Categories of learning-oriented leadership: a potential contribution to the school context

Abstract

This paper presents knowledge about learning-oriented leadership as part of managers’ daily work. The aim is to contribute findings from an empirical study in the software communication industry and discuss their potential contribution to leadership in the school context. Through an empirical and learning-theory-based analysis of managerial acts of influence, learning-oriented leadership is suggested as an analytical concept. In the educational leadership literature concerning instructional, pedagogic or learner-centred leadership, the interpretation of each concept is shifting and thus unstable. The studying of a non-school empirical context contributes to an analytical separation of the pedagogical leadership task from the pedagogical core task, which may be useful when returning to the school context. The learning-oriented categorisation of managerial acts of influence presents different routes for managers – including school principals – to intervene in their employees’ learning and competence on both individual and collective levels. Here, we offer an alternative suggestion for how to understand what principals do to influence the work in their organisations.

• action
• learning-oriented leadership
• pedagogical leadership
• principal
• managerial influence
• pedagogic interventions
• work-integrated learning

Notes

1 A group of software development methodologies, in which requirements and solutions evolve through iterations and incremental development between people with different functional expertise.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marianne Döös

Marianne Döös is a Professor in Education, and a researcher within Organisational Pedagogics at Stockholm University since 2008. Her research deals with the processes of experiential learning in contemporary work settings, on individual, collective and organisational levels. Topical issues concern interaction as carrier of competence in relations, shared and joint leadership, conditions for competence, organisational learning and change. Marianne Döös has authored and co-authored many articles and books. Two relevant examples among her publications are ‘Collective learning: Interaction and a shared action arena’ (in the Journal of Workplace Learning, 2011) and ‘Organizational learning as an analogy to individual learning?’ (in Vocations and Learning, 2015). [email protected]

Lena Wilhelmson

Lena Wilhelmson is an associate professor and a senior researcher at Stockholm University in Sweden, within the field of organisational learning. Her research deals with individual and collective learning in renewal processes in working life. Her areas of interest include adult education, dialogue and learning processes. Also studies concerning shared and joint leadership have been conducted by Wilhelmson. Lena Wilhelmson has authored and co-authored many articles and books. Two relevant examples among her publications are ‘Enabling transformative learning in the workplace’ (in the Journal of Transformative Education, 2015) and ‘Manager’s task to support integrated autonomy at the workplace’ (in the International Journal of Business and Management, 2013). [email protected]