School Leadership Training – New demands on School Leadership Practices for Quality Improvement and Accountability?

Author(s):

Hedvig Abrahamsen(presenting / submitting)Astrid Øydvin Ingrid Syse

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

26. Educational Leadership

Format:

Paper

Session Information

26 SES 09, Leadership in the Face of Accountability and Testing

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-25

13:30-15:00

Room:

OB-H1.51

Chair:

Gerry MacRuairc

Contribution

The present paper investigates how participation in a national principal leadership training program in Norway, with expectations towards a new role as accountable school leaders, is experienced by principals and deputy heads.

School leadership as a tool for school improvement has received major interest in the last two decades (Cuthbert, Møller, & Ozga, 2013). International research about school leadership emphasises the importance of leadership for quality improvement and increased learning in schools (Day et al., 2009; Hargreaves & Fink, 2006; Leithwood, Harris, & Hopkins, 2008; Robinson, Lloyd, & Rowe, 2008). The focus on school leadership for quality improvement is also met with interest in Norwegian research about school leadership (Aas, 2013; Møller & Fuglestad, 2006) amongst others through participation in the International Successful School Principals Project (ISSP), an international network on research on successful school principals. In Norway, reforms focusing on accountability and results from national and international tests has emphasised the need for training programs of school leaders (WP 31 2007-2008). The Norwegian Government initiated a new national program for leadership training and development for principals in 2009. A major purpose with this program was to meet new international expectations on developing accountable and confident principals and other school leaders.

Norwegian education policy is influenced by international advice from the OECD (Møller, Prøitz, Rye, & Aasen, 2013). The OECD-report “Improving School Leadership – Policy and Practice» (Pont, Nusche, & Moorman, 2008) underlines school leadership as important for the development of student outcomes, and is a representation of powerful economic and political actors` interest in school leadership, and that successful school leadership is crucial to large-scale education reform. Further, the OECD-report Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) (2009) reports that principals in Norway do not focus on instructional leadership in the classrooms (Vibe, Aamodt, & Carlsten, 2009). In 2013 an OECD-report on leadership for the twenty-first century promoted innovative learning through the term Learning Leadership as the most effective school leadership practice (Organisation for Economic, 2013). However, a challenge in knowledge organisations, is problems with the legitimacy of leaders, partly because those working in them tend to be independent and professionally oriented, and one of the problems connected to this is insufficiently strong leadership, at all levels (Christiansen & Tronsmo, 2013 p. 160). A major challenge for the training of school leaders therefore seems to be to finding a balance between being strong and accountable school leaders and to be leaders of professionals.

Research question: How do principals and other school leaders experience change of own leader role and practices as a result of participation in the national principal leadership program?

Objective: The present study aims to identify how the national principal training program can contribute to provide the students with the ability to understand, interpret and develop own leader role in light of national and international expectations on school leader role and practice.

Theoretical framework:
This project draws upon a configurative leadership perspective (Gronn, 2010), focusing on the idea of a combination of different role-sets (Merton, 1957), understood as the complement of role-relationships in which persons are involved by occupying a particular social status (Gronn, 2010, p. 425). A configurative leadership perspective is understood as a combination of a focused perspective on leadership, which reflects a focus on the individual leader, and a distributed perspective on leadership, reflecting a focus on leadership as an activity.

Further, sensemaking theory is applied (Weick, 1995). Explaining interpretative processes that has to do with the construction and reconstruction of meanings about a situation, sensemaking can contribute to understand and explain how school leaders construct meanings about themselves as leaders leading the teachers as professionals.

Method

Methodology: This qualitative study is based on empirical data collected between 2012-2015 and encompasses two semi-structured focus group interviews with all together 11 students who have participated in the national principal training program, e-mail interviews of 20 students and 10 students’ text (Krueger & Casey, 2009; Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009; Silverman, 2011). The interviewed participants are either principals or deputy heads, and they are school leaders from both primary and secondary schools in 8 municipalities in Norway. In Norway the municipalities are described as the school owners, and they are responsible for following up their schools both in developing quality, and to control the results of the schools. We asked two random chosen groups to participate in the study, and all members of the two groups accepted to participate in the interviews. The interviews lasted for approximately 60 minutes and were recorded and transcribed. In the e-mail interviews we asked previous participants from the principal training programs to reflect upon change of own practices as school leaders two years after they ended the training program. The empirical data from was conducted by using NVivo10 software, and the process of analysing the focus group interviews was divided into three levels: descriptive, thematic and analytical (Richards, 2009). The descriptive level focused on descriptions of findings in the material, the thematic focused on themes which evolved. In the third analytical level, interpretations was the main focus. Being an ongoing process, the interpretative analysis aimed at developing knowledge about how to understand school leaders sensemaking of change on role and practice by participating in the national training program, and make sense of own role in the context of international influence on expectations on school leader role and practice. In addition to the focus group interviews, 10 student texts were investigated with the purpose to uncover how students used the writing processes to reflect on changes of own role through the training program. The purpose has been to illuminate what dominating discourses have been purported as important learning from the programs. Three major categories emerged through the readings of the students’ text: Identity and role, leadership and organisation, the importance of theory.

Expected Outcomes

Conclusion: Expected outcomes of findings In our analysis we find that participating in the national principal training program have contributed to give the school leaders a possibility to understand, develop and give words to own role in light of international and national expectations on school leaders’ role and practice. Further, development of knowledge opens up for more alternatives of actions. By this the student experience that the training programs give them more confidence in their leader role and provide them with different alternatives of action in their day-to-day work characterised by complexity and tensions. Especially, their theoretical knowledge, when analysing own schools in developmental work, can contribute to influence how they understand their own leader role. At the same time, new knowledge and expectations can be experienced to be in tension with existing cultures of autonomous professional teachers in the school and may give new challenges as school leaders being situated in complex interactions at their schools.

References

Aas, M. (2013). Ledelse av skoleutvikling. Oslo: Universitetsforl. Cuthbert, R., Møller, J., & Ozga, J. (2013). Leadership and the reform of education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 34(2), 281-294. doi: 10.1080/01425692.2012.761385 Westfall-Greiter, T., Halbert, J. & Kaser, L., Salavert, R., Christiansen, L. L & Tronsmo, P., Owen, S., Tubin, D. (2013). Approaches to learning leadership development in different school systems. In Leadership for 21st Century Learning (pp. 135-181). Day, C., Sammons, P., Hopkins, D., Harris, A., Leighwood, K., Gu, Q., . . . Kington, A. (2009). The Impact of School Leadership on Pupil Outcomes Final Report (pp. 206). University of Nottingham. Gronn, P. (2010). Leadership: Its Genealogy, Configuration and Trajectory. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 42(4), 405-435. doi: 10.1080/00220620.2010.492959 Hargreaves, A., & Fink, D. (2006). Sustainable Leadership. San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass. Krueger, R. A., & Casey, M. A. (2009). Focus groups: a practical guide for applied research. Los Angeles, Calif.: Sage. Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2009). Interviews: learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing. Los Angeles, Calif.: Sage. Leithwood, K., Harris, A., & Hopkins, D. (2008). Seven Strong Claims about Successful School Leadership. School Leadership & Management, 28(1), 27-42. Merton, R. K. (1957). The Role-Set: Problems in Sociological Theory. The British Journal of Sociology, 8(2), 106-120. Møller, J., & Fuglestad, O. L. (2006). Ledelse i anerkjente skoler. Oslo: Universitetsforl. Møller, J., Prøitz, T. S., Rye, E., & Aasen, P. (2013). Kunnskapsløftet som styringsform. In B. Karseth, J. Møller, & P. Aasen (Eds.), Reformtakter om fornyelse og stabilitet i grunnopplæringen. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. OECD (2013). Leadership for 21st Century Learning. Paris: OECD Publishing. Pont, B., et.al, Nusche, D., & Moorman, H. (2008). Improving School Leadership, Volume 1: Policy and Practice (Vol. 1). Paris. Richards, L. (2009). Handling qualitative data: a practical guide. Los Angeles: Sage. Robinson, V. M. J., Lloyd, C. A., & Rowe, K. J. (2008). The Impact of Leadership on Student Outcomes: An Analysis of the Differential Effects of Leadership Types. Educational Administration Quarterly, 44(5), 635-674. doi: 10.1177/0013161x08321509 Silverman, D. (2011). Interpreting qualitative data: a guide to the principles of qualitative research. Los Angeles: SAGE. Vibe, N., Aamodt, P. O., & Carlsten, T. C. (2009). Å være ungdomsskolelærer i Norge: Resultater fra OECDs internasjonale studie av undervisning og læring (TALIS) (Vol. 23/2009). Oslo: NIFU STEP. Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage.

Author Information

Hedvig Abrahamsen (presenting / submitting)

Sogn and Fjordane University College

Department of Teacher Education and Sports

Oslo

Astrid Øydvin

Sogn and Fjordane University College, Norway

Ingrid Syse

Sogn og Fjordane University College

Faculty of Teacher Education and Sport

Kaupanger

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