26. Educational Leadership
Paper
The Voice of Students in School Governance: A case study of a Professional Learning Community
Lucia Fernández Terol1, Marta Olmo-Extremera1, Miguel Ángel Diaz Delgado2
1University of Granada, Spain; 2Researcher in the National Research System of Mexico
Presenting Author: Fernández Terol, Lucia
The work presented here is a proposal that focuses on schools that serve through Professional Learning Communities (PLC) that show trajectories of successful innovation and are recognised as ‘schools that transform’ their reality, culture and practice in order to respond to current challenges and improve their educational results. From this, an interest arises in expanding knowledge about the dynamics that can be carried out in schools to involve students in school governance from a child-friendly perspective. With this emphasis, two questions were formulated:
1. What kind of leadership creates spaces for real student participation in school governance?
2. What strategies can be implemented in the school to give students a voice in decision-making and change?
This study is part of the project ‘Extended professional learning communities and collaborative networks for sustainable development and inclusion: new governance and social capital’ (Ref: B-SEJ-234-UGR20). Funded by the European Regional Development Fund.
Theoretical framework
Student participation is increasingly a global phenomenon as stated in Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Locating student voice in schools and classrooms - governed by entrenched traditional student-teacher roles - means that student influence in decision-making remains a problematic issue.
Previous studies have shown that giving students a voice is a way of valuing their interests and motivations, encouraging their active participation in school decision-making, and moving towards educational change and improvement by (Barker, 2018; Hardie, 2015; Lucena et al., 2021; Sargeant & Gillett-Swan, 2019) sharing school responsibilities.
However, it is common to find studies that approach the teaching profession and leadership in education in terms of student learning from a colonising and despotic perspective, i.e. for children, but without them. Several authors have already denounced the fact that the impact on learning and the improvement of education is sought, but the voice of students is not taken into account (Rudduck & McIntyre, 2007; Tonucci, 2015).
When we talk about learner voice, we are referring to any initiative that favours and encourages student participation in schools, as well as school experiences with highly variable pedagogical scope and meaning (John-Akinola et al., 2014; Susinos & Ceballos, 2012).
Faced with this reality and in order to guarantee the exercise of children's rights in schools and to transform the traditional style of governance, a horizontal, distributed and successful leadership is needed (Rincón-Gallardo et al., 2019). A leadership that is capable of responding appropriately to the demands of specific situations and that will depend on the ability to take advantage of the elements that are given to it to build a joint school vision (Bush, 2018).
For this vision to be extended to the whole community, the leader must bring trust and encourage good communication practices among members (Robinson, 2019). The driver for change must be collaboration, mutual support and trust in staff, in what Hargreaves & O'Connor (2020) have called ‘collaborative professionalism (when teaching together means learning from everyone)’.
Schools that take the Professional Learning Communities model, students, school leaders and teachers work together as partners to make change decisions and co-produce the pedagogy and curriculum of the school, as well as the relationship dynamics in the school (Prenger et al., 2021).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedA case study was intentionally selected for its value and relevance to the research, according to the following criteria:
• Convenience: participation in educational innovation projects.
• Contextual: belonging to schools located in vulnerable contexts at risk of educational and social exclusion (cataloguing of the Delegation of Education and the Andalusian Agency for Educational Evaluation).
• Content perspective: immersion in a process of school transformation focused on the involvement of students as protagonists of their learning and change.
This is the Juan Pablo I educational school (Valderrubio, Spain) which provides infant education (3-6 years), primary education (7-11 years) and lower secondary education (12-14 years). The main value of the school model, proposed by the management, is to recover the ideas and thoughts of the pedagogue Paulo Freire by considering education as a practice of freedom. The management wants to encourage the participation of children in the daily life of the school in order to give them the opportunity to become agents of change in the school and its community. Among its recognitions are the national award of RED learning and servicies as a school promoting health and healthy habits in the locality (2019) and the European Health Promotion Award 2020. Since 2014 it has been a centre promoting positive coexistence by the Ministry of Education of the Andalusian Regional Government, promoting a model of coexistence based on emotional intelligence and interpersonal relationships.
The fieldwork was carried out during two consecutive school years. Three members of the management team and eight teachers were interviewed. Three pupils also participated in a focus group. The interviews were accompanied by field observations and diary entries throughout the research.
The analysis of the information was developed through a recurrent process of reflexive deepening (Kelchtermans & Piot, 2013) and dialectical validation until information saturation and collective consensus on meanings, interpretations and conclusions were reached. Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was used to analyse the data obtained. Themes and categories were constructed with previous categories from the literature and emerging categories from the data (discourse from interviews, participant observation and subsequent discussions about these materials between interviewers and researchers). N-Vivo 11 software was used to support data management and analysis.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsIn order to transform the governance of the school, a set of educational strategies and practices were developed that were made possible through distributed and transformative pedagogical leadership and teacher collaboration. It was observed that changes and improvements were made by the management team that allowed the development of a series of actions to give students a voice in their learning and education.
Creating a space for children's participation was a key aspect for the management team; both in the process of transforming the school and in order to involve students in the life of the school, in their learning and to improve their achievements. Three levels of student participation in school decision-making were identified: organisational level, curricular level and social transformation level (Figure 1)
‘Children's Council’ has been a key participatory body for transforming school governance.
We conclude that the results provide empirical evidence on four areas that have been key to fostering student participation in school decision-making: 1) an expanded perspective of school leadership, towards models of distributed and transformative leadership; 2) the class assembly, delegates and the Children's Council; 3) a greater presence of students in the school space and coexistence relations; and 4) a pedagogical model that focuses on project work and Service-Learning that includes community service actions.
These results have various implications for the educational community, as they invite us to reflect on the great challenges facing the school of the 21st century, in which the voice of the teacher and the management team is not the only one, nor the strongest one. The organisational and pedagogical strategies and dynamics adopted by the school studied are presented as proposals which, in line with the contributions of Schultz (2009), make it possible to move towards schools in which the multiplicity of voices is encouraged, whose pupils can learn and practice the dialogue needed for democratic citizenship.
ReferencesBarker, S. K. (2018). Student Voice to Improve Instruction: Leading Transformation of a School System. Electronic Theses and Dissertations. ACU.
Braun, V. & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa
Bush, T. (2018.) Research on educational leadership and management: Broadening the base. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 46(3), 359–361.
Hardie, E. (2015). When students drive improvement. Educational Leadership, 72(9), 92-96.
Hargreaves, A. & O’Connor, M. T. (2020). Profesionalismo colaborativo. Cuando enseñar juntos supone el aprendizaje de todos. Ediciones Morata.
John-Akinola, Y. O., Gavin, A., O’Higgins, S. E. & Gabhainn, S. N. (2014). Taking part in school life: views of children. Health Education, 114(1), 20-42. https://doi.org/10.1108/HE-02-2013-0007
Kelchtermans, G. & Piot, L. (2013). Living the janus head: Conceptualizing leaders and leadership in schools in the 21st century. M.A. Flores et al. (Eds.), Back to the Future: Legacies, Continuities and Changes in Educational Policy, Practice and Research (pp. 93–114). Sense Publishers.
Lucena, C., López, A., Domingo, J. & Cruz, C. (2021). Alberto’s life story: transforming a disadvantaged school by appreciating the child’s voice. Journal of Educational Administration and History, 3(2), 12- 24. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220620.2021.1893286
Prenger, R., Poortman, C. L. & Handelzalts, A. (2021). Professional learning networks: From teacher learning to school improvement?. Journal of Educational Change, 22, 13–52. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-020-09383-2
Rincón-Gallardo, S., Villagra, C., Mellado, M. & Aravena, O. (2019). Construir culturas de colaboración eficaz en redes de escuelas chilenas: Una teoría de acción. Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios Educativos, 49(1), 241–272.
Robinson, V. (2019). Hacia un fuerte liderazgo centrado en el estudiante: afrontar el reto del cambio. Revista Eletrônica de Educação, 13(1), 123-145. https://doi.org/ 10.14244/198271993068
Rudduck, J. & McIntyre, D. (2007). Improving learning through consulting pupils. Routledge.
Sargeant, J. & Gillett-Swan, J. K. (2019). Voice-inclusive practice (VIP): A charter for authentic student engagement. International Journal of Children’s Rights, 27(1), 122-139. https://doi.org/10.1163/15718182-02701002
Schultz, K. (2009). Rethinking classroom participation. Listening to silent voices. Teachers College Press.
Susinos Rada, T. & Ceballos López, N. (2012). Voz del alumnado y presencia participativa en la vida escolar: apuntes para una cartografía de la voz del alumnado en la mejora educativa. Revista de educación, 359, 24-44. http://hdl.handle.net/11162/95224
Tonucci, F. (2015). La ciudad de los niños. Grao.
26. Educational Leadership
Paper
The Principal and the Superintendent in the Governing Chain in Sweden: putting leadership practices in context.
Katarina Roos, Olof CA Johansson
Umea University, Sweden
Presenting Author: Roos, Katarina;
Johansson, Olof CA
In this paper, leadership and governing in the Swedish, public school sector at the municipal level is examined. The concept of ‘governing chain’ is used to picture an ideal model of governing. Political intentions manifested in decisions made by central and local government, are expected to come to life as public officials, principals and teachers enact those decisions. Though reality is more complex and chaotic than this over-simplified picture suggests, the governing chain serves as an analytical model for our analysis. The links in this chain are actors upholding key functions at different levels. Both within and between these, there are intervening spaces in which policy intentions are being interpreted, transmitted, and translated.
The Swedish Education Act (SFS 2010:800) identifies the organizer of education, the superintendent, the principal, and the teacher as core links, responsible for enactment in the governing chain. Both public sector and private sector organizers are present in the Swedish educational system, and although they share the same mission, their capacity to enact varies. Principals are expected both to act as managers and administrators responsible for day-to-day operations, and as pedagogical leaders with a particular responsibility for improving teaching and learning activities. The Swedish Education Act was thoroughly reviewed in 2010, and this revision sought – among other things – to emphasise the principal as a core actor with great responsibility in the governing chain. A more recent change in law in 2018 forced organizers of education to appoint a function as superintendent if they had not already done so. The intention was to safeguard that national laws and regulations are met by the organizer, and the primary objective for the superintendent is to see to this.
In the eyes of the national legislature, principals and superintendents are identified as vital links in the governing chain. They are employed by the organizer, who may set out additional objectives that they are expected to meet. In this paper we focus solely on Swedish municipalities as organizers of education. Sweden is usually described as a decentralised welfare state and local government are self-governing bodies with strong financial and political autonomy. Both principals and superintendents are expected to meet the expectations and interests of both the state and the municipality as organizer, which in practice may turn out to be an act of balancing on slack line. Is this balancing somehow reflected in the leadership practices of the two types of functions?
The aim is to describe and analyse how superintendents and principals perceive their mandate and roles in the local, municipal governing chain and how they balance and negotiate between those, in the intervening spaces of the governing chain. Our ambition is to contribute to greater knowledge on how principals and superintendents perceive their leadership in the context in which it is situated, and how the leadership of these functions is (dis-)connected in the local governing chain. Although the results are valid in a Swedish context, the theoretical implications are of general interest for the broader research society, both in the European, and in an international context.
Studies of leadership should take context into consideration. By context we mean both the municipal context, and the structure of the local governing chain. The guiding principles behind the system of governing can also be perceived as part of a wider context. The system of governing has the potential to both facilitate and constrain different types of leadership practices. Previous research has shown that there is a potential conflict between leadership ideals that favour democratic and participatory practices, and systems of governing that favour accountability and control.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe paper relies both on qualitative and quantitative data. A survey was conducted in December 2019, one year and a half after the change in law that requested organizers to introduce the superintendent position. The survey data is used to describe and analyse their perceptions of both their formal mandate and role in the light of the change in law. The second part of the study is an in-depth analysis of qualitative data from interviews. Two rounds of interviews, covering a multitude of leaders in local governing chains, were conducted in two different municipalities during the spring and autumn of 2019. The total number of interviews were 87, but the total number of informants exceeds that number as some were group interviews. One of the purposes was to get a broad and multifaceted picture of governing and leadership practices of- and in schools, and thus both political and administrative functions exercising leadership were interviewed. For this paper the interviews conducted with the four principals and the two superintendents have been analysed. The ambition is not to compare governing or leadership practices between the two municipalities nor to generalise the results, but to use the qualitative data to get a more in depth understanding of how these actors balance their mandates and roles, than the survey data allows.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe results from the analysis of the survey suggests that superintendents in Swedish municipalities generally think that they have a strong mandate in seeing to that national laws and regulations are met. Moreover, the majority express willingness to act accordingly. They acknowledge the difficulties in acting both as representatives of the state, while at the same time handling the sometimes, conflicting interests and objectives of the municipal organizer of education. At the same time the majority sympathise with the change of law and greet the stronger national mandate, despite the potential for role conflicts.
The superintendents who were interviewed, think that they have a strong mandate to uphold the national mission, if they manage to comply within the budgetary frames set up by the municipal board. The four principals also describe a mandate which is defined by their capacity to stay within budget. The two municipalities in the qualitative study are both organized in a similar way. Both municipalities practice a New Public Management oriented system of governing, a management by objectives and performance measurements model, commonly practiced in the Swedish public sector. Accountability seems to be a core value as actors describe clearly defined, separated responsibilities for specific executive functions. Actors generally and the superintendent and principals particularly, seem to be aware of the formal chain-of-delegation, who to (not) turn to and when. The superintendent for example describes the balance between building relations and trust with principals and other actors in schools, without sidestepping subordinate functions that according to the chain of governing, should settle relations with the latter. Principals a like, show great awareness of who to turn to and not in a governing chain in which accountability is valued. The mode of governing thus define the repertoire of leadership practices that principals and superintendents can practice.
ReferencesEk Österberg, E. & Johansson, V. 2019. “Ledarskapsideal i förändring – det finns inga ledare utan styrsystem, in Bergström, T. & Eklund, N. (Ed.) Ett annorlunda ledarskap. Chef i politiskt styrd verksamhet. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Forsberg, E., Nihlfors, E., Pettersson, D. & Skott, P. 2017. Codification of Present Swedish Curriculum Processes: Linking Educational Activities over Time and Space. Educational Governance Research, EGTU Vol. 5. Springer.
Grimm, F., Norqvist, L., & Roos, K. 2021. Exploring visual method in the field of educational leadership: Co-creating understandings of educational leadership and authority in school organisations. Educational Management Administration & Leadership. https://doi.org/10.1177/17411432211030747.
Johansson, O., Nihlfors, E., Paulsen, J. & Risku, M. 2011. “The Nordic superintendents’ leadership roles: cross national comparisons”, in MacBeath, J. & Townsend, T. International Handbook on Leadership for Learning. Springer Netherlands.
Johansson, O., & Ärlestig, H. 2022. ”Policy implementations in schools: the chain of command and its intervening spaces.” In, Nir, A.E. (Ed.) School leadership in the 21st century: challenges and coping strategies. New York: Nova Sciences Publishers, Inc. 247-246.
Johansson, O., & Ärlestig, H. 2022. ”Democratic governing ideals and the power of intervening spaces as prerequisites for student learning”. Journal of Educational Administration. Vol. 60(3): 340-353.
Johansson, V., Lundgren. L. & Montin, S. 2018. Den kommunala statliga ämbetsmannen. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Karseth, B. & Möller, J. 2020. ”Legal Regulation and Professional Discretion in Schools”. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research. 64:2. 195-210.
Moos, L., Nihlfors, E. & Merok Paulsen, J. 2016. Nordic Superintedents: Agents in a Broken Chain. Educational Governance Research, EGTU. Vol. 2. Springer.
Roos, K., Johansson, O., & Svedberg, L. 2022. ”Skolchefen – en gammal roll i förändrad skepnad” [The school superintendent – an old role in altered shape]. Statsvetenskaplig tidskrift. Vol. 124(3): 679-711.
Shaked, H., & Schechter, C. (2017). Systems thinking for school leaders: Holistic leadership for excellence in education. Cham, Switzerland: Springer.
Ärlestig, H. & Johansson, O. Ed. 2020. Educational Authorities and the Schools – organization and impact. Examples from 20 states. Dordrecht: Springer.
26. Educational Leadership
Paper
Assessment Leadership Among School Leaders – Navigating Across Leadership Ideals and Policy Context
Elin Stark
Umeå University, Sweden
Presenting Author: Stark, Elin
Traditionally, the Swedish principal has been regarded “the first among equals” (Ullman, 1997), as part of the teaching profession rather than a profession in its own right. The emergence of New Public Management (NPM) in Sweden and numerous other countries brought changes in the organizational structure of welfare production and introduced new roles for principals, emphasizing “keeping budgets, improving results and increasing competitiveness” (Jarl et al., 2012: 429). This has been described as a discursive shift, with “transformations both in the practices of school headship and in the ways that school heads think and talk about their role” (Gewirtz and Ball, 2000: 253). One way of framing this development is in terms of an increased emphasis on educational accountability (Leithwood, 2001), more specifically external accountability (Elmore, 2005). Wermke et al. (2022) argue that Finnish and Norwegian principals have less decision-making capacity and are subjected to less control than their Swedish counterparts (particularly in the case of Finland, with an autonomous teaching profession and fewer controlling stakeholders). For Swedish school leaders, the combination of extended decision-making requirements and extended external control poses “risks of failures for which the principals will be made accountable" (Wermke et al., 2022: 745).
This paper explores how Swedish school leaders perceive their role in relation to teachers’ assessment, grading and accountability. In doing so, the paper seeks to interrogate how school leaders navigate in a landscape characterized by leadership ideals promoting distributed orientations to leadership; and a policy context permeated by notions of external accountability. The following research questions are posed:
- Which leadership practices do school leaders account for in relation to assessment and grading?
- Which leadership ideals are manifested in school leaders’ account of their leadership practices?
- How do these leadership ideals align with an accountability-driven policy context?
In Sweden, the issue of grade inflation has been a matter of public and political debate for some time (Riksrevisionen, 2022), not least in relation to the marketized school system (Lundahl et al., 2013). According to the Swedish School Act, the principal is to ensure that teachers’ grading is carried out in line with legislation. At the same time, the principal’s mandate in relation to the actual grading procedure is very limited and is almost exclusively the teacher’s domain. Nonetheless, the Swedish National Agency for Education states that “the principal has a key role in teacher’s efforts towards fair and equivalent grades” (Skolverket, 2022: 23). Recently, new regulation regarding grading was introduced, which increases the scope for the professional judgment of teachers in relation to the syllabus. In the government bill (Prop. 2021/22:36) preceding the new legislation, the notion that the reform will have consequences for principals is mentioned only briefly and without specifying what these consequences are, thus reinforcing the sense of ambiguity and unclarity regarding the role of the school leader with regards to assessment and grading.
With their dominant position in the public policy debate, leadership theories are here described in terms of leadership ideals (Ek Österberg and Johansson, 2019), with different normative statements about the role of the leader. The leadership ideals which resonate with principals may align more or less with the policy context at hand, specifically a policy context where external accountability is a prominent feature. The study presented in this paper sheds light on the potential conflict between the principal’s task to act as a both a manager and a pedagogical leader – a task which the principal is to be held accountable for – and the mandate and objectives to fulfil that task in practice.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe empirical material used in the study includes two focus group discussions with principals and assistant principals. Some of the participants are responsible solely for secondary school and some for both primary and secondary school. Out of these units, one is an independent school (private school with public funding) and the others are schools run by the municipality. Whilst operating in the same national policy context, the school leaders operate in varying geographical context, including both rural and urban municipalities.
The discussions were semi structured and addressed matters such as how the school leaders gather information about the assessment and grading practices of teachers at their school/s, structures regarding assessment and grading, and dilemmas arising with regards to the issue at hand.
The empirical material will be categorized according to which leadership practices can be discerned in the school leaders’ accounts of their role in relation to assessment and grading. Thereafter, the leadership practices described will be analysed with regards to which leadership ideals they can be associated with. Finally, the leadership ideals prevalent in the material will be related to policy context and the question of the extent of alignment between the leadership ideals and the policy context will be discussed.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsPreliminary results point at a varying degree of direct involvement with teachers’ assessment and grading on behalf of the school leaders. In some cases, the responsibility is delegated to the so called first teacher and in others, the school leader participates in discussions with teacher teams on assessment and grading. Throughout the focus group discussions, protecting and ensuring teacher autonomy is accentuated. Furthermore, the school leaders raise the importance of creating beneficial conditions and structures for collegial discussion and co-assessment among teachers, more so than pointing at measures for following up and evaluating assessment and grading.
Leadership ideals manifested in the school leaders’ account are directed towards distributed forms of leadership, characterized by trust and distribution of power and responsibility. Whilst not raised by the school leaders themselves, this may pose challenges in terms of external accountability.
ReferencesElmore RF (2005) Accountable Leadership. The Educational Forum, 69: 134-142.
Ek Österberg E and Johansson V (2019) Ledarskapsideal i förändring – det finns inga ledare utan styrsystem [Leadership ideals in transition – there are no leaders without governing systems]. In: Bergström T and Eklund N (eds) Ett annorlunda ledarskap : Chef i politiskt styrd verksamhet [A different kind of leadership : Managing politically governed agencies]. Lund: Studentlitteratur, pp. 55-77.
Gewirtz S and Ball S (2000) ‘From ‘‘Welfarism’’ to ‘‘New Managerialism’’: Shifting Discourses of School Leadership in the Education Marketplace’. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 21(3), 253–268.
Jarl M, Fredriksson A and Persson S (2012) New Public Management in Public Education: A Catalyst for the Professionalization of Swedish School Principals. Public Administration 90(2): 429–444.
Leithwood K (2001) School leadership in the context of accountability policies. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 4(3): 217-235.
Lundahl L, Erixon Arreman I, Holm A-S and Lundström U (2013) Educational marketization the Swedish way. Education Inquiry, 4(3): 497-517.
Prop. 2021/22:36. Ämnesbetyg – betygen ska bättre spegla elevers kunskaper [Government bill : Subject grades – grades are to better reflect student knowledge].
Riksrevisionen (2022) Statens insatser för likvärdig betygssättning– skillnaden mellan betyg och resultat på nationella prov [State Measures for Equivalent Grading – the difference between grades and results on National Tests]. Report, The Swedish National Audit Office.
Skolverket (2022) Betyg och prövning : Kommentarer till Skolverkets allmänna råd om betyg och prövning [Grades and Examinations : Comments to General Advice on Grades and Examinations by The Swedish National Agency for Education]. Report, The Swedish National Agency for Education.
Ullman A (1997) Rektorn : En studie av titeln och dess bärare [The Rector—A Study of a Title and its Holders]. PhD Thesis, Stockholm Institute of Education, Sweden.
Wermke W, Jarl M, Prøitz TS and Nordholm D (2022) Comparing principal autonomy in time and space: modelling school leaders’ decision making and control. Journal of Curriculum Studies 54(6): 733-750.
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