Curriculum Studies, Leadership and Educational Governance (CLEG)
The aim of the research group is to generate knowledge of nationally and internationally relevant key policy issues and educational problems. The fundamental questions addressed are positioned among education policy, public administration, and pedagogy, in which studies of educational reform and leadership in compulsory and upper secondary education are central.
How do actors at school level collaborate to realize the overarching societal mission of schooling? This is one of the questions the group will be focusing on. Illustration photo: Shane Colvin/ UV.
The CLEG group's research is organized around three thematic areas. These represent separate domains of inquiry but clearly inform one another: Curriculum and educational reform, Governance and accountability, and Leadership and advancement of knowledge.
An interdisciplinary research field
Curricula, educational reform, and diverse modes of governance forge key premises for leadership and generation of knowledge in schooling and education. Simultaneously, leadership practice is paramount to contemplating how reform and curricula evolve and are enacted on the organizational level.
Through combining these three areas, an interdisciplinary research field is established.
CLEG has provided important contributions within all three areas of investigation (click to read more about each area).
Curricula and educational reform
Research here has demonstrated how reforms are realized through interactions between national traditions and trending international reforms. Findings show how curricula evolve due to internationalization and networking of policy actors. Together, this research has provided input on what is important in education and learning and how schools should ideally be organized.
Governance and accountability
Research within this area has provided knowledge about quality assessment and evaluation practices. It also demonstrates how evaluation leads to new forms of coordination in education, where expectations for the use of results and new technologies govern development and policy enactment.
Leadership and advancement of knowledge
Research reveals how professional actors, such as school leaders, interact and collaborate towards realizing the overarching societal mission of education as well as how change processes and innovation are led and communicated throughout schools.This area comprises an interdisciplinary field of research that draws on various theoretical and methodological approaches.
Research questions for the future
Based on the three areas, the group will focus on the following questions in the near future:
- Which relationships arise among governance, leadership, and students’ learning outcomes?
- How do actors at the school level collaborate to realize the overarching societal mission of schooling?
- How do educational reforms undergo processes of stabilization and change within schools’ practices?
- What leads to power and influence through leadership practice?
- How are innovation and change communicated and coordinated throughout schools?
- How is knowledge and expertise utilized in reform work?
- How do governance and leadership practices change in schools upon the introduction of new tools and multiple forms of data?
An institutional view of reform work and shifts in practice in schools has been and will continue to be central. This view may imply focusing not only on how institutional work occurs but also who executes it and finally what constitutes such work.
The exact outcome of a reform will necessarily rely on the dynamics between the discretionary work of professionals and the degree of state regulation. Additionally, in an era of international comparisons, actors’ use of various forms of data and educational programs offers an important entry to understanding learning processes and the institutional work taking place through change.
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