This is the published version of a paper published in Professional Development in Education.
Citation for the original published paper (version of record):
Brauckmann, S., Pashiardis, P., Ärlestig, H. (2020)
Bringing context and educational leadership together: fostering the professional development of school principals
Professional Development in Education
https://doi.org/10.1080/19415257.2020.1747105
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http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-170166
ARTICLE
Bringing context and educational leadership together: fostering the professional development of school principals
Stefan Brauckmann, Petros Pashiardis and Helene Ärlestig
ABSTRACT
Policy makers increasingly acknowledge that problems and challenges arising at the school level should be resolved on site. At the same time, the political expectation to delegate more responsibility to the individual school is rather heavily contrasted with the weak knowledge about how this new public management approach can be translated into successful leadership practices. Thus, considering that there is a close relationship between context and leadership, principal preparation programmes should be guided by a deeper examination of contextual factors.
Against this background, we aim to critically examine existing views of practitioners and researchers on the challenge of establishing more con- text-sensitive school leadership preparation programmes in an era of New Public Management in Education. In doing so, we introduce the Swedish Model of principal preparation as an example for a more context-sensitive leadership preparation program. To that end, we argue that a di fferentiated perspective about contextual conditions and their role as facilitators or obstacles to e ffective leadership must be further explored.
Moreover, school leaders should be encouraged to consider the relevance of such approaches to their own needs.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 24 July 2019 Accepted 22 March 2020
KEYWORDSProfessional development;
school leaders; autonomy;
context; Sweden; new public management; e ffectiveness;
leadership preparation
1. Introduction
In recent years, a shift of perspectives can be observed internationally, about the way schools are being a ffected by problems which are increasingly global, and the realisation that the solutions are mainly local. Drifts in values, new technology as well as other societal changes have enhanced expectations, at the same time as policy makers acknowledge that problems and challenges which arise at the school level should be resolved on site, thus relying to a greater extent on an e fficient as well as e ffective site-based management (Pont et al. 2008, Gurr and Drysdale 2016, Sebastian et al.
2018). This change is expected to generate or enhance strategic leadership actions, thus allowing for the design of more and better contextually-bound solutions for the respective schools. In particular, new instruments of governance are needed, which are characterised by a greater degree of autonomy and accountability. These instruments are intended to support policy-makers and school principals in terms of targeting speci fic aspects of school development in order to operate as quality assurance mechanisms.
At the same time, we do know that the success of leadership relies on the choice and combination of di fferent leadership styles, as well as the specific situation and context underlying those particular combinations (Brauckmann and Pashiardis 2011, Nir and Hameiri 2014, Brezicha et al. 2015).
Therefore, considering that contexts and leadership actions are intricately intertwined, leadership preparation programmes should adopt those governance principles guided by the concept of New Public Management and a stronger consideration of contextual factors such as the national and
CONTACT
Stefan Brauckmann
Stefan.Brauckmann@aau.at© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
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