Professional Documents
Culture Documents
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
1.1 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
REFERENCES……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Chapter One
1.0 Introduction
The Philippines is with running with the trend of focusing on educational leadership
and education in general. Although, defining leadership in the Philippines will be a tricky
ordeal. In the first place, discussing leadership in general is very challenging for the
following reasons: 1) there is no overall agreement of how the notions of leadership –
leadership, management and administration – should be defined and 2) leadership
discourses “give more emphasis to different issues in leadership (Nivala and Hujala,
2002).” Scholars pose two critical questions. How can a very complex and incoherent
phenomenon be argued in general and what theories should be chosen if one argues
about theoretical issues of leadership? This review looks at leadership in the view of
educational leadership in the context of the Philippines. The description we shall adapt
shall be the one discussed lengthily by Leithwood et. al, (2004) They said that most
definitions of leadership have two core functions: “providing direction” and “exercising
influence”. They also noted that leadership is a “highly complex concept” and that
defining leadership “too narrowly are more likely to trivialize than clarify its meaning.
Leithwood et. al, (2004)”
Various studies support the idea that it is the leadership of the school that makes
a difference between mediocrity and excellence. One can always point to the principal’s
leadership as the key to success of a school that is vibrant and has a reputation of
excellence in teaching. Indeed, the school manager is the keystone in the building of
effective schools. There is a positively significant correlation between effective principals
and effective schools.
With the goal of schools being to prepare students, citizens, people for life-long
learning and survival, schools need to ensure that students get the best of their education
by increasing their learning curve. Leadership comes into play in this goal by influencing
students learning through influence on other peoples or features of the [school]
organization, decisions about class size, student-grouping and instructional practices of
teachers, the nature and extent of monitoring student progress, provision of professional
development opportunities for teachers, and the alignment among goals, programs and
policies Leithwood et. al, (2004). More importantly, the commitment of stakeholders is
highly affected by the school head’s behavior (San Antonio and Gamage, 2005).
In the past 50 articles I’ve skimmed about the word leadership in local media
sources – newspapers, magazines, blogs, forums, online articles and book , Filipino
writers have only associated the word ‘leader’ with people in business or government
holding high positions. This poses a very bureaucratic view of leadership as something
that comes only with position or stature in public or private domain. Most leadership
programs in the Philippines launched by the government and/or sponsored by other
countries focus more on training for government positions and fail to represent other
sectors especially education.
Another view I have observed is that the educational leader is a school manager.
As a result, programs geared towards honing educational leaders focus on managerial
skills rather than leadership capabilities. In a seminar conducted by the Philippine Normal
University as part of a series on Deanship, the following topics were listed: “how to handle
day to day problems, effective supervision and evaluation of faculty, strategic planning
and predicting future trends, internationalization and likage (PNU, 2011).” On the
contrary, there are many expectations of an educational leader in the Philippines. In a
study by San Antonio and Gamage (2005), factors affecting stakeholder’s commitment
levels in a school in the Philippines included the schools head’s behavior: supportive
(open to suggestions, recognizes others, approachable, resourceful, transparent, fair,
strict, respect others, trusts others, sincere), pro-active (active, prompt, enthusiastic,
innovative, dedicated), gives priority to school or student welfare, behaving in cooperative
and admirable ways (well-behaved, high moral values, helpful, committed, encourages
others, present good ideas, open to ideas of others, knows how to control emotions).
Leader’s lacking in decisiveness and over-manifestation of their traditional authority
(frank, monopolizing discussions, gives no sufficient freedom to express sentiments,
being authoritarian, arrogant, sarcastic, ill-tempered) lessened participation in school
democracy. Unfortunately, school head’s behaviors are likely to be personality-based
rather than trained. In the construction industry, while civil engineers – symbolic of
teachers in the education industry – are expected to be competent in construction
management skills, areas of expertise in project leadership, organizational alignment and
general management are lacking. Organizational alignment is the congruence and
compatibility of the various activities in a construction project and determines the outcome
of success or failure (Acacio, 2007).
These are:
• Ability to monitor classroom instruction.
• Ability to work with educators to plan instructional programme and
• Ability to identify, acquire and coordinate resources necessary for instructional
improvement including staff development.
1.0 SUMMARY
"Leaders who create leaders are more powerful than those who do not."
-Sam Lucas, Gilbert C. Brown, Frank W. Markus
"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things." -Peter F.
Drucker
REFERENCES
Forbes, Gilbert M., “Trends and Issues: Roles of School Heads as Instructional Leader,
Administrator and Manager, Manila 2011
Zulu, Simo Duncan C., “The Instructional Leadership Role of School Principals,” An
Unpublished Research Study for the Course Masters of Education in Planning and
Administration, 2004
http://lunakatrina.blogspot.com/2012/10/educational-leadership-in-philippines.html