Welcome and välkommen  school administrators in the U.S. and Sweden responds to unexpected numbers of refugees in their rural communities

ABSTRACT

This exploratory, comparative study focuses on the leadership challenges encountered by American and Swedish school superintendents in communities that experienced an unexpected increase in the number of refugees being placed their towns. We focused the study on two small communities in northern Sweden and two communities in northern Vermont. Our study draws on social ecological systems theory to examine the responses of school superintendents to the arrival of refugee students and the extent to which the local, state/regional, and national contexts in which they worked facilitated or hindered their ability to respond to these needs. The majority of the data collection for this study was done in 2017 and 2018 and included personal interviews, on-site observations, and document analysis. The refugee students’ lives in both Sweden and Vermont were characterized by numerous systems and subsystems, and all four superintendents sought to create linkages between and among these systems, believing that the smaller sizes of their districts made this easier to accomplish. They faced many challenges in their efforts to respond to the needs of refugee students, and the alignment or misalignment of policies at the local, state/regional, and national levels played a significant role in enhancing or constraining their success.

Acknowledgement

The research for this project was supported by the Henrietta Frances Zezula Lowak Endowed Distinguished Professor Award.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. To distinguish between the terms, ‘refugee’ and ‘asylum seeker’ the authors rely on the definition provided by Amnesty International (2019). That is, ‘A refugee is a person who has fled their country of origin and is unable or unwilling to return because of a well-founded fear of being persecuted because of their race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.’ An asylum seeker is defined as, “an individual who is seeking international protection. In countries with individualised procedures, an asylum seeker is someone whose claim has not yet been finally decided on by the country in which he or she has submitted it.” Amnesty International points out that, ‘Not every asylum seeker will ultimately be recognised as a refugee, but every refugee is initially an asylum seeker.’

2. This study was not focused on exploring the role of superintendents as social justice advocates, so these findings have only become fully evident in the interviews that we’ve conducted after completing the study reported here. Consequently, we will be presenting these findings in the next phase of our work.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Henrietta Frances Zezula Lowak Endowed Distinguished Professor Award

Notes on contributors

Betty Merchant

Betty Merchant is the Henrietta Frances Zezula Lowak Endowed Distinguished Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Texas in San Antonio. Her research interests include: diversity and educational reform, educational policy analysis, democratic school leadership in increasingly polarized, diverse, and confrontational political contexts, and international comparative studies (e.g. the International Successful School Principal Project, ISSPP).

Olof Johansson

Olof Johansson is a senior professor of political science and works at the Centre for Principal Development, Umeå University, in Sweden. His research interests are school leadership, principal training, school governance, school effectiveness and school improvement and also values and ethics in relation to school leadership. He is working with large research projects, which all have international counterparts. In 2015 he was the principal investigator for the Government of Sweden in relation to ‘Principals working conditions and pedagogical leadership’. He received the Donald Willower Centre award for Excellence in research in 2010. Contact: [email protected]

Helene Ärlestig

Helene Ärlestig PhD (Ed.) is professor in Educational Administration and director for the Centre for Principal Development, Umeå University, Sweden. Her research interest concerns organizational communication, pedagogical leadership, quality assurance and principal’s professionalism. She is involved in several international comparative studies about principals’ leadership, for example the International Successful School Principal Project, ISSPP and International School Leadership Development Network, ISLDN.