Session Information
32 SES 01, Leadership and Organizational Development
Paper Session
Contribution
The focus of a study is on the leadership of the basic education at schools. As a theoretic perspective to leadership of educational organizations, the instructional leadership approach is used. It emphasizes the pedagogic perspective to leadership - the importance of principal’s understanding of class-room activities, learning, and teaching in order to the best way to lead teaching and learning (e.g. Dinham, 2016). Instructional leadership has been used as one framework for comparing the OECD countries (OECD, 2013). The approach has currently developed to a more comprehensive direction paying now attention to, for example, teachers’ professional development (e.g. Hallinger 1992, 2005; Plessis 2013). This approach, and its Finnish variation, the broad-based pedagogical leadership (Lahtero & Kuusilehto-Awale, 2015) form the basis for the further analysis of the social and discursive practices contextualizing the instructional leadership.
The empirical context of the study is on Finnish public basic schools. In the Finnish public schools, mostly owned by the municipalities, the leadership of the school has been appointed to the principal (Basic Education Act 628/1998). It is typical for the Finnish schools, that the leadership is somewhat shared (Taajamo et al. 2014), and in many schools, there seem to be a leadership team or similar that usually consist of principal and a group of teachers (Ahtiainen et al.). However, due to the autonomy of local educational organizers, and to some extent the autonomy of schools, the leadership structures vary as well as do the tasks and responsibilities of a principal (Ahtiainen et al.; FNBE 2013). Governmental regulation on the basic education defines framework for organizing the schooling as well the principles and values for education (Basic Education Act 628/1998) and the national framework for the curriculum and distribution of lesson hours have been defined by the National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (FNBE, 2016).
Municipalities, together with the local schools, decide on the local application of the national curriculum, taking into account the local environments, value choices and special resources. (Niemi, 2016.) Traditionally, the professional freedom of the individual teachers on decisions related to organizing one’s teaching has been strong in the Finnish context (e.g. Niemi, 2016). The power of the principal and leadership groups in the schools is therefore limited to the local application of the national curriculum at school, organization of the human resources and the everyday work at school. In this context, it becomes interesting to explore the leadership of the educational organizations from the perspective of the people in leadership positions – how they conceptualize their work, its constrains, contradictions and opportunities.
In this paper, we are exploring the ways principals and members of the leadership groups in basic education understand and conceptualize their work as leaders and the influencing practices of the school. Theoretically, we draw from the social constructionism and critical discourse analysis. The social practices (Fairclough, 2003) are articulations of diverse social elements; activities, social relations, objects and instruments, time and place, social subjects and semiosis. The social practice is both constructive and a construction (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). The discursive approach understands the power as relational, existing in relationships and interaction, creating and based on shared understandings on the experienced reality, mentalities including the values, hierarchies and practices (Foucault, 1971). To be able to reach the constructive power of these discourses and to root the leaders’ speech on its contexts, the discourses and social practices are understood as positioned in a certain space and time and as a product of the certain practice.
Research questions:
- What are the discourses constructed in the speech on educational leadership?
- What are the social practices defining the leadership?
Method
Research data The data was collected in five schools in the Southern Finland. All the five schools were participant of a program where they developed their leadership structures. The program applied the ideas of borad-based pedagogical leadership (Lahtero & Kuusilehto-Awale, 2015) that has many points of connection with the current form of the approach of instructional leadership (e.g. Dinham, 2015). The data consist of three types of interviews: principal individual interviews (n=5), leadership team (n=5), and teacher group (n=5). in total 52 (34 women, 18 men) people participated the interviews. The interview method was Qualitative Attitude Approach (QAA). The QAA is based on statements given to interviewees, and it supposes that the interviewees will during the interview position them in relation to them (the given statements), and argue in favor or against the statement. In this study the statements were drawn from the approach of broad-based pedagogical leadership (Lahtero & Kuusilehto-Awale, 2015), and the statements included themes such as, the systematic nature of leadership performed by the principal and leadership team; the systematic nature of communication and actions of the principal and leadership team; the principal’s presence in the school. All interview target groups were given (one statement at the time) the same eight statements (modified to fit their perspective, though). Methods of analysis Research methods used to analyse the data were critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2003) and qualitative content analysis (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008). Critical discourse analysis (CDA) starts by exploring the social practices constructing the particular field, in this study the educational leadership in basic education, fol-lowed by formulating the discourses defining those social practices. CDA was used to map the semiotic aspect of the context as political and strategic field, and to compare the different discourses on education, and to make the different and potentially conflicting ideas, conceptualizations and legitimations among the leaders visible. Qualitative content analysis as a method supported the critical discourse analysis by offering the tool for categorizing the social practices, constrains and enabling factors, and going through the data in the beginning of the analysis.
Expected Outcomes
As an outcome of the analysis, we expect to gain the increased understanding on the experienced leadership practices in the context of the basic education in Finland. Analysis will create knowledge on what the leaders see as a challenge or an opportunity and on how the existing leadership practices are contextualized in certain political, organizational, institutional and cultural environments. We aim to get more in-formation on the existing and potentially conflicting issues and contradictions related to schools, the relationships between the actors, and on different assumptions and expectations on leadership.
References
Ahtiainen, R., Lahtero, T. & Lång, N. (in press). Johtaminen perusopetuksessa — katsaus koulujen johtamisjärjestelmiin ja rehtoreiden näkemyksiin johtajuuden jakamisesta [Leading in the comprehensive school – leadership structures and principals’ views on distributed leadership]. In J. Hautamäki, M-P. Vainikainen & I. Rämä. Perusopetus, tasa-arvo ja oppimaan oppiminen: Valtakunnallinen arviointitutkimus. Helsinki Studies in Education. Basic Education Act 628/1998. https://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/1998/en19980628.pdf Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of knowledge: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. NY: Doubleday. Dinham, S. (2016). Leading Learning and Teaching. Victoria: ACER Press. Elo, S., & Kyngäs, H. (2008). The qualitative content analysis process. Journal of advanced nursing, 62(1), 107-115. Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. Psychology Press. Foucault, M. (1971). Orders of discourse. Social science information, 10(2), 7-30. Lahtero, T. J. & Kuusilehto-Awale, L. (2015). Possibility to Engage in Pedagogical Leadership as Experienced by Finnish Newly Appointed Principals. In American Journal of Educational Research. Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 318-329. FNBE. (2013). ”Rehtorien työnkuvan ja koulutuksen määrittämistä sekä kelpoisuusvaatimusten uudistamista valmistelevan työryhmän raportti. Raportit ja selvitykset 2013:16 [Re-defining the School Leaders Profession and Leadership Training. Report of Work Group Preparing Renewal of Qualification Requirements. Reports of National Board of Education 2013:16]”. Finnish National Board of Education: Helsinki. FNBE. (2016). National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2014. (2016). Publications 2016:5. Finnish National Board of Education, Helsinki. https://www.ellibs.com/fi/book/9789521362590/national-core-curriculum-for-basic-education-2014 Hallinger, P. (1992). The Evolving Role of American Principals: From Managerial to Instructional to Transformational Leaders. Journal of Educational Administration, 30, 35-48. doi: 10.12691/education-3-3-11. Hallinger, P. (2005). Instructional Leadership and the School Principal: A Passing Fancy that Refuses to Fade Away. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 4, 221–239. doi: 10.1080/15700760500244793. Niemi, H. (2016). The Societal Factors Contributing to Education and Schooling in Finland. In Miracle of Education (pp. 23-40). SensePublishers, Rotterdam. OECD. (2013). TALIS 2013 Results. An International Perspective on Teaching and Learning. DOI:https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264196261-en https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/talis-2013-results_9789264196261-en#page324 Plessis, P. (2013). The principal as instructional leader: Guiding schools to improve instruction. Education as Change, 17, 79-92. doi: 10.1080/16823206.2014.865992. Taajamo, M., Puhakka, E. and Välijärvi, J. (2014). ”Opetuksen ja oppimisen kansainvälinen tutkimus TALIS 2013. Opetus- ja kulttuuriministeriön julkaisuja 2014:15. [Teaching and Learning International Survey, TALIS 2013. Publications of the Ministry of Education and Culture]”, Opetus- ja kulttuuriministeriö: Helsinki.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.