Conference Agenda

In a society increasingly characterized by efficiency, quality, and optimization logic, school and education systems are also under constant pressure to change. Quality assurance requirements are imposed on schools at various levels and by various institutions, which are expected to implement and adapt these steering impulses in a location-specific manner within the framework of expanded school autonomy. Within the transformation towards a new governance shift (Altrichter & Maag Merki, 2016), the roles and responsibilities of the actors involved have become more differentiated and, in some cases, have shifted (ibid.). Global expectations regarding process and output orientation are transferred to national education systems, differentiated at the federal level, interpreted regionally, and ultimately implemented at the local level. This multi-level logic leads to complex and sometimes diffuse constellations in which the boundaries between competences and responsibilities remain unclear (Altrichter et al., 2021; Klein & Bremm, 2020; Wilkins et al., 2019)

Against this backdrop, the symposium adopts role diffusion as a central analytical lens to examine how actors navigate competing demand. The symposium addresses (1) how central actor groups construct, justify, and make sense of their roles, mandates, and responsibilities within evolving governance arrangements, and (2) how implicit assumptions about steering, coordination, and accountability towards schools become visible in these constructions. Building on this, it further asks (3) how qualitative reconstructive approaches can contribute to generating situated knowledge about these processes, thereby opening new analytical perspectives on the relationship between knowing and acting in educational governance and on the conditions under which such knowledge enables more informed forms of action. The symposium examines various actors in different education systems: it includes municipal school boards in Germany, school administrators and school boards in Switzerland, and school development consultants as well as school quality managers in Austria.

These research questions are addressed using a multi-method approach, which aims to generate knowledge at different empirical levels. First, a methodological combination of Qualitative Content Analysis (Kuckartz & Rädiker, 2023) and Document Analysis enables a deductive examination of the roles of different school leaders.

To add further depth to this perspective, the methodological repertoire of the symposium is supplemented by a reconstructive approach. The focus thereby lies on the implicit knowledge underlying the actions of school leader: Further contributions will be devoted to the individual orientation framework and individual role understandings of school leaders (Nohl, 2017; Bohnsack, 2013). To extend the methodological perspective by an additional approach, the final contribution is devoted to generalized forms of implicit knowledge and presents a detailed typology (Bohnsack, 2017) of different professional self-images.

By foregrounding everyday practices of educational steering, this research underscores the analytical value of qualitative approaches for examining governance beyond formal structures. It conceptualizes role diffusion as a dynamic and relational condition rather than a deficit, and shows how knowledge about quality, responsibility, and effectiveness is produced and enacted in practice, thereby deepening the understanding of how educational steering is shaped in contemporary education systems.

By bringing together cases from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, the symposium enables a systematic comparison of how role diffusion is shaped under differing governance traditions, legal frameworks, and degrees of school autonomy. This cross-country perspective enables identification of common patterns as well as context-specific dynamics in the negotiation of roles and responsibilities. In doing so, the contributions generate insights that are relevant for educational governance debates beyond the countries studied, offering conceptual tools and methodological approaches that can be applied in other national and regional contexts.

The present study seeks to explore how school principals and school boards interpret their roles in the context of evolving governance structures and shared responsibilities. The objective of this study is to identify areas of tension and potential solutions or coping strategies from a pragmatics perspective. The empirical investigations encompass two primary components. Firstly, semi-structured inter-views were conducted with school principals (10 interviews) and school boards (4 interviews) from four public schools in the Swiss Canton of Argovia. Conversely, the document analysis encompasses the formal legal basis and strategic regulations (e.g. school programs, mission statements, development plans) in addition to protocols derived from shadowing observations. Utilizing the content-structuring qualitative content analysis approach proposed by Kuckartz and Rädiker (2023), a comprehensive analysis of the interviews and documents was conducted. This approach enables an open and flexible examination of the data. The analysis was executed using QDA software (MAXQDA 24). The preliminary phase of the analysis placed particular emphasis on the governance equalizer (Schimank, 2007; Feldhoff et al., 2012). This concept encom-passes the regulatory and control dimensions inherent in the multi-level school system, wherein negotiations between various actors are conducted. A deductive category system was determined based on the governance equalizer. The complete data set was coded using the final category system. The analysis was augmented by Orton and Weick's (1990) reconceptualization of loosely cou-pled systems. This framework provides a lens to comprehend organizational structures that ex-hibit a duality, characterized by both distinctiveness and responsiveness. In these structures, elements are coupled yet retain autonomy, thereby creating a dynamic interplay within the organ-izational ecosystem. This approach sheds light on the varied interpretations and implementations of directives, mandates, and initiatives across levels and actors (Orton & Weick, 1990). First findings indicate that school boards and school principals delineate their roles as distinctly separate yet interdependent entities within the context of evolving governance structures. School boards take on strategic leadership, while principals bear an overall operational responsibility and act as central mediating bodies between strategic guidelines, external control impulses, and school practice. Responsibility is distributed to teachers through delegation and participatory structures, while formal decision-making power remains with the principals. As actors navigate the interplay between mandates, roles, and responsibilities, they encounter multifaceted ambigui-ties and tensions in school-based decision-making. To address these complexities, strategies including institutionalized communication routines, facilitation of relational and pragmatic trust, as well as situational negotiation are employed, albeit not without challenges.

Feldhoff, T., Durrer, L., & Huber, S. G. (2012). Steuerung eines Schulsystems. Eine empirische Analyse, wie Akteure die Steuerungskonfigurationen des Schulsystems wahrnehmen und sich deren zukünftige Gestaltung wünschen. Die Deutsche Schule, 104(1), 71–87. https://doi.org/10.25656/01:25722 Kuckartz, U., & Radiker, S. (2023). Qualitative Content Analysis: Methods, Practice and Software (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications Ltd. Orton, J. D., & Weick, K. E. (1990). Loosely Coupled Systems: A Reconceptualization. The Academy of Management Review, 15(2), 203. https://doi.org/10.2307/258154 Schimank, U. (2007). Die Governance-Perspektive: Analytisches Potenzial und anstehende konzeptionelle Fragen. In H. Altrichter, T. Brüsemeister, & J. Wissinger (Eds.), Educational Governance (pp. 231–260). VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-531-90498-6_9

In the context of the global trend toward New Public Management (Altrichter & Maag Merki, 2016), educational governance is increasingly being realigned: traditional input-oriented ap-proaches are being supplemented and superseded by more output-oriented forms of governance. Within this governance theory discourse, there is a growing call to reposition the school super-vision as a central steering actor in a less controlling and more advisory as well as supporting nature (Klein & Bremm, 2020; Hanschmann, 2017). In Austria, this discourse has already manifested itself at a regulatory level: with the 2017 educa-tion reform, the supervisory function was fundamentally redesigned (BMBWF, 2024). Former regional and compulsory school inspectors – now School Quality Managers (SQMs) – were integrated into a newly constituted organizational setting and entrusted with an expanded set of responsibilities and competencies (BMBWF, 2026). From a praxeological-sociological perspective, professional action is not primarily understood as the execution of formal directives, but as practice structured by implicit knowledge, which is expressed through specific orientation frameworks and professional self-conceptions (Bohnsack, 2022). Empirical findings suggest that supervisory practice is largely shaped by individual professional self-images, pointing to a heterogeneous enactment of the role (Zaruba et al., 2024). This heterogeneity provides the starting point for the present study, that asks which orientation frameworks underlie the actions of SQMs and how professional self-conceptions can be reconstructed in the context of shifting regulatory requirements. To address this question, twelve semi-narrative individual interviews were conducted with SQMs from different federal states. From this sample, six interviews were selected for analysis due to their particularly contrasting perspectives. The data was analyzed using the Documentary Method (Nohl, 2017), which shifts the analytical focus from the explicit content of statements to the manner of presentation, thereby enabling the reconstruction of implicit orientation frame-works and guiding interpretive patterns (2017). Preliminary findings reveal considerable variance in orientations. Different professional biog-raphies and experience profiles correlate with diverging orientation frameworks: some SQMs primarily understand their role as supportive and development-oriented, while others conceive of their function as more reactive, operationally oriented, and shaped by situational problem-solving. This contribution provides a specific value to the symposium by empirically illuminating the individual orientation frameworks of SQMs and showing how these structures shape the implementation of regulatory requirements within the new governance setting. In doing so, it complements the symposium’s broader analyses of role construction with a micro-analytic perspec-tive that makes the implicit knowledge and professional self-conceptions visible.

Altrichter, H., & Maag Merki, K. (Eds.) (2016). Handbuch Neue Steuerung im Schulsystem (2nd ed.). Springer VS. Bohnsack, R. (2022). Metatheoretische Rahmung der praxeologisch-wissenssoziologischen Professionsforschung. In R. Bohnsack, A. Bonnet & U. Hericks (Hrsg.), Praxeologisch-wissenssoziologische Professionsforschung: Perspektiven aus Früh- und Schulpädagogik, Fachdidaktik und Sozialer Arbeit (S. 31–55). Julius Klinkhardt. Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung [BMBWF] (2024). Schulaufsicht – Schulqualitätsmanagerinnen (SQM). https://www.bmbwf.gv.at/ Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung [BMBWF] (2026). Verordnung des Bundesministers für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung betreffend das Schulqualitätsmanagement (SQM-VO) (Fassung vom 9. Januar 2026). Bundesrecht konsolidiert. Hanschmann, F. (2017). Staatliche Bildung und Erziehung. Mohr Siebeck. Klein, E. D. & Bremm, N. (Eds.). (2020). Unterstützung – Kooperation – Kontrolle. Zum Verhältnis von Schulaufsicht und Schulleitung in der Schulentwicklung. Springer VS. Nohl, A.-M. (2017). Interview und dokumentarische Methode: Anleitungen für die Forschung-spraxis (4. Aufl.). Springer VS. Schütze, F. (1983). Biographieforschung und narratives Interview. Neue Praxis, 13(3), 283–293. Zaruba, N., Porsch, R., & Radisch, F. (2024). Perspektiven der Schulaufsicht auf die Implementation der Ganztagsschulreform in Deutschland: Befunde aus dem Projekt „Beratende Schulaufsicht“ (BeSa). Die Deutsche Schule – Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft und Schulpraxis, 116(3), 268–282.

Ensuring the effectiveness and quality of educational institutions is not just the responsibility of individual school stakeholders. Schools as educational organisations are embedded in a complex system of interdependencies. To understand how transformation processes (e. g. digitalisation) are implemented, we also need to consider school supervisory authorities, municipal school boards and other supporting structures. However, research on these supporting structures and the associated educational administration remains limited (Berkemeyer 2020). In practice, mu-nicipal school boards shape key framework conditions and control resources, especially for the promotion of digitalisation (Bockhorst & Kreutzmann 2021). This contribution focuses on municipal school boards. In Germany, they are responsible for the “external” affairs of schools (buildings, maintenance, equipment). Formally, they do not co-decide on curricular or pedagogical matters. Yet, positioned at the interface between the state level and the individual schools, they are essential for the subsidiarity implementation of educa-tion policy reforms (Hermstein 2021). This intermediary position allows them to act beyond their resource- and infrastructure-related mandatory tasks: they can interpret responsibilities sit-uationally, initiate development impulses, and co-shape schools’ room for action. In the context of digitalisation, this becomes visible when they move beyond their formal area of responsibility and, by defining framework conditions and broadly interpreting their field of activity, enable or constrain certain pedagogical concepts (Hermstein 2024; Yotyodying et al. 2022). The theoreti-cal foundation for this examination is provided by Educational Governance research, focusing on the alignment, communication, and coordination within the multi-level system of the institu-tional environment of schools as a central research topic (Hafner 2022). The following research questions are placed at the center of the analysis: How do municipal school boards construct their role and responsibilities in relation to schools in the context of school digitalisation? Which implicit understandings of governance and steering toward schools become visible in the interpretive frames of municipal school boards in the context of school digitalisation? We conducted 17 semi-structured interviews with members from municipal school boards across Germany between June and August 2025. The interview data are analysed using recon-structive methods (Bohnsack et al. 2013). Initial reconstructions reveal tensions between pedagogical autonomy and infrastructure- and economically driven expectations of steering and standardisation. Moreover, financial scarcity as well as missing or contradictory guidelines from the federal and state levels are discussed as relevant constraints on equal participation, most notably in structurally disadvantaged contexts.

Berkemeyer, N. (2020). Schulleitung und Schulaufsicht – Symptome einer fehlenden Idee der Gesamtsystemsteuerung. In E. Klein & N. Bremm (Eds.), Educational Governance. Unterstützung – Kooperation – Kontrolle: Zum Verhältnis von Schulaufsicht und Schulleitung in der Schulentwicklung (pp. 375-388). Springer. Bohnsack, R., Nentwig-Gesemann, I. & Nohl, A. (2013). Die dokumentarische Methode und ihre Forschungspraxis: Grundlagen qualitativer Sozialforschung. Springer. Bockhorst, R. & Kreutzmann, N. (2021). Unterstützung von Schulträgern vor und während der Corona Pandemie. Schulverwaltung. Nordrhein-Westfalen, 32(4), 116-118. Hafner, S. (2022). Koordination und Kompromiss in föderalen Bildungssystemen. Springer. Hermstein, B. (2021). Zur Unterstützung von Einzelschule und Schulentwicklung durch kom-munale Schulträger. In T. Webs & V. Manitius (Eds.), Unterstützungssysteme für Schulen: Konzepte, Befunde und Perspektiven (pp. 215–236). wbv. Hermstein, B (2024). Schulträger. Eine postheroische Führungsinstanz im Mehrebenensystem Schule. DDS – Die Deutsche Schule, 2024(3), 239–251. Yotyodying, S., Eickelmann, B., Endberg, M. & Lorenz, R. (2022). Entwicklungen der schulischen digitalen Infrastruktur für das Lehren und Lernen durch Investitionsprogramme aus Sicht von Lehrkräften der Sekundarstufe I. In R. Lorenz, S. Yotyodying, B. Eickelmann, & M. Endberg (Eds.), Schule digital – der Länderindikator 2021. Lehren und Lernen mit di-gitalen Medien in der Sekundarstufe I in Deutschland im Bundesländervergleich und im Trend seit 2017 (pp. 145–160). Waxmann.

School development consulting (SDC) has become a widespread support approach in Austria's multi-level school system and other countries, typically involving long-term or project-based activities carried out by external actors who offer services such as team supervision and leader-ship coaching. Moreover, SDC operates within educational governance frameworks where schools receive support for their development processes and self-selected priorities. However, SDC remains an unprotected term with neither standardized nor mandatory qualifications for external actors (Altrichter et al., 2021), creating a field where conflicting interests converge: schools seek support for self-determination and individual projects while government’s view SDC as an opportunity to implement central reforms, constituting an inevitable tension between autonomy and heteronomy (Beer & Krainz, 2025). Therefore, the research project investigates how school development consultants in Austria perceive their professional identity and the ac-tion-guiding principles constitutive of their professional identity. Using methods of reconstructive social research (Bohnsack, 2008), 17 interviews with school development consultants across several Austrian provinces were conducted between July 2024 and February 2025. The data was analysed using the documentary method (Bohnsack, 2013; Nohl, 2006), focusing on implicit practical knowledge (Polanyi, 1966/2016) and reconstructing action-guiding orientations from narratives of consulting practice. Results were synthesized into a typology. The study reveals that actors perceive their roles in SDC very differently, with five distinct types of professional self-concepts reconstructed from the data. These types demonstrate varying ap-proaches to navigating the tension between supporting school autonomy and facilitating policy implementation. The findings illuminate how consultants construct their professional identities within contested terrain, offering insights for educational governance regarding the variety of different consulting approaches. This typology contributes to understanding how professional identity formation occurs in unregulated consulting environments and provides a framework for examining the impact of different consulting orientations in supporting both school development goals and broader educational reform objectives.

Altrichter, H., Krainz, U., Kemethofer, D., Jesacher-Rößler, L., Hautz, H. & Brauckmann-Sajkiewicz, S. (2021). Schulentwicklungsberatung und Schulentwicklungsberatungsforschung. In BMBWF (Hrsg.), Nationaler Bildungsbericht Österreich 2021 (S. 375–421). https://doi.org/10.17888/nbb2021 Beer, H. & Krainz, U. (2025). Zum professionellen Selbstverständnis der Schulentwicklungs-beratung. Organisationsberatung, Supervision, Coaching. Vorab-Onlinepublikation. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11613-025-00975-6 Bohnsack, R. (2008). Rekonstruktive Sozialforschung: Einführung in qualitative Methoden. UTB, Budrich. Bohnsack, R. (2013). Dokumentarische Methode und die Logik der Praxis. In A. Lenger, C. Schneickert & F. Schumacher (Hrsg.), Pierre Bourdieus Konzeption des Habitus: Grundlagen, Zugänge, Forschungsperspektiven (S. 175–200). Springer VS. Nohl, A.‑M. (2006). Interview und dokumentarische Methode: Anleitungen für die Forschungspraxis. Wiesbaden VS Verlag. Polanyi, M. (2016). Implizites Wissen. Suhrkamp (Erstveröffentlichung 1966)