NSW Secondary School Deputy Principals: The Neglected Leaders. Organisational, Theoretical and In-situ Practice Perspectives

Abstract

This study’s purpose was to investigate NSW, secondary school deputy principals’ educational leadership, their development, career aspirations and engagement with the Australian teaching standards. A qualitative survey of seven system leaders from educational regulatory and jurisdictional organisations, provided background perspectives for five school case studies. The government and non-government case studies provided rich descriptions of deputies’ roles by integrating qualitative data from five principals, eleven deputies and twenty-four key school documents. Although theoretically sensitive to instructional and transformational leadership, the study was primarily inductive, exploring deputies in diverse school settings. Reflexive thematic analysis generated in-depth Australian findings, adding to the global discourse regarding contextualised leadership practices. Diverse deputy roles were evident across schools and were reflected in a vivid array of participants’ metaphors. A wide spectrum of educational leadership practices was identified, often hampered by managerial responsibilities. Deputy instructional and transformational leadership practices varied considerably but were often constrained by socialisation into the deputy role and a Taylorist approach to role allocation. Standards’ engagement was largely deputy role dependent. There were mixed responses regarding the adequacy of deputy development and deputy ambivalence regarding principalship. The relationship between leadership practices and school context is reinforced and expanded in this research. This study illustrates that instructional and transformational leadership theories do not always address deputies’ onsite practice and require integration with organisational and socialisation theories. This investigation finds that in NSW there is limited organisational deputy support resulting in dependence on individual school contexts, historical conventions and local socialisation into deputy roles.