Recontextualizing (Fend 2008) administrative regulations and dealing with established working cultures of different organizations involved (school, university, study seminars, extracurricular cooperation partners and central educational offices), which include collectively shared assumptions and practices, are two prime challenges within the processes of teacher education. Weick and Sutcliffe speak of the organizational culture as a means of handling expectations. In this context expectations are considered as tacit agreements concerning appropriate attitudes and behaviour (Weick & Sutcliffe 2007: 122). Often they remain implicit, in other words they are not communicated but rather assumed as shared premises of communication. Congruent to this perspective we regard organizations as social structures with cultural patterns or symbolic orders (Weber et al. 2014), which are documented in social interactive processes, individual narrations and artefacts. They are especially prominent in processes of transition and innovation. Regarding this, Senge states that “if you want to change a system, before you change the rules, look first at the ways the people think and interact together.” (Senge 2000: 19) This perspective is central for the communication within processes of transition between organizations and sets the focus for this symposium.

 We ask: Which assumptions, beliefs and values are addressed in the cooperation and communication between the organizations university, school, second phase organizations, welfare institutions, cultural associations and municipal educational organizations? Which practices and artefacts related to organizational cultures are brought into being? And what role do administrative regulations play in this process?

 Using transcriptions of team meetings, group discussions and interviews with different actors as well as documents of administrative regulations, four different examples of interorganizational transitions will be analyzed with research designs grounded in qualitative methodology.

Early findings suggest that within processes of interorganizational transitions different organizational cultures and corresponding notions toward communication, cooperation and professionalization encounter each other. Not always are these differences explicated; because of this, these settings require not only the explication and transformation of different organizational cultures, but also mutual acceptance and appreciation as a basis for the cooperative work. The aim of our symposium is to highlight the learning challenges and processes that are connected to transitional processes between different organizations in the field of contemporary teacher education. Special attention will be given to the national contexts of the studies, their commonalities and differences as well as the transferability of the findings

Inputs

• Transitions between municipal educational policy related to immigrant students and implementation of policy in four Icelandic municipalities.(Hanna Ragnarsdottir & Anh-Dao Tran)
• Transitional processes between university and second phase organizations in Germany – handling of cultural practices (Heike de Boer & Benjamin Braß)
• Transitions between the University, Schools, and Expanded Fields of Educational Practice in Austria (Claudia Fahrenwald)
• Transitional processes in the cooperation of school pedagogy and social pedagogy in Germany (Anke Spies)

Chairperson: Udo Gerheim

Discussant: Hafdís Guðjónsdóttir

Fend, H. (2008). Neue Theorie der Schule (2nd edition). Wiesbaden: VS Senge, P. M., Cambron-McCabe, N., Lucas, T., Smith, B., Dutton, J. & Kleiner, A. (2000). Schools that learn: A Fifth Discipline Fieldbook for Educators, Parents, and Everyone who cares about Education. New York: Doubleday Weber, S. M., Göhlich, M., Schröer, A., Schwarz, J. (eds.) (2014). Organisation und das Neue: Beiträge der Kommission Organisationspädagogik. Wiesbaden: Springer VS Weick, K. E. & Sutcliffe, K.M. (2007). Managing the Unexpected: Assuring High Performance in an Age of Complexity (2nd edition). New York: Wiley