"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

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ID: 312030
2026
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Abstract
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.
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Authors Shahid Hussain Wassan
Journal Social Sciences & Humanity Research Review
Year 2026
DOI
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URL
https://sshrr.online/index.php/4/article/view/495
Keywords Keywords not found

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