Session Information
26 SES 07 A, Policy, Values, and Ethical Leadership – Diversity, Covariation, or Conflict
Symposium
Contribution
Leadership is more than making decisions and taking responsibility. It is also about facilitating and creating trust, engagement, motivation, and distributing power to others (Arlestig & Johansson, 2016; Shaked & Shechter, 2017). In Sweden, the number of leaders both above and beneath principals grows. This raises questions on how leaders interact and share their mission and responsibility. How are values, power, and interpretation of policy interacted and communicated between leaders? An important aspect of the governing chain is to contribute to how policy is understood, implemented, and challenged. In the rational model of the democratic governing chain, intervening spaces at all levels are neglected to the policy process. The meeting and forums between leaders on various hierarchical levels can be seen as intervening spaces where interpretations and negotiations take place. Places where ideology and rationality meet individual actors and various school contexts and organizations. Our research question is: How are democratic policy ideas visible in the intervening spaces of a governing chain in public schools? The study took place in two municipalities representing the 25 most populated cities in Sweden. The data is based on interviews with 66 informants with leadership roles on the district level and two schools in each municipality (Grimm, Norqvist & Roos, 2021). The interviews were semi-structured asking about relations, trust, responsibility, and assessment. All interviews were recorded and transcribed. The empirical data shows that even if leaders have continuous meetings there is various understanding of what is seen as important and good quality. There is also various intention and priorities depending on if the leader works on the district level as a principal or teacher. The communication between levels hides some of the problems if there is a risk to lose control. Instead, the language is used to encourage and show that there is continuous work towards higher academic student results. The findings indicate that intervening spaces and policy drift are vital to support, control, and use professional competence in the process to transfer political ideas to classroom practice. (Johansson & Ärlestig 2022a; 2022b).
References
Ärlestig, H., Day, C., & Johansson, O. (2016). A decade of research on school principals: cases from 24 countries. Dordrecht: Springer. Grimm, F., Norqvist, L., & Roos, K. (2021). Exploring visual method in the field of educational leadership: Co-creating understandings of educational leadership and authority in school organisations. Educational Management, Administration & Leadership, 174114322110307–. https://doi.org/10.1177/17411432211030747 Johansson, O. & Ärlestig, H. (2022a). Democratic governing ideals and the power of intervening spaces as prerequisite for student learning. Journal of Educational Administration, 60(3), 340–353. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-04-2021-0079 Johansson, O., Ärlestig, H. (2022b). Policy implementations in schools: the chain of command and its intervening spaces. In A. Nir (ed.) School leadership in the 21th century: challenges and strategies. (pp. 247–276). NY: Nova. Shaked, H., & Schechter, C. (2017). Systems thinking for school leaders: Holistic leadership for excellence in education. Cham.: Springer.
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