Jorunn Møller

Democratic Schooling in Norway: Implications for Leadership in Practice.

This article explores the meaning of an education based on democratic values and the implications for school leadership in practice. Based on findings from a case study in a Norwegian upper secondary school, the study describes democratic school leadership in practice, with particular attention to the distribution of power and leadership in the school, student voice in the decision-making process, their opportunities for open dialogues, and the conditions that must be in place for students to develop as citizens.

Modernising education: New Public Management reform in the Norwegian education system

Since the end of the 1980s, the Norwegian education system has gone through major reform, influenced largely by new managerialist ideas. Strategies to renew the public sector were promoted as the new public management (NPM). This paper investigates the way ideas connected to NPM reforms have been introduced and interpreted in the Norwegian education sector. Based on our studies of selected policy documents from the last two decades, we have identified three areas of discursive struggle. The first one is linked to ideologies and the national history of schooling, the second to contested issues of teacher professionalism and the third is associated with strategies for modernising and improving education. A main argument is that NPM reforms changed direction and sped up when Norway was listed among the ‘lower-performing’ countries according to Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and other international tests. Leadership and accountability became the dominant themes in Norwegian education.

Team leadership in upper secondary education1

This article aims at presenting some of the findings from the Norwegian part of the ‘Successful School Leadership Project.2 In order to adequately capture the complicated and dynamic nature of leadership in the participating schools, a distributed and micro-political perspective on leadership is chosen. The Norwegian team has been investigating elementary as well as secondary education, but we will for this presentation emphasize some general aspects of leadership in upper secondary education. Three upper secondary schools will be presented and used as examples in our discussion. Our findings underscore how school leadership is an interactive process involving many people and players. Geographical location, school history and size point to a variety of challenges, but in all schools we could identify success as a result of a continuous team effort. Leadership analysed within a distributed perspective can be described as an organizational quality in these schools. The many faces of distributed leadership in upper secondary education can best be comprehended in the light of the schools’ historical, cultural, political and social context. The study also demonstrates how trust and power within distributed leadership of an organization were closely interrelated.3

Cross-national Comparisons in the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP): The USA, Norway and China

This article provides a cross‐national perspective on successful school principalship in three countries derived from an analysis of case studies in the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP). The ISSPP aims to investigate the characteristics, processes and effects of successful school leadership across eight countries (i.e. Australia, Canada, England, the United States, China, Denmark, Sweden and Norway). Examples from the USA, Norway and China (Shanghai) were selected to illustrate cross‐national differences related to the societal purposes of education, the structure and funding of different national educational systems and the influence of particular governmental educational policies (i.e. accountability‐oriented policies) on the leadership practices of individual school principals. Variations in selection criteria and research procedures were also noted. Recommendations for further research using a cultural framework include analysing multiethnic schools to identify culturally specific leadership practices as well as developing further ISSPP case studies in non‐Western contexts.

A Scandinavian Perspective on Educational Leadership.

Abstract The objective of this article is to examine the rhetoric of educational leadership within a Scandinavian context, as it occurs within the framework of New Public Management. The study asks questions about new demands on leadership expressed in policy documents. Local culture and distinctive aspects of national life tend to modify external influences such as those inherent in the philosophy and practice of New Public Management. Scandinavian schools reflect key elements of Scandinavian life such as a commitment to collaboration, democracy, and individual enlightenment. These are themes in the curriculum of many of these countries and key values of the teachers who lead the learning processes. The range of tensions and dilemmas that teachers and their leaders are now facing are a direct result of the clash between generic public policy and the distinctive approach to support life and democratic culture in the Scandinavian countries. School leaders, it seems, are clearly in the middle of this clash and must mediate between these two trends. To remind us of the ultimate objectives of schooling, we outline a Scandinavian vision of democratic reflective leadership.

Successful principalship in Norway: sustainable ethos and incremental changes?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore whether and how success has been sustained over time in schools which were identified as being successful five years ago.Design/methodology/approach – Three schools were selected for a revisit, and the sample included two combined schools (grade 1‐10) and one upper secondary school (grade 11‐13). In two schools the same principals were still in post, and in the third school there had recently been a change in principalship. Interviews with the principal and a group of teachers at each school were the major source of new data. Questions that guided the study: What structural and cultural changes can be identified within the schools compared with five years ago? What factors might help sustain success over time?Findings – The learning‐centred approach identified earlier had been sustained in the schools during the five years. All principals focused on multiple ways of influencing staff motivation, commitment and working conditions, teamwork was a vital chara...

Leadership as relational work: risks and opportunities

Although fostering trust has been given more emphasis in recent research on school leadership, less research sheds light on the tensions between power and trust and how collective interactions related to leadership evolve in school settings. This paper addresses leadership as relational work, traced in interactions between a principal and a group of teachers operating within the context of a school-improvement project in a Norwegian upper secondary school. The analysis explores how the participants position themselves and others through negotiations in meetings while the participants discuss the conditions of the project. The findings show how leadership positions and power relations are constituted, challenged and changed in interaction amongst the participants over time. Thus, this study provides insight into leadership as an interactive process and the dynamics of power and trust in developing leadership actions. The main argument is that risks and opportunities are significant parts of leadership work, and that relational work affects the ever-changing status of the division of authority.

The Construction of a Public Face as a School Principal.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how successful school leaders in Norway frame their public identity and how their narratives may be understood in relation to different discourses on leadership.Design/methodology/approach – The approach draws upon a theoretical perspective which asserts that there is a profound connection between identity and practice, and between identity and the construction of a number of narratives (Wenger; Bourdieu and Wacquant). The author has combined analyses of public discourses on school leadership with findings based on the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP) to analyze the school principals construction of a public face.Findings – The study demonstrates how the public identity and face of a school principal is multiple, subjectively constructed and intersects with public discourses. Moreover, it highlights why principals need greater capability to lead their schools in a dynamic context by being the figure head and representing the o...

Learning to share: a vision of leadership practice

This article aims at providing insight into ways of constructing leadership for learning within a Norwegian context. The focus is on how a Norwegian principal talks about educational leadership and learning. The principals story is juxtaposed with references to how her deputies and a group of teachers frame their experiences about leadership for learning at this particular school. In this instance, the sharing of leadership is considered successful because those wishing to share in the leadership of the school have learned first to share in the leaders vision of leading. A main argument is that in constructing her story about leadership for learning the principal is also negotiating who she is for others as well as for herself, and her identity construction is work in progress.

Framing research on school principals’ identities

Abstract This paper provides a basis for a tentative framework for guiding future research into principals’ identity construction and development. It is situated in the context of persisting emphases placed by government policies on the need for technocratic competencies in principals as a means of demonstrating success defined largely as compliance with demands for the improvement in student test scores. Often this emphasis is at the expense of forwarding a broader view of the need, alongside these, for clear educational values, beliefs and practices that are associated with these. The framework is informed by the theoretical work of Wenger and Bourdieu as well as recent empirical research on the part played by professional identity and emotions in school leadership. In the paper, we highlight different lines of inquiry and the issues they raise for researchers. We argue that the constructions of school leadership identities are located in time, space and place, and emotions reflect complex leadership identities situated within social hierarchies which are part of wider structures and social relations of power and control.