Conference Agenda

One ‘changing condition’ of education that is rarely the subject of empirical educational research is the legal (e.g. case law, legislation) and administrative (e.g. ministerial orders, internal regulations) framework that structures educational systems in their respective national contexts (Hugo, 2025). This conceptual neglect stands in tension with the fundamental role such frameworks play in shaping the governance, operation, and transformation of public education.

As public education is typically mandated either constitutionally (e.g. Germany, France, Switzerland, and South Africa) or through legislation (e.g. United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden, and Norway; Hugo et al., 2025), this gives rise to a complex network of legal and administrative regulations. These normative structures delineate responsibilities, rights, and permissible actions for all actors within the education system. Educational leaders, in particular, are obliged to comply with these legal and administrative rules. To ensure that those with formally assigned authority (von Ameln, 2012) – principals, administrators, government officials – neither exceed legal boundaries nor fail to exercise legitimate discretion, they must possess and make use of adequate legal and administrative knowledge.

At the same time, stakeholders increasingly report uncertainty about the relevant regulatory landscape (Findlay, 2007; Butlin & Trimmer, 2018). This uncertainty directly shapes everyday decision-making and practice. Consequently, processes of school improvement and transformation cannot be meaningfully understood or effectively implemented outside their legal and administrative contexts.

Treating legal and administrative regulations as data not only affirms their relevance but also underscores their research potential (Hugo, 2025). These documents are typically published in national, publicly accessible databases – rendering them comprehensive, systematically available, and amenable to empirical analysis. Treating such regulatory materials as an integral component of educational data expands the methodological repertoire of educational research and facilitates the integration of legal perspectives into the study of educational governance and policy development.

This symposium addresses this research gap by bringing together three presentations that explore different approaches to analysing legal and administrative data relevant to educational leadership at different levels of governance. Each contribution is situated within a distinct theoretical, methodological, and national perspective.

Presentation 1 provides an overview of legal and administrative data as a subject of educational research and introduces methodological approaches to analysing such data, focusing on legal review and document analysis. The methodological considerations are illustrated with research projects from Germany. Serving as the methodological foundation of the symposium, Presentation 1 is followed by two project presentations, which provide insights into research that place legal and administrative documents at the centre of their analysis. Presentation 2 discusses a study from Switzerland that examines the legal frameworks of all 26 Swiss cantons with regard to school autonomy and explores differences in the delegation and devolution of tasks among state governments, municipalities, and school leaders, using qualitative content analysis. In contrast, Presentation 3 demonstrates how document analysis of Norwegian legal documents (excerpts from the Education Act, the overarching sections of the national curriculum, and two local policy documents) can be combined with ethnographic data to explore expectations of school leadership in quality work, as well as the mediating role of local education authorities in decentralised governing systems between national legal frameworks and school leaders’ practice and autonomy.

Overall, the symposium pursues two main objectives: first, to raise awareness of the significance of legal and administrative regulations for schools, education, and, by extension, educational research; and second, to present concrete methodological approaches that make legal and administrative data accessible and usable for educational research purposes.

In democratic societies, public education is highly regulated: from the constitution (e.g. the right to education) and legislation (e.g. school laws, education acts) to ordinances (e.g. school ordinances), statutory provisions, and internal administrative regulations (e.g. curricula). Consequently, each state operates with a complex regulatory framework that shapes decision-making, leadership, and practice in education. Despite the extent and impact of these frameworks, law has so far played a marginal role in educational science, empirical educational research, and the qualification of educational professionals. This lack of attention is also reflected in the absence of methodological approaches to analysing legal and administrative documents as data. Legal and administrative data include all documents produced by political authorities – legislation, administration, and jurisdiction – to regulate the education system (Hugo, 2026). These encompass constitutions, laws, ordinances, and statutory regulations organised hierarchically (Kelsen, 1960/2020), as well as administrative decrees and education-related case law from constitutional and administrative courts. Such data are typically published in government databases and offer several advantages: They are freely accessible, non-reactive, and usually available in large quantities (Salganik, 2018). Existing studies often rely on non-transparent forms of document analysis or eclectic document selections, limiting transparency, verifiability, and research quality. The presentation addresses this research gap. It first defines relevant types of legal and administrative data and outlines different methodological approaches, such as document analysis (Bowen, 2009). It then focuses on the systematic legal and administrative review, an innovative method developed specifically for the analysis of legal and administrative data. This method combines principles of systematic literature reviews (Booth et al., 2021) for data collection – including search syntax, search strategy, and data selection based on PRISMA standards (Moher et al., 2015) – with content analysis techniques (e.g. Krippendorff, 2019) for data analysis. Each step is illustrated with examples from policy research projects in Germany. Finally, the presentation discusses the advantages and disadvantages of this method. The approach enhances transparency, replicability, reliability, and comprehensiveness. Each decision in the selection process is traceable, quality is ensured through inter-rater checks, and all relevant regulations can be systematically identified. The main challenges include the vast number of documents and discrepancies in the quality of government databases, which can be mitigated through computer-assisted techniques such as text mining. Overall, the presentation highlights how legal and administrative data – long overlooked in educational research – can be systematically analysed to strengthen transparency and methodological rigour in the field

Booth, A., Sutton, A., Clowes, M., & Martyn-St James, M. (2021). Systematic approaches to a successful literature review (3rd ed.). SAGE. Bowen, G.A. (2009). Document analysis as a qualitative research method. Qualitative Research, 9(2), 27–40. Hugo, J. (2026, under review). Systematic legal and administrative review: A new methodological approach to analysing legal and administrative data. Kelsen, H. (1960/2020). Theorie des Rechts (2nd ed., reprint). Mohr Siebeck. Krippendorff, K. (2019). Content analysis: An introduction to its methodology. SAGE. Moher, D., Shamseer, L., Clarke, M., Ghersi, D., Liberati, A., Petticrew, M., Shekelle, P., Stewart, L.A., Altman, D., Booth, A., Chan, A.-W., Chang, S., Clifford, T., Dickersin, K., Gøtzsche, P.C., Grimshaw, J., Groves, T., Helfand, M., Higgins, J. (…) Whitlock, E.P. (2015). Preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis protocols (PRISMA-P) 2015 statement. Systematic Reviews, 4(1), 1–9. Salganik, M.J. (2018). Bit by bit: Social research in the digital age. Princeton University Press.

Research on educational governance tends to focus either on analysing the steering mechanisms within a specific education system (Endemann & Burkhard, 2025) or on comparing the governance structures of different systems (OECD, 2017). This study successfully combined these two approaches by analysing and comparing the steering mechanisms and governance structures of all 26 Swiss cantons. Many studies have observed an increase in school autonomy following a shift from input-based to output-based control, especially in the context of New Public Management (Thiel et al., 2014). International research concludes that school autonomy and accountability must be balanced, promoting autonomy in decision-making while holding schools accountable for their performance. Yet this delicate balance is strongly affected by the state’s or country’s steering tradition, political decision-making, and legal framework. In Switzerland’s highly decentralised educational federalism, the federal government delegates the regulation of compulsory education to the states, resulting in 26 distinct school systems (Fischer, 2008) and thus regulatory systems. The states decide whether and how to distribute responsibilities for compulsory education to municipal authorities. At the municipal level, responsibilities are again distributed differently. This paper examines how the states regulate school autonomy in legal documents and how they differ with regard to the distribution of tasks among state government, municipalities and school leaders. Drawing on the analysis tool ‘Governance-Equalizer’ (Schimank, 2007), the researchers first gained an understanding of how education is regulated at the state level by analysing all state education laws for references to aspects of steering in public schools. These references were systematically categorised following the guidelines of qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz, 2016) in order to identify different control mechanisms in the 26 Swiss cantons. The dataset comprises 172 legally binding documents, in which 1.600 codes were assigned across 22 categories. The analysis aimed at developing of a typology of state governance (Hofman et al., 2008) based on the functional method in comparative legal research (van Hoecke, 2015). Preliminary results show varying degrees of distribution and bring forth two types of states. While one type grants a high degree of autonomy to municipalities and school administrators, the other is more centralised and local autonomy is low. Different regional traditions regarding the position of municipalities within the states, paired with distinct fiscal factors, could explain this phenomenon. The results provide a comprehensive overview of education governance in all 26 cantons and are useful for both education authorities and researchers.

Endemann, D. & Burkhard, J. (2025). Schulautonomie in Deutschland – wie Schulleitungen sie wahrnehmen und wie sie sich seit 2000 entwickelt hat. In F. Isensee, T. Mayer, L. Pohle, & D. Töpper (Eds.), Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zur Bildungsforschung 2025 (pp. 116–140). Berlin Universities Publishing. Fischer, J.A. (2008). Direct democracy and public education in Swiss cantons. In N. C. Soguel & P. Jaccard (Eds.), Governance and Performance of Education Systems (pp. 137–153). Springer. Hofman, R.H., Hofman, W.H.A., & Gray, J.M. (2008). Comparing key dimensions of schooling: Towards a typology of European school systems. Comparative Education, 44(1), 93–110. Kuckartz, U. (2016). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse: Methoden, Praxis, Computerunterstützung (3rd ed.). Beltz. OECD. (2017). Government at a glance 2017. OECD Publishing. Schimank, U. (2007). Die Governance-Perspektive: Analytisches Potenzial und anstehende konzeptionelle Fragen. In H. Altrichter, T. Brüsemeister, & J. Wissinger (Eds.), Educational Governance: Handlungskoordination und Steuerung im Bildungssystem (pp. 231–260). VS. Thiel, F., Cortina, K.S., & Pant, H.A. (2014). Steuerung im Bildungssystem im internationalen Vergleich. In R. Fatke & J. Oelkers (Eds.), Das Selbstverständnis der Erziehungswissenschaft: Geschichte und Gegenwart (S. 123–138). Beltz Juventa. van Hoecke, M. (2015). Methodology of comparative legal research. Law and Methode, 1–35.

Quality enhancement has become a central ambition in education policy, positioning school leadership as key to improvement. In the Nordic countries, empirical research has highlighted a growing tendency towards local education authorities (LEAs) organising school leadership in new ways by introducing shared leadership models such as co-principalship or formal school leadership teams (Ahlin, 2025; Döös & Wilhelmson, 2021). These developments can be understood in relation to international and national policies that promote school autonomy while increasing LEAs’ and school leaders’ responsibility for quality enhancement and results (Liljenberg & Samuelsson, 2025; Prøitz et al., 2022; Verger et al., 2024). In Norway, school leadership teams and LEAs share responsibility for quality work. Yet, despite national policy emphasising the importance of school leadership, prior research indicates a lack of “policy descriptions of how leaders should contribute to enhanced quality in schools” (Valle & Lillejord, 2023, p. 15). This raises questions about policy expectations and how interactions between policy and shared leadership affect school leaders’ autonomy in quality work, within complex governance arrangements. This study investigates the intersections between policy expectations enshrined in legal documents and the enactment of shared leadership in quality work and discusses potential implications for school leader autonomy. Applying an embedded case study approach, the study draws on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork, following the school leadership teams in two Norwegian upper secondary schools within one LEA. The generated fieldnotes and interview transcripts, as well as legal policy documents were analysed through content-based and thematic analysis: the national ‘Education Act’, the ‘Core Curriculum’, and the local administrative documents ‘Letter of Assignment’, and the ‘Framework for Leadership and Learning’. Using Hopmann’s (2008) concept of ‘management by expectations’ as an analytical lens, the findings reveal that policy frames school leadership as both individually accountable and collectively responsible, emphasising relational, trust-building practices. Local policy operationalises national policy expectations through examples of best practice, yet limited follow-up leaves school leaders navigating broad policy ambitions largely on their own. The leadership teams enacted shared leadership in line with policy expectations. While these practices supported collective engagement, they also constrained individual decision-making, giving rise to dilemmas related to autonomy. Combining analysis of ethnographic data with legal and administrative documents contributes to a nuanced understanding of the intricate relation between national and local governance and school leaders’ quality work. The study points to the need for stronger local mediation to balance policy expectations and leadership autonomy.

Ahlin, A. (2025). From traditional leadership to team collaboration: Sense-making by principals in school leadership teams. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/15700763.2025.2549336 Döös, M. & Wilhelmson, L. (2021). Changing organizational conditions: Experiences of introducing and putting function-shared leadership (FSL) into practice in schools and pre-schools. Leadership and Policy in Schools, 20(4), 672–689. Hopmann, S. T. (2008). No child, no school, no state left behind: Schooling in the age of accountability. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 40(4), 417–456. Liljenberg, M. & Samuelsson, K. (2025). Contradictory policy demands – perspectives on educational leaders’ shared responsibility for educational improvement. International Journal of Educational Management, 39(6), 1582–1595. Prøitz, T. S., Novak, J., & Mausethagen, S. (2022). Representations of student performance data in local education policy. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 34(1), 89–111. Valle, R. & Lillejord, S. (2023). A new regime of understanding: School leadership in Norwegian education policy (1990–2017). Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 9(2), 144–160. Verger, A., Lluís, P., Pagès, M., & Camphuijsen, M. (2024). School autonomy with accountability as a cross-national policy model: Diverse adoptions, practices and impacts. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 10(3), 167–179.