"First a Teacher, then an Officer": How Contractual Head Teachers used Role-Modeling as Embodied Leadership and Soft Power for School Transformation in Rural Sindh, Pakistan

In situations where weak institutional authority and bureaucratic absence is observed, traditional models of leadership may not be effective in systemic change. This study proposes that role-modeling is a leading approach of embodied leadership and soft power that is used by contractual school leaders in rural Sindh, Pakistan, to trigger school change. Basing the analysis on a qualitative multiple-case study of three merit-selected, contractual-employed head teachers (IBA head teachers) in District Khairpur, the analysis shows how these leaders, with no permanent status and conventional positional power, modeled what they wanted to model: punctuality, instructional rigor, and personal integrity. This enacted performance was used to eradicate resistance, establish moral legitimacy amongst employees and the community, and establish a new normative order in the school. The study theorizes role-modeling as a non-passive trait, but as an agentic type of soft power that subsidizes the functional deficiency of the state. Results suggest that the performance of presence and a pedagogy of action were successful, in co-opting followers as well as transforming communities of skeptics into active collaborators. The study, however, also finds a performance-precarity paradox, in which job insecurity contributes to excellence, but creates long-term burnout and sustainability problems. This study adds to the body of work in leadership by redefining role-modeling as an advanced survival and change mechanism used in unstable institutional environments through the use of the physical body as a primary location of leadership.