A systemic perspective on school reform. Principals' and chief education officers' perspectives on school development
| Pages | 46-61 |
| Published date | 01 February 2011 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09578231111102054 |
| Date | 01 February 2011 |
| Author | Kirsi Pyhältö,Tiina Soini,Janne Pietarinen |
| Subject Matter | Education |
A systemic perspective on school
reform
Principals’ and chief education officers’
perspectives on school development
Kirsi Pyha
¨lto
¨
Centre for Research and Development in Higher Education,
University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
Tiina Soini
Department of Teacher Education, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland,
and
Janne Pietarinen
Faculty of Education, University of Joensuu, Joensuu, Finland
Abstract
Purpose – This study aims to gain better understanding of the perceptions comprehensive school
principals and chief education officers have about the implementation of school reform and the means
they use to facilitate the development of such.
Design/methodology/approach – This research project was carried out using a systemic design
research approach. Open-ended questionnaires provided the data for the study and these were
completed by educational leaders operating in local school districts.
Findings – The results demonstrated that pedagogy was emphasized most often as the core of school
reform by principals but chief education officers considered technical and financial factors more often
as the critical core of educational reform. Nevertheless, both groups had quite similar ideas on how to
promote school development.
Research limitations/implications – The findings reflect the Finnish educational system and
capture only two levels of leadership within the system. Future research ought to focus on studying
school reforms within different school systems as a complex of correlated events, processes, strategies,
interactions and qualities.
Practical implications – To be able to achieve a successful and sustainable school reform more
attention must be devoted to creating and activating collaborative learning environments, not only for
pupils and teachers, but also for educational leaders at all levels of school administration.
Originality/value – The study adds to an understanding of the often-mentioned gap or conflict in
perceptions and beliefs between different actors in an educational system.
Keywords Schools, Education,Leadership, Educational innovation, Finland
Paper type Research paper
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
The authors wish to thank Annabel Battersby-Ja
¨rvinen for the language revision and Elsi
Ahonen for her contribution in editing the reference list. They also wish to thank the Finnish
Ministry of Education and Finnish Work Environment Found for funding the research project
Learning and Development in Comprehensive School.
JEA
49,1
46
Received July 2009
Revised December 2009
Accepted March 2010
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 49 No. 1, 2011
pp. 46-61
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/09578231111102054
Introduction
Comprehensive schools around Europe, Finland included, are currently faced with
numerous multidimensional educational reforms concerning all levels and actors of the
schooling system. In Finland three major pedagogical comprehensive school reforms
have been launched since the 1990s, initiated mainly by politicians and administrators.
The most basic and possibly the most challenging reform consisted of a shift from
viewing the teaching-learning process primarily as a transmission of knowledge, to
viewing teaching as focused on active and collaborative knowledge construction. The
second reform consisted of decentralization of school administration, which was
shown, for example, in the replacement of the National Curriculum by a set of fairly
general goals approved by the Ministry of Education, with the responsibility for
curriculum planning shifted to the grass-roots level of communities and single schools.
The most recent of the pedagogical school reforms, implementation of undiv ided basic
education, aims to support pupils in their learning path through the various transitions
of their school career from pre-school to ninth grade and even upper secondary school
or vocational education (Finlex, 1998; Ministry for Education, 1998, 1994, 2004).
The Finnish school system represents a Scandinavian approach for political
decentralization and local accountability of school administration. The new school
legislation made municipalities fairly autonomous in arranging primary- and
secondary education. The legislation offers only general aims for the reform while
the responsibility for the reform implementation is up to the single municipalities and
schools (Aho et al., 2006; Johnson, 2006; Moos and Moller, 2003). Accordingly principals
and chief education officers play a key role in translating the reform into local
educational practices and structures that requires intensive collaboration between the
groups. Moreover principals and chief education officers need to sustain the reform
implementation in schools and municipalities by supporting teachers’ in their
professional development and by enabling generation of pedagogical innovations at
root-level school work (Stoll et al., 2006). This means that perceptions and strategies
adopted by principals and chief education officers have a substantial effect not only on
each other, but also on the way the local board of education operates (Kanervio and
Risku, 2009). Therefore it is of the most importance to understand how these local
educational leaders perceive the ongoing reforms.
The research project
This study is a part of a larger national research project: “Learning And Development
in Comprehensive Schools” (2004-2009) on undivided basic education in Finland
(Huusko et al., 2007). The project aims to identify and understand preconditions for
successful school reforms. Altogether 87 municipalities and 237 schools around
Finland participated in the first phase of the research project (2005-2007). The project
was carried out using a systemic design research approach (Brown, 1992; Collins et al.,
2004; De Corte, 2000; Salomon, 1995). It included data collection from four different
levels of the schooling system: heads of school districts (chief education officers);
principals; teachers; and pupils (9th graders). To capture the views of differe nt actors,
the data was collected through mixed methods such as inquiries, interviews, reflective
discussion, and activating methods. In this article the focus is on analyzing chief
education officers’ and principals’ perceptions about the ongoing national school
reform.
Perspective on
school reform
47
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