Leadership identity in a small island developing state: the Jamaican context

Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online's data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. It is widely acknowledged that good leadership and management practice is vital for the success of educational institutions (Bush et al. 2010) and that good leadership and management development programmes are an important aspect of institutional growth (Carmichael et al. 2011). Key benefits of such programmes have been identified by Bubb and Earley (2007) and include positive effects on learning, recruitment and retention, and staff motivation. Previous research suggests, however, that while leadership and management development practices are common in the UK educational system, they are less well established in developing countries even though the pressure on school leaders in such contexts can be " particularly acute " (Bush 2009, p. 377). This finding is coupled with the fact that the majority of research into school leadership and leadership development has tended to focus on Western, industrialised countries and on their related social and organisational structures (Nguni et al. 2006; Simkins et al. 2003; Walker et al. 2013). Consequently, while the role of leadership in improving schools is attracting more worldwide attention (Rhodes and Brundrett 2009), there appears to be a need for more research investigating leaders' experiences in different national settings, acknowledging the vast cultural diversity that exists between countries in relation to school leadership (Oplatka 2004). The purpose of this article, therefore, is to attempt to fill this gap by reporting on research which aimed to explore the background and identities of a group of Jamaican School Leaders who were involved in an ongoing leadership development programme. The programme was set up in collaboration between a UK University and a Jamaican commercial business, undertaken as part of its community development outreach work. The aim of the programme was to enable school leaders in six chosen rural schools, each school with their own specific social and educational problems, to develop their leadership skills and behaviours to positively impact on student learning. The two main research questions addressed in this paper are: RQ1. What are the personal motivations and circumstances that lead Jamaican teachers to become school leaders? RQ2. How do Jamaican school leaders describe and understand their experiences of being in the role? Although a recent review concluded that there was …