European Educational Research Journal
ISSN 1474-9041

CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text]

SPECIAL ISSUE
The Europeanisation of Educational Leadership?
Guest Editors: SIMON CLARKE & HELEN WILDY

Simon Clarke & Helen Wildy. Introduction. The Europeanisation of Educational Leadership: much ado about nothing?, pages 352‑358
Jorunn Møller, Gunn Vedøy, Anne Marie Presthus & Guri Skedsmo. Fostering Learning and Sustained Improvement: the influence of principalship, pages 359‑371
Ciaran Sugrue. Performativity and Professionalism: Irish primary principals’ experience of building leadership capacity, pages 372‑386
Joanna M. Michalak. Making a Difference in Challenging Urban Schools: successful principals, pages 387‑396
Lejf Moos. Hard and Soft Governance: the journey from transnational agencies to school leadership, pages 397‑406
John MacBeath. Recruitment and Retention of Senior School Leaders: meeting the challenge, pages 407‑417

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GENERAL ARTICLES
Nele McElvany & Roel van Steensel. Potentials and Challenges of Family Literacy Interventions: the question of implementation quality, pages 418‑433
Stefanie van Ophuysen. Moving to Secondary School: on the role of affective expectations in a tracking school system, pages 434‑446
Laurie Lomas & Jani Ursin. Collegial or Managerial? Academics’ Conceptions of Quality in English and Finnish Universities, pages 447‑460
Amélia Lopes. Teachers as Professionals and Teachers’ Identity Construction as an Ecological Construct: an agenda for research and training drawing upon a biographical research process, pages 461‑475

REVIEW ESSAY doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.3.476
Florian Waldow. What PISA Did and Did Not Do: Germany after the ‘PISA-shock’, pages 476‑483 VIEW FULL TEXT

The Europeanisation of Educational Leadership: much ado about nothing?

SIMON CLARKE & HELEN WILDY Faculty of Education, University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.3.352

This introductory article examines the elusive concept of Europeanisation and discusses the implications of this process for educational leadership, especially as it applies to the formation of school leaders. With an eye to Europeanisation, the article also investigates four pertinent themes extrapolated from the scholarly discussion contained in this special issue of the European Educational Research Journal that may be relevant to the broader context of European educational leadership. These themes are: European understandings of the nature and purpose of educational leadership; the practice of educational leadership in the contemporary European policy environment; the preparation, development and support of school leaders according to a European coordinated approach; and the veracity of a Europeanised educational leadership.

Fostering Learning and Sustained Improvement: the influence of principalship

JORUNN MØLLER University of Oslo, Norway GUNN VEDØY University of Oslo, Norway
ANNE MARIE PRESTHUS University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway
GURI SKEDSMO University of Stavanger, Norway

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.3.359

This article reports on selected findings from the project ‘Revisiting Successful Principals’. The authors revisited some of the schools which participated in the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP) five years ago. In this article they focus on how the principals are positioning themselves as leaders, and how they are involved in the construction of a public self, while responding to questions about fostering learning and sustained improvement. The study confirms that a principal may have a significant influence on a school’s policy and in particular the preferred strategies. In addition, the study revealed that, despite the new expectations which are raised towards schools in society, there was also extensive continuity at the local school.

Performativity and Professionalism: Irish primary principals’ experience of building leadership capacity

CIARAN SUGRUE Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.3.372

The evidence presented in this article regarding policy reforms in the Irish context may suggest that, until now at least, professionalism prevails over performativity when viewed from the perspectives of primary principals. Nevertheless, the article argues that the prevalence of professionalism may indeed be short lived and principals themselves may be complicit in hastening a more performative-driven culture within school communities as they compete for a share of systemic power and in the process increase professional distance between themselves and their teaching colleagues while promulgating a rhetoric of collegiality and shared leadership.

Making a Difference in Challenging Urban Schools: successful principals

JOANNA M. MICHALAK University of Lodz, Poland

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.3.387

The article reports upon findings from four multiple-perspective case studies of successful principals in challenging urban contexts. Each principal was described as making a significant difference to the quality of school education. The findings are obtained from the Polish part of the ‘Leading Schools Successfully in Challenging Urban Contexts’: Strategies For Improvement’ project. The research design consisted of two overlapping phases: the first was a literature review to ascertain ‘what is known’ about the nature and effects of leadership in challenging urban contexts; the second involved a case-study approach, collecting data from 36 schools to explore the leadership strategies that are used by successful principals of schools that face challenging urban contexts. The analysis of the cases identified that there were several interconnected strategies that are not only important, but essential for leadership success in these schools. They are related to setting the directions, developing people, redesigning the organisation and changing the culture of the school. Each of them encompasses more specific competencies, attitudes and considerations.

Hard and Soft Governance: the journey from transnational agencies to school leadership

LEJF MOOS School of Education, University of Århus, Copenhagen, Denmark

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.3.397

The governance and leadership at transnational, national and school level seem to be converging into a number of isomorphic forms as we see a tendency towards substituting ‘hard’ forms of governance, that are legally binding, with ‘soft’ forms based on persuasion and advice. This article analyses and discusses governance forms at several levels. The first layer is the global: the methods of ‘soft governance’ that are being utilised by transnational agencies. The second layer is the national and local: the shift in national and local governance seen in many countries, but here demonstrated in the case of Denmark, and finally the third layer: the leadership used in Danish schools. The use of ‘soft governance’ is shifting the focus of governance and leadership from decisions towards influence and power and thus shifting the focus of the processes from the decision-making itself towards more focus on the premises for decision-making, and towards the follow-up on decision-making, the connecting phase because influence is exerted in all phases. From this new perspective we are interested in analysing new forms of influences like discourses and new social technologies. In order to get an overview and further the understanding of relations and the coherence of processes of influence/power/governance, the article introduces a communications model of decision-making processes as processes of influence.

Recruitment and Retention of Senior School Leaders: meeting the challenge

JOHN MacBEATH Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.3.407

Whether or not it may be described as a ‘crisis’ there are mounting concerns in many countries about the supply line of well-qualified principals or head teachers. This article contends that many of the strategies put in place to address the intensification of school leadership are necessary but insufficient. Collegial networking, confidantes, coaches and critical friends are important and welcome in alleviating the pervasive sense of loneliness that many school leaders express but these measures do not deal with the deeper lying issues. The phenomenon of ‘career deputies’ is now a telling international indicator of a widespread reluctance to become the ‘ultimate Mister Fixit’. Resilience, professional solidarity and subversive qualities within the profession have to play a part in demonstrating to governments that there can be a better way.

Potentials and Challenges of Family Literacy Interventions: the question of implementation quality

NELE McELVANY Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, Germany
ROEL VAN STEENSEL Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.3.418

Literacy interventions in the family context have great potential to promote reading development in children. However, the results of meta-analyses indicate that family-based approaches tend not to be as effective as expected. Although the effectiveness of family literacy interventions can be assumed to hinge largely on the quality of their implementation in families, this aspect has attracted surprisingly little research attention to date. This article identifies, analyses, and discusses aspects of implementation quality that may enhance or diminish the effectiveness of family literacy interventions. Data from two evaluation studies of programmes for kindergarten- and school-age children were used to examine three types of implementation variables (intensity and quality of parent–child activities; support and training provided for parents; participation). The results indicate possibilities for how implementation quality in all three areas can be improved. Implications for future family literacy programmes as well as for evaluation and implementation studies are discussed.

Moving to Secondary School: on the role of affective expectations in a tracking school system

STEFANIE VAN OPHUYSEN Institut für Erziehungswissenschaft Westfälische Wilhelms Universität Münster, Germany

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.3.434

Transition to secondary school implies basic changes in social, instructional and organisational aspects of school life which afford the pupils’ adjustment. As transition takes place at a predictable point in time, children develop expectations about the start at their new school. In order to analyse predictors and consequences of these expectations 870 German children filled in a questionnaire assessing transition expectations, grades in mathematics and language, academic self-concept, and school dislike. Achievement tests were administered, too. Data were collected at the end of grade four at primary school and one year later at secondary school. Regression and communality analyses revealed that emotional school-related variables are more predictive for expectations than measures of achievement. On the other hand, the influence of expectations on the adjustment at secondary school is only of low importance in comparison to school type-effects.

Collegial or Managerial? Academics’ Conceptions of Quality in English and Finnish Universities

LAURIE LOMAS King’s Institute of Learning and Teaching, King’s College London, United Kingdom
JANI URSIN Finnish Institute for Educational Research University of Jyväskylä, Finland

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.3.447

Two specific forms of quality are identified: Type I, which has a managerial focus and stresses fitness for purpose and accountability, and Type II, which is collegial and concerned with enhancement. Through an analysis of the literature on quality in higher education and small-scale empirical research with a sample of academic staff, this article compares conceptions of quality assurance in the English and Finnish higher education systems. The authors highlight the similarities and differences in the two countries and possible reasons for them. Over time the blend of managerial and collegial approaches to quality has come to favour the former but much more so in England than in Finland, which continues to prefer a largely enhancement-led agenda. Both are signatories to the Bologna Declaration, and the implications for other European countries of convergence in quality assurance systems by 2011 through this Declaration are considered.

Teachers as Professionals and Teachers’ Identity Construction as an Ecological Construct: an agenda for research and training drawing upon a biographical research process

AMÉLIA LOPES Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Porto, Portugal

doi:10.2304/eerj.2009.8.3.461

The study of teacher identity developed greatly during the 1990s and, in a way, replaced other studies on teacher professionalism. Highlighting the interactions, emotions and cognitions in their everyday expression, these studies contributed to making visible the role of specific communities of professionals in valuing and improving professional action. However, after almost two decades, it became clear that the study of the construction of teacher identity could not be based solely on the description of the interactions, but in fact also required a macro-sociological analysis. Coordinating these levels of analysis is important for developing the construct of the teacher as a professional, a profile that inspires current teacher training policies in Europe. Based on theoretical contributions such as the ‘construction of professional identities for real social change’ (Claude Dubar), and the ideal-typical model of professionalism (Eliot Freidson), this article aims to present the construction of teacher identity as a subjective dimension of the process of teacher professionalisation, viewing it as an ecological construct. To this end, the article presents the results of research carried out during the 1990s and the early twenty-first century, in order to shed some light on the dynamics inherent to each of the levels of analysis and the interactions which are established between them. The article concludes with a discussion of the advantages of this approach for teacher training and research.

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