Conference Agenda

Ensuring educational quality is a shared responsibility among multiple actors, yet the formal and legal responsibility ultimately resides with school boards. Within educational governance structures, school boards play a pivotal role. They are accountable for the quality of education, for organizing education, and for defining the responsibilities and autonomy of school leaders (Stevenson et al., 2021). Consequently, they are key players in initiatives aimed at improving educational quality (Hooge & Honingh, 2014). Despite their central role, empirical knowledge about the composition, internal functioning, and performance of school boards remains limited (Honingh et al., 2020; Leechman et al., 2019). Moreover, little is known about the factors that explain variation in how school boards function (Cornforth, 2001).
Against this background, this paper addresses three research questions:

1. How do school board members and school leaders conceptualize ‘effective functioning’ of school boards?
2. How do school board members and school leaders evaluate the effectiveness of their school board across different policy domains?
3. To what extent do organizational characteristics—such as board size, policy-making capacity, and role conception—explain differences in perceived and reported functioning?

Conceptually, the study builds on international research suggesting that the quality of school boards can be understood in terms of their effectiveness across multiple policy domains, including educational, financial, and organizational policy (Balarin et al., 2008; Devos et al., 1999; Hess & Meeks, 2010). Prior research indicates that school boards do not adopt a uniform role across these domains. Depending on the domain, boards may act in a policy-making, a supervisory, or a formal approval role (Devos, 2008; Devos et al., 1999; Rekenhof, 2019). For instance, Unda et al. (2023) show that boards are more often expected to take a policy-making role in financial and identity-related matters. In addition, larger boards are more likely to delegate responsibilities to school leaders (Stevenson et al., 2021).
To explain variation in school board functioning and to analyze board–school leader relationships, this study draws on the concept of policy-making capacity (Devos et al., 1999; Van Elsen et al., 2023; Vanhoof & Van Petegem, 2017). This concept refers to the extent to which an organization is able to formulate, implement, monitor, and adjust policy in a coherent and strategic manner. We hypothesize that stronger policy-making capacity is associated with more effective functioning across policy domains.
This paper integrates findings from large-scale survey research and in-depth case studies conducted in the Flemish education system. By combining perspectives of both school board members and school leaders, the study sheds light on convergences and divergences in expectations, role perceptions, and evaluations of board functioning. In doing so, it contributes to the international literature on educational governance by providing empirically grounded insights into how school boards function, how effectiveness is perceived, and which organizational features matter most.
Beyond its empirical contribution, the paper aims to inform ongoing debates on how governments can steer and support school boards more effectively. Rather than assuming one ‘best’ governance model, the findings highlight the importance of context-sensitive approaches. The findings underscore the need for policies that reinforce boards’ policy-making capacities and safeguard their autonomy, while bridging perception gaps of board effectiveness between board members and school leaders.

Collaboration has been promoted globally as a cornerstone of educational reform, positioned as a driver of professional learning, organizational improvement, and systemic change (Datnow & Park, 2019; Chapman, 2018). Yet its enactment is deeply shaped by local histories, governance structures, and socio-cultural traditions. This study focuses on Hong Kong’s K–12 education system, a context marked by hybridization since the 1997 handover, where colonial legacies, neoliberal reforms, and increasing national integration intersect to produce distinctive challenges for leadership and governance (Lin & Jackson, 2020; Fung & Pun, 2021). Collaboration in Hong Kong is framed not only as a professional mechanism for school improvement but also as a tool for ideological alignment, evident in policies promoting patriotism, Mandarin instruction, and national identity (Tang et al., 2022). These dual imperatives complicate leadership practice, as principals negotiate professional agency within centralized expectations and socio-political sensitivities.

The study is guided by two questions: how principals interpret and enact policy expectations around collaboration, and what leadership and governance conditions shape collaborative practices in the pursuit of educational change. By situating Hong Kong’s case within international reform trends of decentralization, accountability, and school-based management (Beck, 2005), the research highlights both commonalities and divergences. While European systems similarly grapple with distributed leadership, participatory governance, and accountability pressures, Hong Kong’s hierarchical traditions and conflict-avoidant culture (Lee & Lee, 2018; Kwan & Li, 2015) reveal how collaboration can be constrained by socio-cultural norms. This comparative lens underscores the importance of contextual sensitivity in understanding how collaboration is mobilized across different systems.

The theoretical framework adopts a post-structural orientation, drawing on Foucauldian concepts of power, discourse, and governmentality (Foucault, 2002; Gaventa, 2003). Collaboration is examined as a discursive construct embedded in policy texts and enacted through leadership practices, revealing how reform agendas privilege particular meanings of improvement while marginalizing others (Young & Diem, 2018; Apple, 2024). Critical Policy Analysis operationalizes this lens, interrogating gaps between rhetoric and reality and situating collaboration within broader socio-political ecologies.

By integrating analysis of policy texts with narrative interviews from fifteen principals, the study illuminates how collaboration is both imagined and lived. Principals describe navigating tensions between accountability demands and relational leadership, between hierarchical traditions and participatory ideals, and between local autonomy and national integration. These findings resonate internationally, where leaders in diverse systems face similar dilemmas of reconciling policy imperatives with the lived realities of schools. The Hong Kong case thus contributes to comparative scholarship by showing how collaboration is simultaneously a professional practice, a governance mechanism, and a political project, offering insights for European and global debates on distributed leadership, participatory governance, and authentic collaboration.

Many studies suggest that the task of a school principal has become increasingly complex and challenging (Gunnulfsen, A.E., Ärlestig, H. & Storgaard, M, 2023; OECD, 2008; Tintoré et.al., 2022). One common challenge across national contexts seems to be that the vast amount of routine management hinders principals from focusing on pedagogical leadership (PL) of the school. In a Finnish context, the changing operational environment has created pressures to transform the organisational structures and practices of educational leadership on the municipal level (Risku, Kanervio & Pulkkinen, 2016). Substantial municipal autonomy in Finland creates favorable conditions for creating local responses to the changing operational environment through internally and collegially driven development of the leadership organization. This paper is based on an interview study of one such municipal reform. The organizational reform included a transformation of the school principals´ role as well as an introduction of new levels of middle-leadership. We focus on two research questions. 1) What reasons sparked the development process in the municipality, and how were these reasons related to the domains of management and pedagogical leadership? 2) What were the consequences of the organizational reform for management and pedagogical leadership? In order to theoretically deal with the questions, we make a distinction between PL on the one hand, and management on the other. We conceptually define PL through non-affirmative theory of education (NAT), utilizing a multi-level and multi-actor approach (Elo, 2021; Uljens & Elo, 2024; Uljens & Ylimäki, 2017).

In this context, pedagogical leadership refers to the dimension of leadership that aims to influence the development of an organization through influencing the learning of an Other directly or indirectly. Based on NAT, pedagogical influence can be defined as a summons of an already self-active Other to engage in a self-transcending activity that could result in the intended development through a process of learning (Uljens & Elo, 2024). To summon an Other is to invite, provoke or support the Other to engage in activities that are likely to result in learning. It is important to maintain a difference between pedagogical summoning in teaching and in leadership, when defining PL. To use the concepts of cultural historical activity theory an action (summoning to self-activity) derives its meaning from the intentions behind the activity that it is a part of (teaching or leadership) (Engeström, 2000). In order to be able to categorize an action (summons) as either teaching or leadership, we thus have to look at what intentional activity it is a part of. Teaching is focused on supporting the learning and development of individual students in an educational institution. Pedagogical leadership is focused on influencing the development and future direction of an organization through the learning of its members. Whether a summons is to be regarded as teaching or PL thus depends on which overarching activity the summons is a part of.

Management is regarded as tasks focused on maintaining the operational status quo of the organization and keeping the organization running smoothly in accordance with its current aims, procedures and regulations (Dimmock, 1999; Northouse, 2022). Tasks such as staffing, controlling budgets, implementing procedures, and maintaining consistency and stability would be considered typical for management. In contrast, pedagogical leadership would be focused on influencing the future direction and development of the organization through bringing about change on an individual or organizational level through learning. Approached in this way, the core difference between management and leadership is management´s focus on maintaining status quo and smooth operations vs. leadership´s focus on influencing change and development.