Exploring the sources of personal visions of educational leaders and how their visions reflect in their leadership practices

Some of the authors argue that one of the most powerful foundations for educational reform is having a focused personal vision. It provides direction and gives meaning to our work. All leaders have the capacity to create a compelling vision but few of them have the ability to transform their visions into reality. The question arises here that what are the sources, which influence educational leaders to develop their focused personal visions. Similarly, how their leadership practices are different from leaders who do not have focused personal visions. Thus, this study seeks to explore the sources which influence educational leaders to develop their focused personal visions and how they enact their visions through leadership practices. The study employed comparative case study approach. Information was gathered through semi-structured interviews, observations and document analysis. Two educational leaders of different organizations in Karachi were the primary research participants. Two staff members of each organization were also interviewed to find out their views about the leadership practices of their leaders. Their personal visions were to enhance the capacities of teachers and teacher education programme. The findings of the study suggested that personal values, interests, needs and beliefs influenced both educational leaders to develop their focused personal visions. Religious, social and cultural sources were found the prominent influencing factors of both educational leaders\u27 personal visions. Both the educational leaders developed their own educational organizations to enact their personal visions. The findings also revealed that the educational leaders also have had the leadership style of strategic, empowering and emancipating outlook i-e both of them believed in developing shared visions, collaborative decision making, individual stimulation, setting directions and providing professional development opportunities. The study makes recommendations of: 1) exploring how personal visions are transformed into shared vision of the organization; 2) a quantitative study can be conducted on exploring the sources of personal visions; 3) exploring the practices of visionary leaders could be another interesting study