This paper argues for the need of an educational infrastructure to strengthen the teaching profession and its leaders. We understand infrastructure as interlinked resources that support school development, such as a knowledge base with data, research and validated experience, administrative, physical, and technological support structures, feedback mechanisms and professional learning communities (Børte et al, 2020, Lillejord & Børte, 2020). The 1983 report A Nation at Risk, ignited a global discourse of mistrust in education and resulted in accountability reforms that ignored the complexity of education (Lillejord, 2020). As these reforms are currently waning, we need knowledge about how to strengthen the teaching profession’s research-informed, knowledge-building, professional learning processes (Lillejord, 2023) and how leaders can facilitate the co-construction and synthesizing of knowledge from various sources.

Researchers have argued that school leaders are, next to classroom teaching, the most important factor for students’ learning (Leithwood, Harris & Hopkins, 2008). There is, however, little research on what school leaders do to accomplish this (Leithwood, Harris & Hopkins, 2020), little research on school leaders’ workplace learning (Veelen, Sleegers, & Endedijk 2017) and little research on support structures for learning at organizational level. In schools, argued Weick (1976), two ‘systems' worked separately. One consisted of teachers, parents, students and curriculum, another of the principal and middle leaders. While the two systems are somehow attached, there is little transfer of knowledge. We draw on Shirell & Spillane (2020) who described education as a complex, learning-intensive enterprise, requiring educators to work together to improve practice and Gurr, Longmuir and Reed (2021) who suggested that a context view of schools helps us understand how school leaders influence various contextual factors to develop schools.

Due to educational institutions’ inherent complexity, leading and organizing schools for learning and development is challenging, partly because decades of neoliberal policies fixated the idea that the knowledge needed for school development and improvement was to be found outside school. External experts and consultancy firms supposedly knew more about how schools should improve than teachers and school leaders. When efforts to get this external knowledge into schools failed, teachers were often blamed (Sarason, 1998). Schools’ internal knowledge is diverse and includes how students experience teaching and learning, what teachers discuss and agree on in their professional learning communities and how school leaders organize for learning.

An Expert Group (Lillejord et al., 2021) on schools’ contribution to students’ learning found that in schools with a substantial contribution to students’ learning, school leaders systematically used the schools’ internal knowledge to improve practices. Student participation was systemic, and teachers used their professional learning communities to discuss how they could use student feedback to improve practice. While these school leaders took for granted that the knowledge needed to improve practice was in the school, leaders in low performing schools were oriented outwards, to external, knowledgeable experts. Based on these findings, an important first step in the development of an educational infrastructure is to understand how school leaders perceive and develop educational knowledge (Brezinka, 1992). Teachers and leaders must understand the schools’ internal knowledge processes and develop a meta-perspective on their knowledge work (Lillejord, 2023).

 Norwegian policy documents (Ministry of Education, 2017; 2019) and evaluations of reform initiatives in schools, claim that school leaders lack analytical competence and that schools lack a support structure for development efforts. As this can be considered barriers for learning at organizational level, we will present data that allow us to explore how school leaders understand such key concepts.  Our research question is:

 How do school leaders understand “analytical competence” and “support structure” in relation to an infrastructure for school development?

This paper reports from a qualitative exploratory descriptive study (Hunter et al., 2019). We wanted to unveil how school leaders understand key concepts that are in research and policy claimed/reported to affect their ability to organize for learning and development in schools. A qualitative open-ended questionnaire was developed to elicit school leaders’ understanding of analytical competence and show their perceived need for support structures for school development. The following open-ended questions were formulated: • How do you understand the concept analytical competence? • What kind of analytical competence do you/your school need? • How do you understand the concepts support systems and support structures? • Which support structures/systems do your school need? Data collection and analytical strategy The first data collection was conducted during spring 2022. A web-based questionnaire with four key questions was distributed to 30 school leaders (middle leaders and principals) who attended a post-secondary school leadership master course called “Leadership of learning and curriculum work in schools”. Participants were encouraged to answer the questionnaire within a time slot of about 10 minutes during the last day of the leadership program. Fifteen of the participants answered the questionnaire. The second data collection is scheduled in February 2023. This will supplement and strengthen our initial findings and allow us to further explore aspects of interest unveiled in the first data set. The questionnaire is therefore expanded with three questions related to school leaders’ perceived needs for what it will take to systematically utilize the diversity of the schools’ internal knowledge resources. The questionnaire will be distributed to 22 school leaders who attend the same post-secondary school leadership master course “leadership of learning and curriculum work in schools” and will include principals and middle leaders. Results from the first and second data collection will be analyzed using thematic analysis, to identify diversity within the group of leaders, strengths and weaknesses related to the school leaders’ understanding of and need for analytical competence and support structures in development work.

The analysis of the first data set shows that school leaders perceive the concepts “analytical competence” and “support structures” differently. Their reported needs could be grouped in three categories: 1) School leaders with weak understanding and high need. Common denominators in this category were their outwards orientation, their stated need for external knowledgeable experts or programs that can support and help them organize and manage school development processes. 2) School leaders with moderate understanding and high need. The answers in this category indicated a moderate understanding of what analytical competence is and how it can be used in school improvement processes. Common denominators were the orientation outwards in terms of support structures. 3) School leaders with high understanding and low need. Leaders in this category aligned their descriptions of support structures to the school’s existing infrastructures and ways of organizing and improving practice. All leaders in this category were oriented inwards i.e., on how to use, improve and strengthen the school’s existing knowledge. They also referred to how they could strategically use professional learning communities as support structures and build internal systems for collaboration. The study has revealed that school leaders differ in how they perceive their needs for support. They also think differently about their knowledge needs (i.e., believe that the necessary knowledge is in school or outside the school). These differences probably influence how they understand what it takes to be a leader to manage, organize and develop complex organizations such as schools. Like all professions, the teaching profession needs an infrastructure that can be used to synthesize the diversity of knowledge and various knowledge sources through processes of assessing and improving educational practice. An infrastructure for systematic knowledge work enables leaders to organize schools in ways that shield them from future potentially counter-productive policy initiatives and reforms.

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