‘Tell us what, but not how’ – understanding intra-organisational trust among principals and LEA officials in a decentralised school system

Abstract

During the last two decades, researchers and practitioners have shown great interest in research concerning how to implement change in local schools. The research repeatedly stresses the importance of trust among colleagues, yet few studies have examined intra-organisational trust, or the absence of such, during a change process within a decentralised school system that includes local education authorities (LEAs) and local schools. This qualitative study of a municipality reveals principals' and LEA officials' views of intra-organisational trust, while managing a situation of a lack of quality within their school organisation. The article presents empirical data from interviews using the analytical perspective from intra-organisational trust to explore trust, or lack thereof. To analyse the statements, a framework of attributes of trust belief (views of co-workers' benevolence, ability, integrity and predictability) is used. The results describe increasing trust belief among principals and LEA officials comprised in a collectivistic approach of building a new structure for quality and improvement work. The article contributes to the understanding of what creates trust as well as how the relationship between intra-organisational trust and school development can be understood.

Supervision of Madrasah Principal on the Implementation of English Learning Evaluation

“…Supervision and development of teacher performance needs to be done regularly because it will affect the quality of schools. (Andersson & Liljenberg, 2020) argue that changes in school organization often result in a decrease in teacher performance. In this case, it is necessary to have supervision from the madrasah principal, especially trying to provide solutions to these problems.…”

An exploration of “Schools as Learning Organisations” as a catalyst for school and system change

“…The nature of distributed leadership as a theory criticizes the hierarchical design of leadership and suggests the involvement of all personnel in the decision-making mechanism and collaboration among the entire staff as ways to effectively coordinate work and solutions to organizational problems. (Gumus et al, 2018, p.6-7) There is still, however, a role within distributed leadership practice, for positional leaders to facilitate the co-construction and then the monitoring of the implementation and actualisation of a shared vision across a school (Andersson & Liljenberg, 2020;Harris & Jones, 2018aKools & Stoll, 2016b;Liljenberg, 2015;Mulford & Silins, 2010).…”