Understanding Educational Leadership and Curriculum Reform

Abstract

On a state level both curriculum policy work and educational leadership are increasingly challenged by new transnational phenomena in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas alike: expanding cultural neo-national-ism, more populist politics, economic protectionism, new forms of self-centered identity formation, reli-gious fundamentalism, mistrust in democratic political participation, and decreasing respect for knowledge institutions and established media. These developments have many roots but appear partly as consequences of neoliberally driven policy initiatives and globalization. Consequently, there is increasing mistrust as to whether curriculum, leadership, and evaluation initiatives driven by a global neoliberal policy may provide sustainable solutions for guiding reforms in the public sector, including education. Not surprisingly, also the existing curriculum and educational leadership theory are under scrutiny. This article provides openings pointing to a hermeneutic and systems-oriented, multilevel and professional approach for reorienting na-tional systems with respect to collaborative work on curriculum, leadership, and evaluation. Such a Bild-ung-centered view on human identity, growth, and citizenship is congruent with a non-affirmative educa-tion theory (NAT). It provides a conceptualization that is able to deal with curriculum and leadership gen-uinely based on an idea of education. Such a position grounds educational leadership, curriculum, and pol-icy work, as well as evaluation and school reform, in education theory. As a general education theory the non-affirmative position is able to bring together an analysis of educational aims, contents, and methods of schooling, teacher professionalism, and leadership. In addition, NAT frames an understanding of how cur-riculum work at different levels is initiated, implemented, and enacted. In bridging these perspectives, it is argued that critical and hermeneutic NAT provides a theoretically productive approach to present-day local, national, and global education problems. As a foundational frame of reference, NAT allows us to perceive curriculum discourses as different forms of mediating, hermeneutic invitations, and summoning to self-activity and self-formation (Bildung), within and for a democratic polity.

Coordinating, communicating, and combining languages in local immersion education policy reform in Finland

“…The findings provoked further questions about how power is distributed whilst policy works are legitimated and accepted by different policy actors. These questions led to a connection between curriculum policy discourses and educational leadership, consistent with the suggestion of Uljens (2018).…”

“…Two types of discourses are relevant to interactive policy processes: coordinative discourses, which refer to the construction of policy amongst policy actors, and communicative discourses, which refer to the legitimisation of policy between policy actors and the general public (Schmidt, 2010(Schmidt, , 2015. However, as DI was originally used in the political sciences, it requires slight modification to fit the educational context (Uljens, 2018). Wahlström and Sundberg (2018) also pointed out that in empirical studies, such as the study at hand, a useful approach is to distinguish between one-way persuasive communicative discourse and the more reciprocal deliberative communicative discourse.…”

Bildung: alive and allowed? A critical study of work plan practices in Norwegian schools

“…While the sociological research literature examines education from an external, societal perspective, curriculum studies and didactics as a research field anchor their research questions in educational theories and practices (see, e.g. Aasebø et al, 2017;Deng, 2020;Friesen, 2017;Mølstad & Karseth, 2016;Nordin, 2018;Uljens, 2018). In Northern and Central Europe, these didactical theories have traditionally been Bildung oriented (Swedish: bildning; Norwegian: danning; Danish: dannelse) (Gundem, 1995;Sivesind, 2008;Sivesind & Luimes, 2017).…”