Educators’ Reflection on Distributive Leadership and Job Stress in Technical and Vocational Education

Leadership style is known to increase stress amongst educators in technical and vocational education, which can then have a negative impact on the performance and quality of work. It has been argued however that this situation can be improved by adopting a more flexible and cooperative style of leadership. Thus, the purpose of this study is to determine the link between distributive leadership and job stress in technical and vocational education. The study used the purposive sampling technique to choose four respondents on the basis that they all had a minimum of one year’s teaching experience in technical and vocational education. Their semi-structured interviews formed the basis of a qualitative method analysis wherein interview data were transcribed verbatim, coded and categorized by themes. The resultant data were then analyzed using content analysis methodology. The results of this study show that distributive leadership is currently practiced in technical and vocational education and demonstrates that distributive leadership can reduce educators’ stress at the workplace. Thus this research concludes that, although some level of job related stress is inevitable, distributive leadership practices are very significant in alleviating stress related problems for education sector workers.