Relationship between Decision-Making and Professional Experiences of a Pakistani Female Head Teacher in Initial Years of Headship

The importance of a head teacher in a school has been the focus of many educational research studies for many decades. For example, Hallinger and Leithwood (1994) cited in Shafa (2003) say, "In fact it has almost become an article of faith that the capacity of schools to improve teaching and learning is strongly mediated by the quality of leadership exercised by the principal" (p. 17). However, in many developing countries including Pakistan, very little effort has been made to understand this role. Consequently, in Pakistan the quality of leadership in government schools has remained almost unimproved for almost four decades. What seems evident is that decision-making styles are transferred from one head to another for many reasons, such as insufficient and inappropriate preparation for the post. One of the criteria for becoming a head teacher in government schools in Pakistan is seniority, which is mainly based on teaching experiences. This criterion has some role to play in the transmission of headship roles in schools. Memon (2000) has argued that recruitment of head teachers on the basis of their teaching experience rather than their experience in school management has resulted in the induction of unqualified and untrained head teachers into government schools. This indicates that head teachers' prior professional experiences are critical in understanding their ways of decision-making. Moreover, the way new head teachers respond to different situations in the school could be rooted in their own accumulated professional experiences. As Feiman-Nemser (1983) argues, "students internalize models of teaching which are activated when they become teachers" (p. 153). Probably teachers internalize models of management as sub-ordinates in the school and reactivate them on their turn when they become head teachers. So, there is a need to explore how prior professional experiences influence decision-making. Hence, this study attempts to unpack the influence of prior professional experiences on the decision-making of head teachers in dealing with challenges in their initial years. The ever-growing body of knowledge in educational leadership is witnessed in researchers' concentration on support strategies (Benaim & Humphreys, 1997) and professional development of head teachers (Kanwar, 2000; Shafa, 2003). Therefore, to some extent, researchers understand how various support strategies are planned, implemented and sustained; how an organization's culture in a context responds to the complex dimensions of headship; and how professional development of head teachers influences the whole process of leadership, at least in western industrialized nations. But researchers have rarely, if ever, examined the utilization of nonmaterial resources (head teachers' prior professional experiences); and have hardly ever linked them to the approaches that they take in addressing issues in the initial years of their position. This study, therefore, is significant because it will explore the co-relation of prior professional experiences and decision-making of a new head teacher. As there is a dearth of systematic studies on head teachers in the context of Pakistan, and as Kanwar (2000) claims, he was not aware of any systematic study on head teachers in Pakistan before 1998, the findings of this study will add to the growing body of knowledge in Pakistan. The purpose of this case study was to gain insight into the process of how a head teacher's decisions are informed by her prior professional experiences in coping with the challenges in initial years in a well-established government secondary school in Pakistan and to explore the factors, other than professional experiences, which tend to influence a beginning head teacher's decisions in dealing with those challenges. The research that this study addresses is: How are a head teacher's decision-making processes informed by her prior professional experiences in dealing with challenges in the initial years of a headship, in a government secondary school in Pakistan? …