Missions, Visions, and Goals for School Improvement - A Typology of Estonian Schools

ABSTRACT

The aim of this study was to analyze the alignment of visions, missions, and goals for school improvement in an Estonian context. Since school leaders have high levels of autonomy in Estonia, school improvement is strongly influenced by direction setting. In this study, we analyzed 56 school improvement plans to examine the variability of topics in the mission, vision, and goal statements. The main findings revealed that most of the schools were confused in their direction setting, which raises the question of how to ensure effective school improvement in an education system characterized by high autonomy.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Karina Ivanova and Riho Vanari for their valuable support during the coding process.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.