The role of the Catholic school leader in NQT and NRT induction programs

Abstract

The idea behind this dissertation is to explore the role that senior leadership team members take on in the induction of Newly Qualified and Newly Recruited teachers in local church schools. This research seeks to understand the perspective of the church school leaders and their assistant heads in how they deal with the demanding process that induction entails, the relationships they forge with the new entrants, how their leadership style develops when coping with these inexperienced members of staff and the mentoring roles that they embrace. A qualitative approach through semi-structured interviews with six senior leadership team members at three local Dorothean Schools and a small focus group with several educators from the same schools was selected as a means for data collection. The data collection resulted in key areas of interest represented by four major themes elicited through the Thematic Analysis approach. The analysis brought forward the following four major themes, namely, (1) The school leader as a facilitator of induction, (2) The school leader’s leadership qualities, (3) The school leader as mentor, (4) The school leader and school identity. The research led to acknowledge the ever-changing roles of school leaders, the sharing of good practices and the dedication to the mentoring relationships forged between the school leaders and the new teaching staff. This confirms the importance of induction and the worthwhile investment of time and energy in the induction program to benefit all stakeholders within the school.