Student Discipline Management: An Examination of the State Secondary School Principal’s Leadership in Mauritius

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the leadership approaches that state secondary school principals adopt in Mauritius in order to manage student discipline. Semi-structured interviews and non-participant observation were done in this multisite case study. Purposive convenient sampling was used to gather information from 84 participants. It was found that principals use visionary leadership, distributed leadership, learner leadership, inclusive leadership and ethical leadership. This is the result of the political and legal framework, the unwillingness of the educators to assume their professional commitment to discipline students, the complicated protocol to be observed by principals to address indiscipline, and the feeling of disempowerment of the principal to manage student behaviour due to the centralisation of the education system. The study recommends for a mix of leadership approaches to ensure effective student discipline.