External Control and Professional Trust in Norwegian School Governing: Synthesis from a Nordic Research Project

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This paper analyses productive patterns through which school superintendents and subordinated principals collaborate at the local levels of implementation in the Nordic countries. The underlying theoretical premise is that the school governance systems in the Nordic countries, as a function of strengthened state steering and a variety of local political conditions, entail a series of loose couplings-described by the broken chain metaphor. The analysis is based on a review of findings from a comparative Nordic research project. The review reveals that school superintendents and principals to a large extent activate professional learning forums as integration mechanism-to make collective sense of ambiguous national reforms. Important learning conditions that emerge from the country reports, on which the reviewed research is based, seem to cluster and cohere around learning climate, interpersonal trust, leadership support and a shared knowledge base between the school leaders and the municipal apparatus. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Section: Broken Chains In Nordic School Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

Mediation, Collaborative Learning and Trust in Norwegian School Governing: Synthesis from a Nordic Research Project

Paulsen

Henriksen

2017

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“…From a conceptual stance, the model through which Finnish municipalities govern their schools and their school leaders corresponds fairly well with a school strategy conceived by Brian Rowan as a commitment model in his 1990 policy review (Rowan, 1990;Rowan & Miller, 2007;Paulsen & Høyer, 2016). Contrary to a strategy model based on external evaluation, inspection, and control, the commitment-based model (of how to govern schools from the district level) stands out differently (Rowan & Miller, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 71%

Conceptualizing Professional Commitment-Based School Strategy

Paulsen

2018

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Core values inherent in the Finnish comprehensive education system can in many respects be interpreted to cluster and cohere around a Bildung discourse, which is paradoxically seen against the backdrop of the system’s stable high rank in PISA, the hallmark of an outcome discourse. Yet the point is that within the frames of a Bildung discourse, the themes in focus for curricula go beyond basic skills with a similarly strong focus on societal values and culture. At the process level, Finland is more deeply and strongly infused with a policy culture that is more compatible with the Bildung tradition than the Anglo-Saxon outcome discourse—with its core values of organizing and leading for relations and teaching. As noted by Finnish scholars, such cultural traits of the Finnish system are viable and can be interpreted as associated with institutional path dependency, anchored in longstanding agrarian and social-democratic values. The current paper interprets these cultural traits also as manifest at the local level around a school strategy model close to the one characterized as a professional commitment strategy in the early 1990s by the American scholars Susan Rosenholtz and Brian Rowan. The purpose of the paper, however, is to advance this theoretical understanding a step further towards a conceptual model of commitment-based school strategy. This paper is, thus, a pure conceptual piece. To elaborate the early insights from the 1990s further, a case drawn from Helsinki primary school is used as an empirical illustration.

“…Effective leaders in non-school settings are defined by "the quality of the social exchange between leaders and followers, characterized by mutual trust, respect, and obligation" (Chen,Kirkman,Kanfer,Allen,& Rosen p. 333). This observation, has, of course, been reflected for some time in school leadership texts (Blumberg & Greenfield, 1986;Deal & Peterson, 1994) as well as recent studies of trust and respect in school settings (Louis & Murphy, 2017;Paulsen & Høyer, 2016;Tschannen-Moran, 2014). Louis and Murphy (2017), for example, show that where principals trust their teachers' professional competence, teachers are more likely to say that they have a caring principal.…”

Section: Positive Leadership In Practicementioning

confidence: 89%

Potential of Positive Leadership for School Improvement

Louis

Murphy²

2018

In this paper, we undertake four formative assignments: (1) We introduce the idea of positive school leadership (PSL) based largely on theory and research conducted outside the educational sector and introduce four orientations that anchor PSL; (2) we develop ideas about how asset-grounded concepts of leadership can be incorporated into schooling; (3) we examine how concepts underlying PSL may affect schools, classrooms, teachers, and students; and (4) using narrative research and grounded theory we introduce an overview of empirical evidence linking PSL and valued outcomes. We conclude by discussing the significance of PSL for organizational theory and leadership preparation and professional development.