ABSTRACT

Efforts to improve school effectiveness have yielded positive results as there are more effective schools than dysfunctional ones. However, in some cases school leadership has not reached the required standard to maintain a high level of school effectiveness, highlighting doubts about the ability of some school leaders’ skills in ensuring schools are centers of leadership excellence. While the appraisal system was implemented for teacher development, more efforts are evidently needed to ensure that school leadership is on board with the appraisal practices in a South African school context riddled with teacher resistance for change. The democratization and decentralization of curricular roles to teachers coupled with shared governance have stimulated teacher leadership. The emergence of multicultural school environment as a result of racial and cultural integration has resulted in new leadership challenges for a multicultural school context. The indication is that culturally responsive leadership is needed to harness new multicultural situation in schools.