Table Of ContentSPRINGER BRIEFS IN EDUCATION
Ulf Blossing
Torgeir Nyen
Åsa Söderström
Anna Hagen Tønder
Local Drivers for
Improvement
Capacity
Six Types of School
Organisations
SpringerBriefs in Education
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/8914
Ulf Blossing · Torgeir Nyen · Åsa Söderström
Anna Hagen Tønder
Local Drivers for
Improvement Capacity
Six Types of School Organisations
1 3
Ulf Blossing Åsa Söderström
University of Gothenburg Karlstad University
Gothenburg Karlstad
Sweden Sweden
Torgeir Nyen
Anna Hagen Tønder
Fafo Institute for Labour and Social
Research
Oslo
Norway
ISSN 2211-1921 ISSN 2211-193X (electronic)
ISBN 978-3-319-12723-1 ISBN 978-3-319-12724-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-12724-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014953308
Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
© The Author(s) 2015
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Preface
How school improvement comes about in local schools is a strong interest among
the authors of this book. What the local drivers for improvement capacity are,
and how we can understand them, are the questions we investigate in this book.
Studying political school reform and how initiatives are applied in local schools,
we have taken the standpoint that knowledge about local schools and how school
leaders and teachers think about their improvement capacity is essential. In this
book, we identify six types of school organisations shaped by different sense-
making processes. We have come to understand the development of improvement
capacity as being tightly coupled to what school leaders and teachers in local
schools believe drive improvement, and to how this belief makes sense in their
local school history and in their identities as teachers and school leaders.
The data come from an evaluation of a state-financed school improvement pro-
gramme in Norway called ‘The Knowledge Promotion Reform—From Word to
Deed’. The evaluation was carried out in 2006–2010 and was based on a combina-
tion of qualitative and quantitative data.
This study is intended for researchers, graduate students, school leaders and
teacher leaders. As we aim at both research and practice we have included theory
and methodology, but also quite detailed descriptions of the schools illustrating
each of the six types. We hope these will be recognisable for practitioners and thus
inspire them to initiate improvements in their own schools.
We are very grateful to the schools in Norway and to the teachers, school lead-
ers and students who willingly and carefully engaged in our interviews. We would
also like to direct our thanks to the experts who have read the manuscript for this
book and have suggested improvements. These have been very helpful in making
our intentions and reasoning clearer.
Gothenburg, September 2014 Ulf Blossing
Oslo Torgeir Nyen
Karlstad Åsa Söderström
Oslo Anna Hagen Tønder
v
Contents
1 Introduction ................................................ 1
Local Support and Challenges in Educational Policy ................. 4
References .................................................. 6
2 Organisational Perspectives on Schools and Change ............... 9
Instrumental and Institutional Perspectives on Organisations ........... 10
Schools’ Improvement Capacity ................................. 14
A Socio-structural Perspective .............................. 15
The Need for Focusing on Teaching Practices ...................... 19
The Need to Consider Means- Versus Goal-Situated Strategies ......... 19
Four Means-Situated Strategies ............................. 20
A Social Learning Perspective .............................. 22
References .................................................. 23
3 Method .................................................... 27
Sampling ................................................... 28
Procedure ................................................... 28
Analysis .................................................... 29
School Types as Basis for Describing School Organisations ........... 31
Comments on the Construction of Types .......................... 33
References .................................................. 34
4 Six School Types ............................................ 35
Overview ................................................... 36
The Idea-Driven School ....................................... 37
Typological Description ................................... 37
Background to Vega School ................................ 37
Vega School’s Infrastructure ............................... 37
Vega School’s Improvement History ......................... 38
Understanding and Strengthening Vega School’s
Improvement Capacity .................................... 40
vii
viii Contents
The Plan-Driven School ....................................... 42
Typological Description ................................... 42
Background to Capella School .............................. 42
Capella School’s Infrastructure ............................. 43
Capella School’s Improvement History ....................... 44
Understanding and Strengthening Capella School’s
Improvement Capacity .................................... 45
The Model-Driven School ...................................... 47
Typological Description ................................... 47
Background to Rigel School ............................... 47
Rigel School’s Infrastructure ............................... 48
Rigel School’s Improvement History ......................... 49
Understanding and Strengthening Rigel School’s
Improvement Capacity .................................... 50
The Problem-Driven School .................................... 52
Typological Description ................................... 52
Background to Pollux School. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Pollux School’s Infrastructure .............................. 53
Pollux School’s Improvement History ........................ 54
Understanding and Strengthening Pollux School’s
Improvement Capacity .................................... 54
The Profession-Driven School .................................. 56
Typological Description ................................... 56
Background of Sirius School ............................... 57
Sirius School’s Infrastructure ............................... 57
Sirius School’s Improvement History ........................ 59
Understanding and Strengthening Sirius School’s Improvement ... 59
The Team-Driven School ....................................... 61
Typological Description ................................... 61
Background to Atlas School ................................ 61
Atlas School’s Infrastructure ............................... 61
Atlas School’s Improvement History ......................... 62
Understanding and Strengthening Atlas School’s
Improvement Capacity .................................... 63
5 Concluding Reflections ....................................... 65
The Sensemaking Organisation of Capacity ........................ 66
Supporting Local Capacity-Building ............................. 69
Support from the Central Educational System ...................... 70
References .................................................. 74
Chapter 1
Introduction
Abstract International trends in education are outlined that are important for
school improvement efforts at both the national level and in local schools. Key
concepts include competitiveness, efficiency, freedom of choice, flexibility and
decentralisation. International knowledge measurement is a driving force when
national educational reforms are planned and implemented. The concrete mean-
ing of these concepts and the international knowledge measurements vary between
countries and between local schools. The aim of our study was to explore and
describe how improvement capacity in local schools is organised and to develop
an understanding of this organisation as a practice and as a sensemaking process in
local schools. We present Hopkins’ four drives towards building an effective local
capacity for improvement and consider what kind of support schools need in order
to be effective. In contrast to Hopkins, we focus on how local schools put their
improvement work into their situated and sensemaking practices, which are not
always perceived as progress from the outside. The chapter ends with an overview
of the book.
Keywords Neoliberal g overnance · Globalisation · Glocalisation · Decentralisation ·
Knowledge promotion reform · Building capacity · Local support
In most countries, during the first decades of the second millennium, there have
been a number of major reforms in the field of education with the aim of enhanc-
ing competitiveness. Many of these reforms are rooted in neoliberal and neocon-
servative governance ideals, where competition and choice are seen as key drivers
for increasing the public school system’s effectiveness and improving student out-
comes (see, e.g. Apple 2006; Dalin 1994; Giddens 1996; Giroux 1997; Hargreaves
1998; Kumar and Hill 2009). Concrete examples of changes being implemented
in this spirit are privatisation in the sector, decentralisation of responsibility,
results-based management and an intense control of school quality and students’
academic performance. According to Daun (2002), there are both political and
© The Author(s) 2015 1
U. Blossing et al., Local Drivers for Improvement Capacity,
SpringerBriefs in Education, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-12724-8_1
2 1 Introduction
economic reasons for these changes. The aim is that flexibility will increase as
local responsibility increases. At the same time, higher productivity in terms of
improved student outcomes is expected.
However, higher productivity does not naturally follow in the steps of neolib-
eral governance. Teachers and school leaders still struggle with developing their
instruction in order to improve student outcomes. On the one hand, nations come
up with new reforms in an attempt to display a top-level educational system in
the global competitive, and on the other hand, school leaders struggle to build
local improvement capacity among their teachers in order to put reforms into
practice.
This study is about the organisation of local school improvement: how such
organisation is constituted in practical work and how it shapes capacity in local
schools. Ideas about what drives improvement and ways of organising this work
are intertwined and make sense for the teachers and school leaders, despite
research knowledge on what promotes the building of local improvement capacity.
The aim of this study is (1) to explore and describe the organisation of improve-
ment capacity in local schools and (2) to develop an understanding of this organi-
sation as a practice and sensemaking process in local schools. In conclusion, we
will also (3) address support issues in relation to these findings. However, a school
organisation is only local in relation to its context, and therefore, we would like to
dwell somewhat longer on the topic of neoliberalism and globalisation.
Globalisation is a term that describes how the world has “shrunk” and how inci-
dents in one country can quickly have an impact far beyond that country’s own
borders. The international market is characterised by free movement of capital,
and local economic ups and downs can have severe global consequences. Cultural
expressions, attitudes and ideas are spread and contribute to the experience of a
global get-together, which simultaneously adds diversity as well as “monoversity”.
Some concepts that are applied in the description of modern society, and that cre-
ate an image of the time we live in, are freedom of choice, individualism, flexibil-
ity and responsibility (Bauman 2002; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002; Giddens
1996, 2003; Harvey 2007). In the context of this global social change, education
has become an increasingly important competitive factor both at the international
level and at the individual level. Requirements for education and mobility increase
pressure within the labour market. Beck (1998) describes how increased globalisa-
tion requires a geographical and social mobility which risks cutting off people’s
cultural and social roots. This leads to increasing individualisation, where equals
find themselves in a competition to gain and keep a position in the labour market.
The central role of education as a means for competition, both within and between
countries, in an increasingly tough global economic market, has highlighted how
countries make international comparisons of their success in their efforts to edu-
cate their citizens.
In a European perspective, education has become an important area of both col-
laboration and competition. Lawn (2011) describes a process of Europeanisation
in education among the countries in the European Union (EU). This process
is governed by the creation and use of indicators, standards and comparisons.
