ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Leadership in Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1629153
This article is part of the Research TopicEducational Leadership and Sustainable DevelopmentView all 16 articles
District Leadership Strategies and its Challenges in Supporting Teaching and Learning: Perspectives of Two Districts in South Africa
Provisionally accepted
Pinkie Euginia Mthembu1*
Thamsanqa Thulani Bhengu2- 1University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
- 2University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pinetown, South Africa
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Purpose: Education districts are critical to providing and sustaining quality teaching and learning.This paper examines the nature of support provided by district officials in two education districts in South Africa (SA) and the challenges encountered in improving quality teaching and learning.Methodology: Underpinned by the interpretive paradigm and a qualitative research approach, this study employed purposive sampling to select the two districts, with further input from District Directors in identifying additional participants, including Circuit Managers and Curriculum Support officials. Semi-structured interviews served as the data generation technique, and the data were thematically analysed.The findings show that while organisational structures are crucial for enhancing efficiency in delivering on mandates, the work of the District Offices in this study did not align with expectations. It is evident that a culture of working in silos and a failure to coordinate activities within districts persisted, thus undermining the noble intentions of policy regulations governing the work of district offices and supporting effective teaching and learning in schools.The participants viewed leadership strategies that neglected lower grades and prioritised Grade 12 as a leadership challenge. Drawing from the findings, we can conclude that the district's implementation of adequate support for schools remains a challenge.
Keywords: district leadership, Supporting teaching and learning, District leadership challenges, South African school districts, District leadership Strategies
Received: 15 May 2025; Accepted: 03 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Mthembu and Bhengu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Pinkie Euginia Mthembu, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
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