ABSTRACT
One of the important elements of the whole-school approach to multicultural education is school leadership. Leadership provides direction and orchestrates different elements of school organisation to implement a shared vision and objectives (Bush & Middlewood, 2005). Within the context of cultural diversity, school leadership deals with teachers, students, parents, and the community who come from various cultural backgrounds, bringing with them unique cultural characteristics which more or less influence their learning processes and outcomes (Banks, 1997; Corson, 1998; Dimmock & Walker, 2005). This chapter analyses leadership in four schools – Rose Garden (SSPR), Averroes (MSPR), Voice of Islam (SISPR), and Creativity (SVSY) – to find out what the school leaders understand about the realities of cultural diversity and how they articulate these understandings in school vision, policies, and programs. This chapter also identifies the leadership qualities the school leaders display that are supportive of the development of multicultural education. By school leaders here, I mean principals. This is because, as indicated by many studies (Gurr, 2002; Hallinger & Heck, 1998; Hill, 2002), school principals exert a pivotal role in school development and improvement. This chapter argues that leadership for schools with cultural diversity needs to incorporate various styles including contingency, strategic, participative, and moral leadership. Conventional school leaders who assume and exercise a single style of leadership will find difficul-ties in dealing with the complexity of schools with students and teachers of different faiths and cultures (Dimmock & Walker, 2005). Likewise, school principals who emphasise more managerial tasks find it hard to cope with problems triggered by the spirit of both internal and external changes.
