Jan Merok Paulsen

The School Boards between Power and Influence

The decentralized Scandinavian school structure with the municipal school committee as a central factor between the municipal council and other school interests gives the school board a central rol ...

Local Decisions Under Central Watch: A Nordic Quality Assurance System

Quality assurance or accountability, as we use the term, refers to when an actor, in virtue of contractual obligations, has the right to hold another actor responsible to a set of standards, to judge whether the standards have been met and to impose sanctions if the standards are deemed unfulfilled. In this chapter, we compare how (and if) these rights have been distributed and enacted in educational administration in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. By specifying contractual obligations, we wish to separate accountability from other kinds of asymmetric power relations, such as those between parent and child, and focus on acts of delegation and control.

Comparing Educational Governance

The focus of this book is educational governance at the local school district level seen in a cross-cultural perspective, which is based on national survey studies of local school boards in the Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden.

The Nordic Superintendents’ Leadership Roles: Cross-National Comparison

The chapter focuses on what happens when national education policies meet structures of implementation at the local school district and school levels. Focus is on the position that is subordinated to a municipal committee or board responsible for education. This position is here called superintendent, even if precise titles vary. By focusing on this position, its relation to the political board and the function as superior of principals in the school district, it will be possible to investigate some of the preconditions for learning in the school districts.

Norwegian Superintendents as Mediators of Change Initiatives.

The underlying theoretical argument in this article views municipal school superintendents in the Nordic context as middle managers in organizational theory terminology. Empirical support for this discussion emerges from national data collected among Norwegian school superintendents in 2009. Findings show that the actual work and leadership functions of Norwegian school superintendents match theoretical properties of middle managers fairly well. Findings also suggest school superintendents actively mediate tensions embedded in the current Norwegian educational policy stream. Specifically, central aims derived from accountability discourse are filtered out and translated into traditional school-development and pedagogical-leadership discourse at the local managerial level.

Globalisation and Europeanisation of Nordic Governance

Power relations between state, regional, municipal, and school levels have changed over the past decade or so. This shift is clear from an analysis of data from our survey of school board members and chairs in the Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden – and from country reports and thematic chapters in this volume. School board members also have exposed their new roles, tasks, and functions in municipal and political bureaucracies, government and governance, and therefore, new relationships between politicians and administrators, and between political boards and municipal administration, are formed. Also relationships between municipal policy and management agencies and government have been transformed so that in some cases, the traditionally strong municipal role in the “chain of governance” has been weakened or bypassed.

Role and Influence of School Boards on Improving Educational Quality

Ensuring educational quality is high on the policy agenda in many countries, especially efforts regarding students’ learning outcomes.

Exploring individual-level and group-level levers for inter-organizational knowledge transfer

Purpose – This purpose of this article is to contribute to the research on the role of individual and group-level autonomy and absorptive capacity for inter-organizational knowledge transfer. Design/methodology/approach – The study investigated a field sample of 274 individual participants in 82 groups who were taking part in a large-scale benchmarking project in the Norwegian public sector. Hypotheses were developed and tested by using multiple regression, structural equation modeling and hierarchical linear modeling and included an empirical test of moderator effects. Findings – The findings suggest that individual and group autonomy, along with individual experiences of absorptive capacity, supports complementarily inter-organizational knowledge transfer. Research limitations/implications – The study reinforces the idea that individual and group autonomy are enabling conditions for knowledge transfer from project settings to parent organizations. Absorptive capacity, in line with more recent theorizing...

School Boards in Norway

The current country report describes and pictures Norwegian local school boards in the national school governance process. A relatively potent layer of local politicians with education as policy specialism emerges from the Norwegian country case, where school board members are active local politicians with a clear motivation structure linked to school improvement and educational policy. At the same time the country report highlights strong influence on local policy processes from transnational and actors and state bodies. First, OECD lays down, yet indirectly, premises for the local school governing discourse in order to fit PISA as the educational “benchmark”. Second and nested (within this policy discourse), the state has strengthened its steering core towards municipalities, schools and teachers through a large body of standardized performance indicators and national tests, from which results are made publicly available for media and stakeholders. Third, the state has in the same period transferred significant responsibilities and degrees of freedom (in regulative terms) to municipalities as school owners. Local decision-making in pedagogy can fairly well be interpreted as a process of “blueprinting” of state policies. Local school politicians are tightly coupled to the administrative core and the top apex of the municipality organization. Taken together the chapter leaves the image that local school policy specialism has been significantly transferred from the political camp to the administrative centers of the municipality organization, at the same time as the state has coupled school professionals stronger to national and transnational policies.

Control and Trust in Local School Governance

External school inspection and state supervision represent key instruments in many European countries for improving the quality of education. Although some countries, such as England, France, and the Netherlands, have a long tradition of school inspectorates, other countries such as Sweden only recently reintroduced a school inspection system (Johansson O, Holmgren M, Nihlfors E, Moos L, Skedsmo G, Paulsen JM, Risku M, Local Decisions under Central Watch – a new Nordic quality assurance system. In: Moos L (ed) Transnational influences on values and practices in Nordic educational leadership – is there a Nordic model? Springer, Dordrecht, 2013). In Denmark, the relationship between the state and the municipalities is conducted through a public governance contract. For example, subject matter aims that used to be very broad and loose at this level were supplemented with clear aims that were developed into shared aims from 2006 onwards. Moreover, a state supervision system was introduced to standardize the quality assurance procedure. In a similar vein, Norway conducted a national quality assurance system in 2006, paired with national achievement testing systems, to chart and publish the results and a state supervision system. In contrast to Sweden, the local governance level – municipalities – in Denmark and Norway is the target of state supervision; thus, inspection and control are more loosely coupled with schools and principals at the “street level.” In Finland, the National Board of Education conducts national evaluations, and this state agency is also responsible for the national evaluation of learning outcomes. Notably, in this respect, Finland deviates from the international stream of state quality assurance and inspection, not at least linked to the political system’s resistance to ranking schools and municipalities and the external publication of performance indicators.