Expanding Distributed Leadership in a Finnish Teacher Training School’s Change Laboratory

• In Event: Transformative Research With School Communities and Teachers

Abstract

Our study explores how a Change Laboratory intervention conducted with teachers in a Finnish teacher training school generated a new local conception of distributed leadership. The school faced a pressing need for organizational transformation amidst a curriculum reform. By addressing a central contradiction between the historically strong teacher-autonomy vs. the collaborative, interdisciplinary demands of the new curriculum, the participants renewed the school’s instructional leadership practices through expansive learning. We investigated the expansive learning process, which resulted in a germ cell concept of “compass” for generating and modeling new distributed leadership practices for the school. A detailed sub-typification of expansive learning actions was induced from the data and employed to explain how the concept of distributed leadership emerged and evolved.

Authors

• Sakari Hyrkkö, University of Helsinki

• Anu Kajamaa, University of Oulu