Conceptualizing a Leadership Style for Promoting the Teaching and Learning of Mathematics in Rural Secondary Schools

Abstract

Mathematics teachers serve as instructional leaders in their classrooms to ensure effective teaching and learning of mathematics. This chapter chronicles the conceptualization of a leadership style that promote the teaching and learning of mathematics in rural secondary schools. In this chapter, a prediction of a leadership style that can transform underachieving rural secondary schools for the promotion of teaching and learning of mathematics is presented. In addition, the interaction between transformational and instructional leadership effects in the mathematics classroom are discussed. The chapter defines leadership in mathematics teaching, discusses leadership for the mathematics classroom, presents how leadership was introduced in South African schools, followed by Mathematics instructions and leadership, and principal's perceptions on school leadership and its links to or effects on mathematics performance. Finally, the chapter suggests applied transformational leadership as a proposed tested model that has yielded a good performance in rural mathematics classrooms.