Mika Risku

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.

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.

Finnish Superintendents: Leading in a Changing Education Policy Context

Finland’s education system is regarded as one of the most effective in the world. Shared values of the Finnish welfare society continue to influence national education policies that determine how education is organized, governed, and led. Findings from a national study of the superintendency, however, suggest recent demographic and financial changes as well as ideologically driven legislative reforms are radically changing provision of education, stimulating mergers, altering organizational and governance patterns, and changing superintendents’ work. National policies are redefining the role of the superintendent from being a bureaucratic functionary to a member of an executive management team.

Superintendent leadership under shifting governance regimes

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse the superintendent position, its relation to the local political system and the function as superior of principals in the school district in order to ...

Symbolic leadership and leadership culture in one unified comprehensive school in Finland

The research presented in this article is a description of the symbolic leadership and leadership culture in one unified comprehensive school in Finland. The study is a phenomenological qualitative case study based on triangulation. Leadership is studied through its functional, verbal and material dimensions. Leadership culture is regarded as one of the part cultures of the organisation culture. It is a product of the meaning and interpretation process which forms itself through the symbols of the principals leadership. According to the present study, the leadership culture of the unified comprehensive school can be described as consisting of respect, communality, equality and humour.

School Boards in Finland

In today’s global societal development, Finland in many ways seems to be an outlier relying on policies, the goals, contents and enactment of which differ from those of many other countries. Furthermore, the policies Finland relies on appear to provide outlying results concerning both the education system and the society (Risku M, Ital J Sociol Educ, forthcoming; Risku M, Kanervio P, The Finnish superintendent. In: Nir A (ed) The educational superintendent: between trust and regulation: an international perspective. Lambert Academic Publishing, New York, 2014). The many-sided outlying character of Finland makes it an interesting case of research.

Competence and Understanding in the Governance Chain

Education is of fundamental value for a society; to raise and foster a new generation of citizens in a global and local multicultural context. It is therefore crucial to identify the competences that are needed for multiple actors in the school governance chain, with the aim of achieving this mission in different contexts over time.

Symbolic leadership culture and its subcultures in one unified comprehensive school in Finland

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe a symbolic-interpretative research on the leadership culture and its subcultures in one unified comprehensive school in Finland. Design/methodology/approach – The research is a phenomenological, qualitative case study. Its methodology is based on triangulation. Findings – The leadership culture of the unified comprehensive school studied in the present research seemed to be based on equality, communality, appreciation, flow of information and humor. Besides examining the general leadership culture of the school, an attempt was made to study the possible subcultures of the school by examining the six subject groups into which the teachers were divided in the school on the basis of the teachers’ education and tasks. These subject groups formed the subgroups of the research. If a subgroups interpretation of the leadership culture of the school differed significantly from those of the other subgroups, the subgroup was considered to have a subculture of its o...

Finland: Finnish Principal

The presentation of principalship in Finland begins by giving an overall description of the Finnish education system and of the formal position of principals in Finland. The more detailed examination of the Finnish principal comprises two main sources. Both sources are reviews on research on principals in Finland in 2000–2010. The first one was conducted for the Swedish Research Council by Risku and Kanervio (Doctoral and regular research on principals in Finland 2000–2010. In: Johansson O (ed) Rektor – en forskningsoversikt 2000–2010 [Principal – a research report]. Vetenskapsradets rapportserie 4:161–186, 2011). The second one is a report by Alava et al. (Changing school management. Status review – May 2012. Publications 2012:13. Finnish National Board of Education, Helsinki, 2012) for the Finnish National Board of Education.

Democracy in Complex Networks: Political Leaders and Administrative Professionals

The core assumption in this chapter is that political actors and civil servants on the municipal level share in the common societal responsibility for the education and upbringing of the next generation. Using a filter of five core public-governance logics in the analysis of our data – the marketplace logic, the managerial, the public, the professional and the ethical –we find both similarities and differences between politicians and civil servants. We analyse how politicians and administrators are positioned in the system and how they develop their commitment to, and their competencies to take part in furthering, both a democratic education and an efficient and effective governance system, in the context of municipalities that face continued restructuring. We present similarities and differences between countries in the project, so some overlapping from the country reports will occur in this chapter.