Studying Negative Aspects in Educational Leadership: The Benefits of Qualitative Methodologies

Authors : Izhar OPLATKA

Pages : 549-574

Doi:10.30828/real.1330936

View : 95 | Download : 90

Publication Date : 2023-09-25

Article Type : Other Papers

Abstract :The aim of this paper is to encourage researchers to employ qualitative methodologies when studying the negative aspects in educational leadership. To this end, I focus on one negative aspect in organization – abusive leadership and use it to exemplify the benefits of qualitative research and its potential methodologies. More specifically, I pose two questions: insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(1); How can the qualitative research improve our understanding of abusive leadership in schools; insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(2); what are the practical tools to study abusive educational leadership from a naturalistic perspective? Through qualitative research methods, researchers are likely to explore the complexity of human behavior and thereby generate deeper understanding of leaders\` negative behaviors as well as of toxic interactions in the school. In this paper, I emphasize the epistemological contributions of qualitative methodologies to the research on abusive educational leadership and probe into the kind of knowledge we may gain when employing these methodologies.
Keywords : abusive leadership, semi structured interviews, sensitive topics in leadership, unstructured observations