Teachers Making Sense of Principals’ Leadership in Collaboration Within and Beyond School

ABSTRACT

The purpose of the study is to create a deeper understanding of teachers’ sense-making of principals’ leadership in the context of collaboration within and beyond school. Data were collected over three years, from semi- structured individual and group interviews with teachers, as well as a part of a teacher questionnaire. A qualitative content analysis, guided by an institutional perspective on organizations and sense-making theory, was performed, and the analysis revealed that important sense-making was related to the leadership practices and the formal leader. The findings provide an elaborated illustration of how intentional efforts to collaborate and develop the schools in various collaboration beyond school may affect the normative, and cultural-cognitive aspects within schools.

KEYWORDS:

• Teachers’ sense-making
• principal leadership
• within and beyond school collaboration
• leadership
• leadership practices

Introduction

With this study, the aim is to create a deeper understanding of principals’ leadership in the context of collaboration within and beyond the school in a Swedish context. A substantial body of research emphasizes school leadership as a major influence on quality improvement in schools (Day et al., 2009; Harris & Jones, 2015; Huber & Muijs, 2010; Leithwood et al., 2017). Research has pointed to four broad categories of basic leadership practices or functions (Day & Leithwood, 2007; Leithwood & Riehl, 2005; Leithwood et al., 2006): setting direction, understanding and developing people, designing and managing communities, and managing the teaching and learning environment. Moos et al. (2011) added one more category: leading the environment. Schools are deeply dependent on their environments, whether they are political, administrative, community-oriented, cultural or other; therefore, it is important that principals manage and lead relationships beyond the physical boundaries of their schools (Moos et al., 2011). Principals’ leadership is a key factor in supporting students’ achievement (Leithwood et al., 2017; Wahlstrom & Louis, 2008), but how teachers experience and enact principals’ leadership is less clear (Saarukka, 2016).

One example of collaboration within, between, and beyond schools in Sweden, is a conducted collaborative improvement project, run within the partnership of three schools, one university, and three private companies. The intentions were to develop leadership in the schools and the schools’ ability to manage and lead improvement processes, by starting with their local needs, with the overall aim of strengthen schools’ internal improvement capacity. Previous studies have been focused on the principals’ voices regarding their experiences and sense-making of leading collaboration within and beyond school (Sahlin, 2018, 2019; Sahlin & Styf, 2019). The results revealed that principals’ sense-making of the collaboration was related to the cultivation of collective participation and responsibility, the development of trust and improvement of culture among actors, and the sense of moving towards research-based and collaborative learning-oriented practice within their schools (Sahlin, 2018, 2019). To obtain deeper knowledge about principals’ leadership in these processes of leading collaboration within and beyond school, and to create a broader and more nuanced picture, it is important to emphasize the teachers’ experience and sense-making.

The knowledge gap identified and also a strong argument for why the study is needed is the lack of research on teachers’ perceptions of principal leadership in school improvement processes (e.g., Saarukka, 2016; Wahlstrom & Louis, 2008). Another argument in favour of the study is that most of the international research regarding principal leadership has been limited to the Anglo–Saxon context (Håkansson & Sundberg, 2018; Muijs et al., 2011; Stoll & Louis, 2007). Therefore, research conducted in a different cultural, context could make an important contribution to the field.

In Sweden, participatory democratic thinking, social justice, equity, equal opportunities, and inclusion in line with the cornerstones of the welfare state have been the guiding words in the emergence of the Swedish school system since 1946 (SOU, 1948, p. 27). For schools to live up to this, leadership has also been framed by democratic values and democratic leadership has been the guiding principle for Swedish school leaders (Blossing et al., 2014; Moos, 2013). Consequently, there has been an intention to improve the school through collaborative structures, shared responsibility and collective learning that promote collaboration (Skoloverstyrelsen, 1980a, 1980b; SOU, 1974). Since the early 1980s, for example, principals have delegated responsibility for educational issues to teacher teams (Blossing & Ekholm, 2008) and by institutionalizing teacher participation in decision making, a democratized culture has been fostered (Höög et al. 2005). Teacher teams with cross-disciplinary structures are now an “institutionalised practice” in most Swedish schools. Likewise, distributed leadership positions for teachers, both formal and informal, are also present (e.g., Blossing et al., 2012; Björkman, 2008).

With this setting, the study aims to create a deeper understanding of principals’ leadership in the context of collaboration within and beyond the school and of how such processes reshape regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive pillars (Scott, 2008) in a combination of top-down and bottom-up processes. By doing so, the study adopts an institutional perspective on organizational change and focus on principal leadership practices. Few prior studies have taken an organizational perspective on school leadership and school improvement (Ärlestig et al., 2016), which makes this a particularly interesting question for research. One research question guides this study: How do teachers make sense of principals’ leadership at local school level in the processes of within and beyond school collaboration?

The paper is structured around the following sections; first, insights from previous research about principal’s leadership and teacher’s perceptions of principal leadership and then previous research concerning collaboration within, between, and beyond school; secondly, the study’s methodology; the results and conclusions.

Principals’ Leadership and Teachers’ Perceptions of Principal Leadership

School leaders are considered vital in development work (Huber & Muijs, 2010). Researchers, practitioners and political representatives have emphasized that school leadership and school improvement are essential if schools are to meet future requirements and fulfil their mission to enable all students the possibility to develop and achieve their educational goals (Huber & Muijs, 2010; Leithwood et al., 2006; Leithwood et al., 2017; OECD, 2013, 2015; Pont et al., 2008). Although researchers in numerous studies have identified principals’ importance (e.g., Hitt & Tucker, 2016; Huber & Muijs, 2010; Leithwood, 2012; Leithwood et al., 2004), fewer studies have examined teachers’ perspective on principals’ leadership in school improvement processes at local school level (Harris et al., 2003; Ismail, 2012; Olofsson, 2015; Saarukka, 2016; Wahlstrom & Louis, 2008). It is difficult to find previous research on teachers’ sense-making of the principal’s leadership. The existing research has focused on teachers’ expectations of the principal (Saarukka, 2016), teachers’ perceptions of what skills the principal should have (Raasumaa, 2010), teachers’ attitudes towards the principal’s leadership (Olofsson, 2015), teachers’ perceptions of the principal’s instructional leadership abilities (Blase & Blase, 1999; Gumus & Akcaoglu, 2013), and how teachers’ work satisfaction is influenced by the principal’s leadership style (Ismail, 2012). According to Saarukka (2016), research results on teachers’ expectations of the principal’s leadership are thus mainly attributable to what the principal should lead and how the principal practices leadership to organize and create the conditions for teaching and learning. Based on the above-mentioned research, on teacher’s perspectives on the principal leadership, a brief review is presented next.

In a big US study of Blase & Blase from 1999, about teachers’ perspective on principals’ instructional leadership and teacher development, two major themes of instructional leadership emerged and included talking with teachers to promote reflection and promoting professional growth. The findings of a more recent Swedish study (Olofsson, 2015) showed some similarities, that teachers’ attitudes towards the principal leadership and collaboration varied, where most teachers support a principal who has an open dialogue with teachers while also working for collaboration in teacher teams. The findings in a Finnish study of Saarukka (2016) about teachers’ expectations of the principal showed that teacher expectations according to the principal focused on different perspectives on leadership abilities. Trust and collaboration were mentioned as essential in a school activity culture supporting educational development. Teachers expect a supportive educational learning culture conducted by the principal and collaboration among didactic professionals in the working practice in an environment of common activities and mutual responsibility. One other result was that the teachers expected to have trust and confidence in the principal (Saarukka, 2016). In another study, teacher trust in principals was most influenced by leadership practices which teachers interpreted as indicators of vulnerability, understanding, benevolence, competence, consistency and reliability, openness, respect, and integrity (Handford & Leithwood, 2013; Tschannen-Moran & Gareis, 2017). Principals can build teacher trust by fostering collaboration in schools. Collaboration and trust are reciprocal processes (Bryk et al., 2010). Collaboration requires time, energy, and sharing resources which in turn develops trust. The greater the collaboration between co-workers the greater the trust that is developed between individuals in a workplace (Tschannen-Moran, 2001). In an Icelandic study by Tiplic et al. (2020), about how teachers perceived organizational factors, the results showed that feedback by school leaders, role clarity and perceived organizational support were strongly associated with collaborative learning activities. Tiplic et al. suggest that one implication for practice is that leadership that promotes organizational factors will also promote collaborative activities. These results relate to Wahlstrom and Louis’s (2008) study in the US about how teachers experience principal leadership. The findings showed that the effect of teachers’ trust in the principal becomes less important when shared leadership and professional community are present. Ismail’s (2012) study in the US showed that teachers generally expected principals to know about all aspects of their school, while still giving teachers autonomy and freedom to make good decisions in classrooms. Teachers wanted a strong leader who can make clear and consistent decisions, while earnestly considering all opinions involved. Gumus and Akcaoglu from 2013 showed that Turkish teachers’ perceptions about principals were that they generally need improvement in their instructional leadership skills, especially in supporting teachers’ professional development.

To sum up, teachers’ perceptions of the principal leadership can be summarized with the fact that the principal needs leadership skills such as being able to decide and be clear, inspire confidence and trust, have an ongoing dialogue with teachers and be able to collaborate and support the teachers’ professional development and be an instructional leader.

Collaboration Within, Between, and Beyond School

Over the last few years, the attention paid to collaboration and networking, has increased due to an increase in major school improvement strategies in a number of countries (Ainscow, 2016; Azorín, 2018; Chapman et al., 2016; Hands, 2015; Malone, 2017). An emerging body of research shows that external support and partnerships with various actors in the surrounding community are processes that can support schools in their improvement work and strengthen their improvement capacity (Sahlin & Styf, 2019; Blankstein & Noguera, 2016; Goodall, 2017; Malone, 2013; Muijs et al., 2011). Although partnerships by themselves are not a sole solution for school improvement, the role of external partners cannot be overlooked (Blankstein & Noguera, 2016). Such collaborative approaches to school improvement could establish a valuable platform for professional collaboration and improvement in schools (e.g., Cordingley, 2015; Muijs, 2008) and serve as enablers of the internal capacity building in schools (Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012). This platform is in line with that proposed by Ainscow (2012, 2016), who argued for more collaborative ways of working for schools, based on the assumption that education systems have more potential to improve themselves using collaborative strategies and working with other schools and the community in multiple ways.

Ainscow (2016) used the concepts within, between, and beyond schools to distinguish and clarify three interlinked areas in a study of collaboration as a strategy for promoting equity and developing collaborative improvement approaches. This framework, taking a within, between, and beyond perspective, has been adapted in this study to define collaboration and different approaches to collaboration. In this study, the focus is on the collaboration within the schools and when schools collaborate with various external actors in the schools’ local communities. Collaboration within the schools in this study refers to both horizontal and vertical levels of collaboration (e.g., between occupational groups, teachers, different leaders and management functions, subjects, teams, and collective structures within the organization). Collaboration beyond school is in this study defined as local schools collaborating with external actors within their local communities or within the global community (e.g., companies, institutes, universities, schools in other countries).

Professional collaboration and social learning have been linked by several researchers (e.g., Harris & Jones, 2015; Stoll & Louis, 2007) to the concept of “professional learning communities” (PLC). Several researchers have presented evidence of the important conditions and factors for success in professional collaboration, which highlights characteristics of PLCs which seem to be intertwined, operating together (Stoll & Louis, 2007): shared values and vision, respect and trust among colleagues, a focus on serious educational issues with challenging of the existing conditions, and the importance of creating cultures for learning as well as collaborative structures. Furthermore, supportive and shared leadership practice and involvement in decision-making seem to be important for building and sustaining PLCs (e.g., DuFour & Eaker, 1998; Fullan, 2009; Harris, 2010; Stoll & Louis, 2007). Campbell et al. (2016) stressed that collaborative professional inquiry is a key component in increasing teacher quality and securing better learner outcomes. Their work confirmed that professional learning with impacts must be focussed, rigorous and critical to make any real or lasting difference on professional practice and student learning outcomes. Harris and Jones (2015) synthesized previous research on collaboration, showing that it is most effective when it is relevant, relational, authentic, engaging, practitioner driven, contextual and ongoing (see e.g., Timperley et al., 2007) as well as intentional in its content, purpose, goals, and desired outcomes that balance individual classroom needs with the broader school and system (Ainscow, 2016; Campbell et al., 2016; Hargreaves & Fullan, 2012). Similarly, Chapman et al. (2016) noted that, to be most effective, professional collaborative inquiry within, between and beyond schools should be evaluative and focussed on improving learning and teaching. The next section presents the institutional theory and the sense-making theory used in this study.

Theoretical Framework

In this study, Weick’s (1995) sense-making theory was employed and combined with Meyer and Rowan’s (1977) institutional perspective on organizations to guide the understanding and interpretation of the study’s content analysis. One argument regarding the choice of theoretical perspectives in this study is, as Weick et al. (2005, p. 410) emphasized, that “sense-making and organization constitute one another”, arguing that the central theme in organizing and sense-making is the way people organize, and make sense of equivocal inputs and enact this sense back in the world to make it more orderly.

Institutional Perspective on Organizations

An institutional perspective (Meyer & Rowan, 1977) implies that the focus should be on the schools’ inner lives and organizational structures and processes (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; March & Olsen, 2005; Meyer & Rowan, 1977), as is the case in this study. Departing from the new institutional theory focuses this research on the institutionalized organization’s relationship with the outside world and the way this relationship affects the organization’s evolution. The institutional theory is meant to explain how structures, norms, and patterns of social relationships in organizations both change and resist change by emphasizing the ways in which organizations are linked to the broader social and cultural environment and – hence the need to seek legitimacy in relation to other organizations (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983; March & Olsen, 2005; Meyer & Rowan, 1977). One of the earliest insights on the perspective and still one of the most basic assumptions is that organizations are not just formal systems created to achieve certain goals; they are also social and cultural systems. Their activities are characterized in different ways according to the individuals who are part of them and their surroundings. Organizations become institutions in various ways and over time (Scott, 2001). This is usually called institutionalization, which means that when they are social systems, they gradually develop a set of norms and values and a certain way of doing things. Scott (2008) clarified that institutions control and restrain organizational behaviour. However, Scott also emphasized that institutions need support and can empower organizational actors and activities. Scott (2008) concluded that institutions “provide guidelines and resources for taking action as well as prohibitions and constraints on action” (p. 50). According to Coburn (2004), institutional theory is a cultural approach emphasizing how norms and cultural conceptions are constructed and reconstructed over time and carried out by individual and collective actors embedded within policy and governance structures. Institutional theorists seek to understand the persistence of or changes in structures, norms, and patterns of social relationships in organizations by highlighting how they are linked to the organizations’ broader social and cultural environments (Coburn, 2004).

Scott (2008) argued that the characteristics of institutional structures are formed by three pillars: regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive. These three pillars guide the ways in which individual actors interpret and respond to changes in organizations. The regulative pillar concerns institutional aspects referring to laws and rules that together regulate and constrain organizational behaviour. Regulatory processes involve the capacity to establish rules, inspect others’ conformity to them, and, as necessary, manipulate sanctions – rewards or punishments – to influence future behaviour (Scott, 2014). The normative pillar comprises elements that constrain and empower behaviour through systems of values and norms. Scott (2014) declared that values are to be understood as conceptions of the preferred and the desirable; in turn, actions and interpretations can be compared and assessed according to these notions. Scott (2008) clarified the concept that norms “specify how things should be done; they define legitimate means to pursue valued ends” (p. 54). Thus, the normative pillar constrains organizational behaviour but also enables social actions and the balancing of responsibilities, privileges, duties, licenses, and mandates. The cultural-cognitive pillar involves shared conceptions of social reality and a frame through which meaning is made. Following Scott (2008), these thoughts and identifications are often deeply embedded in organizations’ lives. Concerning legitimacy, Scott (2008) emphasized the power of cultural-cognitive elements because they primarily rest on preconscious and shared, taken-for-granted understandings. This study is informed by an institutional perspective on the school as an organization and takes into consideration that change in school is both a top-down and a bottom-up process. Top-down processes here refers to both policy messages and top-down management from the steering chain on changing institutions and as local bottom-up processes where institutional work stabilizes, changes or adjusts external influence on the school (Scott, 2008).

Making Sense of Principals’ Leadership Practices and Roles

Sense-making is about the “making of sense”, where “sense” refers to meaning and “making” refers to the activity of constructing something (Weick, 1995). Here, it is understood as the process by which teachers construct meanings regarding the characteristics of collaboration within and beyond school with a focus on principals’ leadership. Weick (1995, p. 18) argued that sense-making is “grounded in identity construction” and occurs in the context of “ongoing” projects, leading to behaviours that “enact” the environment. Weick (1995) and Weick et al. (2005) define sense-making as a retrospective process that tends to arise when the current state of the world challenges the expected state, and by which people in organizations try to coordinate actions and enforce order in order to understand themselves and their actions. To handle such a situation, people individually and collectively try to reduce complexity in order to construct new understandings and interpretations. Action is based on how people select information from the environment; make meaning of that information; act on those interpretations and, by doing so, develop culture, social structures and routines over time (Coburn, 2005; Spillane et al., 2002; Weick, 1995). Sense-making is not a passive act of discovering reality but an active process in which actors enact their environment. According to Weick et al. (2005), sense-making is a method of creating a shared understanding that is plausible enough for a group to move towards action. Weick et al. (2005, p. 414) emphasized that what is plausible for one group, such as principals, often proves implausible for other groups, such as teachers.

Method

In this study, a qualitative case-study design (Yin, 2013) is employed with a purposive sampling method in order to include schools participating in collaboration beyond the school in the local community. To address the complexity in leading these beyond school collaboration, contextual depth is required, which a case study allows according to Stake (1995, p. 16): “In qualitative case study, we seek greater understanding of the case, we want to appreciate the uniqueness and complexity, its embeddedness and interaction with its contexts”. A case-study design was chosen because it is appropriate to examine what happens here and now (Yin, 2007) and because it can be defined as a holistic description and analysis of a single entity or phenomenon. As Stake (1995, p. 8) put it: “The real business of case study is particularization, not generalization”. The case in this study, the quintan (Stake, 1995, 2006), was the principals’ leadership in the processes of within and beyond school collaboration and was pre-selected for the study (Stake, 1995). Three schools were chosen to be a part of the study.

The three schools in the study are public compulsory schools in the mid-region of Sweden. The Sea School is a fairly large 0–9 school and has about 340 students and employs about 50 teachers. It is located about twenty kilometers southwest of the city centre, in a smaller community close to an industrial area. The school is led and managed by two principals (0–5, 6–9): one responsible for Grades 0–5 and leisure activities and the other responsible for Grades 6–9. They strive towards shared leadership. The principals have worked at the school for between one and one and a half years. The school is still in a construction phase after a merger four years ago combined two units into one. The school has no formal team leaders because there are no functional teacher teams. During the collaboration, one of the principals left after a period of sick leave, at which time the remaining principal was responsible for the entire school. The remaining 0–5 principal was intermittently partially or fully on sick leave, and at the end of this study’s timeframe, she left her mission. The overall leadership focus at the school is very much on the work organization and creating a functioning school day, but the leadership desires to make the school more of a learning organization. The Lake School is a rather small 0–5 school located about eight kilometres southeast of the main town, in a small community close to an industrial area, and has about 150 students and employs about 25 teachers. The school management comprises one principal, but for support, the principal works with the school’s teachers for special needs education; together, they constitute an educational management team for the school. Two principal changes took place at the school during this study’s period. The school is organized with one teacher team, a preschool class, school, and a leisure centre. The employees work in three departments. The school has moved away from using age-integrated classes, in large part to work in a more age-homogeneous way. The Mountain School is an upper secondary school located in a sparsely populated municipality in the inlands of northern Sweden. This upper secondary school is rather new. It provides six national programmes and also organizes nationally approved training in different sports. The school is small; it has about 120 pupils and employs about 25 teachers. The school management consists of one principal, and the school is organized as one teacher team. At the end of this study period, the school experienced a change in the principal role.

Data were collected over 3 years, from 2012 to 2015, and consisted of semi-structured individual and group interviews with teachers at the schools (Table 1). Project meeting notes, field observations, field notes, and document analysis were also used to create a “thick description” (Geertz, 1973) of the case. To grasp the teachers’ sense-making of principals’ leadership during the whole project period, a process-oriented perspective was used in this study, with interviews conducted at the beginning, middle, and end of the collaboration: October–December 2012, March–May 2014, September–November 2014, and April–June 2015. The participant selection in the in-depth case study was consistently built upon “purposeful sampling” (Patton, 2002, p. 230). The selection allowed for maximum understanding of the individual cases. A sample of teachers was chosen to participate in the interviews, and all of the teachers were chosen to participate in the questionnaire. The teachers were selected to find representatives from different parts of the school, e.g., teachers from all stages, in different subjects and different teacher teams. In this work, the principals assisted with establishing contact between the researchers and teachers. In total, 33 interviews (24 individual and 9 group interviews) were conducted with teachers from the schools. All interviews lasted about 45–70 min and included questions about school organizations, distribution and division of labour and, how the schools and the external partners collaborated, leadership and management of collaboration, and other external collaboration between the schools and the surrounding community. A teacher questionnaire was originally intended to be used as part of the evaluation of the school improvement project. However, parts of the questionnaire were also interesting from a research perspective. Therefore, three open-response questions were used by the questionnaire in this study (3 questions and 375 coded responses). The response rate for the questionnaire was 71%. The whole questionnaire included questions about the collaboration within and beyond school, the leadership and management in collaboration and the teachers’ sense-making efforts, and the part of the questionnaire used in this study included open-response questions about strengths and weaknesses the teachers had experienced in the project overall as well as a question about what lessons they take away from being a part of this project during three years. The questionnaire was distributed at the end of the collaboration. All present teachers responded to the questionnaire digitally during the time the researchers from the university conducted school visits. This meant that information about the questionnaire and its purpose could be communicated during the time the researchers was present. It also meant that it was possible to provide technical support and answer questions that arose during the time they answered the questionnaire. All interviews were recorded and saved as separate digital audio files and then transcribed verbatim (Patton, 2002).

Table 1. Interviews in the three case schools.

School	Semi-structured individual interviews	Semi-structured group interviews
Sea School	6 teachers (2014) 6 teachers (2015)	2 teachers (2012) 3 teachers (2014) 3 teachers (2015)
Lake School	3 teachers (2013) 3 teachers (2015)	2 teachers (2012) 2 teachers (2014) 2 teachers (2015)
Mountain School	3 teachers (2014) 3 teachers (2015)	3 teachers (2012) 3 teachers (2014) 3 teachers (2015)

The Case

In this study, the “quintan” (Stake, 1995, 2006) was the principals’ leadership in the processes of within and beyond school collaboration. The study is an investigation of teachers’ sense-making in the context of a collaborative improvement project involving three schools.

Context of the Case

The overall project was intended to improve students’ learning outcomes by starting with school’s local needs. The more specific project goals were to develop leadership in the schools and to develop the schools’ ability to manage and lead improvement processes, with the overall aim of strengthening schools’ internal improvement capacity.

The project initiative was created in light of the prevailing situation in the studied region of Sweden. From a national perspective, the region in question has few well-educated people, its pupils show low results on national tests (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2014a, 2014b), too few university students live in the region, too few students stay in the region after completing their university studies, and too many well-educated people leave the region (Statistics Sweden, 2014). Altogether, these were crucial factors for this project involving collaboration with three companies, one university, and three schools in the region. The intent was to help keep this region of Sweden alive by linking the schools, university, and companies in order to strengthen the schools’ internal capacity for school improvement and support a common good for the whole region.

Based on previous research in educational leadership and school improvement, the aim was also to link local schools’ competences with those of external collaborative partners. The improvement project was run within the framework of a partnership between one university, private companies in the region, and three schools in the Mid-Sweden region. A research team from the university collaborated with the involved schools, and three individuals from the team were responsible for the contacts with each school. The research team had two missions within the project’s framework: to conduct research on leadership and the ongoing improvement processes and to collaborate with and support the schools’ principals and the teachers in their improvement work. However, the author of this study was not involved in the collaboration with the schools and mainly focussed on the research part of this project. Each school was coupled with one private company¹ for three years to encourage collaboration in areas of leadership and improvement processes in the schools, primarily focusing on the school’s improvement needs. The three private companies are major companies or from major industries operating in one region of Sweden but in different sectors: tourism, energy, and pulp and paper/hygiene products. One of the companies is a multinational company, one company operates in Sweden and Norway, and one company operates locally in one region of Sweden. Next, some examples of how the schools collaborated within this partnership is presented.

A number of activities within the framework of collaboration were similar and conducted at all three schools. For example, during the collaboration, the researchers from the university regularly conducted school visits at the three schools not only evaluate various areas and issues in the collaboration but also to conduct research at the schools. The involved researchers held several lectures and presentations of recent research based on the respective school’s needs. For instance, they held lectures on peer observations for teachers, principals’ leadership, teachers’ leadership, internal improvement capacity, reading, and productive learning environments. Conferences on practice and research were held each year for the involved schools, the university, and involved private companies. The participating researchers from the university acted as advisors, or a sounding board, to give feedback and acted as “critical friends” (Costa & Bena, 1993, p. 49) to the principals and the teachers in their improvement efforts during the collaboration.

At the Sea School, the main foci of the collaboration with the university were coaching the two principals regarding leadership, based on their needs, and supporting the building of a new organization with teacher teams at the school. The collaboration with the private company centred on teachers’ leadership and on student-centred activities.

The Lake School’s main focus was to work on teachers’ leadership development through peer observations with the support of the university researchers, who also conducted research on it. Another focus area was the development and work with “the goal tree”, a tool used to communicate the goals of the curriculum with the students. The collaboration with the private company focussed on teachers’ leadership and leadership development as well as student centred activities.

At the Mountain School, the collaboration with the university had two foci. The first was to encourage teacher-led mini projects that aimed to develop leadership and entrepreneurship in the teachers, with the support of the researchers from the university. The other focus was the school’s internationalization work; the school wanted both pedagogical support and the participating researchers’ external perspective to develop their internationalization. The collaboration with the private company included places for students during their workplace-based learning, training, marketing, and various events in sport activities.

Data Analysis

Qualitative content analysis was used for this study and within-case analysis was used for the collected empirical data (Miles et al., 2014). Atlas.ti 6.2 was used to organize the empirical data. The analysis was based on the study’s purpose and research questions, and the categories were built up by codes that conceptualized leadership as practice and sense-making, as well as other codes from the inductive and interpretive readings. The analysis process can be characterized as focused on meaning, by coding, by condensing meanings, and interpreting meanings (Miles et al., 2014; Weick, 1995, 2001). Dependability procedures in qualitative research include the control of transcripts, constant comparison of data with the codes, and cross-checking for inter-coder agreement (Miles et al., 2014). These procedures were followed to ensure both dependability and credibility.

In the analytical process, the interviews and the part of the teacher questionnaire were read several times to obtain a sense of the whole. This reading, in combination with reading literature in the field, inspired new thoughts and reflective notes that grew the input for further analysis. After getting a sense of the whole, a more systematic approach was applied. A combination of pre-established concept-driven codes (e.g., principal leadership, leadership, leadership practices, management, collaboration within in school, collaboration beyond school, collaboration forms, school improvement) and free codes from the inductive and interpretive readings was helpful in the continued analysis and facilitated the development of the themes used in the discussion section. The inductive categories were oriented towards capturing various aspects of the teachers’ sense-making. The analysis focused on how teachers made sense of the principals’ leadership in the processes of within and beyond school collaboration, and how their understanding is expressed in what they say and do. Sense-making theory (Weick, 1995) was used to support this study’s analyses of how the principals and teachers made sense of the principals’ leadership practices. However, the need for another theory emerged during the study. The institutional theory (Scott, 2008), adopted in the discussion of the findings, became a tool for understanding the organizations’ work processes and for grasping the more general and structural aspects that benefit change. Institutional theory and the three pillars of institutions (Scott, 2008) – described as consisting of regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive structures – were used to deepen the analysis of the study. One argument regarding the choice of theories in this study is that sense-making and organization constitute one another (Weick et al., 2005). The central theme in both organizing and sense-making is using how people organize to make sense of equivocal inputs and enact this sense in the world to make the world more orderly. Continuous discussions and reflections with the other involved researchers in the research team of the project have also been an important part of the analytical work of the study. To provide further insight into the coding process, an example of the different steps used to analyse the empirical material is presented in Table 2.

Table 2. Examples of the meaning units illustrating categories and themes.

Theme	Category	Meaning unit
How teachers make sense of leadership practices in collaboration within and beyond school	Lack of teacher participation in the implementation of the beyond school collaboration	“We had never heard of the project until we were a part of it”.
	Teachers’ responsibility and leadership in collaborative processes	“The leadership is very clear, and at the same time, distributed to a number of areas [in order] to enlarge our own responsibility”.
How teachers’ make sense of the formal leader in collaboration within and beyond school	The need for formal leaders in school improvement processes	“When we began to read about this, there were several studies that showed that it was one of the biggest detectable links with school development and the pupils’ learning opportunities. It was a great confirmation to see that research really is important, as it is formulated in the Education Act ‘shall be based on research and proven experience’”.
	Principals’ lack of leadership and management in collaboration beyond school	“I had wanted more support from our principal [P1] in planning the project’s time. He received a lot of criticism because he could not clarify the project’s plan and content. Many felt confused”.

Findings

The themes and categories are presented in the text that follows, and illustrated by quotations from the interviews and the questionnaire. A coherent narrative was written based on the themes and categories to illuminate the teachers’ sense-making of principals’ leadership in collaboration within school and in collaboration that goes beyond school. Some of the quotations have been edited to become more readable without taking away from or changing their meaning.

How Teachers Make Sense of Leadership Practices in Collaboration Within and Beyond School

Principal’s Organizing of Collaborative Structures for School Improvement

The principals’ organizing of collaborative structures appeared in the teachers’ sense-making. The teachers made sense of the importance of various forms of collaboration, the value of joint activities in the schools, and what collaboration meant in terms of development of culture and professional practice. People from the schools worked with several collaboration forms, and in most of the cases, the principal decided on the collaborative structures. Sometimes another teacher with a leadership role was involved (e. g. a teacher who is responsible for internalization was involved in the decision of choosing to work with development of internationalization with support from the university), and the two first teachers² at Lake School were involved in the decision to work with the “goal tree”, a tool used to communicate the goals of the curriculum with the students. The first teachers tried to make sense of what was needed more in this specific work, and one idea was that the formal leader should have followed up more on the work and should have more pronounced expectations of the staff. The level of involvement in these decision processes from the teachers, apart from the ones mentioned above, are vague and indistinct in the analysis. The decisions about the initial collaborative structures at Sea School were joint decisions made by the two principals, who had worked together at the school from the beginning of the collaboration. During the process of collaboration, the remaining principal took the initiatives and made the decisions regarding the created collaborative structures. At the Mountain School, one focus was to encourage teacher-led mini projects that aimed to develop leadership and entrepreneurship in the teachers. This was the principal’s choice and decision. One teacher retrospectively looked back and made sense of what leading mini projects meant to her: “Since everyone worked with their mini projects, it has contributed to increased leadership and mandate for everyone’s own knowledge area”.

The teachers at all three schools stated that their principals set aside time for work on the project and for individual and collective learning. However, some teachers also reported a lack of time for participating and working on these beyond school collaboration, and in the analysis, it also emerged that the principals could have allocated more time for this work (especially at Sea School and Lake School). Another time-related challenge that several teachers expressed while looking back at the conducted project, was the difficulty in prioritizing everything (e.g., in relation to other ongoing development initiatives), such as finding time for collaboration with other teachers. However, several teachers made sense of what the preconditions for collective learning meant in terms of professional development and school improvement. It meant time to work together and reflect, focussing on learning. One teacher made sense of what the participation on the project had meant for the teachers and the school and expressed a desire for “something to work together with. The whole school has a common goal that has been made clear in the partnerships. The partnership has led us to discuss goal achievement and leadership”.

The various collaboration forms developed organically during the collaboration process. An orientation towards collective processes and learning-oriented practice emerged in the analysis in two (Lake School and Mountain School), of the three schools. Based on the teachers’ sense-making of the organizing of collaborative structures, it seems, the collaboration forms, based on the school’s needs, were fruitful in the development work and the external support from the university.

Lack of Teacher Participation in the Implementation of the Beyond School Collaboration

The analysis showed that many teachers perceived that they were not involved in the application for participation in the project, which included beyond school collaboration: “We had never heard of the project until we were a part of it”. The applications were written with very short notice, and only a few teachers were involved in that process together with the principal at each school. Several teachers, would have preferred that everyone received the opportunity to participate in this process. The anchoring of the beyond school collaboration was also poor at all three schools and several teachers made sense of and specifically claimed that the anchoring needed to be better. For example, one teacher said, “Development initiatives should be rooted in staff and permeate the whole organization”.

Many teachers at the three schools retrospectively looked back and stated that the principal should have informed them more and communicated the thoughts, direction, and content regarding the beyond school collaboration to the teachers. Joint discussions with the staff were also necessary when the beyond school collaboration was implemented, to create a common understanding of what they would mean and how the teachers would work together in the school: “Too poor implementation at the start. Not all staff participated, and they did not feel involved”. Several teachers noticed confusion about what the beyond school collaboration would mean, what participation would mean for the teachers and what was expected of them. Therefore, it took time for the collaboration to get started properly, which was partly a reason why the collaboration did not get as strong a foothold in the organization as they could have with more teacher participation in the implementation of the overall project.

This lack of teacher participation in the beyond school collaboration also seems to partly have occurred during the actual execution. The analysis revealed that some teachers did not feel involved at all and that the principal failed to communicate information to the teachers: “We have not been specifically involved in the process. We have not learned so much about what our school has done”. Other teachers verified this in their sense-making about how other teachers experienced the collaboration: “All of my colleagues have not felt involved”. A teacher looked back retrospectively and meant that at the end of the beyond-school collaborations, it felt like the collaboration was the school’s own work and that the teachers were more involved in it. The lack of influence and participation is evident in the teachers’ sense-making of the implementation of the various beyond school collaboration and could be understood as the lack of teachers’ power and ownership in this process, which are related to their sense-making of the principals’ lack of information and communication regarding the beyond school collaboration and their purpose.

Principal’s Organizing of Leadership Structures in the School

At Lake School, there was some ambiguity about the school’s actual management structure, and the teachers tried to make sense of that structure looking for extracting cues. One teacher perceived that the special educators, together with the principal (P1), constituted the school’s management group, while other teachers did not express this so clearly but meant that they doubted whether there actually was a management group at all. One teacher mentioned that the principal had discussed ideas with the special educators and that decisions are realized by individuals and within the teacher teams. The new principal (P2) clarified the management structure, which featured a sole principal who would organize meetings with the special educators regarding student care and with the first teachers regarding the project and various pedagogical issues. The principal would also determine which tasks should be planned and carried out at staff conferences. As mentioned earlier, first teachers were a part of distributed practice at all three schools; only Lake School’s first teachers were outspoken in taking on leadership responsibility for the staff’s collective learning.

The management structure at Mountain School formally consisted of only the principal and several leaders who provide informal support functions to the principal. There was no formal management group; an assistant principal took over when the principal was not in place. This process was neither formalized nor clearly stated, so some ambiguity prevailed. This uncertainty caused an internal conflict within the teacher, as opposing groups held differing opinions about how the school should be managed. There was no consensus on the school’s management and leadership structure, leading to questions such as “Who leads what and do we have one or more leaders?” This conflict created problems during the second year, when it limited both internal and external collaboration. A teacher described the school’ existing management functions:

When the principal is not here, I am his deputy as the principal. We have the study and vocational counselor and a new function as a study coordinator, who will take the overall responsibility for the students. Many teachers have parts of management functions in their services, more or less in reality. Someone organizes the schedule; someone has programme responsibility.

Within the partnership, the school wanted help developing its management structure; as the collaboration progressed, the school developed a more formal structure. This teacher made sense of the change to this more formal structure, “During these three years, I think that the leadership of the school has changed, based on the need of the staff group, to more clearly divide who is responsible for what. There is a clearer formalization today”.

As of the time of this study, the management structure at Sea School had been poor for a long time. The principal (who serves grades 0–5) worked in a transparent manner to create a management structure for the whole school, according to the teachers. The principal also created a management group that included representatives from the entire school; this group met once a week. One teacher retrospectively made sense of what the management group meant:

We have a management team with team leaders, where we meet every Monday, and team leaders distribute information to their group, as a kind of democratic decision-making process and a way for both the principal and employees to be up to date on what’s happening in the organization.

The teachers, when making sense of the school’s management structure, found that, as the school progressed of beyond collaboration, its internal leadership structures became more formalized, transparent and distributed.

Teachers’ Responsibility and Leadership in Collaborative Processes

At Mountain School, the long-tenured teachers knew that they were allowed to be independent and to make their own decisions, but the newer employees did not have an easy way of knowing this. Mountain School had an inclusive culture and values, as was apparent in the interviews with the teachers. The teachers saw the school’s management as analogous to running a company, and believed that this was partially because of the school’s location in a sparsely populated area, where competition was exposed: “If we do not have satisfied students, then the students will not come here”. A group of long-tenured teachers who were a part of the school’s culture expressed that the principal’s leadership was distributed, “The leadership is very clear, and at the same time, distributed to a number of areas [in order] to enlarge our own responsibility”. Another staff member agreed: “It is the same for me as being responsible for a coffee shop. If there is something that you cannot handle yourself, you turn to the principal. Otherwise, you fix it yourself”. Teachers at Mountain School created meaning using various forms of collaboration to allow everyone to take responsibility for the school’s development. For example, teachers had significant responsibility for and leadership in the mini-projects, as each teacher was responsible for leading his or her own project.

At Lake School, the use of peer observations provided the teachers with active influence and participation. This in turn meant more responsibility. One teacher made sense of what the peer observations meant in relation to leadership, “The peer observations have meant a more open climate and given us a common platform around discussions about leadership, where we were able to share each other’s strengths and development areas”. Their collective work towards a common goal (developing teacher leadership) was fruitful and helped the staff to discuss leadership and goal achievement.

At Sea School, one teacher expressed confidence in having the principal’s full support when taking responsibility and leading school improvement. However, according to the analysis, the teachers did not clearly take specific responsibility or shoulder leadership in the collaborative processes related to the project. The principal did include some teachers in collaboration with the private company during the progress of collaboration, and this had an impact. There are several potential reasons for the lack of teacher responsibility. Firstly, the main focus of this project was to support the principals in their work. Secondly, the school lacked formal management during the project period. Thirdly, several teachers stated that there was organizational fatigue due to problems with the constant turnover in principals. For example, a teacher said: “There is no strength and energy left, we cannot bear each other’s projects or contribute to it being good”. Another teacher made sense of the reasons behind this: “There are many who have ideas but a combination of lack of management and far too much top-down stuff. All the documentation that needs to be done is added”. Based on the teachers’ sense-making it seems as joint responsibility, active participation, and learning-oriented development work are important.

How Teachers’ Make Sense of the Formal Leader in Collaboration Within and Beyond School

The Need for Formal Leaders in School Improvement Processes

Teachers at the three schools highlighted the importance of having a principal, who use school improvement to ensure that these issues are prioritized. To the teachers, it makes sense that leaders are needed to collaborate with external actors, as the teachers are busy and need to prioritize teaching and their students. The leadership abilities that the teachers put forward as important in these processes included being present, being responsive to staff and activities, having clear leadership, and making decisions.

Two out of three schools also involved teachers who held formal leadership positions (so-called first teachers) in their schools’ improvement processes. At Lake School, two first teachers had the formal responsibility of leading collegial learning within the framework of the project. The first teachers at Sea School and Mountain School also had school improvement assignments, but these were not as clearly linked to the project.

The change of principals at Lake School meant a changed leadership and leadership structure for the school. Several teachers expressed optimism about the new principal (P2) and argued that the principal’s leadership was clearer than before, with a greater overall focus on leadership across the school. A few teachers made sense of a change in culture at the school: “It feels [like] a changed atmosphere among us, as teachers – a more open climate”. Several teachers stated that the new principal stepped into the school’s improvement work immediately. Other teachers, stated that the functionality of the collaboration within the school improved when the principal’s leadership became clearer. One teacher made sense of the improvement by saying that, “[We do] not [use] as much territor[ial] thinking as before, but today we collaborate better”. Overall, at this school, the new principal’s greater clarity of leadership on many issues created positive organizational effects. The importance of having designated formal leaders when engaged in improvement processes at the local school level is evident, from the teachers’ sense-making responses.

Principals’ Lack of Leadership and Management in Collaboration Within and Beyond School

Several of the teachers at the three schools made sense of a need for a principal who is a pedagogical leader (i.e., someone with the capacity to lead pedagogical discussions and engage in collective learning with the teachers). Some teachers at Sea School perceived that the principal there is not actively engaged in school improvement and explained that the school had no functioning pedagogical leadership. Several teachers at all three schools also expressed a need for more support from the principal in terms of planning time for project-related issues: “I had wanted more support from our principal [P1] in planning the project’s time. He received a lot of criticism because he could not clarify the project’s plan and content. Many felt confused”.

Several teachers from all three schools pointed out deficiencies in the principals’ communications in relation to the project’s development work. As one example, a teacher at Lake School said that the communications with the principal there (P1) lacked clarity, which easily created misunderstandings, “The principal sometimes has difficulties [in being] clear, which means that, sometimes we misunderstand what he decides”. Some teachers at Lake School described the principal (P1) in positive terms as someone who is student-focused and who is consensus-oriented, but they also stated that they need a leader who is clearer and who makes more decisions. Some teachers at the Mountain School also stated that the principal of that school could be unclear at times.

Due to the turnover in the principal position (including several sick leave periods) at Sea School, this school had no formal leader at times, and this affected both everyday work and long-term development work, “The constant change in the management means that certain things are not realized or become prioritized”. This meant that the school had to start the project over several times due to development issues. Based on the teachers’ sense-making, it appears that the principal must provide more information and communication to create collegial engagement and add direction to the school improvement work. Altogether, the need for a pedagogical leader appears as important sense-making for the teachers.

Lack of a Permanent Principal and Turnover of Principals

The issues of a lack of a permanent principal and of a high turnover in that position emerged clearly from the analysis, especially with regards to Sea School and Lake School. The interviews with the teachers at Sea School, revealed a somewhat turbulent and disorganized workplace without actual management at times, leading to some periods in which everyday activities did not function optimally. One teacher at Sea School looked back on the school’s management retrospectively and stated that it has been problematic because of the frequent changes of principals over a long period:

A part of this obviously lies in the fact that there are changes in principals all the time, which means that we must always change direction. Then, we lose focus on the direction because the goal is constantly changing. You [the university] have only been involved during these three years. It has been the same for the past ten years.

At Sea School, a large amount of the external collaboration with the university involved supporting the principals’ with coaching and one teacher made sense of this in relation to the school’s development,

There was a lot of focus on the principals, and they got coaching and support from researchers at the university, and now one principal has left. The idea was that the support for them would have an effect on the school’s internal activities. The principal who is still here has a very high workload, so there is no room to lead school development.

The teachers’ sense-making was that everyday work in the school failed when there was no management; a lot of information disappeared due to unclear leadership as a result of the principals’ turnover. However, the teachers clearly have confidence and trust in the principal of the 0–5 grades; she has legitimacy as the principal for the entire school. The teachers’ sense-making was that the responsibility for leading the whole school was too much for any one person. The teachers also expressed a great need for greater leadership and management. Another teacher shared their experiences and the current situation at the school making sense of the urgent need of a formal leader for the school:

It has been very shaky. A lot has happened. We are in great need of management, and now we are facing the next year with a lot of uncertainty, and we are groping as well. There will be no principal at the school in the fall.

During the collaboration process, the principal of Lake School changed; one teacher linked this change to the improvement work and made sense of and explained that it takes time for a new principal to become familiar with various school improvement issues, ongoing projects and external collaboration; the same idea applies when there is high staff turnover at a school. Another teacher retrospectively made sense of earlier experiences by explaining that principals know that they are leaving, that position often do not continue to pursue school improvement. It is difficult to implement school improvement projects and collaboration with external actors when the formal leader functions are vulnerable and replaced frequently.

Criticism of both the management functions and the management at the municipal superintendent level emerged from Sea School in the analysis. The teachers at this school had the most significant problems with turnover and absences among principals, and the school was without a principal for a long time. Temporary principals stepped into the organization but it did not work well, according to the teachers. The superintendent-level management promised the school and its staff a sustainable organization, but this was delayed semester after semester:

Last spring, we were promised a sustainable organization, but they did not manage to recruit a new principal. New promises were made that it would be resolved after Christmas. It was the same thing after Christmas, and here we still are with no new management. The current principal ends after this academic year.

A teacher clarified and made sense of how the lack of a principal affected her everyday life at school:

There is no principal to ask. When you meet your boss so little, and you know that she is so overloaded and has very high blood pressure, I don’t want to ask personal questions like ‘Can I take a course for professional development?’ or ‘I feel a little stressed now and need to talk to you about my work situation’. You are not going to talk to a manager who is three times as stressed as you.

Based on the teachers’ sense-making, it is evident that the lack of a permanent principal and the turnover in the position have affected both ongoing improvement work, and everyday work, which supports the need for formal leadership. However, the lack of formal leadership has also meant that the Sea School has engaged in a pragmatic distribution of leadership, in which the teachers themselves have informally taken responsibility for various activities through necessity; this can be seen as the construction of a distributed practice.

Discussion

By adopting an institutional perspective on organizational change, this study shows that teachers’ important sense-making regarding the principals’ leadership in collaboration within and beyond school relates to the existence of leadership practices in which interactions among leaders, followers, and situations take place. The present analysis was theoretically assisted by sense-making theory (Weick, 1995). The theoretical perspective of institutional theory (Meyer & Rowan, 1977) was used in the discussion, with the three pillars of institution as the focus (Scott, 2008). Thus, the following discussion is on the teachers’ sense-making of the principals’ leadership practices in collaborations within and beyond the school, in terms of the regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive aspects discussed.

From the regulatory aspect, apart from the obvious regulatory laws and regulations for schools in Sweden, ongoing regulatory processes influence principals’ leadership practices and the schools. These involve the capacity to establish rules, inspect others’ conformity to them, and, as necessary, manipulate sanctions – rewards or punishments – to influence future behaviour (Scott, 2014). This study can be seen in light of the ongoing regulatory processes, such as from the Swedish government (SOU, 2017, p. 35), the Swedish Agency for Education (2011a, 2011b), the School Inspectorate (2010, 2012) and the OECD (e.g., OECD, 2013, 2015). The policies’ emphasis is on how collaboration with the surrounding society can improve schools. In terms of within and beyond school collaboration, restructuring necessitates an organizational reshaping of the cognitive and normative structures, including values, and norms, as well as an understanding of how such collaboration should be conducted. It is evident that the teachers engaged in the collaboration within and beyond school to varying degrees and with different extent of involvement. The teachers did not get a chance to jointly define the key issues, which would have created a common ground and a sense of common identity. Not properly anchoring the collaboration with the teachers can be understood as a deficiency in the principal’s role and leadership, which research has emphasized is crucial for success in professional collaborations (e.g., Gumus & Akcaoglu, 2013; Tiplic et al., 2020). Based on the teachers’ sense-making, about the insufficient involvement of teachers in the implementation of the partnership, one assumption is that the teachers may need more time to translate and make meaning of change. Some of the teachers also expressed that not all teachers felt involved in the collaboration process. Thus, in this work it appears that more sense-giving from the principal and more collective sense-making is needed to create participation, collegial engagement, direction in the school improvement work, and more responsibility must be distributed to include everyone. These findings can be linked to previous research that also showed teachers’ needs for communication, dialogue and involvement of collaboration (Blase & Blase, 1999; Gumus & Akcaoglu, 2013; Olofsson, 2015). The findings can also be understood based on the importance of organizational factors such as feedback from the principal, clarity in roles and organizational support (Tiplic et al., 2020), and that the leadership that promotes organizational factors also promote collaboration. The various collaboration forms developed organically during the collaboration process. An orientation towards more collective development processes emerged for two out of the three schools.

From the normative aspect, it is possible to interpret that the changes in the organizational structure, as having started to affect the school’s normative dimensions. However, there is clearer movement in the norms of collaboration than in the norms regarding the principals’ leadership and management. Norms and values that seem to have started to move as a result of the collaboration include the development of collective commitments to guide collaboration and engagement, an increase in shared responsibility for work, and the fostering of both learning-oriented collaboration and research-based knowledge construction (Sahlin, 2018, 2019; Sahlin & Styf, 2019). This result is in line with a study by Muijs (2010), where clear goals and changes in cultures, attitudes, structures, and incentives were emphasized as requirements for collaborative strategies to work. The development of trust and improvement cultures between actors cannot be underestimated in these within and beyond-school collaborations either (Ainscow, 2016). The different forms of collaboration, the collective activities in the schools, and what collaboration meant in terms of development of culture, norms and professional practice was important in the teachers’ sense-making. This is reinforced in a study of Bryk et al. (2010), where they emphasize that collaboration and trust are reciprocal processes, and by Tschannen-Moran (2001) who underlines that the greater the collaboration between co-workers the greater the trust that is developed between individuals in a workplace.

From an institutional perspective on organizational change, the results of the study also show that teachers’ important sense-making of principal’s leadership in collaboration within and beyond school also are related to those of their formal leaders. The results of this study validate earlier studies about the importance of principal leadership in development processes (e.g., Hitt & Tucker, 2016; Leithwood, 2012; Saarukka, 2016). Based on the institutional perspective (Meyer & Rowan, 1977, 1978; Weick, 1995), it is possible to interpret that the teachers were in more need of the principal as the coupling agent, interpreting the policy messages from the environment through the pre-existing frameworks and practices, and translating it to the local context where values and deeply held beliefs are embedded in the local context (Liljenberg, 2015). This was also reinforced by Weick (1995), who argued that people in loosely coupled organizations, such as schools, are in more need of finding a shared sense of direction for their work. The results of the study reveal that a change in the organizational structure, as a result of collaboration beyond school seem to affect the cultural-cognitive aspect somewhat. With regard to this aspect, the teachers clearly interpreted and made sense of their formal leaders’ importance to the school improvement processes. Firstly, to the teachers, it makes sense that a formal leader is necessary when collaborating with external actors for different reasons, e.g., to have explicit and pronounced expectations of the staff, to involve the teachers more, to follow up more, and to create organizational preconditions. The results can be clearly linked to previous studies on both teachers’ expectations of the principal when it comes to creating a supportive educational learning culture (Saarukka, 2016), and the importance of various organizational factors such as clarity in roles, conditions, and organizational support (Tiplic et al., 2020). Secondly, teachers also express the importance of having a pedagogical leader, with the capacity to lead and participate in collective learning. Thirdly, based on the teachers’ sense-making, it is evident that the lack of a present principal and the turnover of principals affected both ongoing improvement work and the everyday work in two out of the three schools.

Limitations of the Study

Inevitably, there are limitations that need to be identified and recognized in this study. First, the small number of cases in this multiple case study, and its specific social context, limit the generalizability of the findings. Second, the study’s sample was not independently selected, and its findings are linked to national and local context, which is both a limitation and a strength. Notwithstanding, this study contributes in-depth information about the teachers’ experiences and their construction of meaning of their principals’ leadership in collaboration within and beyond school in their schools. Finally, although the sample is small and not representative, the findings provide useful insights into how teachers understand and interpret their principals’ leadership in the collaboration within and beyond school in their school’s improvement processes.

Conclusions

This study’s main contribution is to highlight the importance of including the teachers’ sense-making about leadership in collaboration to deepen the knowledge about how leadership is enacted in collaboration within and beyond school. To conclude, the formal leader is crucial in leading the improvement processes at the local school level, which echoes many studies of school leadership (e.g., Louis et al., 2010); based on the results of this study, the principals’ may have worked more with participation, collegial engagement and direction in the school improvement work (e.g., Gumus & Akcaoglu, 2013; Tiplic et al., 2020). However, the distribution of responsibility to the teachers and the development of the teachers’ leadership in these collaboration seem to have affected the schools’ organizational structures and the normative structures to some extent. The change in the organizational structures, through different external and internal collaboration forms, seems to have started to change the practice in the schools. From the perspective of the teachers’ sense-making, this resembles a legitimate way of working on school improvement issues, given the limitations that exist in this case. Reasonably, it may not be a design of working on school improvement issues for every school, but in specific cases where such conditions exist, these collaboration affect the normative, and cultural-cognitive pillars (Scott, 2008) that exist in the participating schools. A focus on collaboration beyond school led change and development within the school towards a changed practice in which school leadership becomes more of a collective concern rather than an individual.

Implications for practice are that the formal leader’s importance for local school improvement processes is crucial and that the principal needs to create the conditions for a pedagogical leader capable of supporting and leading collective learning. The principal also needs to work more with “sense-giving” and communication to create participation, collegial commitment, and direction in the development work with all teachers. Another implication for practice based on this study is that school improvement through various internal and external forms of collaboration can be a way to change the actual practice in the schools. Based on the lack of research on teachers’ perceptions about principal leadership, further research, could be directed towards more of teachers’ perceptions and sense-making of how principals enact certain practices, what those practices are, and their resulting impact.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The project was an initiative of the Middle Northern Education Group, a nonprofit association of organizations and education and business companies in the middle region with a common interest in education and regional development. The three companies selected for collaboration with the schools were part of this association and were selected through dialogue with the principals of each school based on their needs.

2 First teachers in Sweden is a career service for specially skilled teachers in primary and secondary school. The career step was introduced in 2013 as part of the so-called career step reform in order to create more career opportunities for teachers and thus make the profession more attractive.