Six School Types

Organizational building versus teachers’ personal and relational needs for school improvement

“…Participants in the group interviews were selected to cover wide ranges of work experience (years of employment), teaching subjects, grade levels and leadership assignments in their organizations, with participants from all teacher teams in the school or preschool unit. Detailed questions were asked ( inter alia ) based on the model for assessing improvement capacity of an organization constructed by Blossing et al (2015). The interviews lasted for approximately 90 minutes on average.…”

“…In the second step of the analysis the NVivo.11 program was subsequently used to organize the reports for further analysis. In this step of the analysis the researcher used the OD theory-based framework of improvement capacity and the four-aspect structural model developed by Blossing et al (2015) to evaluate the schools’ and preschool units’ improvement capacities. Regarding the first aspect, the infrastructure of the local school organization, the analysis was limited to the grouping subsystem constituting the organizational structure and the work in the groups.…”

“…Taking a socio-structural perspective of change, Blossing et al (2015) have developed a framework, with its root in OD theories (Burke, 2008; Schmuck & Runkel, 1994; Schmuck, 1995), to capture improvement capacity in school organizations. The framework includes four aspects connected to: (1) infrastructure, (2) improvement processes, (3) improvement roles, and (4) improvement history.…”

“…Illustrative examples of teachers’ personal and relational needs could be when teachers’ individual needs to attend training courses are prioritized, although they are not in the interest of the school as a whole, or when individual teachers’ wish to work with certain colleagues is given priority although knowledge and competence needs to be spread throughout the organization. Thus, it is essential for school leaders to pay attention to this potentially distorted orientation, to avoid falling into the trap of prioritizing teachers’ individual needs so strongly that organizational needs are neglected (Adolfsson & Alvunger, 2017; Blossing et al, 2015; Stoll, 2009).…”

Innovative work in school development

“…The Pinewood project was funded through the national initiative ‘Knowledge Promotion – From Words into Deeds’, which was a supplemental strategy to the educational reform launched in 2006. By participating in the programme, LEAs were expected to enhance their ability to carry out school development projects designed to improve learning outcomes and learning conditions for students (Blossing et al, 2010). The Pinewood local municipality project received CEA funding, and LEAs funded within this initiative were required to collaborate with external partners (consultants or higher education institutions), to plan their work based on a mandatory organisational analysis tool provided by the CEA and to report on results during and at the end of the project.…”