational Administration and History
ER -