Around the world leadership has in recent decades come to be highlighted as an important factor for schools to achieve their goals. In Sweden the school leader assignment, in line with these global perceptions, has sharpened, and now even more as the new Education Act came into force the summer of 2011 (SFS 2010:800). With this, the school and therefore school leaders assignment has been more formalized and school leaders abilities to develop schools is written out more clearly than before. These tendencies are also to be found in the work of the national School Inspectorate, where school leaders as a key factor for quality and development are highlighted. At the same time, the complexity of the profession and leaders ability to function as an educational leader and communicate with the staff is also emphasized (Skolinspektionen 2011a, b och c).

In my presentation I will describe the results from a research project that have taken these above described aspects as a starting point. The main interest in the study is organizational communication - how we talk to each other in our workplaces - and the significance of this communication when it comes to tackle and carry through development, initiated by a policy text of any kind. In the study, I aim at investigate the relationship between government regulation and communicative practices concerning these regulations: What takes place beyond the explicit, administrative governance? Which meanings are created in the living narratives of this control?

The purpose of the research project is to examine how school leadership takes shape, in narrative practices of systematic quality work. The research questions are:

• What different forms of school leadership take shape in and through narrative practices in quality work?

• How do these forms of school leadership appear, in relation to dominant discourses of leadership?

The theoretical starting points lies in the area of narrative organizational research, and especially in the critical antenarrative theory and method (Boje 2010).  This is an approach that offers opportunities to explore the dynamics of organizational communication and it pays attention to the many different kinds of meaning making storytelling that takes place in an organization, especially when a new policy is to be launched. In line with this view an organization is to be considered a ”collective storytelling system” (Boje 1991, p 1), or a ”story telling space” (Boje, Rosile and Gardner 2004, p 7). In this story telling space several dynamics occurs: between the fulfillment and unfulfillment of a story (e.g. the interaction between consensus/non-consensus about what a new policy is about); between narratives, antenarratives and surrounding discourses (e.g. the way one policy on local level relates to/is related to another on a national level); between our inner, psychological needs of understanding what we are going thru and the story telling networking in the organization. The boundaries between these dynamics are permeable, although it often figures hierarchic and/or competitive relationships between them. Several stories with separate plots on the same event also often compete for space (ibid.).

Barge J. K. (2004). Antenarrative and managerial practice Communication Studies, 55(1), 106-127. Boje, D. M. (1991). The story-telling organization: A study of performance in an office-supply firm. Administrative Science Quarterly, 36(1), 106-126. Boje, D. M. (2001). Narrative methods for organizational and communication research. London: Sage. Boje, D. M. (2010). What is ante narrative? Fetched 2010-06-13, from http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/what_is_antenarrative.htm Boje, D. M., Rosile, G. A., Gardner, C. L. (2004). Antenarratives, Narratives and Anaemic Stories. Paper for the All Academy Symposium “Actionable Knowledge as the Power to Narrate”, Monday August 9 2004, New Orleans meeting of the Academy of Management. Fetched 2010xxxx från http://peaceaware.com/McD/ Czarniawska, B. (2011). Skuggning i fältarbete. I Ahrne, G. och Svensson, P. (red.) Handbok I kvalitativa metoder. Malmö: Liber. Fullan, M. G. (1991). The new meaning of educational change. London: Cassel Educational Limited. Hargreaves, A. (2000). The emotions of teching and educational change. I A. Hargreaves, A. Lieberman, M. Fullan och D. Hopkins (Red.), International handbook of educational change. (s. 558-570). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. SFS 2010:800. Skollag. Hämtad den 2011-10-22, från http://62.95.69.3/SFSdoc/10/100800.PDF Skolinspektionen (2011a). Rektors ledarskap. En granskning av hur rektor leder skolans arbete mot ökad måluppfyllelse. Kvalitetsgranskning. Rapport 2010:15. Hämtad den 2011-10-22, från http://www.skolinspektionen.se/Documents/Kvalitetsgranskning/rektor/kvalgr-rektor-slutrapport.pdf Skolinspektionen (2011b) Kvalitetsgranskningsprojektet. Rektors ledarskap 2. Direktiv. Dnr 4020:5 753. Hämtad den 2011-10-22, från http://www.skolinspektionen.se/Documents/Kvalitetsgranskning/rektor2/direktiv-rektor-2011.pdf Skolinspektionen (2011c) Litteraturöversikt inför granskning av Rektors ledarskap 2. Hämtad den 2011-10-22 från http://www.skolinspektionen.se/Documents/Kvalitetsgranskning/rektor2/litteraturoversikt-rektor2011.pdf