How do principals make sense of school leadership in Norwegian reorganised leadership teams?

Abstract

A growing body of research has emphasised the importance of school leadership practice for quality improvement in schools. Yet, little attention has been paid to the investigation of how principals reshape their leadership role and leadership practices when schools reorganise the leadership team with the purpose of increasing the number of formally assigned leaders. As such, this study provides additional insight into how moments of transitions may reshape institutional logics regarding principal leadership practice. Drawing on interviews and contextual observations of five principals in lower secondary schools, framed within a distributed perspective and theory of sense-making, we address this issue by demonstrating that regulative changes influence the normative and cognitive aspects of institutions. We argue that principals re-conceptualise leadership when they move from being solo leaders to sharing leadership, and this allows for subjective interpretations. We have identified two approaches for principal leadership practice which the reorganised leadership team can provide – the exchanging information – and collaborative discussion approaches.

Keywords:

• redistributed leadership
• leadership teams
• the principal
• deputy heads

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Professor Jorunn Moller for her valuable suggestions on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes on contributors

Hedvig N. Abrahamsen is a PhD candidate at the Department of Teacher Education and Sports, Sogn and Fjordane University College. Her research interests include leadership in education and school reform.

Marit Aas is an Associate Professor at the Department of Teacher Education and School Research at the University of Oslo. She is responsible for the National School Leader Program at the University of Oslo. Her research areas are School leadership and Management and School Development.

Glenn Ole Hellekjaer is Professor of Teaching English as a Foreign Language at the Department of Teacher Education and School Research at the University of Oslo. His research areas are Reading Academic English, Content and Language Integrated Learning, English-Medium Instruction in higher education and Needs Analyses of English and other foreign languages in business and public administration.