**5.3 Challenges to effective leadership**

Headteachers and teachers acknowledge the complex challenges of leadership in their schools when they referred to the centralized directives and lack of recognition for teacher identify and voice which are creating tensions and dilemmas for school leaders in Ghanaian schools. Despite having the knowledge and capabilities of leading their school, transforming teaching and learning becomes a difficult or even an impossible task because of lack of freedom to make contributions to decision-making.

Some participants claimed that 'many schools are failing in Ghana, student performance is low and teachers' capacity to turn things around is ignored' *(Favor, teacher).* Another headteacher claimed:

*school leadership is now a political game. If you present a counterview to what is handed down to you from above, they view you as an opposition trying to distabilise government policy. (Peter, headteacher).*

The participants also referred to the lack of infrastructure, resources such as textbooks electricity and furniture as serious challenges to school leadership in Ghana. 'Let me give you example, our schools were supposed to teach IT skills, but schools do not have electricity, how do you operate computers even if you have one?' (Kate, teacher). Similarly, other said:

*our students do not have adequate textbooks and classroom furniture is not conducive to learning. Even some of our students have to sit on molded blocks…as a leader of the school, you are stressed every day because things are not working but you cannot talk about it because you are afraid of political reprisal (Clara, headteacher).*

Despite school leaders being highly regarded among the teachers and headteachers, it appears policy-makers often distance themselves from the teachers and headteachers. This means that policy actors make all decisions without considering the opinions of members of the schools' community. This does not mean the policymakers are not aware of the critical role of teachers and headteachers in improving the quality of teaching and learning in Ghana. The entrenched master-servant relationship established through colonial legacy keeps influencing current operations of the education system at large [3].

Additional challenge to school leadership in Ghana espoused by the participants pertains to the excessive interference of politics in school leadership. Two participants claimed:

*the Ghanaian education system is seriously influenced by cultural and political affinity (Terri, teacher)…In fact all decisions are political decisions even if things are not working well the same agenda continues to be pushed through which affect the effective school development, teaching and learning (Maxwell, headteacher).*

This sentiment was identified in a previous study which claimed that the Ghanaian political structure of the country is deeply rooted in its culture, and there is no simple way to distinguish between culture and politics, which makes it difficult to

address the two forces of influence separately [3]. The political climate in the country is a direct reflection of educational leadership that governs learning reforms and programmes.

It is claimed that the Ghanaian education system functions through political interference and ruling parties creating inconsistencies and ineffectiveness [3]. Suggestions were made to disentangle educational leadership from excessive political interference by 'developing a country vision for education whereby school leaders are consulted to share in that vision (Peter, headteacher). They argued that 'leadership is about development, vision, progress and efficiency which cannot materialize if politics is mingled with education' (Tom, teacher). This means having difficult conversations at all levels of leadership, critically interrogating our habitus and our collective and individual practices to create transformative opportunities for leading education in Ghana.

Having critical conversations also means challenges ideologies of domination by people who have colonizing tendencies such as policy-makers who view themselves as superior to others and therefore must overpower them by dictating how they should lead their schools [7]. In education systems where a leader or policy-making group deemed itself as superior to teachers, ascribed excessive power to carry out domination behavior to self-proclaim and to benefit through legitimation of the status quo, schools are bound to fail. Ideologies emanate from the habitus; therefore, to counter ideologies of supremacy, we must start by interrogating our individual and collective habitus [8]. It is through conscious interrogation of the habitus that we can challenge dominant discourses and give voice to formerly marginalized teachers and headteachers to be involved in strategic decisions that relate to their contexts of practice.

## **5.4 Implications**

The findings of this study have several implications for practice. The realization that leadership evolves from human habitus (identity) and interacts with capital to produce actions within fields serves to deepen understandings of practice as taking place in social fields, relationships, personal positionings and interactions. In Ref. to this, social spaces must be taken seriously when thinking about school leadership. In this view, we can envision the non-linearity of leadership and that the concept of leadership itself is a relational concept that warrants valuing the contribution of everyone within the school. On the contrary, we identified in this study that the Ghanaian school leaders do not appear to have voice in constructing their own leadership because the process of leadership in schools is dictated through politics of control and subjugation [5, 6, 19]. It is argued that designing leadership for others [20] is an act of leading without others; therefore, to lead with others, it is important for leadership to move away from reproductive or colonial leadership which replicates acts of domination and exclusion. Leadership practices that

*are lodged and validated in the doxa of the times, they only will remain viable if schools and the larger social-economic social space in which they remain also stay fixed. They will not challenge the conservative political ideology and social inequalities which are at the root of ineffective school leadership and school achievement decline ([5], p. 169).*

By implication, this calls for policy-makers to interrogate their own habitus and generate actions that invite and reward teachers to be part of the leadership process. Bourdieu places emphasis on the interrogation of one's habitus as well as the analysis of various forms of capital that individuals possess to bring their values to interactions in social spaces. Analyzing and critically reflecting on the value of the capital that others bring to the leadership process can create valuable leadership opportunities within the school to collectively improve teaching and learning. …

Researchers [1] argued that 'school leaders are important agents in schools, they can interpret, envision, verbalize, and, as such, create the social world' ([1], p. 297).

The implication of our study resonates with what previous leadership researchers profess that:

*education should be centred not first and foremost on what is expected and imagined of them (by politicians, experts, bureaucrats, etc.), but on who they are, what they do, and why they do it. In other words, the education should be depoliticized and adapted more to local, specific and democratic meaning making ([1], p. 308).*

School leadership is a growing arena of professional identity formation. Leaders shape the profession, school development and effectiveness. But leadership is not an individual practice. Understanding the importance of Bourdieu's three concepts of habitus, capital and field and applying these to leadership practices can help us disrupt the colonial legacy of leading by domination.
