Question 1: You are a recently appointed school rector who is presently observing the school structure and culture. You have noticed that the teachers frequently bargain with management to achieve their responsibilities.
a) What strategies would you use to alter the prevailing transactional leadership culture to a transformational culture?
b) By closely referring to Mauritian context, what are the challenges which prevent the school leader from becoming a moral agent and what must be done to support him/her?
Question 2: Our kids bring all sorts of issues with them to school that are often overlooked when it comes to academic accomplishment. Most of these issues centre on race, poverty, class, gender, religion, dysfunctional families and disability. Most of the administrators and teachers working with these kids just do not seem to know how to handle such problems and might want to help, however in most of the instances they require to follow regulations and policies.
Sometimes, they are fearful of getting to the underlying causes as to why such kids are not doing what is expected of them. They are as well reluctant to acknowledge that the real issues might not be students at all, however may lie with a rule, teaching or leadership or might simply be a problem of context or environment. I've always believed that if a policy or rule does not work then it requires to be changed”. (Extract of Interview with Anthony Normore)
a) The concept of leadership for Community-Building is an emerging concept that is necessary to understand contemporary leadership studies. Explain the advantages of leading for community-building.
b) According to Riley, describe the three steps which school leaders can take to establish a new leadership that will help to make a new relationship with the external community.
Question 3: Those women who have accomplished positions that are held predominantly by men have realized, consciously or unconsciously, that there are social roles and expectations governing the role of females from the culture. They should become abnormal women; they should transcend the social expectations of femaleness in order to aspire to the socially prescribed role of leader. And since they do not fit the expectations of the attributes of leaders, they are as well abnormal administrator.
(Schmuck 1996, p.356).
a) According to literature, what are the main factors that prevented and are presently preventing women to undertake leadership positions?
b) What are the distinguishing features of the female leadership style? Supplement your answer with illustrations from the school context.
Question 4: It is frequently seen that societal culture is beyond the control of educational leaders however heads and principals are able to influence organizational culture.
a) In what manners ‘societal culture’ influences the school?
b) How can principals use the school’s organizational culture so as to fight the negative affects of societal culture?