0000000000526281
AUTHOR
Tapio Juhani Lahtero
Symbolic leadership and leadership culture in one unified comprehensive school in Finland
The research presented in this article is a description of the symbolic leadership and leadership culture in one unified comprehensive school in Finland. The study is a phenomenological qualitative case study based on triangulation. Leadership is studied through its functional, verbal and material dimensions. Leadership culture is regarded as one of the part cultures of the organisation culture. It is a product of the meaning and interpretation process which forms itself through the symbols of the principal's leadership. According to the present study, the leadership culture of the unified comprehensive school can be described as consisting of respect, communality, equality and humour.
Symbolic leadership culture and its subcultures in one unified comprehensive school in Finland
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a symbolic-interpretative research on the leadership culture and its subcultures in one unified comprehensive school in Finland. Design/methodology/approach – The research is a phenomenological, qualitative case study. Its methodology is based on triangulation. Findings – The leadership culture of the unified comprehensive school studied in the present research seemed to be based on equality, communality, appreciation, flow of information and humor. Besides examining the general leadership culture of the school, an attempt was made to study the possible subcultures of the school by examining the six subject groups into which the teachers w…
Realisation of strategic leadership in leadership teams' work as experienced by the leadership team members of basic education schools
This article introduces a quantitative research into how the leadership team members of 49 basic education schools in the city of Vantaa, Finland, experienced the realisation of strategic leadership in their leadership teams' work. The data were collected by a survey of 24 statements, rated on a five-point Likert scale, and analysed with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). The only variant explaining the differences in experiencing the realisation of strategic leadership in the leadership teams' work statistically, almost significantly, was the leadership team membership.
Finnish Case of Basic Education for All – With Quality Learning Outcomes
This article views behind the success of the Finnish basic education in the PISA assessments in the years 2000, 2003, 2006 and 2009. Success is here defined not only as excellent learning outcomes in reading literacy, mathematics and science, but also as a high level of educational equity and equality. The achieved outcomes are attributable to several factors, of which this article addresses especially the basic education reform of 1972-1977 and the university based teacher education leading to a master’s degree. Additional attention is paid to the autonomy of the municipalities (counties), schools and teachers in building and implementing the curricula, on the respect for learning and teac…
Distributed leadership in practice in Finnish schools
ABSTRACTThe aim of this study is to explore what aspects the principals and the members of the management teams in the primary and upper secondary education schools in Vantaa support distributed leadership in their school and how necessary they see that distributed leadership is extended to the students in matters concerning the curriculum and the development of teaching practices. The research method was a survey based on a questionnaire of 48 questions, where the respondents evaluated the preconditions of distributed leadership in their school. The principals and members of the management teams in the primary and upper secondary schools in Vantaa see distributed leadership mostly as deleg…