One of the topical issues in education debate in Zimbabwe is the question of teacher involvement in decision-making. Teachers are becoming more critical of the traditional bureaucratic and authoritative top-down method of administrating and managing schools. Teachers, like other citizens are becoming more and more aware of their rights. As such, teachers are demanding that they be involved in the decision making process, not only in their schools but in national education issues as well. Involving subordinates in decisions may improve the quality and acceptance of decisions when participation fits the constraints of the situation. The purpose of the study was to investigate the extent to which school principals involve in school based decision-making processes of sporting activities. The study adopted a qualitative interpretive research approach. Five schools were sampled and data were collected through interviews. It emerged from the findings that teachers in the five schools are fully involved in decisions that are related to sporting. This is plausible, the reason being that it is these teachers who probably are coaches and trainers of various school based sporting disciplines. Therefore, one finds that teachers get specialised in sporting activities, thus giving them greater command of both the child and the sporting activity. The findings above depict that teachers in all the five schools under study are empowered to make decisions in certain areas as mentioned above although some of the participating teachers do not consider such areas as critical in decision-making.

Sporting Activities, school leadership, decision-making, management teams, teacher participation