Analysis of leadership dynamics in educational settings during times of external and internal change

Abstract

Background:The article concerns the tensions that can arise during demanding external, and consequential internal changes and considers how educational leadership is able to respond to them. Leadership is here understood as a collaborative endeavour, producing shared sense-making in situations of tension. Purpose: The main research question was: what kinds of leadership dynamics underlie situations of tension brought about by external and internal change? The sub-question was: what kind of micro-level sense-making processes, argued to be the true source of change, assist in revealing these dynamics? Programme: Educational organisations increasingly face demanding external changes, such as the two mergers described in this article. Tensions can easily be brought about during such external changes and the consequential internal changes, such as two pedagogical innovation projects in this article. Sample: The study was conducted with three leadership teams within two organisations. The first organisation was a vocational education organisation with around 4000-5000 students and 500 staff members. The leadership team that was studied was followed for almost two years. The other organisation was a business school which comprised of around 7000 students, 150-200 professors and 500 staff members. There, two leadership teams were investigated and followed for almost three years. Design and methods: The data for the sense-making process was selected by way of qualitative content analysis and an experimented model called TenKeys®. This data were analysed using a grounded theory approach to uncover the underlying leadership dynamics. Results: Ten micro-procedural leadership dynamics were identified. Actions related to the pedagogical projects were then interpreted by means of these dynamics. Conclusions: The findings suggest that understanding underlying leadership dynamics might help educational organisations respond to possible tensions brought about by external and internal change and, consequently, support learners' learning processes, albeit indirectly.

Towards an Educational Leadership: Functions and Failures Perceived by Teachers and Management Teams

“…The essential areas of action in a center's dynamics that every educational leader has to promote widely vary. By way of synthesis, and in line with what has been pointed out by authors like Jäppinen (2017) and Pont et al (2008), a first area refers to economic-administrative management, which includes the coordination tasks of different school services. A second area refers to the field of curricular and methodological development, which is fundamentally related to the improvement of teaching-learning processes.…”

Clearing Opacity: Change Management via Leader Transparency in Native American Neotraditional Organizations

“…Organizational leaders—defined as top managers tasked with guiding the strategic direction of the organization—matter a great deal to the success or failure of organizational change (Hambrick & Mason, 1984; Oreg & Berson, 2019). The organization’s top leaders are not only responsible for charting the strategic direction of the organization, which entails balancing the need for continuity and change (Taylor-Bianco & Schermerhorn, 2006) but also for translating events that unfold outside of the organization (e.g., emerging business trends and technologies) into new initiatives within the organization (Jäppinen, 2017). Such initiatives often result in leaders communicating the parameters for change directly to employees (Yue et al, 2020).…”

School leadership in data use practices: collegial and consensus-oriented

“…From studies on professional communities, we know that micro-studies obtain a clearer picture of how, for example, school leaders relate to managing the data use practices in their respective schools. Some studies have shed light on how using specific discourse strategies is important for establishing identity during changes in policy discourses on school leaders' responsibilities and for investigating the underlying leadership dynamics that operate in organisational change situations that bring about tensions (Cohen 2008;Jäppinen 2017). Furthermore, micro-process research is often fruitfully combined with ex situ accounts of practice and situated within a political and social context to enhance knowledge about how local practices construct school processes (Little 2012).…”

“…Studies on data use consistently emphasise the importance of school leaders as drivers in making student performance data productive for improving student learning outcomes (e.g. Hoogland et al 2016;Sun, Przybylski and Johnson 2016); however, we know less about how school leaders actually use data when interacting with teachers and how accountability pressures influence the relationships and epistemic work within data use practices (Prøitz, Mausethagen, and Skedsmo 2017;Jäppinen 2017). Thus, micro-level analysis of data use, with a basis in small-scale interactions between individuals, is of critical importance for understanding how data use both constructs and instantiates institutional routines and processes (Little 2012).…”