The geographic periphery as architecture for leadership practice with Swedish primary school principals: a peripatetic leading practice

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to report a study that develops knowledge of the geographic periphery as architecture for leadership practices by principals in small primary schools with no more than four teachers. The geographic periphery has different prerequisites from geographic centers. Sweden is a rural country that also has large cities which attract people for economic and social reasons. There is limited research on the nature of school leadership in rural contexts. This paper addresses these limitations through an ethnographic study, with participatory observations in village schools and a follow-up conversation with principals and teachers. The main findings illuminate place as a physical as well as discursive and social dimension. The rural leadership practices considered peripatetic differ in Sweden, and internal and external recruitment is of importance for leadership practice. To organize and ensure equality in education, more knowledge of rural education is needed.

Introduction

This paper presents and discusses the findings from a study of leadership practices in Swedish rural contexts. Leadership is essential for building good education (Leithwood et al., 2020). According to Swedish law, education must be equivalent across the nation (Swedish Government, 2016), including equal access to education independent of geographic location or economic status (§ 8), and regardless of where in the country education is delivered (§ 9).

However, despite this legal requirement, it is difficult to deliver equivalent education (Beach, From et al., 2018). The urban norm of Swedish society and national policy favor urban communities (Andræ Thelin, 2005; Beach, Johansson et al., 2018; Beach & Vigo Arrazola, 2020; Bæck, 2016; Eriksson, 2010b). Due to this urban norm, rural areas may be perceived as peripheral (Johansson, 2017; Pekka, 2011; Vallström & Vallström, 2014), leading to unequal education. There are also implications for uneven measurement instruments and national statistics, due to the low number of pupils in rural schools (Andræ Thelin, 2005). Therefore, rural schools may appear to have lower standards, even when this is not the case. This suggests that urban and rural schools are not equal.

This inequality has escalated since a reform made in 1992. In an attempt to decentralize school management, the Swedish government devolved management of schools to local municipalities and, further, enabled private companies to form and direct so-called ‘free schools’. This decentralization has given rise to the issue of equivalent education (Nordin, 2014), notably in respect of free schools (Bunar & Ambrose, 2016; Lundström et al., 2017). Even though Sweden has rather high equality standards in general (OECD, 2015), there is also evidence of reduced equality nationally (OECD, 2018). The issue of equivalence also relates to place (Andræ Thelin, 2005; Budge, 2010; Theobald & Nachtigal, 1995; VanTuyle & Reeves, 2014). ‘Additionally, the differentiated mobilizing of students across parts of the Swedish quasi-market spatially reproduced injustices based on students’ gender, migration background, school ownership, and market location’ (Fjellman, 2019, p. 6).

Urban–rural power relations often appear in the form of a geographic center (urban) and the geographic periphery (rural). The word periphery inhabits this power relationship and has been used by postcolonial geographers (Sjöstedt Landén, 2012) to mark a critique against the global colonization and asymmetry of power (Sjöstedt Landén, 2012, p. 335). The Swedish geographic periphery struggles with a national discourse about ‘ … areas that lack resources and are located far from the center’ (Eriksson, 2010b, p. 24). These power relations are not so well documented in education research because researchers have mainly researched urban places (Becher & Trowler, 2009). This lack contributes to a problem in building rural education research.

For developing schools, school leadership is essential (Liljenberg, 2015; Moos et al., 2011), especially in disadvantaged education situations (Angelle et al., 2021; Norberg, 2009; Poekert et al., 2020). Rural schools often experience inequality, due to a lack of economic recourses, low education standards, and low expectations for education in site (Nordholm et al., 2021). Therefore, leadership is important to describe and understand. This knowledge is useful for educators, principals, decision-makers in school organizations, and policymakers at the municipal and national levels. However, leadership has not been examined in Swedish rural areas. To understand these settings, and to develop rural education research, it is important to start with the subject of leadership practices.

This paper reports a study that develops knowledge of the geographic periphery as architecture for leadership practices by principals of small primary schools. One way to understand leadership, according to the context of place (cf., Hallinger, 2018), is that it emerges as a practice co-created by people in site. The practice is enabled and constrained by its architecture (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008). The analytical work of this paper was directed by the following question: How does the architecture of the geographic periphery impact the leadership practices of principals in small primary schools?

This text is developed around the term rural, but, as it includes many different meanings, this concept poses a problem. Hardwick-Franco (2018) highlights its many different existing interpretations. In this text, rural is used synonymously with sparsely populated remote areas and the Swedish word glesbygd. Many studies lack a definition of their use of rural, making them hard to compare. In the sample, I substitute rural for the geographic periphery, based on the definition by Christaller (1964), to be discussed later.

Local context

Swedish geography is divided. Almost all (99%) of Sweden is rural (Jordbruksverket, 2018). The national population density is only 23 inhabitants/km², but about one-third of the population lives in or near the three major cities, Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö, and about 85% of the population lives in urban or suburban areas (OECD, 2015). Nevertheless, small schools are common in Sweden. ‘One-third of public schools and more than half of independent schools have fewer than 100 students’ (OECD, 2015, p. 21).

Two national public agencies govern Swedish education, the Schools Inspectorate (Skolinspektionen) and the National Agency for Education (Skolverket). ‘In broad terms, the Schools Inspectorate is mostly tasked with oversight responsibilities, whereas the National Agency for Education is mostly tasked with development responsibilities’ (Holmgren et al., 2013, p. 74). Curricula are developed by the National Agency for Education, and school quality is assessed by the Schools Inspectorate.

Sweden is divided into regions and municipalities. Responsibility for the regions and municipalities is located with the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (Sveriges Kommuner och Regioner, SKR). The municipalities are responsible for organization and financing of schools. Citizens in each municipality elect a municipal assembly (kommunfullmäktige) which plans the municipality’s budget and sets tax local levels. The municipal assembly also elects the municipal board (Kommunnämnder) to handle the municipality’s day-to-day operations (Holmgren et al., 2013). Their responsibilities include ‘delivery of services such as education (childcare, preschool, primary and secondary schools), health (e.g. support to disabled persons and elder care), urban planning, social welfare, emergency services (except policing), sanitation, and environmental issues. Municipalities are entitled to levy income taxes on individuals. As a result, municipalities have significant capacity to decide what services they should prioritize’ (OECD, 2015, p. 17). Taxes in rural areas generate limited amounts of money for education, due to smaller populations compared with urban areas, and the lower incomes of the rural populations. At the same time, education costs more.

Equalization takes into account that demand may vary according to population structure and that the cost of delivering the service may vary, depending on the residence, the proportion of students with foreign backgrounds, and/or low socioeconomic status. For example, in rural municipalities, education may be more expensive to provide due to greater distances and the smaller number of students in schools.

(OECD, 2015, p. 84)

The combination of higher costs and lower taxes is problematic, and a significant challenge for school development and school leadership. Since 1994, when pupils were permitted to choose which school they attended, heads of school have received money for each pupil matriculating, so-called school money (skolpeng). This become a marketization issue, and unjust geographies were established (Fjellman et al., 2019). In municipalities and schools with low taxes and few pupils, the economic prerequisites differ from those of city schools with many pupils. Schools in rural areas close down, affecting the social life of rural areas (Cedering & Wihlborg, 2020). As rural schools close, the distance between the remaining rural schools increases (Åberg-Bengtsson, 2009; Cedering & Wihlborg, 2020). This distance is often traveled over poor roads and infrastructure, like trains or buses, is lacking.

Previous research

Research on school leadership in rural areas is rare, even though it is well known that place matters for the practice of leadership (Ashton & Duncan, 2012; Surface & Theobald, 2014). For example, ‘research into village schools in Finland has been meager, and most was conducted more than a decade ago’ (Autti & Hyry-Beihammer, 2014, p. 2)

McHenry-Sorber and Budge’s (2018) review of rural school leadership indicates two previous waves. The first wave contains research about the internal or external recruitment of principals, and how the principals’ former workplaces affected their access to leadership practice in the rural school. The findings showed that internally recruited principals found it easier to lead rural schools. The second wave explored power relations between the center and periphery, and showed an imbalance in the relationship, where the center had more benefits (cf., Ashton & Duncan, 2012; Bæck, 2016; Budge, 2010).

This is confirmed by Bæck (2016), who reports that Nordic reforms and revisions in curricula are often adapted to urban environments. ‘The principals are concerned about having to implement a policy they perceive to be irrelevant or inappropriate to the needs of small rural schools’ (Starr & White, 2008, p. 6). There is a power imbalance between national policy and the local settings due to an urbanized policy discourse (Budge, 2010; Preston et al., ; Starr & White, 2008), and globalization and neoliberalism shape the inequality that exists between urban and rural education (Freie & Eppley, 2014; Starr & White, 2008). This, in turn, generates more work for teachers and principals (Ashton & Duncan, 2012). The expectations placed on the school to translate external policy often conflict with local interests and social capital (Budge, 2010; Downes & Roberts, 2018).

In rural areas, there is social capital, with strong bonds between inhabitants (Lind & Stjernström, 2015). This could be explained by a common social meaning of place (Massey, 2013), a so-called sense of place (Bauch, 2001; Budge, 2006). One explanation for the strong social capital is the economic burden. ‘Many rural communities are in economic distress, which contributes to many social problems that affect rural schools and rural students’ achievement …. Rather than viewing rural communities as places where people live, policymakers have viewed rural areas as sectors of a national economy’ (Budge, 2006, p. 2). However, social capital could be used to secure socio-economic growth. Social capital contributes to socio-economic outcomes, but it is not measured (Falk & Kilpatrick, 2000, p. 89). Social capital could be used as a resource in rural schools to facilitate education adapted to the rural environment (Karlberg-Granlund, 2019; Olesen et al., 2016). Social capital requires social awareness and personal engagement in leadership practices which differ from urban counterparts (Anderson & White, 2011; Copeland, 2013; Falk & Kilpatrick, 2000; Hansen, 2018; Preston & Kooymaus, 2013). ‘Social capital is produced and used in everyday interactions’ (Falk & Kilpatrick, 2000, p. 104).

Despite this social capital, rural principals often experience professional isolation (Hansen, 2018; Starr & White, 2008; Stephenson & Bauer, 2010; Wildy et al., 2014), which leads to closer relationships with teachers (Hardwick-Franco, 2018). There remains a lack of published research on the role of peripatetic principals in rural areas, and the study presented here is a contribution to development of this knowledge.

Rural schools in Sweden

Rural principals in Sweden often have responsibility for several schools and work part-time at all schools (Åberg-Bengtsson, 2009). To centralize school units, principals have become peripatetic and travel between several school units, which is time-consuming (Pettersson, 2017). A second workload factor that principals face is the low expectations, held by parents and society, for student performance (Nordholm et al., 2021). A third workload factor is that, despite good pupil–teacher ratios, teachers in Swedish rural schools lack formal competence (Holmlund et al., 2019) and professional support (Pettersson & Ström, 2019). A fourth aspect of principal workload is the urban–rural power relation, the relation between the geographic center and periphery (Beach, From et al., 2018; Beach, Johansson et al., 2018; Beach & Vigo Arrazola, 2020; Eriksson, 2010a, 2017). This places greater responsibility on school leaders to lead professional development in rural schools (Harris, 2010) as leadership is considered key in school development (Moos et al., 2011). In the Swedish rural context, a significant research gap warrants the research reported in this paper.

Theoretical framework

Practice theories are suitable in rural studies due to their sensitivity to context (Nelson, 2019). One practice theory is even more site-sensible, namely practice architecture. While other practice theories claim that practices emerge with their participants, practice architecture argues that a practice is pre-programmed by its architecture, in the form of three ‘arrangements’ (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008). These arrangements are material, discursive, and social. These arrangements affect the practice in the forms of ‘relatings, doings, and sayings’ (Kemmis & Mahon, 2017). The geographic periphery is a material arrangement, but also discursive and social (Budge, 2010; Eriksson, 2010b; Massey, 2013).

Material–economic arrangements make space for doings in the practice, and are about can be seen and measured. These are about time and place. (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008; Kemmis & Mahon, 2017; Kemmis et al., 2014, 2017). Doings refer to principals’ traveling or staying in schools, teachers’ instruction, meetings, and what they do in their everyday life.

Cultural–discursive arrangements make space in the practice for sayings. These are about what is said and how. A discursive arrangement is shown in symbols and both verbal and nonverbal communication (Gee, 2011; Nicolini, 2012). A discursive arrangement enables and constrains what is proper to say in a given practice (Kemmis & Grootenboer, 2008; Kemmis & Mahon, 2017; Kemmis et al., 2014). For example, an economic argument that influences a school or local community could enable or constrain sayings in a leadership practice.

Social–political arrangements make space for relatings in the practice, e.g. how relations emerge and how power is positioned in such relations. Relations are constructed among people and things. A social–political arrangement may be expectations, prior experience, decisions, and how decisions are being enacted. Power and solidarity are central concepts in relations.

In the present study, leadership practice is at focus, as well as how the architecture of the geographic periphery enables or constrains the emergence and development of leadership practices.

Methodology

To describe how something appears, attendance by the researcher is desirable. ‘To find leadership, then, we must look to the practice within which it is occurring’ (Raelin, 2017, p. 395). In the study presented here, the relationship between practices and architectures is at focus. One such arrangement is situated. To understand its social–cultural and discursive arrangement, I needed to watch what happens in the field and then talk with participants (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2019).

Ethnography is a variety of methods developed by anthropologies and social scientists (Walford, 2008). In the US, education ethnography was focused on ethnic minorities, whereas education ethnography in the UK was more focused on the urban environment (Delamont & Atkinson, 1995; Hammersley & Atkinson, 2019) Ethnography has its roots in colonialism and exploring tribes and minorities. It provides the means to study the cultures and discourses in which teachers and principals live, and is helpful in understanding arrangements and practices (Walford, 2008). Six specific criteria were highlighted by Walford (2008), one of which is the researcher as an instrument. Therefore, it may be of importance that I was formerly a teacher in a rural school (in a different municipality), and that this helped me get access to the schools. My earlier work provided me understanding and access, but, to teachers and principals, I was a researcher from the outside. Walford (2008) also states a criterion of engagement, and, to be honest, the more I learned, the more I became engaged. This may be understood as bias, but the researchers’ impact on the field could be used to understand the ethnographic study (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2019; Jeffrey & Troman, 2004). Wegener (2014) describes this: ‘Instead of viewing the researcher’s insiderness as a potential bias to be minimized, I came to embrace my “own experience” of changing insider and outsider positions as a gateway to analyze boundary-crossing’ (p. 157). In the study presented here, boundary-crossing was not used, but my insiderness was a way to understand the practice and the architecture of practice. This insiderness or narrowness could understood both as a strength and a limitation of ethnography: a limitation because of its limited ability to be generalized, and a strength because it is nevertheless valid in a particular context.

Ethnography was used for the present study due to its historical connection to the periphery and my ability, as a former teacher, to get access, but especially because of ethnography’s sensitivity to cultures. More specifically, theory-informed ethnography (Trondman, 2008; Willis & Trondman, 2000) was used. Here, ethnography is helped by a theory to maintain a distance to the field, but the most important function of a theory is to gain an understanding of social phenomena concerning ethnographic data (Willis & Trondman, 2000). Ethnography seems best suited for research of rural leadership practice (Nelson, 2019). Ethnography is also relevant for the presented study, due to its sensibility for culture according to cultures as an architecture for leadership practices.

Sample

Municipalities in Sweden were established in 1973 according to Christaller’s (1933) theory of central place. This is still important each time the municipality design is revised. In every municipality, the municipal board and its administration are centrally located.

To select a sample of rural schools, I had to search for municipality classifications. Municipalities are classified by the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, and the Swedish Board of Agriculture (Jordbruksverket). In the classification by the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, a rural area does not have a value of its own but is assessed according to how it is used by inhabitants of the cities. This classification is often used in national educational research, but identifying rural municipalities is not suitable.

Therefore, the sample was instead drawn from the classification by the Swedish Board of Agriculture, the hegemonic structure of which is the opposite of the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions’ classification. That is, the former originates from rural and sparsely populated areas. Nordholm et al. (2021) explains:

However, this categorization appeared more accurate compared to other classifications in the Swedish context based on how the concept of “rural” areas and/or regions is presented and understood in an international context.

(Nordholm et al., 2021, p. 12)

The sampling of schools was based on municipalities classified as sparsely populated areas, and villages in the geographic periphery of those municipalities. The geographic periphery is located far from the connections between central places (Christaller, 1964). ‘Peripherality has been defined as the outermost boundary of any area, a clear spatial interpretation … (Brown & Hall, 2000, p. 1)’. These villages are both peripheral to the urban centers of the nation, such as the big cities like Stockholm, where the Schools Inspectorate and the National Agency for Education are located. They are also peripheral concerning to the municipal center, the municipal seat where the local assembly, the municipal executive committee and the municipal boards are located.

In these peripheral areas, three schools were chosen according to the number of teachers (no more than four, preschool teachers included) and the presence of one part-time principal. Sampling also required the exclusion of novice teachers and principals. Six schools were chosen according to these criteria. However, before participatory observations started, three had staff changes or were prevented from participating, leaving a sample of three total. All principals and teachers at these three schools were included in the study.

Data production

To see what teachers and principals did in their everyday life, participatory observations were made and, to understand the field notes and issues raised in participant observations, I used reflective conversations. These two methods were separated in time. Analyzed data from participatory observations were used as a point of departure for the reflective conversations.

Participant observations were made in each of the three schools for three periods of 1–3 days. As the principals were not based at the schools, teachers were observed more than the principals. When the principal arrived, I observed and recorded their meetings, but also their preparation before the meetings, and how both principals and teachers talked about the meetings afterward. To take note of the teacher’s comments about the principal, and the leadership practice, was one way to understand this leadership practice. The observations were participatory, in the way that I engaged in the schools and stayed for a while in each village to understand the teachers, the principals, their day-to-day work, and the village where the school was located. In the daytime, I was at the schools and I sometimes joined teachers in their spare-time activities. The principals had a peripatetic role, i.e. commuting between schools in the district. The observations were documented as field notes and voice-recordings, both my own, as I spoke to the recorder in short breaks, and recordings of meetings with principals, teachers in the village school, and teachers in the principal district.

After data from participatory observations were analyzed, I returned to the schools to have a conversation with the teachers and principals about what I saw and wondered about in the data. I call these reflective conversations, rather than interviews, because I wanted to develop new knowledge together with the teachers and principals and understand their perspectives. For example, I asked, ‘When I was here, I saw that you tried to solve this problem. Why didn’t you ask the principal?’ then gave them the opportunity to explain their feelings and experience in the observed situation.

To analyze all the findings, I transcribed field notes, recordings of meetings, and recorded reflective conversations, leading to a picture of the leadership practice. Then I used AtlasTi to mark all the different arrangements in the architecture that had an impact on the leadership practice. Then different categories of the arrangements emerged and were coded.

Findings

The findings below describe the architecture of the leadership practice in rural schools. The schools were from two different municipalities and three different principal districts. In these three schools, the principals are responsible for several schools and do not teach. There are also preschool classes (Psc), which are part of the school organizations (also common in Sweden) managed by the principal. The pupils start in Psc the year they turn six, then start first grade the year they turn seven. Therefore, preschool teachers are employed in the school. In this paper, the preschool teachers are called teachers, due to the similarity of duties. The sample does not include so-called ‘free schools’ managed by private companies; all schools are managed by municipalities.

The local contexts of the schools are rather similar, and the surrounding villages have developed tourism as a primary source of income. In each of the villages, there are hotels and other tourist-related business. Each village also has a grocery store and a church. The roads from the villages are small and rather poor. One bus leaves the village in the morning and returns in the evening. The population of each village is approximately 100–200, but greater in winter, due to the tourism activities. The municipalities are responsible for approximately 7 primary schools and approximately 8,000 inhabitants, with a population density of 1 inhabitant/km².

Previous research demonstrates how principals work part-time as both teachers and principals (Copeland, 2013). This is not the case in the present study. The education of principals in Sweden is regulated by the National Agency for Education. This is called the Principal Program. The Principal Program is compulsory to be employed as a principal. The principals participate in the Principal Program during the first four years of their principal employment. It is funded by the government and municipalities, or by the company that manages the school. This means that rural municipalities pay for principals’ education and require them to work with the principal commission. For small schools, this means that the principals are responsible for several schools in a principal district and have a peripatetic workplace. The division of principal districts, and the context of each school, are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. School contexts

School	River school	Lake school	Mountain school
Grades	Psc–3	Psc–6	Psc–6
Number of pupils	15	15	12
Number of teachers	2	2	4
External teachers visiting the school	None	3 + teaching by internet link	1
Km from municipal seat in municipality	150	70	100
Km from the principals’ office	15	95	130
The principal district consists of	River School and one bigger school	Lake School and two schools of similar size	Mountain School and three schools of similar size
External teaching in one other school	One day in the central school for grade three	All teaching is on the school or by internet link	One day in a municipal seat for grade six

Table 1 shows the differences and similarities between the schools in the study. These are relevant to understanding the findings, which are structured according to the theoretical framework, and based on material, discursive, and social arrangement.

The geographic periphery as material arrangements

The material arrangements differ in terms of place, as Table 1 shows. All schools have a peripatetic principal and share principals with other schools. Given the low number of pupils, the schools cannot afford to employ a full-time principal. Lake School and Mountain School share principals with other schools of a similar size, whereas River School shares its principal with a bigger school. River School is geographically close to a bigger school. The principal has an office in this bigger school. The office of the Lake School and Mountain School principal is more than 70 km away. None of the schools have a separate office or room for the principal to use. All rooms are used by teachers and for teaching. In all the schools, there are two to three classrooms and one teachers’ office; in two schools, there is also a dining room. In the third school, pupils eat in a classroom. All schools have a teacher break room. This space is used differently. At Lake School, it is often used by teachers and the principal, who uses it as a workspace as well. In the other schools, the teachers drink their coffee in the classroom, and the principals are only present for meetings and classroom visits. All teachers live in or near the village. None of the principals live in the village, but they do live in a rural area.

The peripheral geographical location means that decision-makers rarely visit the schools. One teacher described one occasion when the municipal board came to the school before an important decision. To encourage them to visit, the teachers invited them to dinner.

When politicians come to visit, before making an organizational decision, less than two-thirds have never set foot here. And they are actually on their way out before we show them that the preschool is behind the next door. What do they want to see when they are here? It is interesting that they sit in a central location and make many of these decisions, but they have no idea what it looks like. So, it is very useful once they come out (to the periphery). Although, sometimes, they are more interested in eating than actually looking around. And then they want to go back to the meeting so they can get home sometime. Because it’s two hours both ways. Although, it is the same distance (for us) when we travel the other way.

Teacher, River School

Even if the principal visits schools regularly, municipal decision-makers are not familiar with the surroundings and how the school building is used. When decisions are made, the politicians are dependent on the principals’ narratives.

The material arrangements differ in time as well, namely the time it takes for the principals to travel to the schools, and the time that the principals are present. River School’s principal and Lake School’s principal are scheduled to be present at the school for at least two hours every week, whilst Mountain School’s principal is scheduled to be present one day every second week. In practice, however, principals were sometimes prevented from following these schedules due to bad weather, illness, or urgent employee matters at another school. The teachers seem accustomed to this. Sometimes, they are informed of the principal’s absence, and sometimes they are not. The principals spend several hours in the car every week driving between schools in their districts.

The geographic periphery as discursive arrangements

The teachers are used to managing for themselves. The newly employed principal at Lake School described her first period there, and how she struggled to comprehend teachers’ activities. The teachers were used to handling everything themselves, and forgot to inform the principal when they ordered items for the school. The principal repeatedly had to remind them to inform her about their activities. One example of this comes from Lake School, which lacks both a gym and a swimming pool. Students there have their sports lessons outside, i.e. they manage without the gym. But it is too cold in the lake to learn to swim, so they need access to the swimming pool which is in the municipal seat. The teacher in the village school e-mails and calls the teacher in the municipal seat now and then, to book the swimming pool, but it is always unavailable. They never secured access to the swimming pool during the entire year. When I asked why she didn’t speak with the principal about this, the teacher replied: ‘It never comes to my mind that she could help me. Of course, now that we have a principal who cares about us, I could ask for her help’. They are not used to involving the principal, due to experiences of being rejected.

To feel rejected by the principal is something the teachers have learned to expect, and they even tried to protect me from disappointment. As mentioned earlier, the principal may not show up, sometimes without excuse or explanation. As a researcher, I first saw this as a ‘one-off’, but when this pattern continued at all schools it became an established feature. The teachers’ comments about the principals’ absences are incisive. When I said: ‘Of course she will come. I have driven for hours to meet her here today’. They answered: ‘Just telling you, don’t be disappointed if she doesn’t show. You get used to it’ (teacher at Lake School). Several times, the principal failed to keep an appointment and I felt disappointed and rejected. The teachers also talk about the presence of the principal as unnecessary and take responsibility for the distance between the principal’s office and the school. ‘I hope she doesn’t go all the way out here for this meeting, she had a cold’ (teacher at Mountain School), or “We don’t need her presence to do this, we can handle it ourselves’ (teacher at Lake School).

The River School principal emphasizes that teachers were welcome to the bigger school, but it is always the River School teachers who must travel. That is how it always has been done. The teachers in the village school are understood as traveling per discursive agreement. When this was mentioned in the reflective conversation, both the principal and the teachers explained that it was obvious. The teachers in the bigger school never visited the village school: ‘Why should they?’, the principal asked. When I explained my point of view, that they could be seen and understood by the River School teachers, the principal rapidly answered with an economic justification. But, after a while, she said: ‘I have never thought about it. It’s just the way we do it here”. This discursive arrangement, of norm-setting teachers and adaptable teachers, is evinced by their sayings and assumptions.

The principal at Mountain School explains her awareness of the transport problem mentioned above, and the experience of village teachers’ constant adaptation to bigger schools´ teachers needs. Instead, the principal place one meeting with all the teachers from all schools at one school and place the other meeting at another school, so they move around to all schools in the principal district. Equality is important, she stresses. In the next breath, she says: ‘But, we don’t have the December or January meeting at Mountain School, due to the inclement weather conditions’. This highlights the discursive arrangement of adaption nevertheless. The Mountain Schools’ teachers always must travel in inclement weather because it is hard for other teachers to reach their school in the snowy and dark winter.

Two schools struggle with threats of closure. The preschool, in the same building as River School, is growing. The municipal board wants to move the village’s school activities to the larger school, 15 km away, and give the whole school building to the preschool operation. The principal argues for keeping the school and tells the teachers about her argument. The teachers say that the principal is a good one: ‘She is on our side’, they stress. Mountain School risks closure because of the small number of pupils in both the school (12 students) and preschool (2). The principal talked about this at a municipal board meeting, and a read the proceedings and reached the conclusion that the school is closing. When the principal did not contradict this in public, the teachers got worried, and mistrust of the principal has grown. The principal’s sayings and not sayings about the situation seem to be a social arrangement to the readership practice according to the social arrangement and relations with mistrust.

The geographic periphery as social arrangements

For these three schools, principal turnover, due to retirement, resignation, or municipal reorganization, occurs often. For leadership practices to emerge, time is required to develop a common understanding. Lake School changed principals and administrative support several times due to reorganization in the last five years. During the year of the study, Lake School changed principal twice and River School was about to recruit a new principal. One principal describes her problem when trying to join the social network in the village, which led to her departure:

Now that I have told them am going to quit, all of a sudden everyone is my friend. Before, I had no friends. So, you are not invited to the home to anyone … You scare the village as the school principal, they won’t be inviting the boss and that difference blurs when you come from outside. I notice it even when I go out here, that suddenly people open up a bit. Since now (when they know she is quitting) I’m not so dangerous anymore and it’s very exciting.

Principal, River School

The principal’s outsider status constrains her in finding friends in the village, because she is also the school’s principal. This is one reason for her to move away from the village and quit her job. The principal uses these distances to the community to symbolize the school and the profession in a way that teachers are unable to. For this reason, the teachers embody the social capital of the village. This was observed in a parent meeting where the principal was greeted by the teacher and the parents, rather than teachers and the principal greeting the parents. She explains that the teachers are very close to the parents, so she needs to be present sometimes to show that this is a professional working place. The principals’ distance from the village helps the teachers in their conversations with parents, but it also constrains the principal’s ability to be part of the village’s social network, and to feel a common sense of place.

The principal at Lake School stresses her problems with low enrollment in the coming years. Schools in the municipal seat have low teacher standards, bullying among pupils, and overcrowded classes. Therefore, she proposed that the principal group in the municipality to move pupils from the central school to this village school. But they thought it was too long for the pupils to travel by bus. However, if they close the village school, pupils who live in the village must travel the same distance to the central school. The principal felt that they did not listen to her proposal or argument because she worked in the village school, and thus fights for her school without considering the greater interests of students in the municipality. In conversation with other principals in the municipality, I hear this complaint, namely that this principal only cares about the small schools and the special conditions there.

These findings illuminate the unequal power relations between schools in the geographic center and the periphery. For example, teachers at River School are invited to visit the principal and teachers at the bigger school for professional development, but neither time, nor place, nor the agenda of these meetings are adapted to the needs of the teachers from the periphery schools. This shows an unequal power relation, with the power located at the geographic center. The urban norm has priority in the principal group and the village schools must adapt to the needs in geographic center. The urban norm affects the village schools and the principals’ possibilities to have their voices heard. This could also constrain the principals’ potential to receive a mandate to lead. If the principal cannot persuade others to listen to the teachers’ stories, to hear their voices, then the teachers could feel rejected by the principal.

To sum up, the relations between center and periphery are reflected in the agenda of courses and meetings, concerning time and place. These relations show that schools, principals, and politicians at the center decide where and when to meet and the agenda for the meeting. The architecture of the geographic periphery affects the leadership practice in the form of power relations between politicians and the principals, and the principals and teachers. These power relations could affect teachers’ solidarity with the principal, and principals’ power to lead their schools. One reason for this could be the urban norm and the experience of feeling rejected by the principal. When the principal has several small schools, he or she recognizes their interests and has a greater understanding of their needs. This enables teacher–principal solidarity, which in turn gives the principal power to lead in leadership practice. To care for teachers, and to show this, has become a success factor; the principal has a lesser mandate to affect the agenda in the municipality, as smaller schools are marginalized compared to bigger schools.

Discussion

The present study was directed by the following question: How does the architecture of the geographic periphery impact the leadership practices of principals in small primary schools? The findings illuminate rural-specific architecture for leadership practice. A high workload is an issue for rural principals (Ashton & Duncan, 2012; Budge, 2010; Starr & White, 2008), as confirmed by the present research. This workload could be described by the local, peripatetic, and municipal architecture

Local architecture

A common sense of place among teachers helps them to understand the communities. This sense of place helps social capital to emerge (Bauch, 2001). Principals must then relate to the social capital and the teachers’ inclusion in the community. The relatings in social capital in rural leadership practice are considered essential to gain economic stability (Budge, 2010), and to facilitate education adapted to rural environments (Karlberg-Granlund, 2019).

The findings show that principals gain the power to lead if they have experience working in a small rural school and with the inclusion of social capital in a village. In the case of principal turnover, teachers fear being led by a principal who lacks such knowledge. The internally recruited principals find it easier to have a mandate to lead than those externally recruited. This is similar to the first wave McHenry-Sorber and Budge (2018) explored in a literature review, regarding internal or external recruitment. They confirm this access problem for externally recruited principals. The present result indicates a reason for this, concerning principals’ understanding of sayings and relatings in the community as local architecture for leadership practice, the inclusion of social capital, and a sense of place.

The discursive arrangement of center and periphery unfolds in the result. One example is when River School teachers always travel from the periphery to the center, yet the teachers in the bigger school never visit her. The principal of Mountain School is aware of this and tries to change this way of thinking. Even when the principal stresses the awareness, it unfolds the center discourse in the sayings. It seems to take time to change the discursive arrangement of the center and periphery in local practices. This confirms previous research (Bæck, 2016; Eriksson, 2010a, 2010b; McHenry-Sorber & Budge, 2018) and illustrates it in these specific rural peripheral contexts. Another example of the discursive arrangement is the relative lack of power the principals experience in the municipal principal group. This confirms the asymmetry of power between center and periphery that Sjöstedt Landén (2012) explains.

Peripatetic architecture

Peripatetic leadership practices are not previously mentioned outside the Swedish context. Previous research also does not explain the architecture of a part-time principal with an office in another village. It seems unusual in a global context but is a common organizational structure in Sweden (cf., Åberg-Bengtsson, 2009; Pettersson & Näsström, 2017). This affects the physical absence of the principal as a material arrangement and the teacher’s experience of autonomy and feeling of rejection when principals are unable to visit or be near teachers’ day-to-day work.

To gain access to social capital in the geographic periphery, principals have to take part in everyday interactions (Falk & Kilpatrick, 2000), but this is not possible in a peripatetic leadership practice, as shown above. Principals must find other ways to take part in the schools’ everyday work. Another aspect of peripatetic leadership practices is securing access to the everyday school life of teachers used to autonomy. But, even with physical absence, principals find other ways to communicate in peripatetic leadership practice. They use e-mail, telephone, and structure in the form of meetings where principals or teachers travel to show their engagement in schools. Involvement at the school is more than just physical presence, as seen above, when a principal just called teachers to ask how they were doing. This is a typical social arrangement for leadership practice, which could help principals take part in social capital (Falk & Kilpatrick, 2000).

The professional isolation that many rural principals face (Hansen, 2018; Wildy et al., 2014) is not mentioned in this Swedish case. This differs from Hardwick-Franco (2018), probably because the principal does not teach and does not share the day-to-day work of teachers. They meet the principal group in the municipality weekly, but the teachers in the present study only meet at most every second week.

Municipality architecture

The municipal management for the school stresses a small budget and schools often struggle with the threat of closures. This is often on the agenda for meetings with principals and teachers and enables and constrains solidarity between them. The same is the case with turnover. Teachers do not engage with a principal who will be leaving soon. If the principals do not gain access to the social capital that many researchers report (Falk & Kilpatrick, 2000; Lind & Stjernström, 2015; Olesen et al., 2016), they might be more likely to leave their position.

In the municipal principal group, the Lake School principal experiences a lack of power because she is leading the smallest schools. Isolation of principals is seen as an effect of the Swedish decentralization of school management (Jarl, 2013). This gave principals more of a managerial than a leadership mission (Jarl, 2013).

The municipal boards have given the principal an important role to give voice to the community and the teachers, because of their lack of knowledge about the village and the possibility of school closures (Karlberg-Granlund, 2011). How principals defend the schools vis-a-vis the municipal board and the media affects the solidarity teachers grant the principal in their leadership practice. Teachers have a certain power in telling, or failing to tell, teachers’ stories. The teachers depend on the principals’ goodwill to save or care for the school, although school closure is rather common and always a threat if results fall, or if the school becomes too expensive.

Conclusion

The architecture of the geographic periphery consists of social, material, and discursive leadership arrangements. This is shown on a local and a municipal level, where social capital enables and constrains relations in leadership practice. Principals struggle with teachers’ solidarity in the schools on a local level, and the municipal board struggles to understand the specific conditions in schools in the geographic periphery. The economic aspect of material arrangements becomes a discourse arrangement of closing, as in other rural areas (Autti & Hyry-Beihammer, 2014; Fjellman et al., 2019; Karlberg-Granlund, 2011). This is a social arrangement that enable and constrain solidarity in leadership practice.

This result differs from previous research, where principals experience professional isolation (Hansen, 2018; Starr & White, 2008; Wildy et al., 2014) In Sweden, there seems to be a specific peripatetic leadership practice for principals who commute between several schools. They belong to everyone and no one. This prevents the professional isolation that is presented in many rural studies, but also prevents the sense of place that enables solidarity from the communities.

Recommendations

To secure equality in nationwide school organizations, leadership practices and professional learning must emerge (Angelle et al., 2021). For that to happen, the architecture of place must be considered and reforms and policy must be adapted to the local environment. To understand leadership practices in the geographic periphery, it is important to understand the practice as doings, sayings, and relatings. Previous research (e.g. Bæck, 2016; Budge, 2010; Copeland, 2013) focuses on doings as leadership, but sayings and relatings are also context-based and all aspects of context are essential to understand leadership (Hallinger, 2018). The present study explores specific architectures for leadership practices in the geographic periphery, and this must be understood to adapt policies appropriately for teachers and students in such contexts in order to ensure equality. To improve leadership practices in the geographic periphery, I suggest a greater awareness of place as a discursive and social arrangement, not only a material arrangement, and that this awareness be considered in organizational decision-making within national and local educational structures.

Further research

This paper addresses the question of rural leadership in an ethnographic manner. A critique of ethnographic work could be the context-specific knowledge generated; to test this knowledge in more general terms, a qualitative study could be of help. Furthermore, other practices could be relevant to study in the architecture of the geographic periphery.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to Tony Bush, who inspired me to develop and complete this text!

Disclosure statement

This research included no other interests or financial steering. The research was financed by the Department of Education at Mid Sweden University.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sandra Lund

Sandra Lund is a Ph.D. student with an interest in rural education and school development. She is also a teacher in the Swedish principal program.