Search results for "Instructional Leadership"
showing 10 items of 15 documents
Distributed pedagogical leadership in support of student transitions
2012
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…
Leadership in Finnish comprehensive school core curricula since the 1970s
2014
Tiivistelmä – Abstract Suomen peruskoulujärjestelmä sai alkunsa vuonna 1970 ja samana vuonna julkaistiin ensimmäinen peruskoulun opetussuunnitelma. Seuraavat opetussuunnitelmauudistukset toteutettiin vuosina 1985, 1994 ja 2004. Parhaillaan Suomessa kehitetään uutta peruskoulun opetussuunnitelmaa, joka on tarkoitus ottaa käyttöön vuonna 2016. Tässä tutkimuksessa tarkasteltiin johtajuuden ja opetussuunnitelman välistä suhdetta. Tutkimus toteutettiin laadullisena sisällönanalyysina, jossa aineiston muodostivat viralliset opetussuunnitelmat ja kaksi asiantuntijahaastattelua. Tutkimustulokset analysoitiin summatiivisen sisällönanalyysin menetelmin ja tulokset kuvattiin tulkinnallisella menetelmä…
Successful principalship in Norway: sustainable ethos and incremental changes?
2009
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore whether and how success has been sustained over time in schools which were identified as being successful five years ago.Design/methodology/approachThree schools were selected for a revisit, and the sample included two combined schools (grade 1‐10) and one upper secondary school (grade 11‐13). In two schools the same principals were still in post, and in the third school there had recently been a change in principalship. Interviews with the principal and a group of teachers at each school were the major source of new data. Questions that guided the study: What structural and cultural changes can be identified within the schools compared with fi…
Organisational transition challenges in the Finnish vocational education – perspective of distributed pedagogical leadership
2012
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…
Globalization and leadership and management: a comparative analysis of primary schools in England and Finland
2006
This article analyses the impact of processes of globalization on both policy and practice in relation to primary school leadership and management in England and Finland. Data are drawn from case study research carried out from 1994–1996 in six schools in Finland and six schools in England and a follow‐up study on teacher professionalism (2001–2002) that involved 37 of the original participants being re‐interviewed. The article contributes to the ongoing debate concerning the extent to which global trends lead to homogeneity in educational systems or a ‘glocalized’ response. Such a glocalized response is derived not only from different cultural mediations at the national policy level but al…
Collaborative Educational Leadership: The Emergence of Human Interactional Sense-Making Process as a Complex System
2014
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…
Rewards, changes and challenges in the role of primary headteachers/principals in England and Finland
2012
Drawing on an analysis of education policies and qualitative research data, the impact of education reform on the roles of English primary headteachers and their Finnish counterparts is examined and compared. Global forces have resulted in similar policy trends in both countries but owing to contrasting cultural values and education traditions there are marked differences in the mechanisms for change at both national and local levels. However, irrespective of globalisation and differing national contexts, there were considerable similarities in the perspectives of headteachers and principals on the rewards and constraints of their role and the realities of leadership and management.
A systematic narrative review of prosociality in educational leadership
2018
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 …
Interaction model: Reflexiv leadership in the face of tensions in the school’s practical day to day handling
2023
Author's accepted manuscript Rektorer opplever utfordringer i det å arbeide som faglig, pedagogisk og administrativt ansvarlig på skolen. Faglig, pedagogisk og administrativt hensyn kan fort komme i konflikt med hverandre og skape spenninger i rektors arbeid. Denne artikkelen undersøker rektorenes opplevelse av å være leder på skolen, og hvordan de kan håndtere disse spenningene. For å komme så nære rektorene som mulig er det benyttet reflektive livsverdensintervjuer. Resultater i denne artikkelen støtter tidligere resultater i nordisk forskning om at administrative oppgaver tar fokus bort fra utviklingsoppgaver og at det er spenninger mellom ulike oppgaver i rektors arbeid. For å illustrer…
Professional Learning of Teachers in Ethiopia: Challenges and Implications for Reform
2015
Continuous professional development of teachers is of growing interest globally, as it is considered vital to cope effectively with ongoing changes and to improve the quality of education. This qualitative case study explores potential and actual barriers that hinder teachers’ professional development in Ethiopian schools. Data was collected via interviews and focus group discussions from 37 purposively sampled participants. The study reveals three major challenges in teachers’ development: 1) conceptions and conceptual issues related to teaching, professional development and mentoring, 2) management and leadership, and 3) teachers’ work conditions. The need to reconsider educational change…