The transfer of school leadership theories across national boundaries: A study of Brunei Darussalam secondary education

The transfer of school leadership theories across national boundaries: A study of Brunei Darussalam secondary education

The Brunei Darussalam Ministry of Education (MoE) has committed itself to utilising practice from international contexts in order to develop and improve its education system. Against this background, this research employed a mixed methods research design, to answer the question: how well do school leadership theories created in other cultures transfer to the context of secondary education in Brunei Darussalam? Three phases were employed in the research design. First, a document analysis identified school leadership theories originating external to Brunei Darussalam, reflected within a key MoE document. Second, the questionnaire phase of the research design asked secondary principals, deputy principals, and teachers to respond to 50 leadership practices on two five-point Likert scales, which measured frequency of use and significance, respectively. And third, in the semi-structured interviews, participants were asked to comment on the reasons for the key outcomes of the questionnaire phase. Discourse analysis, which identified discursive assumptions and the positions these placed stakeholders in, was then used to interpret the responses of the interview participants. This research concluded that discursive assumptions dictated whether leadership theories from external sources, and their associated practices, transferred effectively into the Brunei Darussalam secondary education system.

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