Session Information
26 SES 14 A, School Leadership Success amidst Contemporary Complexities and Layers of Influence on Education (Part 1)
Symposium to be continued in 26 SES 16 A
Contribution
In Sweden as in many other countries, there is increasing segregation due to students' socio–economic background since most students go to the school closest to home. This study is done in a socioeconomic segregated area in a large city in Sweden to find out how they work towards success. The school has a history of low results and a high number of newly immigrated students. For several years there has been a high turnover of principals and teachers. The current principal is described as driven by a desire to be successful by the superintendent. Multiple aims and a fast-changing society require that we look at principals and school leadership from several perspectives (Shaked & Schechter, 2017; Johansson & Ärlestig, 2020) as schools are complex adaptive systems with prerequisites and change processes that are, nonlinear, unstable, and constantly changing (Morrison, 2002) at the same time as some of their culture and attitudes are stable and hard to change. What characterizes a successful principal in a low socio-economic area? The study seeks answers on how the principal promotes equity, equality, well-being, teacher quality, and academic optimism to create a successful school. Local actors must navigate in complexity, understand and measure improvement, to make change sustainable (Glickman, 2010). We used a mixed methods approach for interviews and a survey based on the revised ISSPP protocol. In total, one principal, five assistant principals, and six teachers were interviewed. An online survey following the revised ISSPP protocol was distributed to all to all 55 teachers with a response of 89 % (n=49) Preliminary results show that the principal communicates academic optimism (Hoy 2014) to convince her personnel of the over-arching aim for the school that every child in their school has the right to the best possible education (SOU 2010:800). This has evoked an emphasis on what is happening inside the classroom and on ways to improve teaching. The principal gives during the interview examples of multiple change processes, outlining that several small steps and processes can lead forward to better teaching and learning. Our measurements of success will be linked to changes in culture, structure, and every child’s learning optimism as well as principals' leadership.
References
Authors, 2021. Author, 2020a Author, 2020b Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard university press. Byrne, D., & Callaghan, G. (2013). Complexity theory and the social sciences: The state of the art. Routledge. Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2017). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage publications. Denzin, N. K. (2012). Triangulation 2.0. Journal of mixed methods research, 6(2), 80-88. Manu, A. (2022). The Philosophy of Disruption. Bingley, Emerald Publishing. Morrison, K. (2010). Complexity theory, school leadership and management: Questions for theory and practice. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 38(3), 374-393. Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research & evaluation methods. Sage. (112 words)
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.