Principals’ professional learning is an essential practice within the educational complex (Kemmis, 2022). The aims vary depending on situation, time, and context, which also affects how schools’ owners make arrangements for principals’ professional learning. The professional learning we discuss in this presentation is a Master course designed as action research and planned in collaboration between a school superintendent in a Swedish municipality and two researchers (also authors of this text) in a Swedish university. 

The school superintendent was the one who took the initiative and contacted the university with a request to arrange a Master course for interested principals in compulsory schools in the municipality. Initially, the superintendent contacted the person who was responsible for the regular Master programme, but for various reasons it turned out to be difficult to find a solution that fitted the needs in the municipality and the superintendent’s expectations. Therefore, the school superintendent took the question further, which finally resulted in contact with two action researchers who are also engaged within the national school leader training programs. In the continuing process, a specific professional learning course is organised especially designed to suit the school superintendent’s ideas and thoughts, and based on the researchers’ knowledge about action research and findings from a previous study on collaboration between school leaders and researchers (Forssten Seiser & Portfelt, 2022). In that previous study, the results reveal the crucial role of the initiation of this kind of collaboration, the prerequisite of co-ownership, and the importance of relations built on trust and respect for each other’s professions, knowledge, and expertise. The study also stresses the importance of setting the arrangements for the collaboration in good time before proceeding to the work. 

The present study aims to explore the initiation process of the collaboration between the municipality and the university in the design of the first part of the course, and its influence on the principals’ professional learning in terms of their pedagogical leadership. The research questions are; 

• What was the purpose of the course and the collaboration between the partners, and how was it developed in the collaboration practice?
• How was the initiation part of the course developed in collaboration practice throughout the first semester?
• How has the design of the first part of the course influenced principals’ professional learning about their pedagogical leadership and local school improvement so far?

These questions will be considered through the lens of the theory of practices architecture (Kemmis et al. 2014). The theory stresses that practices are human-made and socially established; therefore, it highlights the role of the participant in the practice and in the shaping of the practice (Kaukko & Wilkinson, 2020). According to Kemmis et al. (2014), a practice is constituted by the sayings, doings, and relatings that hang together in the project of a specific practice. These sayings, doings, and relatings are prefigured, but not predetermined, by practice architectures present in or brought into the site. Sayings are prefigured by the cultural-discursive arrangements in a site, doings are prefigured by the material-economic arrangements in a site; and relatings are prefigured by the social-political arrangements in a site.

The study has an action research approach, and is based on qualitative data such as notes carried out by one of the researchers who was the educator in the initiation stage of the course, an audio recording from an individual semistructured interview with the school superintendent (60 min), and individually written assignments produced by 16 participating principals in the course. The participants were fully informed about the research project and their rights in accordance with research ethics, and have given their consent to participate in recordings, analyses, and reports of the findings. The study has been approved by the local university’s ethical committee. The interviews have been transcribed. Data have been transferred into the qualitative software programme NVivo. First, data were sorted out of relevance for this particular study. Second, data were coded into sayings, doings, and relatings in accordance with the theoretical framework. Third, coded sayings, doings, and relatings were analysed to identify its surrounding arrangements; the cultural-discursive, the material-economic, and the social-political arrangements. In the fourth phase, the interrelations between the arrangements were analysed to reveal the practice architecture of the collaboration practice, how it shaped the principals’ professional learning, and its constraining and enabling traits (Kemmis et al., 2014). The outcomes are reliable for this specific practice and context only, and are not generalizable.

The purpose of the course and collaboration At an early stage of the collaboration, a shared vision of the purpose of the course was formulated; to create an advanced professional training course for principals that corresponds with their needs of developing their pedagogical leadership to meet the challenges on their local schools, and integrate the course with the already existing meeting structures on the local municipality level. The traditional Master course at the university would not have enabled such integration. By setting up the entire course as an action research study, the principals could use the course to explore their practice when attempting to improve their local schools, and to improve their skills to use scientific approaches. The purpose of the collaboration became to enable principals’ professional learning on the Master level, integrated in everyday practice. The development of the first part of the course The first part of the course was negotiated by the partners to focus on interview methods and qualitative analysis, to enable the principals to explore the challenges in their local schools, and how they are related to their pedagogical leadership. An overall frame of the course was set in terms of content and scheduled. Time, space, and resources were distributed. Content and time were renegotiated as each step of the course was evaluated, and adjusted along the course to meet the principals on the right level, at the right time. As both partners had experience as school leaders as well as researchers, there was a mutual understanding and respect for each other’s roles and competencies. The influence on principals’ professional learning So far, the design of the course seems to have influenced principals’ understanding of the importance of using scientific approaches to address local school challenges, and how their pedagogical leadership is related to other local practices.

Forssten Seiser, A., & Portfelt, I. (2022). Critical aspects to consider when establishing collaboration between school leaders and researchers: two cases from Sweden. Educational action research, 1-16. Kaukko, M., & Wilkinson, J. (2020). “Learning how to go on”: Refugee students and informal learning practices. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 24(11), 1175–1193. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2018.1514080 Kemmis, S., J. Wilkinson, C. Edwards-Groves, I. Hardy, P. Grootenboer, and L. Bristol. (2014). Changing practices, changing education. Singapore: Springer. Kemmis, S. (2022). Transforming Practices: Changing the World with the Theory of Practice Architectures. Springer Singapore.