Shared Principalship: The Perspective of Close Subordinate Colleagues

ABSTRACT

This article presents a study of five schools with shared principalship. It contributes knowledge about how shared principalship is experienced by people who work closely (“close subordinates”) with the shared principalship constellations. Data consists of 20 semi-structured interviews. Close subordinates describe that the shared principalship meant a reasonable workload for their principals and welcomed their level of accessibility. Confidence in the leader collaboration was heightened if close subordinates were able to witness that collaboration in action with their own eyes. The findings are discussed in relation to the conditions introduced by current school legislation in Sweden.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the schools who took part in the study.

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Funding

The authors thank FORTE (Forskningsrådet för Hälsa, Arbetsliv och Välfärd), who provided funding for our work.

Notes

1. We use the term organizer for the Swedish juridical term huvudman. The organizer—whether municipal or private—is ultimately responsible for running the school according to the prescriptions of the Education Act, curricula, and other regulations. This responsibility includes allocating resources, organizing activities in line with local conditions, and monitoring, evaluating, and developing the work of the school in order to fulfil national goals and quality requirements.

2. See Blossing and Söderström (2014) for a description of the Swedish school system.

3. A form of sharing where there is formal hierarchic equality and work tasks are merged (see theory section).

4. This is a solution that is used to enable there to be more than one principal in the same school. However, there is as yet no accurate official data on how many schools divided into units there are.

5. In order to find research in which staff views were expressed, we searched methods descriptions and empirical descriptions. Staff views mainly featured as a complement to the views of the managers themselves.

6. In general, a teacher team leader leads team meetings, takes part in the school’s management team, and is a link between the teacher team and the school’s leadership function.

Additional information

Funding

Forskningsrådet om Hälsa, Arbetsliv och Välfärd