School leadership training transfer in Ghana: Views of successful basic school leaders

Abstract

Various professional development activities including training workshops are organised annually for school leaders. However, there have been questions as to whether participants in training workshops do necessarily implement lessons learnt from such workshops in their schools. This study reports lessons from school leaders who were adjudged to have been successful in implementing lessons from a British Council Connecting Classrooms training workshops for school leaders in Ghana. Adopting a qualitative phenomenological case study research approach using interviews, the study explored what school leaders perceived to be the factors that contributed to their successful implementation of lessons from the training workshops. The study found that when the focus of the workshop met participants needs, engagement of workshop participants in action planning, attending the workshop together with teachers and School Improvement Support Officers, follow-up visits by workshop trainers and organisers, creating of a platform for workshop participants to share experiences, and the organisation of a post-workshop reflective experience and successful stories sharing conference got them to commit to implementing lessons from the workshops. It is therefore recommended that organisers of training workshops for school leaders should incorporate these activities in their organisation of training workshop to achieve the intended impact.