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Ghana's basic education Headteacher leadership: critical discourse analysis of the Headteachers' handbook
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Ghana's basic education Headteacher leadership: critical discourse analysis of the Headteachers' handbook

Philip Saagyum Dare, Robyn Babaeff and Linda Henderson
Journal of educational administration and history, Vol.First online
18/09/2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00220620.2024.2403502
Appears in  Recent Faculty of Education Publications
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Published (Version of record)CC BY-NC-ND V4.0,  Open

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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#4 Quality Education

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Abstract

school leadership headteacher leadership Ghana education service/handbook critical discourse analysis basic education
The Ghana Education Service created the Headteachers' Handbook, a policy document that outlines Headteacher leadership practices. A recent review of Ghana's basic education Headteacher Leadership literature reported that these practices align within a hierarchy-horizontal leadership framework and are enacted within predetermined boundaries specific to the context. Therefore, this paper examined the Handbook's Forward, Introduction, Managing Your School, and Improving the Quality of Learning sections using Fairclough's (2001. Language and Power. 2nd ed. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education) three-stage approach to critical discourse analysis to identify how leadership is constructed and produced. The study shows that the Handbook constructs Headteacher leadership through relational authority, producing responsibilization, accountability, obligations and constraint roles. As such, Headteachers have discourse constraints and limitations when enacting leadership through this predetermined discourse. This paper provides a point of reference for present and potential researchers and Headteachers to theorize about the future of Headteacher leadership in Ghana.

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