In Sweden, as in many countries, the work of school principals has become increasingly complex due to both changed political prioritisations and the societal developments in general (e.g., digitalisation, segregation, and changes in the demographical composition of students). Principals often experience conflicts in their role as they are facing strong expectations being accountable for students results, responsible for the staff in combination with extensive administrative tasks.

While the Swedish Education Act highlights the autonomy of school principals in matters of school organization, finances, and improvement initiatives, it simultaneously underscores the Local Education Authorities' (LEAs) responsibility for school outcomes and ensuring equity. This duality introduces ambiguity and illustrates the challenges faced by actors within local school organizations (Adolfsson & Alvunger 2020). Initiatives from the LEA and superintendent are experienced as administrative by the principals and perceived as interfering with daily work and contributing to an overload of duties. More communication involving long-term visions, frames and interpretations of directives and research are needed in relation to the local context (Norqvist & Ärlestig 2020)

We have in previous epidemiological (Persson, et al., 2021a) and interview studies (Leo et al., 2020) observed that the work conditions of school principals often are overlooked, forgotten, or simply not prioritized by politicians and the superintendents, which are the school principals’ superiors. For example, in a survey that had a nationwide reach, and which entailed more than 2000 school principals and assistant principals, we observed that the principals rated a supportive management as the least supportive factor in comparison with four other factors (i.e., cooperating coworkers, supportive management colleagues, supportive private life and supportive organisational structures) (Persson et al., 2021a). In addition, and when data was broken down further, we observed that only 17% of the school principals and assistant principals agreed with the statements that assessed their trust that superiors had a genuine interest in their job and when needed would help them solving work environment problems for the co-workers (Persson et al., 2021b). Furthermore, when interviewed, the principals explained that the superintendent was the link between the school board (i.e., the political level) and the principals. They also reported that they sometimes experienced opposite expectations from the superintendent and the local school management that caused them to feel that the “gas” and the “break” was applied simultaneously (Leo et al., 2020). There seems to be disconnect between school principals and their superiors that hinders effective cooperation and management. Presumably, dealing with this disconnect will create knowledge that may unlock unused capacity and make the governance of schools more effective and in the end improve student outcomes.

Research on the LEA level give insight of the sometimes challenging relationship between superintendents and principals (Honig & Rainey, 2019; Hakansson & Adolfsson, 2022). However, few (if any) studies have adopted a dual perspective by interviewing both school principals and their immediate superiors within the same organisation to capture their unique perspectives on the same issue. Hence, to gain insight and to improve our understanding of this understudied relation, we decided to conduct an interview study that simultaneously addressed both the school principals and the superintendent’s perspective. Thus, the overall objective of the present study was to identify circumstances that were perceived as facilitating the cooperation between school principals and their immediate supervisors. Specifically, we aimed to answer the following research questions:

Research questions

1. How do school principals and the school principals’ closest managers (often superintendent) describe their collaboration and work relationship?

 2. What opportunities and/or potential pathways for improving their collaboration and work relationship are proposed by school principals and their closest managers (often superintendent)?

In total, we examined eight organizations (seven municipalities and one independent school) in which we interviewed eight school principals and their associated superintendents (N=16). The informants comprised nine females (six principals and three superintendents) and seven males (two principals and five superintendents). The eight organizations were situated in both small municipalities (i.e., less than 4000 inhabitants) and large municipalities (i.e., more than 200.000 inhabitants). The organizations and informants came from various geographical regions from all over Sweden and the schools showed a lot of variation as regards both students and their parents’ socio-economic backgrounds. The informants were identified as presumably working in well-functioning organizations that had a focus on the principals’ work environment (i.e., positive examples). The selection of organizations was driven by suggestions from worker unions (six organizations) and by self-referrals (two organizations) that responded to our request for help identifying positive examples during a large national conference. Thus, the organizations and schools were selected by reputation from others, or from having an own understanding as working in a functioning school. The first contact occurred via the superintendent who were asked to select suitable school principals with at least three years of work experience in the same school. The data was collected via individual interviews on zoom and lasted about one hour. There were always two interviewers (one led the interview and the other observed and asked supplementary questions when needed). The sound files were transcribed verbatim and subsequently subject to a content analysis using the Nvivo 14 software.

Cooperation between the principal's closest manager and the principal The preliminary analyses suggest that both school principals and their closest managers think that the quality of communication and having a good dialogue is important. The principals want easy and quick access to their superiors to get advice and feedback on urgent matters. The preferred main channel for communication is phone complemented by digital platforms. Only a few of the superintendents visit the schools on a regular basis. The structures for the formal meetings with the superintendent and all principals in the local organization differ a lot from some hours online to one full day a week. It is also common to mix shorter meetings online with information and longer physical meetings when there is a need for discussions concerning educational development, policy, budget etc. Opportunities and potential pathways for improving collaboration Division of responsibilities at the leadership level is a key to reduce role conflicts. In most cases administrative tasks, responsibility for facilities, and physical work environment are delegated to others giving principals more time and energy to focus educational leadership. The support is different in the organisations, however principals talk about a mind shift in HR-, and economic departments in favour of seeing teaching and learning as the core of the organization where feeding data to the HR- and economical systems used to be the main priority. Local support and a direct contact between the principal and an expert at the LEA are seen as success factors. The importance of having colleagues at leadership level as support is crucial. Some of the principals work in leadership teams and the ones who are alone at their school have close relations with colleagues in other schools.

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