Purposes and objectives

The project aims to examine and compare the influence of educational leadership practices upon school culture, teaching activities, and student learning and achievement, both within each country and between Norway, Sweden and Finland. The educational leadership practices are interpreted in their contextual embeddedness regarding community relations, policy interests and governance structures across the three countries. The present project has three primary objectives.

1. To understand how high- and low-performing schools differ with respect to principals’ leadership, teachers’ activities and patterns of cooperation as well as mediating roles.
2. To explore how district-level leadership interacts with school principals’ leadership in interpreting and translating national policy and evaluations in order to be able to raise standards and quality of practice.
3. To identify the enabling and constraining factors in the schools’ efforts of raising standards and closing the achievement gaps. 

The project also has two secondary objectives:

1. To develop knowledge about how leadership can improve educational practices and student learning, with implications for principals’ and teachers’ professional development.
2. To disseminate the knowledge gained from the project to the research community, policy makers, educators and parents.

 The empirical data will be gathered from eight (8) lower secondary schools, (students between14 – 16 of age), in each country. This will add up to 24 schools in three Nordic countries. In addition, we will collect data from key actors in the municipalities, in which the schools are located. Findings from the study should be used to improve school leadership at different levels. At the ECER conference we will report on the first case studies that will be conducted spring 2014.

The papers in this symposium are all part of a Nordic Group (N-ISSPP) within the ISSPP, the International Successful  School Principalship Project