**5.2 Leading by colonizing others**

In general, the findings indicate dominant leadership practices in the various school which can be described as colonization. The participants expressed that school leaders adopted dictatorial top-down approaches where they give orders and manage teachers based on directives, they received from their superiors from the Ghana Education Service.

*I understand that effective school leadership must be consultative…we must be caring and reflective of the actions we take but the fact is that even as head teachers policy makers do not consult us on important matters. Our job is to receive directives and then communicate this to our teachers (Clara, headteacher).*

Similar views were expressed by another teacher who claimed that headteachers in the Ghanaian school system are treated as 'policy conveyer belts in production lines' without any human dimension.

*In fact, I am just viewed a tool… there is no high premium on my personal values and capabilities. I can't change anything as a leader and all I can do is to manage the school and my teachers within the existing directive framework. In fact, whatever they tell me from above, I do (Maxwell, headteacher).*

Other headteachers mentioned the politicization of school leadership to the extent that they were afraid of losing their job if they voice out issues related to how they were being manipulated by policy-makers.

*Leadership has moved into politics. It is a serious matter, a narrow and irrational managerial view of leading others. Counterviews from school headteachers are viewed as standing in the way of policy makers. If you are not afraid of losing your job then you can talk, even as school leaders sometimes we do not know when our children will go on vacation or resume school. Everything is a mess, but can you talk about it? (Peter, headteacher).*

Teachers also described the leadership processes in their schools are exclusive lacking effective consultation on important matters affecting their schools. They described leadership as imposing views and making decisions before communicating to them these decisions.

*My experience is that the school has no unique direction apart from what the Ghana Education Service wants us to do. We the teachers are at the receiving end. We are not*  *Leading for Educational Change: How Can We Disrupt the Colonial Legacy? DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108103*

*part of any tough decisions-making that can make the schools unique and effective. We act on what we are told from headteachers (Kate, teacher)*

Importantly, the teachers' views reflected leadership of domination entrenched in dispositions that communicate the status quo. While all teachers are tasked with the responsibility to make their schools effective in terms of teaching and learning, their views do not necessarily matter. This does not mean there were no staff meetings held in the schools.

*We do have staff meetings as our operational practices demand but these meetings held to stamp the decisions from policy makers communicated through the headteachers. Our view doesn't have any influence as teachers (Amanda, teacher).*

It is interesting to note that despite head teachers being approachable and compassionate, their hands are tied in how much the consultative opinions of the teachers can be utilized in any decision-making process.

*Our head teachers encourage and motivating us to be involved in school matters and decision making but how can you be motivated to do anything if you know that you are just wasting your time and energy, realizing that you, have been doing these things all along, but your ideas are not implemented in any decision-making? (Michael, teacher). It is not the headteachers' fault, I would say because they are also in the same challenges with us because they are dictated to by policy makers and if they fail to do what they are told, they will be severely sanctioned or demoted (Favour, teacher).*

While the teachers and headteachers agreed that leadership is about vision and mission of schools, they were of the view that the directives from the Ghana Education Service under which school functions in Ghana do not make this possible.

*In fact, leadership practice in our schools appeared to be the sole responsibility of who is in charge from GES. The headteachers are just figureheads on whom to impose decisions from above. We are just spectators and have nothing to do with real contribution to new ideas to lead the schools. (Evelyn, teacher).*

These views reflect Bourdieu's ideas of how some education systems are constructed to reproduce dominant practices [1]. The leadership practices described by the participants denote actions that communicate superior–inferior tendencies. This dominant discourse is a form of colonizing others into complete compliance to political domination. Indeed, school leaders and teachers that formulated alternative options to how their schools should be led to improve the efficiency of teaching and learning are often disparaged as reactionaries against government policies. But leaders must be critical to challenge existing orthodoxies to bring about school transformation [10]. The leadership practice situations described by the participants demonstrate a struggle within leadership standardization in the Ghanaian education field [4]. This resonates with Helen Gunter's statement that:

*The struggle is about legitimacy and there are vested interests in a field. This is illustrated by those who classify in the field, and those who are classified products of the field. Reputation and status fluctuate, and there can be a process of misrecognition in*  *which power relations are not seen for what they are but are interpreted in a way that is seen as legitimate [6].*
