Research Questions
How do high- and low-performing schools differ with respect to principals’ leadership, teachers’ activities, patterns of cooperation and mediating roles?How does district-level leadership interact with school principals’ leadership in interpreting and translating national policy and evaluations in order to raise standards and quality of practice?In what ways are socio-cultural, historical and contextual factors interpreted and enacted, and in what ways do these factors affect the policy enactments of schools across three Nordic countries?What are the enabling and constraining factors in schools’ efforts to raise standards and close achievement gaps?
Research Design
Methods
A mixed methods design will be used and data will be collected from four lower secondary schools in each country. Two schools will be characterized as high-performing and two as low-performing based on national tests and information about the sociocultural composition of the student population.
Interviews will be undertaken with principals, deputies, teachers and students in the schools. In addition, key actors in the municipalities will be interviewed, with a focus on the interactions between schools and municipalities in enacting national policy in order to raise standards.
Surveys will be conducted among teachers and students in the participating schools and among all principals in the selected municipalities. The development of surveys will draw upon instruments developed within the international network of the “Successful School Principalship Project.
Organization
Project Organization
The project group is cross-disciplinary and involves scholars from educational sciences, political sciences and sociology.
The project manager in Norway is Associate Professor Marit Aas, University of Oslo; in Sweden: Professor Olof Johansson, University of Umeå; and in Finland: Professor Michael Uljens, Åbo Akademi.
National teams have been established in Norway, Sweden and Finland, and the Nordic project group collaborates closely with colleagues involved in International Studies of School Principalship Project, ISSPP
Events
ECER 2014 Porto 1 - 5 September 2014
ECER 2014 "The Past, the Present and Future of Educational Research in Europe" will take place at the University of Porto from 1 - 5 September 2014.