Collaborative leadership as the lens for co-creating an innovation - A curriculum reform in management education

The paper presents collaborative leadership to create a curriculum reform in management education. In our case study, a particular business school wanted to re-modify its curriculum according to turbulence coming, first, outside of the school in terms of increasing complexity in business life and, second, from inside in terms of a large merger. As a consequence, in the co-creation process, a socially-mediated perturbance process started in the school in order to answer the turbulence. According our preliminary results, this kind of process seems to be multilevel and multiphase. It requires new attitudes and a change of the mindset to see management education containing not only knowledge bu…

“But big is a funny word”: a multiple perspective on concept formation in a foreign-language-mediated classroom

In recent years, foreign-language mediated instruction (immersion, content-based language learning and teaching) has been studied from various perspectives. In the following study, a single event from a Finnish third-grade EFL-mediated geography lesson is studied by combining insights from three research approaches: sociocultural, socio-cognitive, and discourse-pragmatic. The data analysis focuses on how during concept formation, the participants use commonplace means present in every classroom – textbook and chalkboard, spoken and written, verbal and nonverbal communicative means – to construct knowledge and its social context. The results indicate that there exist strong parallels among t…

Dynamic properties of successful plural leadership configuration: An exploratory process-study

Our article introduces an exploratory process study of successful plural leadership configuration in searching for alternative solutions to wicked problems. The study was executed within four educational organisations that solved challenging wicked problems arising from today’s changing contexts. We argue that plural leadership configuration is a dynamic process when people in diverse organisational positions, roles, and levels design profitable endeavours through their ideas and activities, bring about desirable outcomes within diverse conditions and outline the future. We searched for potential systemic patterns, characteristics, and structure within this dynamic process. To find these p…

Co-dynamics in engendering innovations through collaborative leadership - A complexity-based approach

The paper presents ten co-dynamics that are supposed to be those underlying forces and powers that bring about an innovation creation process. The co-dynamics as unpredictable movements have been found by a Grounded Theory approach from two large-scale data. Parts of the other data serve here as the empirical source. In order to comprehend the nature of the co-dynamic, the notion of collaborative leadership is exploited. It includes both human participants and tangible elements, such as activities, practices, measures, or tools when synergy is gained. Collaborative leadership is supposed to be, at the same time, both the very source and the result of the dynamical movements. nonPeerReviewed

Analysis of leadership dynamics in educational settings during times of external and internal change

Background: The article concerns the tensions that can arise during demanding external, and consequential internal changes and considers how educational leadership is able to respond to them. Leadership is here understood as a collaborative endeavour, producing shared sense-making in situations of tension. Purpose: The main research question was: what kinds of leadership dynamics underlie situations of tension brought about by external and internal change? The sub-question was: what kind of micro-level sense-making processes, argued to be the true source of change, assist in revealing these dynamics? Programme: Educational organisations increasingly face demanding external changes, such as …

Successful together! : ten keys for collaborative leadership

Focalisation sur le leadership collaboratif

Des chercheurs suggerent que la gestion des defis et des changements de plus en plus nombreux ainsi que la resolution de problemes complexes en education pourraient etre facilitees par le lea­dership collaboratif. Ainsi, le present article vise a eclaircir le concept de leadership collaboratif et, plus precisement, ii repond aux questions suivantes : Qu'est-ce que le leadership collaboratif? Qu'est-ce que le modele TenKeys* (dix clés) propre au leadership collaboratif? De quelle facon le leader peut-il faire preuve de leadership collaboratif? Quels sont les effets du leadership collaboratif selon les recherches effectuees? Par l'entremise de ces questions, nous ferons egalement valoir que l…

Principals’ perceptions about collective competences in shared leadership contexts

This article aims to understand how principals perceive collective competences in their schools’ shared leadership contexts. Collective competences are crucial in shared leadership but have not been widely explored within educational leadership studies. This study investigates collective competences through two intersected models: attribute and relational models. The data comprise interviews conducted with 12 Finnish principals in comprehensive and secondary schools who practiced shared modes of leadership. Due to the Finnish school culture emphasising collaboration, the principals were expected to be able to broadly consider the collective side of competences in their schools. The data wer…

Transitions in Individual Vocational Education Pathways: Challenges and Collaborative Solutions

This chapter draws upon some of the main results of two Finnish nationwide case studies on how common efforts of education providers and organizations’ personnel support VET (vocational education and training) students along their individual learning paths. The first study concerns best practices to prevent early leaving, and the second was a Finnish national pilot programme to assist uncertain students who have somewhat weak prerequisites to enter vocational education. Some excellent solutions are presented, but special challenges for the learner, organization and staff are also revealed. The solutions for excellence promote practices, strategies and structures that support students’ trans…

Collaborative Educational Leadership: The Emergence of Human Interactional Sense-Making Process as a Complex System

The article aims at explicating the emergence of human interactional sense‐making process within educational leadership as a complex system. The kind of leadership is understood as a holistic entity called collaborative leadership. There, sense‐making emerges across interdependent domains, called attributes of collaborative leadership. The attributes give rise to the complex system. They are suggested to be the very agents, i.e. both the source and the outcome of the synergetic sense‐making process. Hence, the agents are not the single persons involved who, however, supply the collective attributes that are modified through human interaction in a holistic way. For studying the emergence pro…

Thinking and Content Learning of Mathematics and Science as Cognitional Development in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL): Teaching Through a Foreign Language in Finland

This paper presents a study on thinking and learning processes of mathematics and science in teaching through a foreign language, in Finland. The entity of thinking and content learning processes is, in this study, considered as cognitional development. Teaching through a foreign language is here called Content and Language Integrated Learning or CLIL. CLIL refers to all those diverse programmes, including some forms of immersion and bilingual education, where a foreign language is a medium of instruction, affecting the entire learning process of the learner. Thinking and content learning in CLIL manifests itself as analogical CLIL reasoning systems, based on two languages, and is assumed t…

Distributed pedagogical leadership in support of student transitions

This article examines how, through uncovering collaborative leadership, the whole school staff is able to understand its common endeavours to support heterogeneous students’ fluent learning paths. For this, a notion of distributed pedagogical leadership (DPL) is drawn upon. DPL concerns everyone in the school community, not only leaders and management. It means abandoning role, instrumental or process centricity and moving towards leadership that is characterized as the innermost qualities of a professional learning community. This kind of leadership is best described with 10 ‘keys’ as 10 key attributes. To understand DPL in practice, quantitative data both from a nationwide Finnish survey…

3D visualization of engendering collaborative leadership in the space

The paper focuses on collaborative leadership in education and how to illustrate its engendering process in a three-dimensional space. This complex and fluid process is examined as distributed and pedagogical within a Finnish vocational upper secondary educational organization. As a consequence, the notion of distributed pedagogical leadership is used when collaborative leadership in education is studied. Collaborative leadership is argued to consist of the innermost substance of a professional learning community, as attributes of a group of people working together for specific purposes. Therefore, collaborative leadership naturally involves actors, activities, and context. However, the inn…

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Indicators of improved learning contexts : a collaborative perspective on educational leadership

The aim of this paper is to illustrate indicators for improved learning contexts based on the notion of collaborative leadership. Collaborative leadership refers to synergetic educational leadership practices through co-performance and a continuous and shared learning process. We argue that the indicators could serve as a bridge between education and the complex and increasing change within the social life and world of work. For finding the indicators, we combined two intertwining dimensions: ‘leadership in education’ and ‘education for leadership’. They were studied by a tested model describing collaborative leadership by a set of attributes. We then applied these attributes to a curriculu…

A systematic narrative review of prosociality in educational leadership

Organizational scholars have vigorously and long studied being prosocial in defining ‘prosociality’ as motivation, behavior, and impact to help or benefit others. This study attempts to provide an overview of previous studies that have approached the elements of being prosocial in educational leadership contexts. However, most of the prosocial elements in education are not explicitly defined as prosociality and have not yet been systematically studied. Thus, this study explored the research questions: (a) What elements could be involved in prosociality within educational leadership? (b) Who could be involved in the process of prosociality in educational leadership? The final corpus of this …

Co-sensing and co-shaping as shared and relational practices in bringing about relational leaders in higher education

AbstractThe aim of this article is to investigate how and what kinds of relational and shared practices were co-created within a multicultural team in a higher education collaborative learning environment. The students interacted while working towards the shared goal of co-constructing knowledge. The study provides insight into how student teams can actively build collaboration in learning spaces through manifesting relational leadership. Shared and relational practices refer broadly to all the knowledge, attitudes and skills that emerge from team interaction. A compound theoretical framework combining relational leadership and leadership trichotomy was adapted to study what particular fact…

Distributed pedagogical leadership and generative dialogue in educational nodes

The article presents practices of distributed pedagogical leadership and generative dialogue as a tool with which management and personnel can better operate in the increasingly turbulent world of education. Distributed pedagogical leadership includes common characteristics of a professional learning community when the educational actors intentionally share a common mission. There, all stakeholders take collective responsibility for students' learning. Generative dialogue is a way to negotiate in this realm in generating new knowledge and understanding. To introduce this process in practice, the article describes two Finnish learning environments where the stakeholders define, first, the c…

Preventing early leaving in VET: distributed pedagogical leadership in characterising five types of successful organisations

This paper presents 14 organisers of upper secondary education in Finland with exceptionally low dropout rates. As a case study in which common strengths were defined, five types of organisations with typical characteristics were found: Working life‐oriented, Networked and team‐based, Cosy and traditional, Guidance‐oriented, and Innovative. Distributed pedagogical leadership (DPL) was created as the theoretical basis from which organisational actions were examined. DPL implies that responsibility for students’ learning is shared by the whole personnel, through long‐term and systematic pedagogical practices. For this purpose, the management and leadership, curriculum, strategies, development…

Organisational transition challenges in the Finnish vocational education – perspective of distributed pedagogical leadership

The article examines organisational challenges in the Finnish vocational education and training (VET) to support students’ lifelong learning pathways. Investigation of organizational challenges is done through the students’ transitions either within one school level or from one school level to another or to working life. For supporting the students’ learning pathways, it is argued here that specific attention has to be paid to collaborative practices of the personnel in order to guarantee the transitional fluency. This kind of collaboration is here called distributed pedagogical leadership. For examining the shared practices in the frame of distributed pedagogical leadership, the article in…

Toward a process paradigm of educational leadership

Prosociality as a mediator between teacher collaboration and turnover intention

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of prosociality, which is defined in terms of helping and benefitting others, between teacher collaboration and their turnover intentions. Prosociality was measured as prosocial impact and prosocial motivation.Design/methodology/approachThis study was conducted through a cross-sectional survey of 260 elementary and junior high school teachers in Japan. A structural equational model was employed to examine the mediating roles of prosocial impact and prosocial motivation in the relationships between teacher collaboration and their turnover intention.FindingsThe results, first, supported the hypotheses: the high perception o…

Collaborativeness as the core of professional learning communities beyond culture and context : evidence from Canada, Finland, and Israel

ABSTRACTProfessional learning communities (PLC) have been widely accepted as effective with respect to good atmosphere, adequate leadership practices, and functional working practices. However, the outcomes for school improvement depend on case-specific issues. To identify less culturally and contextually bound issues in 3 PLC settings in Canada, Finland, and Israel, we examined our cases through the notion of “collaborativeness”. It refers to a systematic and shared process consisting of efforts, ideas, and activities that aim at achieving synergy. By combining the 3 data sets and applying a special model, we were able to distinguish, through qualitative content analysis, ingredients of co…

3D Visualization of Engendering Collaborative Leadership in the Space

The paper focuses on collaborative leadership in education and how to illustrate its engendering process in a three-dimensional space. This complex and fluid process is examined as distributed and pedagogical within a large Finnish vocational upper secondary educational organization. As a consequence, the notion of distributed pedagogical leadership is used when collaborative leadership in education is studied. Collaborative leadership is argued to consist of the innermost substance of a professional learning community, as characteristics or qualities of a group of people working together for specific purposes. Therefore, collaborative leadership naturally involves actors, activities, and c…