Educational Leadership Practice for Improvement: How Schools Understand and Reformulate Government Reforms

• In Event: Reshaping Educational Practice for Improvement: How Schools Mediate and Enact Government Reforms

Abstract

Objectives
The research aimed to better understand how new policies are handled at the local level. In the two last decades the Swedish education system has experienced changes through a stream of constant government reforms that affect individual schools, teachers, principals and school boards. The political rhetoric is that these new laws and regulations should improve the education system and raise pupil’s results.

In this paper, we focus on how trust and expectations from the school board and superintendent are expressed in local policy processes, how support and evaluation structures are constructed in relation to new reforms, how leadership actions at national and district levels are comprehended by principals and their staff. In particular, we will examine whether national decisions are perceived as positive reforms or as new control mechanisms.

Perspectives
We used Lundquist's classic governance model which defines two distinct roles in politics: the policy-maker role and the implementer role, together with Lindensjö and Lundgren´s distinction between formulation (policy making) and realisation (policy implementation) arenas. We identified a direct control by policy makers coupled more-or-less to clear rules for what is to be implemented, and an indirect control (realisation) about the conditions for doing so, for example allocating resources for implementation. Notable is that the implementation level is influenced by several different processes of change and also by mediation from stakeholders.

This vast number of new regulations within the field of education, however, makes it difficult to discern which effects come from what decision- making source. This difficulty is exacerbated by the fact that institutions find themselves at differing stages of implementation whilst experiencing the stream of policy decisions as constant, thus not clearly discerning the different parts of the policies to be implemented. Lack of understanding on the local level can affect how well implementation gets ahead.

Data sources
Our data sources come from a Swedish study named National Policy Meets Local Implementation Structures including national surveys of school boards, superintendents and principals complemented with interviews with the same groups.

Results and Significance of the Work
The analysis tell us that it seems to be unclear to local politicians, superintendents and local heads of municipal governments which unit is ultimately responsible for the local school system. In a research report (Authors, 2013) we have argued that if Low-Performing Schools shall be turned around to a successful school then good working relations between school boards and principals are a necessity for success. We find in this study that this result also applies to the implementation of new national educational reforms. To get improved effects of new educational reforms we propose that there should be a greater focus on the environment in the school district and support structures created for the local school leadership.

Authors

• Olof Johansson, Umeå universitet

• Elisabet Nihlfors, Uppsala University