Relevance Of A Leadership Development Programme To Develop The Leaders Work-Integrated Learning Competencies

Abstract

Today, more than ever, leaders need to demonstrate appropriate work-integrated learning competencies (WILCs) to process and manage emotional dynamics intelligently in their work environment. The challenge is to develop these leaders WILCs that can enable them to understand the contextual environments and the power relationships among employees in their organization. This study, therefore, explored the extent to which WILCs, including their emotional intelligence, can be developed and employed in their organizations to enhance collegial leadership practices. Consequently, this study focused specifically on the adequacy of the Advanced Certificate in Education (ACE) school leadership (SL) programme as a leadership development programme (LDP) offered by a higher education institution (HEI) to develop the WILCs of school principals. The LDP is intended to provide the principals, as leaders, with the opportunity to develop a deeper holistic commitment to their studies in a working school situation. Ideally, the LDP would provide a basis upon which school principals acknowledge the complexity of learning across multiple epistemic sites, rather than from a reductionist view with university modules and schools as separate entities. To investigate this, the qualitative research approach was appropriately used in this study. The findings on the interpersonal WILCs revealed that the school principals acknowledged their awareness of their employees feelings, needs and concerns and were adept at inducing desirable responses in them. Evidently, the findings of this study have confirmed the need for leaders to have interpersonal WILCs that can empower them to succeed in creating the necessary collegial climate in their organisations.