Professional leadership by secondary school headteachers in Malta

Abstract

Theorists and practitioners of educational leadership have only branched out of organisational or educational literature after World War II, and it is only since the 1980s, that is since the founding of the present educational administration and management course, that similar work has started to appear in Malta. The present long essay tries to occupy a hitherto vacant niche in the literature of educational organisation by discussing the degree and style of professional leadership being currently afforded by today's secondary school headteachers in Malta. It also attempts to formulate a typology of headship, and presents some proposals for further action on the professional development of current and future headteachers. The researcher has based his ethnographic style design on a quantitative analysis of a closed type questionnaire sent to all Maltese secondary school headteachers in November 1997, and also on a qualitative analysis of the same data obtained from the questionnaire through an ongoing review of authoritative and recent literature on educational leadership and organisational behaviour. The general approach from theory to quantitative and qualitative analysis and interpretation of data, to proposals for future development of the present course, may be considered to be the result of the attempt to treat the leadership of secondary schools as deeply as possible. On the other hand, in all aspects discussed, a comparative analysis with the present situation obtaining in other countries, or with the past situation of secondary school leadership in Malta, has been attempted, in order to treat the subject from a wide perspective also.