Principals' perceptions of the influence of School Governing Bodies on instructional leadership: a South African study

ABSTRACT This paper reports on an empirical on-going study concerning how School Governing Bodies (SGBs) influence the instructional leadership roles of school principals. The literature on instructional leadership discusses the multiple roles that school principals are expected to perform but fails to analyse how the stakeholders in schools influence their work. This paper is based on a research project that departs from the premise that principals do not work in isolation or in a vacuum but in collaboration with other stakeholders, such as SGBs. The research approach used in this study was qualitative and data was collected from five schools, using semi-structured interviews. The findings of this study show that different principals tend to establish different types of relationships with their governing bodies and that they receive various levels of support. Positive relationship between principals and their governing bodies seem to play important supportive role that encourage instructional leadership.