| 1. |
- Bröms, Tina
(författare)
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Rektorns beslutsfattande om skolans organisation : Navigering utifrån beslutslogiker i oländig terräng
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Over the past several years, there has been a greater demand for accountability of principal´s for the education they provide. Through the Education Act (SFS 2010:800), the Swedish parliament has increased the regulation and clarification of the principal´s responsibility in several areas, for example the responsibility to decide on the school’s internal organization. This thesis takes an interest for the principal´s decision-making, more accurately the aim is to develop knowledge about the principal´s decision-making through logics of decisions (Brunsson & Brunsson, 2017). The concept of logics of decisions is central in this study and are used as an analytical framework to understand and explain how the principal make decision about the internal school organization. Through a reflexive research process (Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2017) the aim is explored thorough three methods: a survey, observations and interviews (Creswell). The results demonstrate thorough logics of decisions that even if principal´s experience mandate, legitimacy and authority, they have a limited room for action options in their decision-making. In the discussion, I argue from a decision-theory perspective that the state, the school board, the staff and the local community essentially control the principal preferences. The legal regulations make the logic of appropriateness with its focus on laws and regulations visible in decision-making. Since the legal regulations are governed by a rationality where there is a best way for the principal to make decision, the logic of imitation will also appear in the decision-making. I also argue that the logic experimentation which is rather invisible in the principal decision-making possibly create at different way for decision-making from those that dominate today. The logic of experimental can become a means of critical examination in the principal own decision-making and practice. Overall, the thesis theoretical contribution is to use a decision-theoretic perspective through the conceptualization of logics of decisions to provide new dimensions of the principal´s decision-making in a context where it has not been used before, the school context.
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| 2. |
- Åkesson, Erik, 1981-
(författare)
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Resultatansvar för likvärdighet : En läroplansteoretisk studie av systematiskt kvalitetsarbete och rektorers sensemaking
- 2024
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The aim of this dissertation is to describe and critically analyze ideas about quality management with in different arenas of the Swedish education systemand how these relate to leadership and the enacted curriculum. The study conceptualizes systematic quality work as a governance tool and a national accountability program created with the aim of solving problems concerning lack of equity and lowered national test scores. Two tensions within the policy program are identified. The first is between external results-oriented forms of control and internal professional trust. The second is between national curriculum goals and local organizational goals.The empirical study consists of a cross-case study of the most different designs of four quality systems enacted by the heads of the school organizations and the principals. The main sources of data are interviews with principals and school leaders and documents and policy artifacts. The data are analyzed from a combined perspective of loosely coupled system, discursive institutionalism and sensemaking.The main conclusion of the study is that while systematic quality work represents an attempt by the state to create a more coherent and centralized accountability system, the results point to a decentralized and loosely coupled education system focused on local organizational goals. The contents of the enacted policy solutions show that the ideational content of quality work is highly malleable to localized uses and interpretations, which also raises questions about how equity is to be understood within the policy program.The enacted solutions show great variance concerning how tensions relating to internal and external dimensions of accountability were handled. The reasons for these differences where related to different leadership strategies, varying pressures from the school market and distinct organizational needs. While the enacted accountability systems in all four cases have created results-oriented frameworks for teaching, their impact on the enacted curriculum was clearly mediated in three of the four cases.
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| 3. |
- Dahlén, Ewa
(författare)
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Rektorn och den dubbla styrningen : en studie om gymnasierektors uppdrag i styrkedjan
- 2023
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In a global education policy context, school leadership has grown in importance in relation to improving school outcomes as well as equity in education. At the same time, during the last decades, the Swedish school system has undergone several large-scale national education reforms. Reforms that have changed the relations between the different levels in the decentralised Swedish school system and at the same time created debates about the purpose and goals of the school system. These debates are based in different perspectives and shaped by various school discourses. The result discourse connected to the perspective of marketization and the democratic discourse connected to the perspective of social inclusion and equality. These are two central discourses who proclaim different views on how challenges within the school system should best be solved. The purpose of this study is to contribute to knowledge about the mission and responsibilities of principals in upper secondary schools in the Swedish school system. The study takes its point of departure in observations of follow-up meetings between principals within upper secondary schools and the local education authority (LEA). This study has three theoretical contributions. The first contribution concerns knowledge of the principal’s mission, assignment, and work tasks. The second contribution is knowledge of how the result discourse and the democratic discourse are used in conversations about the principal’s mission, assignment, and work tasks. The third contribution is knowledge of the interaction between the principal and the LEA, different levels in the decentralised Swedish school system, in the context of follow-up meetings. The results show that LEAs describe the principal’s mission in three parts – economy, administration, and pedagogy. The two discourses are used in all three of the missions where they sometimes collide, creating a discursive conflict and sometimes co-exist without conflict. The results also show that the LEA and principals often have a common view of the purpose and goal of the school system, but there is seldom a common strategy for how these goals are to be achieved. This study contributes to an understanding how LEAs and political governance shape the role of the principals, but more studies are needed.
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