A Case Study On Principals’ Leadership Of Malaysian Chinese Independent Secondary Schools

Malaysian Chinese established schools under the influence of the traditional ideology that puts emphasis on education.Chinese independent secondary schools are private schools that strive to survive outside of the government’s public education system.Under the constraints of objective conditions,the commencement of teaching and research work were slow.The responsibilities of principals are heavy and challenging,yet their personal training and development are often neglected,which affects the overall development of independent secondary schools.Studies on improving principals’ leadership is deemed to be imperative.Through reading local and foreign literatures,this study sorts out the research results on principals’ leadership,understands the current situation,connotation,existing problems of principals’ leadership,and researches on improving their leadership that serves as the theoretical basis and literature support of this research.Based on the ‘Principal Leadership Development Framework’(PLDF),and also combining the needs of Chinese independent secondary school and the actual condition of K High School,this research takes the four key roles of a principal,which are ‘a visionary leader’,‘a leader in curriculum’,‘a leader in organisation’,and ‘a leader in learning’,as the framework of analysis;and further collects data on the leadership practice of Principal C from K High School through interviews and literature analysis,then encodes the data according to the theme.Using the analytical framework,the issue of how to improve the leadership of principals of independent secondary schools is analysed and researched.To further delve into the implementation of the leadership of Principals C,and to explore the factors that affect the leadership of Principal C,so as to extract the characteristics of Principal C’s leadership,and put forward suggestions on establishing a training mechanism to improve the leadership of principals to solve the problem of "how to improve the leadership of principals of independent secondary schools".Combining the practical behaviour and analytical results of the leadership of Principal C,it is found that the role as a ‘visionary’ leader has a dominant position.The other three roles(‘a leader in curriculum’,‘a leader in organisation,‘a leader in learning’)are mere carriers,serving to help in achieving the vision.The key findings reveal that the two major factors affecting Principal C’s leadership are the environment of growing up and the process of acquiring education.The key leadership characteristics of Principal C were also picked out,which are mainly shown in the educational ideology,implementation methods and personal behaviour.Finally,it was found that the two characteristics of Principal C,namely professional ability and personal quality,have significant impact towards improving leadership.Since Chinese independent secondary schools in Malaysia are the product of social movements by the Chinese,they cannot be separated from Chinese social groups.Hence,suggestions have been put forward in this study to improve the leadership of these Chinese independent secondary school principals from the perspective of organizations and individuals.(1)In terms of organization,Dong Zong,as the leading organization of Chinese schools in this country,must establish a systematic training mechanism to resolve the problem of training for these principals.The boards of directors of these schools must recognize and face up to the problems of principal training and principal specialization,and to take the initiative to train successors of principals.(2)In terms of individual,the improvement of their cognitive ability,learning capacity and decision-making ability help in enhancing principals’ leadership.Improving on their personal professional abilities,including understanding the nature of education,mastering advanced educational theories and upgrading their academic qualifications are the most direct elements to boost their leadership skills.It is hoped that this study will provide a guide for improving the leadership of principals,or play a role in attracting more people to have discussion on this topic and find more effective methods towards improving and sustaining the schools’ teaching quality and continuous development of the independent secondary schools in Malaysia.