Transnational Influences On Values And Practices In Nordic Educational Leadership

This book explores to what extent transnational influences change national/local values and practices in the Nordic educational systems. It provides country cases and thematic chapters that give nuanced insights into the influence of transnational agencies on national governance and discourses. It describes how national discourses and regulation influences school leadership values, culture and practice, in competition with traditional values. The transnational and global discourse on educational leadership is mostly formed according to Anglo-American thinking and tradition. Pivotal foundations of this discourse are strong hierarchical societies/class societies with liberal democracies, and clearly streamed education systems. The Nordic discourse, however, builds on a more equal society and flat hierarchies with participatory democracy, and on comprehensive schooling with strong local community roots. Leadership thinking and practices are formed by the culture and context they are part of: they are primarily shaped by the national/local values, traditions and practices, and only partially shaped by politics, discourses and literature. Due to the fact that a great deal of the literature that is being used in the Nordic contexts is of Anglo-American origin and many of the research projects have Anglo-American foundations, it is difficult to distinguish the sources for leadership thinking and practice. This book distinguishes the Nordic from the Anglo-American thinking and presents important findings and arguments for leadership practitioners inside as well as outside the Nordic countries.​

This volume contributes significantly to the ongoing international and Nordic paradigm shift in educational leadership research. It advocates for going from a contemporary, mainstream functionalist paradigm to a reflexive paradigm, based on educational values and knowledge. The volume is built on the shared basis, that the purpose of education is, and must be, fundamental for school leadership practice. However, that is often forgotten in educational governance and policy. The basis of the argument is, that educational leadership needs to change from focusing on effectiveness and narrowly defined accountability towards focusing on leadership that is contributing to the general education of students. That entails that leadership research need to focus on complex perspectives like context, relations, trust, sense making and social and human values, and less on control, outcomes, accountability and testing. The volume reminds readers about the need to raise awareness of the contexts of education and research, be they political, cultural, economic or ideological. Chapters analyze, discuss and compare research from Nordic educational leadership research systems: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The cross-system insights clarify the fundamental relations between policy/governance and research/practice are and discuss forgotten dependencies and opportunities.

This book analyses the superintendent position and relations and shows how the well-known policy umbrella, the New Public Management (NPM), is being adapted to national contexts. School superintendents are civil servants at the heart of the governance of municipal education. Educational governance in the Nordic countries - Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden - is currently undergoing comprehensive restructuring and reconceptualisation at the hands of national governments influenced by transnational agencies. Our analyses of the superintendent position and relations show that the well-known policy umbrella, the New Public Management (NPM), is moving towards focusing on soft governance and social technologies as the preferred means of influences. Thus we rename it New Public Governance (NPG).

This book analyses local school district governance in a comparative, cross-cultural perspective based on national studies of local school boards in the Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The overarching research question explored by the national studies contained in this volume is: How are transnational influences of standardization and accountability, alongside national policies, transformed into local policy cultures by the school boards? In all the Nordic countries, the municipalities are equivalent with the school district level, and municipalities, as such, play a role as the interface between state policies and the schools. This book discusses the variation across different national systems in the Nordic countries in the degree of decentralism, as well as the processes through which sources of political autonomy are put into practice by school boards. It explores the interplay between context and policy-making at the local level, and analyses how local discourses expressed by school boards differ from national policies and trans-national influences. The book’s analysis of the country-cases and thematic chapters shows that there are both important similarities and significant differences in governance functions, power relations and understandings of school board chairs and members between the countries studied. Moreover, the book analyses the many ways in which these similarities and differences affect the work context of school leaders and teachers in the Nordic countries.

This book discusses principals’ prerequisites and work within the five Nordic countries and focuses on schools as formal institutions that carry out functions delegated to them by the social collective. It includes a discussion about what kind of state policy demonstrates autonomy in Nordic schools, as well as the ways in which school leaders as sense makers in local schools possess and enact policy in a globalized economy and a changing world. The book draws both on a range of theoretical frameworks and educational leadership and policy research to provide multiple comparative perspectives of school leadership in the Nordic countries, the moral purpose of schooling, school governance and power relations, expectations towards school leadership, handling of crises, and cultures of trust. The chapters range from in depth-case studies and policy document analyses to large-scale data sets and literature reviews. All chapters have multiple messages for practitioners, policy makers and researchers as they seek to engage with school leadership as a core activity in times of societal changes. As democratic welfare states, the five Nordic countries have many similarities, but also differences which makes it interesting to understand more about various ways to strive towards democracy and well-educated citizens.

This book provides a unique map of the focus and directions of contemporary research on school leadership since 2000 in 24 countries. Each of these directions has its own particular cultural, educational and policy history. Taken together, the various chapters in the volume provide a rich and varied mosaic of what is currently known and what is yet to be discovered about the roles and practices of principals, and their contributions to the improvement of teaching and the learning and achievement of students. The particular foci and methodological emphases of the research reported illustrate the different phases in the development of educational policies and provision in each country. This collection is an important addition to existing international research that has shown beyond any reasonable doubt that the influence of school principals is second only to that of teachers in their capacity to impact students’ progress and achievement and to promote equity and social justice.

This open access book is the first account of the whole diversity of teacher education in the Nordic region: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, the Åland Islands and Sápmi (where the Sámi people live). Today, large parts of the world are looking to the Nordic model of social organization, and interest in the Nordic comprehensive school system and teacher education arrangements is no exception. A good education is a key to prosperity and well-being. And the quality of students’ education is undoubtedly linked to the quality of their teachers’ education. While teacher education in the Nordic region is globally admired, it also faces new challenges. The leading scholars writing in this volume discuss the challenges and opportunities that professional environments are facing. By providing solid portraits of each area as well as analyses across the region, this book will be a great resource to students, academics in teacher education and schooling as well as social scientists and policy-makers inside and outside the Nordic region. This is an open access book.

A provocative and authoritative compendium of writings on leadership in education from distinguished scholar-educators worldwide. What is educational leadership? What are some of the trends, questions, and social forces most relevant to the current state of education? What are the possible futures of education, and what can educational leadership contribute to these futures? To address these questions, and more, editors Duncan Waite and Ira Bogotch asked distinguished international thought leaders on education to share their insights, observations, and research findings on the nature of education and educational leadership in the global village. The Wiley International Handbook of Educational Leadership brings together contributions from authors in twenty-one countries, spanning six continents. Topics examined include leadership and aesthetics, creativity, eco‐justice, advocacy, Big Data and technology, neoliberalism, emerging philosophies and theories, critical democracy, gender and radical feminism, political economies, emotions, postcolonialism, and new directions in higher education. A must-read for teachers, researchers, scholars, and policy makers, this Handbook: Champions radical pluralism over consensus and pseudoscientific or political solutions to problems in education Embraces social, economic, and political relevance alongside the traditions of careful and systematic rigor Challenges traditional epistemological, cultural, and methodological concepts of education and educational leadership Explores the field’s historical antecedents and ways in which leadership can transcend the narrow disciplinary and bureaucratic constraints imposed by current research designs and methods Advances radically new possibilities for remaking educational leadership research and educational institutions