Session Information
26 SES 17 A, Perspectives of Educational Leadership
Paper Session
Contribution
Principals’ tasks are often described as complex. In Sweden as in many other countries, principals need to combine the national responsibility to lead teaching and student learning with municipal governance and administrative task such as resources and personnel. Swedish principals have a large impact on how to organize school activities, decide on resources, and school development initiatives (Ärlestig et al. 2016). Principals’ role includes close cooperation with teachers and the local educational authorities (LEA) (i.e. private school organizers as well as the 290 municipalities). The pressure to increase students’ academic results combined with a shortage of qualified teachers has rendered to more work and the number of deputy principals and other administrative support personnel has increased to assure that principals secure enough time on teaching and learning issues. However, despite country context studies show that principals still find it hard to combine quality assessment, managerial work, different steering logics and a focus on students’ teaching and learning (Leo et al 2020).
Pedagogical leadership is at the core of the principal assignment as stated in the Educational Act (SFS 2010:800). At the same time, pedagogical leadership is a broad concept, and is sometimes perceived as elusive (Svedberg, 2019). ‘Pedagogical leadership’ overlaps with what is internationally referred to as leadership for learning, instructional leadership, or supervision (see e.g., Shields, 2010; Townsead & Macbeat, 2011; Glickman et al, 2016; Seashore Louis & Thessin, 2019). They have in common that the focus is on teaching and student learning, but they differ regarding how controlling, investigative, or inclusive the leadership should be. Uljens and Smeds-Nylund (2021) describe pedagogical leadership as interrelated at all governance levels. They describe pedagogical leadership as investigative and as a strive towards creating conditions for each level to independently develop its work in supporting students' learning and their learning environment. Thus, conducted at several levels and involved different actors. In Forsstein Seisser’s study (2017) where principals’ understanding of pedagogical leadership was explored and challenged this led to changes in principals’ practice. By visualising and discussing expectations, possibilities, and challenges the principals experienced a more shared way of working with pedagogical leadership. In this paper, the aim is to understand how pedagogical leadership is understood and enacted within a school organization. We focus on several levels of leadership, and in this explorative study we ask:
- How, and in what ways, is pedagogical leadership understood, enacted, and desired?
- What differences can be discerned regarding conceptions, and expectations regarding pedagogical leadership from different actors and roles?
- How, and in what ways, can different understandings and expectations of pedagogical leadership and roles work together to strengthen the focus on student’s development and learning?
Method
The paper draws on a participatory case study in one medium-sized Swedish municipality, where the school district leaders initiated a study in collaboration with us, as researchers, on how principals, deputy principals, and administrative support understand and work as pedagogical leaders. All compulsory principals and deputy principals, administrative support, district leaders, and some teachers participate in the study. Before data-collection, an initial meeting was held with all the functions mentioned above and the researchers, except for the teachers. This meeting was treated as an information forum as well as a forum for discussion on questions, strategies, hopes, and fears concerning the participatory study. Recently after the meeting, surveys were sent out to all informants. Different surveys were created for different functions, covering district leaders (3), principals (13), deputy principals (27+), operational managerial support personnel (5), and teachers (150+). The questions and statements were asked to respond to topics such as how they understand pedagogical leadership, their role, and responsibility in relation to pedagogical leadership, and their expectations of others to pedagogical leadership. The survey also included statements regarding their and others’ assignments as well as trust and support. Prior to the survey all participants were informed about the project and consented to participate, that they had the right to withdraw, as well as how data would be stored and used (in line with the Swedish research council, VR 2017). The research process was iterative to come close to the setting and use the findings from the survey to inform the interviews and the overall research process. As a second step, focus-group interviews with all actors in school leadership positions will be conducted in early spring 2023. They will be recorded and transcribed and provide insights into how different understandings of pedagogical leadership are created and enacted to various positions. The analysis will be conducted exploratively and qualitatively via thematic content analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005) involving several steps, including continuous discussions and interpretations between the authors on emerging categories and second-order themes. In the second level of analysis, we have the ambition of using theoretically informed concepts to come to terms with how the differences could be understood as well as to suggest how the different understandings and expectations of pedagogical leadership and roles could work together to strengthen the focus on student’s development and learning. The results will be discussed with all participants in late May for triangulation.
Expected Outcomes
Our tentative findings indicate that pedagogical leadership is depicted in many different ways. There is not one solemn understanding, even though the context could be regarded as quite similar for all the participants in the study as it covers one municipality. This could be important to bear in mind in future studies. From the initial data collection we also see that different roles, actors, or functions place different weights on different aspects of pedagogical leadership. There has recently been a reorganization where the number of deputy principals and administrative support has increased. The lack of qualified teachers and other issues hinder the various roles in creating a mutual understanding of what is meant by pedagogical leadership even if everyone is determined to support student learning. They feel captured in everyday administration which reduces the time for working with the teachers on issues that can create a sustainable improvement of teaching and student learning. Even if pedagogical leadership is seen as important and there are new leadership positions there has been no mutual process on how to understand and execute pedagogical leadership. Our next step will be to categorize various understandings of pedagogical leadership to identify gaps between what school leaders see as their responsibility and their expectations of others. Results will be presented during the conference in Glasgow.
References
Forssten Seiser, A., (2017). Stärkt pedagogiskt ledarskap: rektorer granskar sin egen praktik. Diss. Karlstad: Karlstads universitet. Glickman, C., Gordon, S. & Ross-Gordon, J. (2016) Supervision and Instructional Leadership. NY: Pearson. Hsieh, H. F., & Shannon, S. E. (2005). Three approaches to qualitative content analysis. Qualitative health research, 15(9), 1277-1288. Leo, U., Persson, R., Arvidsson, I., & Håkansson, C. (2020). External expectations and well-being, fundamental and forgotten perspectives in school leadership: a study on new leadership roles, trust and accountability. In Re-centering the critical potential of Nordic school leadership research (pp. 209–229). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55027-1_12 Seashore Louis, K., & Thessin, R. (2019). The role of districts and other agencies in supporting school leaders’ instructional leadership. NY: Emerald. Shields, C. (2010). Transformative Leadership: Working for Equity in Diverse Contexts. Educational Administration Quarterly, 46(4), 558–589. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X10375609 Svedberg, L. (2019). Pedagogiskt ledarskap och pedagogisk ledning: Teori och praktik. Studentlitteratur. Townsead, T. & Macbeath, J. (2011) International handbook of Leadership for learning. Dordrecht: Springer. Uljens, M. & Smeds-Nylund, A. (red.) (2021). Pedagogiskt ledarskap och skolutveckling. (Upplaga 1). Lund: Studentlitteratur. Ärlestig, H, Johansson, O., Nihlfors, E. (2016) Swedish School Leadership Research An important but neglected Area. In H. Ärlestig, C. Day, O.Johansson (eds.) A Decade of Research on School Principals (Vol. 21, Studies in Educational Leadership). Cham: Springer International Publishing
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