Since independence in Namibia in 1990, schools have been required to transform themselves
from hierarchical organisations with autocratic leadership to more democratic forms of
leadership which allow greater participation in leadership by teachers. This shift assumes that
effective leadership and management of schools can secure and sustain school improvement.
Against this backdrop, the purpose of my study was to explore the enactment of teacher
leadership in three public schools in the Eenhana circuit of the Ohangwena region in Namibia
and to examine the factors that enhance or inhibit this enactment.
My study, located in the Namibian schooling system, was a replication of a multi-case study
project conducted in South Africa during 2008-2009 by 11 Master of Education students at the
University of KwaZulu-Natal. My study was conducted within a qualitative interpretive
paradigm and I adopted a case study of three Namibian schools with three teacher leaders per
school as the unit of analysis. As in the original study, the instruments that I used to collect the
data included a survey questionnaire, focus group interviews, individual interviews, selfreflective
journals, observations and document analysis. All the educators, including the three
teacher leaders at each of the three schools completed questionnaires following which the three
teacher leaders at each school were interviewed using a semi-structured focus group interview
method. The teacher leaders also provided information through journal writing. In addition, these
teacher leaders were observed and I examined the school documents, such as minutes of
meetings, to find out how they engaged in leadership roles in their institutions. Semi-structured
individual interviews were also conducted with the principal and the secretary of each of the
three selected schools to acquire contextual information about the schools. The Statistical
Package of Social Sciences was used to analyse the quantitative data while qualitative data were
analysed using thematic content analysis and, in particular, a model of teacher leadership (Grant,
2008).
The findings of my study indicated that, although teacher leadership was a new concept to the
majority of educators who took part in my study, teacher leadership was enacted at all the three
schools. Teacher leadership was enacted differently at each of the three schools depending on the
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culture and structure of each school. At School A, teacher leadership was enacted successfully
across the first three zones of the model within a dispersed distributed framing. At School B,
teacher leadership was restricted to the first two zones, in the classroom and with other teachers
and learners with little leadership distribution. At Schools C, teacher leadership was evident
across all four zones of the model and classified as emergent with a dispersed distributed
leadership framing. Barriers that prevented the development of teacher leadership in these
schools were experienced as time, hierarchical structure, an autocratic principal and the
exclusion of teachers in chairing of meetings. Factors that enhanced teacher leadership included
collaborative and collegial cultures, teamwork, good communication, shared vision,
collaborative decision-making, teachers-led initiatives and the involvement of learners in
leadership roles. The dissertation concludes with recommendations for further research and
practice in relation to the concepts of teacher leadership and distributed leadership in Namibia.