The Place of Personal Values in Educational Leadership in Pakistan
Author: Baig, Sharifullah
Date: 2010-05-00
Type: Journal Articles
Subjects: Foreign Countries,Principals,Administrator Role,Instructional Leadership,Cultural Influences,Social Influences,Values,Leadership Styles,Secondary Schools,Semi Structured Interviews

The demands on the school principal are becoming increasingly complex and challenging because of the principals extensive involvement in the social, technical, and moral dimensions of school life. In order to cope with these demands, the personal qualities of both competence and character are emerging as critical necessities for every principal. Competence, here, refers to the principal's capacity to correctly interpret seemingly conflicting facts and events whereas, character refers to the need for the principal to consistently ground their subjective, personal decisions in socially appropriate values (Hodgkinson, 1999). Indeed, many would further argue (D'Arbon, Duignan &amp; Duncan, 2002; Johnson, McCreery, &amp; Castelli 2000; Shafa, 2003) that the principal's values, as reflected in their character, are at the heart of the school's organizational culture and thereby, make a difference in the lives of all associated with the school. Therefore, the influential role of the principal's personal values throughout the whole school is unequivocal. A principal stepping into the school milieu is never a blank slate in terms of possessing and applying personal values. They are frequently dealing with value-laden conflicts and to resolve such differences, their own values play a vital role in assessing and responding to the variety of scenarios they face (Begley, 2002). Furthermore, the values they apply in such situations become reflected in the school's culture and, subsequently, impact upon the lives of many other people. Thus, there is a strong justification for exploring the role of the principal's values in educational leadership. To this end, a number of researchers have responded to this challenge (Begley, 2002; Branson, 2005; Gurr, Drysdale, &amp; Mulford, 2006; Leonard, 1999), but most of these were conducted in essentially western societies. There has been negligible exploration of the influence of personal values in educational leadership in non-westernised societies like Pakistan (Law, Walker, &amp; Dimmock, 2003). The importance of this cultural focus is indirectly acknowledged in the values literature because the study of values is considered as a context related phenomena (Ryan, 1999) such that our understanding of values must consider the impact of culture isomorphs (Begley, 2002). Culture isomorphs are situations in which social values seem to have the same shape and meaning across many countries and cultures but are actually composed of quite different interpretations. Consequently, generalizations of valuations to other cultures are likely to prove unhelpful. This research was conducted in the specific social and cultural context of Pakistan and sought answers to the following two research questions: (1) What are the motivational bases of the participating principals for the acquisition of their personal values? and (2) How do the personal values of the principals in this study influence their leadership practices? Hence, this research provides a unique contribution to the pool of existing literature, which deals with understanding the underlying personal values and their deep rooted influences on the practices of the educational leaders in a non-western cultural context.