Perceptions of principals and school management teams of the application of distributed leadership and its impact on the working relationship between the principal and the school management team at primary schools in the Sisonke Education District, in the Province of KwaZulu/Natal

Abstract

The main focus of the study was on the working practices and relationships of the principals and school management teams (SMTs). The emerging demand placed on principals to act as organizational change agents prompted the need to determine whether distributed leadership was being exercised among a group of principals in a district undergoing school reform. I wished to find out whether a good working relationship existed between principals and SMTs within the case study schools and whether this relationship could be attributed to the distributed leadership of the principals.