3D Visualization of Engendering Collaborative Leadership in the Space

The paper focuses on collaborative leadership in education and how to illustrate its engendering process in a three-dimensional space. This complex and fluid process is examined as distributed and pedagogical within a large Finnish vocational upper secondary educational organization. As a consequence, the notion of distributed pedagogical leadership is used when collaborative leadership in education is studied. Collaborative leadership is argued to consist of the innermost substance of a professional learning community, as characteristics or qualities of a group of people working together for specific purposes. Therefore, collaborative leadership naturally involves actors, activities, and context. However, the innermost substance of the community is the crux of leadership. It is here presented in the form of ten “keys” and their operational sub-concepts. The keys are highly interdependent and a movement in one of them has an effect both on every other key and the whole. Within this framework, the paper provides a presentation of selected study results by means of the 3D program Strata. The visualizations illustrate concrete examples of the keys and how they relate to the reality in the vocational education organization in question. For this, a novel analysis is used, based on natural laws and rules of physics.peerReviewe

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Toward a Process Paradigm of Educational Leadership

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Get a vocation: keeping on top of studies Reducing the drop-out rate in vocational upper secondary education and training

European business life is in constant need of a skilled labour force; however, in some sectors there is starting to be a shortage of people with good skills. One of the problems is the drop-out rate in vocational upper secondary education and training. The Finnish Ministry of Education commissioned a study in 2006–2007 on reducing the number of drop-outs, GET A VOCATION – KEEPING ON TOP OF STUDIES. 14 education providers whose educational institutions had a low drop-out percentage, i.e. 4–8%, were chosen for the study. They were located around Finland both in towns and rural areas characterised by diverse forms of business, representing many educational sectors, over 30 vocational schools and around 10,000 students. The aim of the study was to establish the good practices and operating models that underpinned the reduction in the drop-out rate. On the basis of the study, an educational institution that fosters commitment in the students to their studies acts systematically and persistently when coming up against challenges. It examines its operations critically, changing them if necessary by focusing on particular issues. It creates a safe and caring learning environment in which certain basic principles prevail, but it is nevertheless flexible. In these kinds of educational institutions, pedagogically distributed leadership, which has been proven in many studies to be one of the most important distinctive features of a fruitful learning environment, manifests itself in five key areas: in management support groups, the general effectiveness of work on the curriculum, the practices of strategic plans and development work, on-the-job learning and the multi-professional nature of educational guidance.peerReviewe

Analysis of leadership dynamics in educational settings during times of external and internal change

Background: The article concerns the tensions that can arise during demanding external, and consequential internal changes and considers how educational leadership is able to respond to them. Leadership is here understood as a collaborative endeavour, producing shared sense-making in situations of tension. Purpose: The main research question was: what kinds of leadership dynamics underlie situations of tension brought about by external and internal change? The sub-question was: what kind of micro-level sense-making processes, argued to be the true source of change, assist in revealing these dynamics? Programme: Educational organisations increasingly face demanding external changes, such as the two mergers described in this article. Tensions can easily be brought about during such external changes and the consequential internal changes, such as two pedagogical innovation projects in this article. Sample: The study was conducted with three leadership teams within two organisations. The first organisation was a vocational education organisation with around 4000–5000 students and 500 staff members. The leadership team that was studied was followed for almost two years. The other organisation was a business school which comprised of around 7000 students, 150–200 professors and 500 staff members. There, two leadership teams were investigated and followed for almost three years. Design and methods: The data for the sense-making process was selected by way of qualitative content analysis and an experimented model called TenKeys®. This data were analysed using a grounded theory approach to uncover the underlying leadership dynamics. Results: Ten micro-procedural leadership dynamics were identified. Actions related to the pedagogical projects were then interpreted by means of these dynamics. Conclusions: The findings suggest that understanding underlying leadership dynamics might help educational organisations respond to possible tensions brought about by external and internal change and, consequently, support learners’ learning processes, albeit indirectly.peerReviewe

Co-dynamics in engendering innovations through collaborative leadership - A complexity-based approach

The paper presents ten co-dynamics that are supposed to be those underlying forces and powers that bring about an innovation creation process. The co-dynamics as unpredictable movements have been found by a Grounded Theory approach from two large-scale data. Parts of the other data serve here as the empirical source. In order to comprehend the nature of the co-dynamic, the notion of collaborative leadership is exploited. It includes both human participants and tangible elements, such as activities, practices, measures, or tools when synergy is gained. Collaborative leadership is supposed to be, at the same time, both the very source and the result of the dynamical movements.nonPeerReviewe