Lejf Moos – författare

This book analyses selected critical concepts of policy and practice in educational leadership in five European countries. The editors and contributors cover Croatia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Denmark and Norway, spanning a wide geographical region as well as diverse historical and political contexts. The analyses primarily consider the issues of convergence and divergence in local educational leadership policies and practice that are developing and emerging from traditional structures and discourses under global, trans-national and regional influences. Focusing on both the macro and micro levels, this book examines a range of topics including international benchmarking, inclusive education practices and digital transformation. It will be of interest and value to scholars of educational leadership in Europe, particularly within smaller countries.

“Today’s local educational leadership policies and practice are connected with the historical roots of five small European countries. In the analysis, perspectives from within each country and comparisons are used interestingly. Both levels of analysis bring out new understandings of the relationship between policy and practice and how they have been related to leadership in a historical discourse. In my opinion the different country chapters and the comparisons represent important new knowledge and I recommended the book as reading for school leaders and policy makers in the field of educational leadership.”

 —Professor Olof Johansson, Umeå University, Sweden 

“The book fills a gap in the research of cross-national research, comparing school leadership issues in two Balkan countries, Croatia and Slovenia, one Baltic country, Lithuania, and two Scandinavian countries, Norway and Denmark. To my knowledge it is the first time there has been this sort of cross-investigation of commonalities and differences in school leadership conditions between these countries in the age of globalization. I am sure that many scholars and practitioners can benefit from this book and hereby recommend it. “

—Associate Professor Emeritus Klaus Kasper Kofod, Aarhus University, Denmark

This volume contributes significantly to the ongoing international and Nordic paradigm shift in educational leadership research. It advocates for going from a contemporary, mainstream functionalist paradigm to a reflexive paradigm, based on educational values and knowledge. The volume is built on the shared basis, that the purpose of education is, and must be, fundamental for school leadership practice. However, that is often forgotten in educational governance and policy. The basis of the argument is, that educational leadership needs to change from focusing on effectiveness and narrowly defined accountability towards focusing on leadership that is contributing to the general education of students. That entails that leadership research need to focus on complex perspectives like context, relations, trust, sense making and social and human values, and less on control, outcomes, accountability and testing. The volume reminds readers about the need to raise awareness of the contexts of education and research, be they political, cultural, economic or ideological. Chapters analyze, discuss and compare research from Nordic educational leadership research systems: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. The cross-system insights clarify the fundamental relations between policy/governance and research/practice are and discuss forgotten dependencies and opportunities.

This book offers an original contribution to the area of international research on comparative education policies and the influence of transnational agencies on national school policy and reform. With a focus on grasping what the Nordic model or the Nordic dimension means in school and educational policy, the book explores in depth the school policy contexts of the five Nordic countries Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. It demonstrates how these particular national contexts engage with and contextualize transnational collaboration on issues like school reform, accountability, evidence and what works, and digitalization.

The book situates these policy issues over a long period of time while integrating the latest developments and reforms. It demonstrates how context matters. It shows how the often elusive, but pervasive Nordic dimension can only be fully understood by painstaking scrutiny of the five national contexts, their particular trajectories and mutual interactions in formal and informal education.

This book identifies the cultural and moral foundations of country-specific educational governance and school leadership and presents the principles of justice and the diversity of common goods that guide leadership practices in schools. It contributes to an existing research field that studies diversity and ethical leadership in schools. 

The social dimension of school leadership is not limited to issues related to equality and equity, or social inclusion. The capacity of leaders to promote civic-mindedness and social cooperation, consensus and acceptance of others, the right balance between freedom and duties, and reciprocity of obligations, are essential to maintain democratic rights and facilitate the life together while respecting ethnic and cultural differences. Therefore, the book gathers contributions from a range of international authors capable of reporting these moral and cultural features, while broadening the research perspectives on school leadership.  

This book discusses national school policy reforms in a number of key European countries and shows how these are framed in transnational collaborations that meet with national particularities and contestations. It gives an overview of school policy developments that represents the diversity of Europe within a comparative framework.

It takes point of departure in the fact that European countries in their school and education policies have been increasingly aligning with each other, mostly via transnational collaborations, the OECD, EU, and the Bologna Process. Even the IEA has been instrumental to motivate alignments by means of influential surveys, knowledge production and methodological development. This alignment in terms of common standards, social technologies, qualification frameworks and so forth have aimed at facilitating mobility of students, workers, business and so forth as well as fostering a European identity among citizens from Europe’s patchwork of small and medium-size countries, representing a patchwork of different languages, cultures and societal contexts. In national recontextualizations, however, alignments have been continuously contested according to the particularities of what has been possible educationally and politically in the different national contexts. Furthermore, the return of national(isms) as well as the rise of edubusiness and digitalization have been increasingly influential. This book thus concludes that increasing transnational alignments have to be observed with meticulous attention to different national contexts that matter greatly.   

This collection focuses on transformations in the governance of education, paying attention to the trans-nationalisation of educational policies and the emergence of new actors in education. It focuses on the knowledge and instruments of government that shape education systems at different scales of governance. The book is a contribution to this field of research, focusing on the new roles and responsibilities of elites inside and outside the education state. It offers in-depth case studies based on an international comparison, examining the dynamics at work in the production and circulation of knowledge, the interplay of interests and power, and the ability of elites to define and lead public action programmes. The research and reflections presented in this book will help students, researchers, practitioners and policy-makers to better understand the transformations in decision-making at a time of globalisation and nationalism in education.

This book analyses local school district governance in a comparative, cross-cultural perspective based on national studies of local school boards in the Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. The overarching research question explored by the national studies contained in this volume is: How are transnational influences of standardization and accountability, alongside national policies, transformed into local policy cultures by the school boards? In all the Nordic countries, the municipalities are equivalent with the school district level, and municipalities, as such, play a role as the interface between state policies and the schools. This book discusses the variation across different national systems in the Nordic countries in the degree of decentralism, as well as the processes through which sources of political autonomy are put into practice by school boards. It explores the interplay between context and policy-making at the local level, and analyses how local discourses expressed by school boards differ from national policies and trans-national influences. The book’s analysis of the country-cases and thematic chapters shows that there are both important similarities and significant differences in governance functions, power relations and understandings of school board chairs and members between the countries studied. Moreover, the book analyses the many ways in which these similarities and differences affect the work context of school leaders and teachers in the Nordic countries.