Conference Agenda

School leaders stand in a field of tension between vertical and horizontal expectations. This situation implies that a school leader must consider education policy guidelines and requirements for student results and at the same time meet the needs of students, parents and staff. This requires a "Janus perspective" which on the one hand involves keeping a vigilant eye on the current societal challenges, and on the other hand put the spotlight on which needs should be taken care of in one's own school linked to the local context that frames the institution.

In this field of tension, school leaders must lead their own staff in the work of interpreting and operationalizing the school's curriculum, which can be challenging. Not least, it requires that the leader himself sets aside sufficient time to update himself on what new reforms and guidelines entail, and in this case the Norwegian curriculum LK20.

The objective of this study is to “open a window” into school leaders’ experienced challenges concerning leading the work of interpreting and operationalizing the school's curriculum in a Norwegian context. For this purpose, we have formulated the following research question:

What challenges do school leaders point out, related to leading the curriculum work at their own school?

In this context, it is relevant to see the school as a learning organization (Senge 1991; Roald 2010). In terms of building capacity for further development of the school, the term "learning organisation" now seems to be replaced by the term "professional learning communities" (Aas & Vennebo, 2021, p. 13). Hence, In the presentation, we will elaborate theoretically on the concept of "professional learning communities". Furthermore, we will include the new curriculum’s description of the professional community and the principal's management of this. We draw on Goodlad's (1979) curriculum model since this model is a relevant analytical tool when it comes to the relationship between the "different faces" of the curriculum.

We will also draw on Ertesvåg's (2012) description of the three phases in development work: initiation, implementation and institutionalisation, which opens up the possibility of being able to analyze whether the school leaders' challenges in leading the curriculum work can be specifically linked to one or more of these phases. We will also take a closer look at ledarship literature, for example Irgens (2021), Klev & Levin (2021), as well as Brunstad (2009) and his book on wise leadership.

This paper highlights the concept of controversial issues in preschool principals’ everyday practice. Controversial issues are something that teachers and principals have to address more frequently in schools and preschools in recent years (Council of Europe, 2017). One explanation for this development might be, according to the Council of Europe, that teachers and principals are working in a rapidly changing global environment. For instance, we have had a worldwide pandemic, conflicts in the surrounding world that increase migration, an ongoing climate crisis and a fast technological development that create insecurities. This development calls for a readiness capacity on the organizational level but also a leadership that is sensitive and able to identify controversial issues that arise in preschools today and tomorrow.

When reviewing research on controversial issues in preschools and schools it is evident that the main focus is directed toward teachers and their practice, i. e. on how they teach in relation to topics that are perceived as controversial in an educational setting (see e.g. Bautista, isco & Quaye, 2018; Sætra, 2019). Further, research on how controversial issues are perceived and dealt with from a principal’s perspective is scarce. The concept of controversial issues is not easily defined and there is no uniform definition of the concept. In this study we use a definition that controversial issues are all issues that create tension or disputes on an organizational and/or societal level such as, for example, segregation, migration, equality, religion, sexuality and gender which may be difficult to know how to handle and/or respond to (Council of Europe, 2017).

As described above, controversial issues are topics that is difficult to handle and sometimes there are no easy solutions or clear paths for the principal in order to deal with or in the process of deciding what to do. In other words, these issues could be described as professional dilemmas for the principals. A dilemma can be defined as a situation where values, obligations and/or commitments collide or conflict and there is, for the involved actors, no obvious right way to do or act (Honig, 1994, 1996). In order to describe and understand these professional dilemmas the concept of dilemmatic spaces is used. A dilemmic space can be understood as a landscape of interactions between different actors within a specific social setting and where frictions in relation to societal and professional norms and values manifest (Olsson, 2022). Through the concept of dilemmatic space, actors, norms, values and action patterns can be framed which can affect how principals are positioned or position themselves, which in turn affects their leadership practice. In this paper we understand the concept of dilemmatic space as being relational and dialectic (Fransson & Grannäs, 2013). This means that not only people are positioned based on their standpoints and their moral positioning but also in relation to various norms, values, patterns of action, decisions, rules, roles and functions are related and positioned in relation to each other, and these positions creates a space, an area where dilemmas might occur that principals have to deal with (Fransson, 2012; Fransson & Grannäs, 2013).

The aim of this study, which has an exploratory point of departure, is to analyze the controversial issues and discuss in relation to dilemmatic spaces. This is done by focusing on which issues preschool principals experience and articulate as controversial in their practice. Further, why these issues are perceived as controversial and how the principals are affected by them and how they position themselves or become positioned and what space they can operate in when trying to deal with them.

The continuous transformation in education globally and perpetual changes in the education landscape have had an impact on many facets of the organisational structure of education, leadership and education provision (Howard et al., 2019; Tintor´e et al., 2022). Although education change is difficult, it is crucial to adapt to worldwide change and needs. Considerable investments in education have been made by many countries, in the hope of school improvement. Despite the investments made, there is still a global concern that numerous schools are not functioning optimally and achieving required throughput rates.

Circuit managers (CMs) are uniquely placed to influence education reform, quality of education and school improvement. The CM is also known as the school inspector or superintendent. CMs have many challenges to deal with that are often beyond their control or mandate (Bantwini & Moorosi, 2018a; Myende et al., 2020). The numerous transformations in education have placed CMs under tremendous pressure, as they are accountable and responsible for the performance of the schools and learners in their circuit areas (Nkambule & Amsterdam, 2018). The support role of CMs has become an integral driver for transformation in schools. CMs should support principals in managing and leading their schools and ensure that principals are capacitated in dealing with many varying disparities (Bantwini, 2018a; Ndlovu, 2018). As such, CMS are central to the success of change initiatives in education. Unprecedented education changes have had an enormous impact on the expected support CMs need to give to principals (Arar, 2020; Kaul, 2021).

Multiple diverse factors influence the support that CMs provide to principals such as required training, context, geography, culture, socio-economic gap, unionised school environment, political interference and leadership of each school (Arar, 2020; Mthethwa, 2020; Myende et al., 2020; Przybylski et al., 2018; Tamadoni et al., 2021). Not all CMs are capacitated to effectively implement the required education changes and deal with school personnel and principals who show resistance to mandatory changes (Myende et al., 2020; Zulu et al., 2021). The findings of various studies show that CMs do not provide principals and schools with sufficient support (Bantwini & Moorosi, 2018b; Kaul et al., 2021).

There is an outcry from principals to be prepared, mentored, trained and developed to deal with education change (Bantwini & Moorosi, 2018b; Myende et al., 2020). The problem is that most education districts and CMs do not provide initiatives or opportunities for principals to be developed to deal with the challenging context in which they find themselves. The responsibilities of principals for ensuring continuous quality education and school improvement rely mainly on the leadership of the CMs in education districts to implement change. The significance of the CMs support to principals during education change cannot be overemphasised and need to be researched (Myende et al. 2020).

The significance of the CM in supporting principals, improving schools, and enhancing student learning is central to achieving greater educational transformation in diverse contexts. To assist CMs in dealing with multifarious factors and enable them to provide principals with effective and sustainable support, the researchers designed a support framework for CMs to support principals during education change.

Globally, reform discourses and policy texts increasingly press standardization, test-based accountability, and evidence-based approaches to decision-making in education systems. These ideas have become staples in policy discourses (Ball, 2008), pushing education leaders to engage with technically rational problem-solving approaches. Although some challenges entail problem solving, others do not. Rather, they pose dilemmas for educators to manage. Dilemmas, as distinct from problems, refer to “messy, complicated, conflict-filled situations” where the alternative solutions are roughly equally desirable (or undesirable), necessitating compromise on the part of education and school leaders on some fundamental values (Cuban, 2001, p. 10). Dilemmas pose distinctive challenges for educational leadership.

In this presentation, we focus on the dilemmas that system leaders encounter in reforming primary school science in response to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013). Primary school science offers an interesting case for two reasons: First, reformers press for ambitious changes that will require system leaders to engage in educational system-building to support science teaching. Second, primary school science has not figured as prominently as literacy and mathematics in policy texts that advance test-based accountability. Historically science is often sidelined in the primary school curriculum (Murphy & Beggs, 2005; NASEM, 2022), with primary teachers often lacking confidence in teaching science (Klepaker & Almendingen, 2017; Murphy et al, 2007), and as a result likely poses unique challenges for system leaders.

We motivate and frame our research by bringing three distinct literatures into conversation. First, education system-building refers to the work that system and school leaders, often in collaboration with teachers, do to organize, support, and manage the core work of schooling—teaching. It involves five core domains of work, distributed across levels (e.g., local education agencies, schools, and classrooms) of the education system, including building educational infrastructures; supporting the use of educational infrastructure in practice; managing environmental relations; managing practice and performance; and developing and distributing instructional leadership (Datnow et al., 2022; Peurach et al., 2019; Spillane et al., 2022). Our analysis focuses on system leaders’ efforts to build education systems to support primary school science and the dilemmas they construct in doing that work (Peurach, Yurkofsky, & Sutherland, 2019).

Second, we take a school subject specific approach to education system-building because the available empirical evidence suggests that the school subject matters not only for how teachers think about teaching and its improvement (Ball, 1981; Siskin, 2013), but also for school and system leaders’ efforts to lead and organize instructional improvement (Spillane & Hopkins, 2013). Further, the institutional environments that form around particular school subjects differ, shaping the work leaders must engage in. For example, some subjects––notably literacy and mathematics––receive considerably more attention from policymakers and other institutional actors than others, such as science and social studies (Burch & Spillane, 2003; Murphy & Beggs, 2005).

Third, while the rise of technical rationality globally has contributed to foregrounding the problem-solving work of educational leadership, scholars have long documented the centrality of dilemmas and managing dilemmas in educational practice from classroom teaching (Lampert, 1985) to school and district leadership (Cardno, 2007; Cuban, 2001; Spillane & Sun, 2022; Spillane & Lowenhaupt, 2019). Dilemmas captured situations in which educational leaders face two or more prized values, where choosing would lead to sacrificing something else they value, potentially making matters worse. Hence, dilemmas do not lend themselves to technically-rational approaches to problem-solving; rather they must be managed – coped with – over time.

Our research questions are:

1. What are the core dilemmas that education system leaders grapple with in improving and supporting elementary science education?

2. How do education system leaders manage these dilemmas?