Knowledge is connections

Lifelong learning: policies and programme

European Policy Network On School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) Grant Agreement EAC-2010-1388 Specific Agreement number: EAC-2010-1388/1

Knowledge is Connections Reflections on knowledge management activities in EPNoSL Del 3.1 Version: 1 Date: 09-01-2014

With the support of the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union

European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) Work Package:

No. 3

Contributors:

Nóra Révai, Justina Erculj, Attila Horváth, Lilla Lukács, Eszter Szegedi

Status, Version No.

Final

Submission date:

09/01/2014

Start Date of the Agreement:

12 December 2012

Duration of the Specific Agreement

13 Months

Dissemination Level:

Public

Project coordinator:

Kathy Kikis-Papadakis, FORTH/IACM katerina@iacm.forth.gr With the support of the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union

Financing:

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.

This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010)

Executive Summary This report is developed in the framework of the European Policy Network of School Leadership (EPNoSL) project’s third work package (WP3) entitled “Knowledge Management”. The objective of this WP was threefold:  



“To promote discourse and networking between diverse stakeholders groups on current pitfalls for school leadership and documenting lessons learnt.

To design, develop and implement collaborative activity-based tools under the scope of enhancing self-reflections on SL roles, tasks, responsibilities and accountability, qualifications and quality assurance and accreditation parameters from an equity and learning perspective.

To enhance the networking capacity amongst target groups within national contexts on pertinent factors relating to the selection and preparation of School Leadership.” (Specific Work Programme 2012-2013)

The present report aims to summarise and analyse the knowledge management activities of the 2 nd phase of EPNoSL. It starts with giving a more theoretical insight into the special role of knowledge management in the field of educational policy drawing on the conceptualisation of knowledge and on recent recognitions concerning the importance of networking in enhancing a global educational knowledge.

The report gives an overview of how knowledge management was conceived and implemented in the project by describing the spaces and channels of knowledge transfer and by offering a typology of the involvement of the different stakeholder groups. Thus it distinguishes those who actively create content from those who “only” follow the discussions and identifies 4 stakeholder groups, by adding knowledge agents to the traditionally identified groups of researchers, practitioners and policy-makers.

The synthesis of national networking highlights two different approaches of networking at the national level: the “push” and the “pull” approach; describes how the partners relied and drew on the main EPNoSL themes and the online events and discussions; and summarises the nature of findings they drew. It further presents two particular examples: the Greek and the French national networks, the former of which was special with regards to its content, whereas the latter with regards to the method of building the network.

The virtual platform (EPNoSL VIP) is explored from three different perspectives: with regards to its structural characteristics, from the perspective of how it deals with equity and learning and from the point of view of its implications on teacher education. We conclude that all the stakeholder groups were represented in the discourse and their contributions show a mixed pattern. The perspective of “equity and learning” appeared in diverse ways in the discussions, although the dimension of actual school practice on equity was less intensely present. The discussions had various implications with regards to the content and methodology of teachers’ and leaders’ professional development, as well as more general considerations as to the context in which teachers can work effectively.

After a detailed statistical analysis of participation, the report draws conclusions with regards to how knowledge is essentially captured in connections and reflects on the impact of the activities.

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010)

Table of Contents

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

2

INTRODUCTION

4

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT – CONCEPT AND STRUCTURE

6

SYNTHESIS OF NATIONAL NETWORKING ACTIVITIES IN 2013

9

APPROACH TO NATIONAL NETWORKING STAKEHOLDERS AND ACTIVITIES THEMATIC FOCUS NATURE OF FINDINGS GOOD PRACTICE CASES

10 11 12 13 14

STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF VIP CONTENT

15

EQUITY AND LEARNING IN THE VIP DISCUSSIONS

22

THE TEACHER EDUCATION PERSPECTIVE

26

ABOUT ATEE SCHOOL GOVERNANCE AND TEACHER EDUCATION THE ROLE OF SCHOOL LEADERS SYSTEM LEADERSHIP AUTONOMY – ROOM FOR MANOEUVRE LEADERSHIP FOR EQUITY CONCLUSIONS

27 27 27 28 28 28 29

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS

29

VIP PARTICIPATION STATISTICS NATIONAL NETWORK STATISTICS

29 32

CONCLUSION

34

REFERENCES

35

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010)

Introduction Eszter Szegedi One of the major challenges of the 21th century’s educational policy in particular after the economic crises is to contribute to the understanding of knowledge and learning in the context of economic development and social cohesion. Educational experts as well as the governments make efforts to define a new role for schools in building and servicing a knowledge-based society, both schools and other educational institutions have to face this new requirement. Since the late 20th century’s new paradigm ‘lifelong learning’ has spread, the question of what functions schools can fulfil in the emerging learning society that would not be better fulfilled by other actors and institutions is increasingly more relevant. Is it possible to exploit research and other forms of knowledge so as to make the sector more effective? There are many practitioners still convinced that education is rather an art which is strongly rooted in practical experience; thus establishing and implementing more comprehensive theoretical knowledge is irrelevant. These are often the underlying questions of discussions among researchers, policy makers and practitioners, whatever might be their central issue. We cannot however answer these questions without a deeper understanding of the concept of knowledge and the nature of knowledge flow between the educational actors.

Defining knowledge has been in the centre of interest of philosophy for centuries. A generally accepted view nowadays is the classification of four different kinds of knowledge by Lundvall and Johnson (Lundvall and Johnson, 1994):  Know-what.  Know-why.  Know-how.  Know-who.

In a more recent article Lundvall highlights the ancient roots of this categorisation, which helps us understand the deeper meaning behind them (Lundvall, 2003, p. 3): “Knowledge has been at the centre of analytical interest from the very beginning of civilisation.

Aristotle distinguished between: EPISTÈMÈ: knowledge that is universal and theoretical. TECHNÈ: knowledge that is instrumental, context specific and practise related. PHRONESIS: Knowledge that is normative, experience based, context-specific and related to common sense: “practical wisdom”. At least two of our categories have roots that go back to these three intellectual virtues. Know-why is similar to epistèmè and know-how to technè. But the correspondence is imperfect, since we will follow Polanyi and argue that scientific activities always involve a combination of know-how and know-why. Aristotle’s third category, phronesis, which relates to the ethical dimension, will be reflected in what is to be said about the need for a social and ethical dimension in economic analysis and about the importance of trust in the context of learning.”

Our present knowledge in the field of education has been based on the results of scientific research which took place in the past few decades. As a result, we have learned a lot about the first two elements of the above mentioned four categories of knowledge, the question of know-how is however gaining increasingly more importance and together with know-who seem to be an increasingly more complex issue.

Education systems have often been described as multilevel, multiactor and complex adaptive systems in the 21th century. Multilevel refers to the co-existence of a transnational level, in which actors, factors, initiatives and sources determine the development of educational governance and systems, and traditional levels such

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) as national, regional, institutional or personal levels of education. The concept ‘multiactor’ is similar, however it implies another type of change, namely that policy makers, representatives of different interest groups of the society, different stakeholders such as parents, employers, teachers, teacher educators etc. all influence the formation of educational systems and it is the interactions of these actors that determine the processes of educational systems.

Considering the above described complexity, it is easier to understand the raison d’être and importance of knowledge management in the field of education. The OECD published a study in 2000 which – based on the experience in the knowledge-intensive economic sectors – emphasises that designing an infrastructure to support knowledge management is crucial to serve tomorrow’s needs, moreover the educational institutions require a conscious change in their culture to manage knowledge better. The study seeks to answer the most relevant and recent questions for the education systems which are as follows (OECD, 2000, p. 69): – – –

– –

“What knowledge (and innovation) is likely to be needed and by whom in education systems of the future?

What are the best ways of i) producing, ii) mediating/disseminating and iii) applying such knowledge?

What action needs to be taken to increase the education system’s capacity for the successful production, mediation and application of knowledge, and what infrastructure might be needed to support and sustain this capacity?

How can this be done to ensure that education systems are efficient and effective and meet the new goals and functions that are likely to be set for them?

In particular, how might all these developments influence and support “schooling for tomorrow”?”

According to the conclusion in Chapter 3 of the OECD report, these questions can only be answered by using a global framework for managing knowledge rather than sequencing knowledge into production, transmission and application. The authors emphasise that establishing and using networks and ICT to support knowledge management, forging new roles and relationships between researchers and practitioners to support better educational R&D and expanding the role of practitioners in knowledge management are crucial.

Networking could be a key element of facilitating the production and application of new pedagogic knowledge on a large scale however it requires the engagement of practitioner-teachers in schools as well as the research community. Educational research is under pressure to become more applied and one of the reasons for the low rates of successful application of research knowledge in pedagogical practice may originate in the difficulties of knowledge transfer. School-generated knowledge could equally enrich academic knowledge, it is however necessary that the different actors make a collaborative professional effort so that the boundary between research and its application become permeable.

Nevertheless in recent decades there has been a spectacular shift of thinking in education from the question of what should be done to the question of how this can be achieved. The focus has been on the implementation issues: we know relatively much about what we should do, however we do not always have the capacity to actually realise the required changes. The reason for this lack of capacity is rooted in the complex, multilevel and multiactor nature of the educational systems, which imply that the results of a policy measure or an institutional innovation are theoretically not predictable. As a consequence the importance of policy experimentation and the subsequent policy learning increases, these two are the key elements of governance.

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) Although technology makes it easier to disseminate theoretical knowledge, electronic publications of results are not necessarily easy to understand, so human networks remain crucial in accessing information. The emerging global information society has created a new profession, the role of which is essential in the mediation between different stakeholders who “do not speak each other’s language“. We coined representatives of this emerging profession ‘knowledge agents’. They are those who design the most appropriate knowledge management activities, manoeuvre the knowledge sharing fora and motivate the participants. They can equally play a role in helping school leaders in their task to integrate policy requirements, theoretical and practical educational knowledge.

The programmes of the Virtual Platform of the European Policy Network on School Leadership and the opportunity itself to create spaces for the different actors from different nations and with various professional background where they can exchange their experience, share their views and engage in an open dialogue is a great form of enhancing policy learning and building trust as a mutual base of partnerships. The essence of the one year long communication process is summarised in the paper on policy response by Bagley and Ward from the perspective of today’s policy making, policy learning and formation of policy consensus: “… Bates et al (2011, p. 41) identify how policy ‘ownership’ is considered to be crucial to implementation. This is because a dispersed, rather than top-down, model of implementation is more likely to ensure that various stakeholders (e.g. parents and local authorities) view policy as benign, rather than an alien interloper, and terms such as ‘influential stakeholders’ and ‘policy community’ (ibid, p. 42) are used to describe the multitude of individuals who must be “on-board” with a policy message in order for it to be embraced. Clearly, this view is consistent with Harvey’s (2009) account of the embedding of novel ideas. The conflation of policy with “common sense” and the cultivation of policy ownership is engineered through such things as consultations and conferences, and of course policy documents play a key role in recruiting stakeholders’ support. Interestingly, it has been argued that policy networks, which would include our own European Policy Network on School Leadership (EPNoSL), ‘are displacing hierarchy and markets and developing as the dominant mode of governance and social organisation’ (Ball, 2012, p. 7), meaning that we ourselves are playing an increasingly important role in the formation of policy consensus.”

Knowledge management – concept and structure Nóra Révai Knowledge management (KM) activities in EPNoSL were conceived to fulfil the following 3 objectives:  



“To promote discourse and networking between diverse stakeholders groups on current pitfalls for school leadership and documenting lessons learnt.

To design, develop and implement collaborative activity-based tools under the scope of enhancing self-reflections on SL roles, tasks, responsibilities and accountability, qualifications and quality assurance and accreditation parameters from an equity and learning perspective.

To enhance the networking capacity amongst target groups within national contexts on pertinent factors relating to the selection and preparation of School Leadership.” (Specific Work Programme 2012-2013)

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) As mentioned in depth in the introduction, KM activities were designed to facilitate knowledge sharing between policy-makers, practitioners (school heads, teachers, teacher and leader trainers, etc.) and researchers both within the EPNoSL partnership and at the national level of the participating countries.

Knowledge management in the second period of EPNoSL (2013) took the form of several interrelated activities, just like in the first period: national networking, online discussions, conferences, PLAs, resource sharing, newsletters, policy briefing notes etc. The first two of the above list – national networks and online fora – were the two methods that constituted the activities of WP3. National network building strategies, activities and the composition of national networks varied in the different countries, a more detailed description of these will be given in the section on national networks. The online fora comprised a series of structured events: 6 webinars and 5 forum discussions thematically closely related to the five main EPNoSL themes: accountability, autonomy, distributed leadership, policy response and educating school leaders for equity and learning. The series of programmes were coined EPNoSL VIP – the Virtual Platform of the European Policy Network on School Leadership –, conveying the obvious message that the programme is open: anyone interested or in any way involved in the improvement of school leadership is a “very important person”, since any knowledge, experience, thought or idea enriches the discourse on the topic. The analysis of its content with special regards to how the horizontal perspective – equity and learning – appeared in the discussions is provided in the third and fourth sections.

Both the openness of the programme and the technological background (a dynamic portal) allow for all participants to contribute to the discussions, share resources and information within the spaces (platforms) created for the purposes of KM. The figure below represents how the concept of KM was realised within EPNoSL:

Figure 1: Knowledge management spaces in EPNoSL

Figure 1 shows the two main spaces created to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and to foster the generation of new knowledge. The left side is the Virtual Platform (VIP), the international virtual space where EPNoSL partners and all those whom they invite and attract into this space – members of the national

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) networks, members of European associations, partners’ colleagues, etc. – come together to share their knowledge, while the right side is the multitude of the national networks on school leadership created by EPNoSL members. Nodes represent the people involved, some of whom are highly linked – also called hubs (Barabási, Albert-László, 2005) –, that is, they know and work together with many, whereas others are less central (more lowly linked) actors. The edges linking the nodes represent some kind of relationship between these two people, which for our purposes is interpreted in a broad sense including for example the link between the presenter of a webinar with its audience. These links are the channels through which knowledge flows.

The link between the two spaces was strong: reports on national networking as well as the final evaluation of the VIP prove that the international discourse was used as an input for the national events in many cases.

Specific examples for how the VIP discussions inspired national networking activities will be given in section 2.

Concerning the roles the members of a community can take on there are various typologies. When describing social epidemics Gladwell distinguishes three “agents of change”:   

connectors: those who know many people usually across social, cultural, professional circles, and introduce people from different circles, they correspond to network hubs; mavens: “information specialists” who accumulate knowledge and know how to share it with others; salesmen: “persuaders”, people with powerful negotiation skills, who can easily make others want to agree with them. (Gladwell, 2000)

According to the type of participation, the members of a collaborative website (such as wiki) can be   

viewers: those who only view content, editors: those who also edit content, creators: those who create new content.

As for the proportion of these different types of participants the “90-9-1 principle” holds, which states that 90% are viewers, 9% are editors and only 1% create content. Yet another classification says that the rule of thumb or the 1% rule holds for the participation in an internet community, that is, only 1% of the users actively create new content, the other 99% only “lurk”. (Wikipédia “1% rule (Internet culture)”, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_%28Internet_culture%29) While all these classifications may have relevance in the knowledge management of EPNoSL, neither of them can directly be applied in our particular settings. We will see later (in section 3) that the roles participants can assume in the VIP events are very similar to those of a collaborative website. In general the members of EPNoSL and its national networks may have had one or more of the following roles:   

contributors: those who actively contribute by knowledge input: presenters of webinars, keynote article writers, moderators of and contributors to the forum discussions; followers or participants: those who “passively” participate in webinars and national workshops, read the keynote articles, resources and/or follow the discussions; mavens or sharers: those who actively share the information/knowledge they gained through various channels (e.g. a school principal / teacher who tells their colleagues, a trainer who builds it in their training course, etc.).

Although we had no tool to measure the activity of people from this perspective as no information was available on the number of mavens nor were EPNoSL partners asked and provided tools to carry out detailed

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) statistical network analysis, the VIP events’ participation could be analysed to a certain extent. The analysis found that the activity of people in EPNoSL VIP corresponds to the typical online behaviour of people, thus the vast majority are followers (passive participants), while only a small proportion actively create or share knowledge (see section 3 for details).

Besides their different roles or type of activity, individuals have a particular professional background that connects them to school leadership: they can be practicing school principals, leaders or teachers, teacher or leader trainers, researchers or policy (or decision) makers, etc. The common platforms (international and national) ensured the grounds for knowledge exchange between the different stakeholder groups. More details about the participation of the stakeholder groups will be given in section 2 and 3.

After a short summary of the spaces of knowledge management, let us first go into more details about the national networks by giving an overview of the approach to networking and examples of how they were put into practice.

Synthesis of national networking activities in 2013 Attila Horváth, Nóra Révai Establishing and exploiting networks has become a major tool of knowledge management and has increasingly gained ground in the field of educational governance as described in the introduction of the present report. With the objective of facilitating a dialogue on school leadership between different stakeholders across Europe, one of EPNoSL’s key activity lies in fostering networking both at the international (EPNoSL itself) and the national level and in strengthening the connection between the European and the national discourses.

When synthesising networking activities it is useful to consider some of the results of the emerging science of networks which provides new insights in many scientific areas and has a huge potential of application. In the report entitled National Platforms on Educational Policy on School Leadership (Révai, 2012) a short overview was given of the typology of networks describing self-organising and artificial, horizontal (informal) and vertical (formal) networks. Some important characteristics that influence the way networks function were also highlighted. Thus we noted that “National networks established in the framework of EPNoSL are interesting mixtures of artificial and natural networks in as much as in most cases they rely on existing informal connections but gather people for a specific purpose and around a common interest.” (Révai, 2012) We equally emphasised that networks can transform over time due to their internal dynamics: artificial networks can become natural ones and natural (informal) networks may be formalised. These different types of networks can however not only be linked through time but they also have a symbiotic linkage since artificial networks are very rarely viable without close cooperation with natural networks. In order to further develop networks in EPNoSL we must keep in mind some basic conditions which are necessary for the effective functioning of artificial networks:  The basis of the network should be mutual trust between the members  All members should be motivated to function the network and to cooperate  Common language and sustainable communication channels  Continuous knowledge sharing  Resources must be allocated in a sustainable way.

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010)

On the basis of network theory and the conclusions regarding national networking in Phase 1 we adopted an open and flexible approach to the further development of national networks in Phase 2, which is based on trust and support. The approach can be summarised as follows: 1. Each partner could create their own particular approach to networking. They were free and encouraged to build on their existing networks, to determine their thematic focus and to select the channels of communication and methods of knowledge sharing most appropriate for their purposes and national context.

2. In order to effectively plan networking activities partners were provided with a planning tool to help them think over their own strategy and needs. Plans were then shared within the partnership and could be used as a source of inspiration.

3. A methodological toolkit, a collection of ideas to inspire partners and facilitate the effective implementation of the national workshops, was compiled to support EPNoSL partners in their national network building activities.

4. Partners were provided with a short synthesis of previous EPNoSL outcomes that they were encouraged to translate and disseminate in their national networks in order to introduce EPNoSL understandings and discourse in the national contexts.

5. Partners were asked to report on their national networks using a common template and to evaluate their activities against a set of criteria that was commonly established and agreed upon.

In the following we are going to synthesise partners’ individual approaches to developing their networks, the composition of stakeholders in the networks, the various activities that took place, the thematic focus partners chose as well as the nature of findings, conclusions and implications that were drawn.

Approach to national networking The strategy to national networking varied among participating countries. This is easy to understand as the different national systems, national policies towards school leadership require adequate approaches. There are, however, some patterns that can be drawn based upon the national reports.

An important but hidden agenda was the intention of national partners. What did they want the network for? What was the aim of setting up a national network?

We identified two approaches: the “pull” and the “push” tactics. Some networks intended to provoke change in their educational system and the organisers of the network had specific ideas of what and how should be done. Their approach was to provide as much information as possible about specific practices.

Practices and policies the network makers considered as worthwhile to explore. This is what we call the “push” tactics. The Portuguese network, for example, has built a strong and meaningful program in order to instigate new ideas among teachers and other stakeholders in school leadership. Similarly, in Poland and Hungary network activities were focussing on specific topics and brought in information, expertise to introduce ideas on accountability, equity or distributed leadership. The Lithuanian example is interesting because the national report clearly sees the need for a “push” approach but the resources are considered to be inadequate for this effort. In another Baltic country, Estonia, the “push” approach is also clear as they were focussing hard on finding better ways of school evaluation within the network.

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) On the other hand we saw other countries where the intention was to open up a wide variety of information without filtering and where the network operators made no effort to promote any particular concept or idea or to formulate educational policy. The idea behind is that things will happen anyway if they want to happen, we can help the process by providing all the pros and cons so that stakeholders can make an informed decision. This is the “pull” approach. We could see a good example on this in the case of Sweden where several networks exist already and EPNoSL is seen as an extra resource but not a tool for bringing in change. The Danish and Spanish networks took similar stance and have been organised with the aim of providing information on the international scene and share experiences they have.

Depending on the local circumstances networking took two alternative routes in developing. In a number of countries, reportedly in Sweden, Latvia or Poland there are several networks and partners saw the danger of organising yet another one just for the sake of a project. In these countries the strategy was to coordinate or to join existing networks so as not to duplicate efforts.

In some countries the formalisation of the network was seen to be unproductive or an option that is not viable. In Hungary the establishment of formal network was simply stated as “not possible”. The reasons may have been similar to the Lithuanian case where the national partner described the situation in a bleak perspective. The formalisation of a network needs resources, some funding in any case, and some of the organisations who have been partners in this project cannot provide this. The network operators clearly saw the national networks as grass root organisations. While this approach is a proper alternative but it is not seen how the networks will survive following the end of the project. It is rather true that networks grow freely in a free environment and die out in dark unless they get support.

Some other partners chose another way and started the network with a strong government support. The top-down method was chosen in Slovenia, Portugal, Greece, France and Flemish Belgium. The formulation of these networks required very good lobbying capacities and as a result the maintenance and the operations are also easier. The possible danger of top down organised networks is that it could be ambiguous after a while who is informing and influencing whom.

The German experience is very exciting as they have realised that while there are already existing networks, during their activities they observed that new professional relationships have been coined and new micronetworks were formed. This throws light on the nature of networks: networks if not formalised into institutions are constantly rebuilding themselves and practically consist of many bilateral relations and micro-networks of only a few people who have some other links to other micro-networks. The German example vividly explains the nature of networks, that is, networks consist of networks and not all members are connected with everybody.

Stakeholders and activities The report form on the national networking activities listed a number of stakeholders and respondents were asked to provide numbers for each item. The form had an “other” item as well so that unmentioned categories could also be reported.

Partners in some cases misunderstood the section and reported the potential number of the target group instead of the positively attending or participating people. Numerical statistics therefore may be misleading.

Nevertheless, there were some partners who have involved all listed stakeholder types (Poland, Latvia and France). It is hard to assess if there were some other stakeholders included in the process because not filling out the “other” cell does not necessarily imply a negative answer. However, one partner, Slovenia, listed

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) NGO leaders, Student Associations’ heads, minority group representatives. considered on the list of categories for future reports.

Some of these may be

In some cases it was difficult to see why some stakeholders have been omitted. This is particularly true in the case of school inspectors. School inspectors may be working under different names in countries. The Danish partner’s remark was that this term is not relevant for them. The Hungarian report also crossed it out as at the time of the project there has been no school inspection in this country.

In general the participating countries focussed on different groups of stakeholders and tried to avoid the “one size fits all” approach in their communication. If there was more than one event organized these were aiming at partly different audiences.

It was characteristic of some actions, like in Hungary, Germany, Greece, Lithuania that parents were not addressed by the activities. The idea was that these professional networks are dealing with problems and in a language that is not suitable for a wider debate. While others, France, Latvia and Poland tried to reach as many stakeholders as possible in order to publicize good practice to all. In France, e.g., even books were published on the topic.

It can be said that all reporting partners established some kind of activity during the period in question. The number of activities per partner varied between 1 (Lithuania, Spain, Denmark, Belgium-FL, Estonia) and 5 (Portugal).

The types of activities ranged from seminars and conferences to research. Most partners considered it to be very important to disseminate the different good or interesting and challenging practices they witnessed during the project. Therefore seminars, conferences were overwhelming on the list of activities. The participation generally seemed to be very good and exceeded the expectations of organisers.

Non traditional ways of meetings, namely on-line discussions, webinars or forums have not been reported very much in the national network reports. The Polish report mentions virtual platform and in one case, in Lithuania, the webinars and e-forums were evaluated as a way of communication participants liked very much.

It has not been part of the national networking per se but must be mentioned here that the webinars organised for the partners and interested stakeholders on the project level have contributed largely to the success of developing not only national but transnational networks.

Thematic focus The topics for some national network meetings, conferences show a strong emphasis on philosophical issues concerning leadership. Even the wording “leadership” (and not e.g., management) suggests this. Terms like “distributed leadership”, “autonomy”, “equity” were in the focus of activities in Denmark, Hungary, Portugal and Spain. Therefore the key questions have been like in Spain: “What do you mean by Leadership? What do you mean by Accountability?”

A rather different approach was taken by other countries where they concentrated on down to earth, pragmatic issues, like effective organisation (Lithuania), school development and improvement of the performance of the educational system (France). The German workshops referred to similar areas but also added “distributed leadership” signalling that it has a day-to-day significance as well. In Estonia the key topic was how to evaluate school leaders and schools and how to inform the public about their performance.

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) In some cases the thematic focus seemed to be less important than the event itself. In some countries, like Slovenia the headteachers had an opportunity to meet with decision makers and the Minister to discuss any issues that concerns them regarding school leadership. A similar case was reported by the German partner: “stakeholders from ministries of education found it very beneficial to have the opportunity for an exchange of ideas with school heads”. In Lithuania the networking itself was a great step forward. While in Greece the target group of special education institutions set the topic as well.

The Belgian-Flemish system is going through some significant changes as, so called, school groups will be formed from small organisations. The Belgian partner conducts a research in finding out what new competencies will this amalgamation call for and what specific needs will arise in training of school heads.

Also in Belgium a survey is pursued on the need for training novice school leaders (serving less than 5 years).

Nature of findings Many of the findings in the reports are very country specific. The solutions and suggestions described by e.g., the Greek report are excellently structured and most probably useful for local use. The real outcome and the conclusions will only show years from now. It is only then to see if there was anything that could be generalised or used in other national contexts.

There are, however, a few conclusions provided either by the partners or could be drawn from the national reports. One important implication was emphasised by the French report referring to a book that was published in the framework of the project. The new leadership task for a school principal is “to find, within the scope of schools, ways to coordinate pedagogical action between partners who do not share the same views as to the objective of education. Even if these partners do not agree on the basic principles, they can do so on practices, for instance a similar work organization”. The suggestion is that the key role of leadership is to mediate the sometimes conflicting interest in the operation of a school. Networking may be a good tool to find good ways and learn from unsuccessful cases.

Somewhat similar ideas emerged in the Slovenian report in which the workshop with parent associations resulted in the following findings:   

“Parents involvement must overcome individual interest for their child National parents association can play important role in raising involvement and parents influence on schools policies Schools must find different ways of co-operation with parents”

The consequences here are also stemming from the complex social environment of schools: children use schools, parents are the guardians of their children’s interest, school have to take into consideration the interest of all children and the state must ensure proper and high quality operations. The interplay of these stakeholders determines the freedom of action for the school leader.

Without making hasty generalisations about systems and their history it seems that the communication between government level (ministry) and schools differ significantly in, so called, “old” and “new” members of the EU. Discussion of policy makers and government officials is an everyday action in some countries with a long history of democracy or stakeholder involvement. One example is Sweden where the partner is the Ministry of Education but at the same time it did not vindicate the power of setting the topics or the pace for local networking. They repeatedly emphasized that the ministry is not in the position of organising events or have a decisive word in the activities. All these have been outsourced to the other Swedish partner, Umea University. The ministry and the Centre for Principal Development at the university have regular meetings

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) with school leaders and their representatives, trade unions, school board politicians. As they frankly stated: “We don’t see a great need for us to form another network. (…) If we shall be successful we need to have a very good program or task for us to discuss.” As they do have proper communication among stakeholders as a usual practice what “very good task” could they find?

In the case of Slovenia participants found it to be very useful to meet policy makers and the minister in person. They may need the network to instigate this communication as this was the exceptional occasion and not the routine. As the report words it: “it was the agreement, as one of the final conclusions, that it should be useful to involve the headteachers in the process of policy decisions and not only inform them after they are made already.” In Hungary efforts have been made to involve ministry officials to attend the two workshops they organised but no one was able to attend. Nevertheless lower level decision and policy makers did participate in both events. The Lithuanian case is even bleaker as the report is speaking about a “bewitchment circle” in which people are not used to speak up openly which is inevitable to run a network.

At the same time only networks can encourage people to share their values and see that they are not alone.

All in all, the morale of these examples is that a function of networks is to bring people together who can share views and values and are “ganging up” to influence policy. This function is badly needed in some countries and is completely meaningless in others.

Finally, there is a technical finding that is coming back again and again from the national reports. In short, the obvious became clear yet again: in Europe English is the new lingua franca. This suggests that any school leader who intends to be involved in international networks needs to be able to communicate in English. Many partners mentioned that the abundance of excellent materials has been spread in EPNoSL but they had no capacity to translate them. The problem implies that intermediates are needed in conveying international experiences on national level. One important function for national networks could be to provide this cultural translation of good (or not that good) practices.

Good practice cases Listing the following good practices does not mean that these were the only interesting examples. However, we found that there are some approaches which may spark new ideas regarding either the content or the method of building networks in the area of school leadership.

One of the specific approaches was presented by Greece. The network was built in a top-down direction by a ministerial background research organisation, the Institute of Educational Policy (IEP). The IEP prepared an overview on the educational leadership scene and realised that there is a field with a lack of leadership support. They started to focus on a group of institutions that has not been in the centre of development due to its special stakeholder group. The schools of special education with specific and differentiated characteristics were selected to be the main target group for the national networking activities. Special education schools related to leadership is a very new area for development in Greece. The strategy IEP chose was not to duplicate networks in school leadership, or offer yet another event to overloaded school leaders but to find a “Blue Ocean” if the market terminology fits this case. The lesson that could be learnt from this case is that networks grow faster and in a more effective way in areas which are relatively neglected or new in an educational system rather than trying to establish a competing network in already “occupied” areas. The success of this strategy is earmarked by the fact that organisers had to change the venue of the planned seminars due to the high number of participants coming to the event at their own cost from all over the country.

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) Another interesting example was provided by France. The national network team was also comprised of highly organised institutions. The central research institution and some other local divisions and higher education institutions put in the focus of their effort the topic of Latin versus Anglo-Saxon approach to educational leadership. It is already well known that because of historical reasons different systems and philosophies of education emerged in various parts of Europe. It is also known that the North American and British influence on education is very strong and one of the pitfalls of making education policy is to copy the methods used in other countries without proper adaptation. The French approach is not arguing against the Anglo-Saxon model but takes another twist in interpretation. They state that in Latin European systems the key issue is not accountability (as these are highly centralized state systems) but to develop pedagogical coordination. This is to “develop an ability to manage schools without agreements between partners about the actual purposes of education: the goal is to find objects and objectives stakeholders may be able to agree on.”

Structural analysis of VIP content Nóra Révai Generating dialogue on school leadership issues between diverse stakeholders is the main objective of knowledge management in EPNoSL. Therefore it is worthwhile to analyse the outcomes from the perspective of stakeholder participation and to examine the discourse in terms of identifiable patterns characteristic to the different groups.

Before going into that it is important to underline however that the data available on the professional background of participants is limited (we do not have information on every participant’s background).

Moreover the frontier between the different stakeholder groups is blurry, the groups are not disjoint. There might be people who belong to several of them at the same time, for example someone who is engaged both in research and in leader training at a university is a researcher who also works in the field of practice.

Others might have belonged to several groups over time, for instance someone who was a school leader for many years and works now as a researcher. It was thus not always easy to decide which group somebody belonged to, for the statistical purposes however we had to make a decision in each case, which we tried to do in the most coherent manner possible. (Boukhelifa, Révai, 2006) We decided to consider the actual professional activity of each participant or the one he/she represents more strongly in EPNoSL. Thus the head of a leader training institute within a university was considered a practitioner even though the discourse he/she engages in may differ from that of a school leader who has no professional background in educational research.

The main stakeholder groups engaged in the discussions were:   

practitioners – including school leaders, teachers, teacher or leader trainers, inspectors, representatives of practitioners’ (SLs’, teachers’, etc.) professional organisations, researchers (from universities, research institutes), policy-makers – including people from ministries, national authorities but also from regulatory bodies or executive agencies established by governments.

The field of knowledge management is infiltrating the world of education as well, as mentioned in the introduction, the number of organisations, companies and individuals whose expertise resides in mediating

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) between different stakeholders by making the results of a profession more digestible and meaningful for another profession, and in facilitating dialogue between different groups by creating the most suitable platforms and spaces for knowledge sharing. In the EPNoSL consortium these organisations have a special role, but their presence in the dialogues is also important as they are likely to function as mavens/sharers (see in section 1). Thus for our purposes, we have introduced a fourth group: 

knowledge agents – including representatives of the so-called capacity building organisations, counsellors/advisors of ministries and authorities, etc.

Different levels of participation can be distinguished according to the nature of contributions made. We will use the following categories:   

main input providers – webinar presenters, writers of keynote articles of the forum discussions, contributors – those who posted comments in the chat box during webinars or on the forum discussion thread, viewers – those who “passively” participated in events, viewed the webinars, and visited the forum discussions.

Note that these categories, although similar, are not identical to the roles that were described in the section on knowledge management as they are specific to the participation in an event (here), while those listed earlier are roles more generally assumed in creating/transferring knowledge and are not restricted to a particular event. The following table summarises the participation of the different stakeholder groups:

VIP MAIN INPUT PROVIDER CONTRIBUTOR VIEWER* Total

Practitioner

Researcher Policy-maker

Knowledge agent

Unknown

Total

3

17

1

0

0

21

25

24

4

17

4

74

52

37

16

33

37

175/1049**

80

78

21

50

41

270/1319

*The number of participants in the webinars per stakeholder group. The total number of followers of forum discussions can be estimated with webpage analytics (visitors with individual IP addresses) however information on their professional background is not available. ** The total number of followers of forum discussions estimated with webpage analytics.

Table 1: Participation in VIP events according to stakeholder groups and roles

It is clear from the data that the VIP discussions were very much research-inspired, 80% of those who provided the main input are researchers. As for the proportion of contributors it is closer to the distribution of all the participants, there is no observable dominance of one or the other stakeholder group.

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010)

Figure 2: Participation in VIP events according to stakeholder groups and roles

Figure 3: The proportion of the different roles assumed by participants

The pie chart above underpins that the behaviour of participants in the VIP events is very similar to that of a typical online community, the percentages are very close to the 90-9-1 principle, and they correspond surprisingly precisely the rule of thumb if we only consider those who create new content (in our case the main input providers) and those who only “lurk� (here the contributors and the viewers).

In order to explore the patterns of discourse of the different stakeholder groups we established a simple typology of contributions based on the forum discussions and the webinar comments. Essentially there were 4 main types of contributions: questions, comments, which formulated a certain opinion about the topic or introduced a new perspective to the discussion, specific examples and feedback on the input or the other comments/posts. To give a more precise picture of these contributions we further broke down 3 of these categories and thus came up with the following:

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) questions that move the conversation forward by introducing a new aspect/perspective  Questions questions that ask to precise a previous statement, idea  Opinions, comments examples of a specific practice (e.g. in a school)  Examples examples of a specific policy (e.g. in a country) or a general phenomenon general feedback (e.g. “Thank you for the inspiring presentation”)  Feedback specific feedback on a previous opinion (e.g. “I agree with X with regards to…”)

The number of the different types of contributions per stakeholder group is shown in Table 2.

WEBINARS

QUESTION

forward moving asking to precise

OPINION, COMMENT EXAMPLE

of practice of policy

FEEDBACK Total

general specific

PRACTITIONER

RESEARCHER

POLICY-MAKER

KNOWLEDGE AGENTS

unknown

7

9

3

11

1

1

1

0

4

0

25

18

0

10

0

7

2

0

1

0

4

1

1

1

0

4

13

1

1

1

7 55

10 54

0 5

2 30

2 4

Total 31 6 53 10 7 20 21 148

Table 2: Different types of contribution per stakeholder group in the webinars

Figure 3: Proportion of types of contribution in the webinars

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010)

Figure 4: Types of contribution per stakeholder group in the webinars

Comparing the percentage of participation per stakeholder group and that of contributions per stakeholder group in the case of the webinars, we find no significant differences, that is none of the stakeholder groups contributes significantly more or less intensely (compared to their participation). Concerning the type of contributions, the most common form was comments/opinion on the whole, however policy-makers did not use this form, they asked questions, gave examples or feedback. Nonetheless, it would be false to draw conclusions as to general trends on contribution patterns as the number of policy makers were too low to have reliable results.

In the case of the forum discussions a fourth type of contribution appeared: of resources (e.g. with links)  share of research results (e.g. in the form of specific references).

The following table and diagrams show the type of contributions per stakeholder group in the forum discussions:

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010)

FORUM QUESTION

forward moving asking to precise

OPINION, COMMENT EXAMPLE FEEDBACK SHARE Total

of practice of policy general specific resource research result/citation

PRACTITIONER

RESEARCHER

POLICY-MAKER

3 1

4 2

1 0

KNOWLEDGE AGENTS 1 0

10

18

1

3 3 3 6 0

1 5 11 15 1

2 31

unknown

Total

1 0

10 3

3

2

34

0 0 1 0 0

4 4 2 2 2

0 0 2 2 0

8 12 19 25 3

5

2

1

0

10

62

5

19

7

124

Table 3: Different types of contribution per stakeholder group in the forum discussions

Figure 5: Proportion of types of contribution in the forum discussions

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010)

Figure 6: Types of contribution per stakeholder group in the forum discussions

In the case of the forum discussions the proportion of contributions per stakeholder group corresponds exactly to the rate of participation that is our data does not show any difference in the intensity of participation between the stakeholder groups. As for the types of contributions, the picture is colourful here as well: all 5 types reached more than 10%, the most common ones seem to have been feedback and comments/opinion. Before we start to compare the data on webinars with those on forum discussions we must note the difficulties encountered during data coding. While in the chat during a webinar it is relatively easy to count the different types of contributions as most of the time one chat comment contains one or maximum 2 types of contributions, it is not the case in forum discussions. Forum posts are usually longer and often contain for example several comments and opinion related to various points. In the phase of data coding we counted the types of contributions each forum post contained, thus if there were three long paragraphs with detailed views on various subtopics, it was counted as 1 comment only. For this reason webinars and forum discussions are not comparable.

On the whole, we can say both for webinars and forum discussions that the dialogue generated was quite varied with regards to the different types of contributions. Moreover the contributions of the stakeholder groups also show a rather mixed pattern, it is not for example the case that practitioners asked and researchers expressed opinions, or that policy makers gave examples of policies and practitioners examples of practice. The variety of contributions of the different groups reflect in a sense the success of the dialogue, knowledge sharing seems to have been present between people with different professional backgrounds.

After the structural analysis of the programme series, let us explore more deeply the discourse itself by analysing it from two specific perspectives. The next section will discuss how the issue of equity and learning

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) appears in the discussions, whereas the one after summarises the events from the point of view of teacher education.

Equity and learning in the VIP discussions Nóra Révai Equity and learning was chosen as the overarching topic of the EPNoSL themes by the expert group in the 2nd period of the project after detailed discussion as to whether it should be a separate theme or it should underpin every theme. The 5 thematic areas in which partners carried out research activities were defined as follows: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Autonomy for equity and learning Accountability for equity and learning Distributed leadership for equity and learning Policy response for equity and learning Educating school leaders for equity and learning.

In accordance with the objectives of the online activities the events were designed to support other activities by providing a platform for dialogue where the main project themes could be discussed. Therefore the thematic orientation of the VIP followed and complemented the above listed 5 areas. To give more emphasis to the importance of equity and learning a separate webinar and forum discussion was dedicated to this theme. The thematic map and schedule of the VIP events were as follows: Date

Topic / title School autonomy - challenge or privilege for school heads?

Diverse perspectives and hopes on autonomy in school leadership

Speakers Hasso Kukemelk (EE) Fred Verboon (NL)

Webinar 1

7th May

Forum 1

13th to 24th May

Webinar 2

28th May

Leading and Managing Change

Peter Earley (UK), Grzegorz Mazurkiewicz (PL)

Forum 2

3rd to 14th June

Policy Response

Carl Bagley, Sophie Ward (UK)

Webinar 3

11th September

Accountability

Forum 3

16th – 27th September

Accountability

Webinar 4

1st October

Webinar 5

15th October

Forum 4

7th – 17th October

Webinar 6

22nd October

Forum 5

28th October – 8th November

Lejf Moos (DK)

Mika Risku (FI), Igors Grigorjevs (LV)

Andrej Koren (SI) Michael Schratz (AT), Educating School Leaders Tom Hamilton (UK), Huub Friederichs (NL) Olof Johannson (SE), Distributed leadership – one concept, Michael Uljens (FI), Petros different understandings Pashiardis (CY) Philip Woods, Amanda Leadership IS distributed Roberts (UK) Leading for equality in a changing Jacky Lumby, Chris Downey Europe (UK) Leadership for inclusive education

Gerry Mac Ruairc (IR)

Table 4: VIP Programme series

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) When looking at the keynotes (presentations, articles, video) and the discussions more closely we can clearly see that the topics are strongly interrelated. Some of the issues come up in nearly every discussion such as distributed leadership, which appears e.g. in the webinar on leading and managing change (leadership as a process which involves numerous people), in that on educating school leaders (distributed leadership at various – micro-, meso-, macro- – levels) and in the context of standards, etc. Other topics are treated quite deeply in webinars not specifically dedicated to the topic, e.g. accountability, in particular with regards to measurement systems, is discussed by Chris Downey in the perspective of leading for equality. It would be interesting to carry out a more profound discourse analysis to map the connections between the topics and to explore overarching concepts, recurring or contradicting arguments; however it is beyond the scope of this report. Instead of exploring the complexity and interconnectedness of the various issues, this section of the report will focus on the dimension of equity and learning.

At the second PLA of EPNoSL in Vilnius (November 2013) prof. Jacky Lumby when looking back to the results and outcomes of various activities raised again the issue whether it was a good solution to have our main priority area – equity and learning – as a horizontal topic or whether paradoxically by being everywhere it – if not disappeared – was subsumed in a wider context and was not considered in depth. In order to contribute to further exploring this matter we decided to examine the online activities from this perspective to see if and if yes how equity and learning are included in the dialogue we generated.

We used simple quantitative and qualitative methods to approach the question. Firstly, we carried out a word count in all VIP events, namely in the transcription of webinars (what was said), the webinar chat conversations, the forum keynote articles and the forum discussions for the following terms: equity (and inequity), equality (and inequality), social justice, inclusion and learning. We obtained the following results:

Figure 7: Frequency of key words in VIP discussions

Figure 8: Frequency of key words in VIP discussions according to their themes

Not surprisingly the webinar and the forum discussion dedicated to the topic contained the largest number of the first four words (equity, equality, social justice, inclusion), however the number was not particularly low in other events either. Of course the sheer number does not reveal anything about how profoundly the topic was addressed or what were the particular approaches, dimensions brought up. We will try and explore these to some extent with a more qualitative analysis of the discussions.

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) The word learning was the most frequent one, which can be used in a wide range of contexts, let the most often recurring collocations stand here in the form of a word cloud generated by the frequency of the expressions:

Picture 1: Word cloud of “learning” according to frequency in VIP discourse

In order that the numbers and this appealing picture above gain any sense, we explored the webinar and forum discourses (transcripts of webinars, keynote articles and forum discussions) with regards to how the issue of equity (equality, social justice, inclusion) and learning appears in them. We will not go into details about the definition and differences of these terms, when we refer to equity as the subject of discussion we mean either of the above concepts. We will consider the last webinar and forum discussion separately as they were both specifically dedicated to these issues.

As far as learning is concerned, the high overall frequency of this word reflects that in terms of the core purpose of schools learning is a key factor. This, however obvious it may sound, is crucial to keep in mind when talking about aspects of leadership so as never to forget that “the primary task of the school leader is to support learning at all levels” (Révai, Kirkham, 2013). Educational leadership, leadership for learning, or learning-centred leadership appeared in several of the discussions and were clearly in spotlight in some of them (e.g. in the webinar on educating school leaders). An explicit focus on learning was not however predominantly present in all the events, the scope of some keynotes and discussions were more specifically targeted then a focus on learning per se.

The issues of equity, equality, social justice, inclusion came up explicitly or implicitly at one point in nearly all of the discussions, the extent to which they were dealt with and their forms differed however. Essentially there were two distinct forms in which the issue of equity appeared in the discussions: in some cases it was treated as an abstract and separate concept, in other cases it was highly contextualised and interpreted Page 24 of 36

European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) within the framework of the particular topic that the discussion addressed. In the keynote article on accountability (Koren, 2013) for example a separate section was about “education for equity”, which offered terminological interpretations for equity and discussed the use of the terms ‘equality of opportunity’ and ‘equity of results’ without placing them in the context of accountability. In contrast the forum paper on autonomy (Moos, 2013) for example contextualised the issue of equity by defining levels of responsibility with regards to social justice, or the keynote on policy response (Bagley, Ward, 2013) took policies on equity and leadership as its main example to illustrate the theoretical discourse on policy implementation. In those cases where the issue of equity only appeared implicitly, it was evidently embedded in the discussion over the particular topic and was thus highly contextualised. An example for the latter is the webinar on leading and managing change, in which both presenters, P. Earley and G. Mazurkiewicz, emphasised the importance of the inclusion of different perspectives and the involvement of everyone (teachers, students, parents, etc.) in the change process (Mazurkiewicz, 2013, Earley, 2013) which placed the idea of inclusion and also the participative dimension of social justice in a particular context.

In the case of forum discussions, when it came to generating dialogue on equity, the most important factor seemed to have been the nature of the keynote questions proposed by the writers. If these questions addressed equity explicitly then the discussion that followed also dealt with the issue explicitly (e.g. the forum on autonomy), if it was implicitly embedded in the questions, then so was it in the discussion (e.g. the forum on accountability), on the other hand even if equity was treated deeply in the keynote article, if there was no explicit reference to it in the questions there were no reflections made on the issue in the dialogue (e.g. the forum on policy response).

The different events dealt with equity from a range of different perspectives. Many gave specific examples of policy or practice on dealing with equality. E.g. Risku in his webinar presentation on accountability (Risku, 2013) gave two examples of Finnish policy on equality:  “When we’ve noticed that inequality in Finland has been and is still increasing, the minister of education allocated money to help those communities that seemed to need more support to help people or students, pupils whose parents are for example unemployed or do not have that good social welfare.”  “Finnish legislation obligates all education providers […] to evaluate the quality on the implementation of curriculum, instruction and teaching arrangements, support to learning and growth and well-being, inclusion and influence, school-home cooperation and safety and learning environment.”

An example of policy from the field of educating school leaders is given by Tom Hamilton (Hamilton, 2013) on how the involvement, participation can be present at all levels not only with regards to students but also teachers and leaders. More examples of policy and practice with regards to working with ethnic diversity in Sweden and Cyprus were mentioned in the webinar on distributed leadership by Olof Johannson and Petros Pashiardis (Johannson, 2013, Pashiardis, 2013).

Other parts of the discussions were characterised by more general theoretical discourses. For example in the webinar on leading and managing change when G. Mazurkiewicz discusses the necessity of change, he argues that changing is a moral obligation towards our students, as we need to “change the unfair and unethical world”, for which changing the school is necessary. (Mazurkiewicz, 2013) The keynote article on policy response considers what happens to these issues through the process of policy implementation and in what form they appear (or remain absent from) governmental discourses (Bagley, Ward, 2013). Some

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) discussions raised issues which were not directly connected to equity – e.g. shared values, mission statement, ethos of the school –, but which had a strong underlying connection with these issues.

Finally, we would like to draw the attention to the terminological perspective of this topic. As there is no unique and agreed meaning of or definition for the concepts equity, equality, inclusion, social justice in the literature (Ward et al, 2013), it might be worth exploring the different interpretations present in the VIP discourse. Some of the discussions explicitly dealt with the definition of some of the concepts. The keynote article on accountability, as we have seen above, says that there are two ways we talk about equity in education: as the ‘equality of opportunities’ and as the ‘equity of results’ (Koren, 2013). Bagley and Ward in the paper on policy response analyse the conceptualisation of equity and social justice in the neoliberal policy discourses and also give examples on the interpretation of the terms in practice (e.g. the interpretation of Canadian principals in the Goddard and Hart study) (Bagley, Ward, 2013). It was more common however that presenters, writers or contributors used the terms without clarifying the meaning or giving a precise definition.

The most interesting terminological debate occurred in the webinar and forum discussion specifically dedicated to the topic (Leading for equality in a changing Europe and Leadership for inclusive education), in which participants raised the issue of the importance of agreed definitions. Some participants radically claimed that it is no use talking about equity without knowing what exactly we mean by this, others in the forum discussion emphasised the importance of giving local definitions, by saying that it is essential for a school to agree on what the term means for them, however, were less convinced of the necessity of having unique global definitions. The keynote article of G. Mac Ruairc also drew the attention to potential implications of some narrow interpretations, e.g. when inclusion is limited to discourse on SEN (Mac Ruairc, 2013). Similarly Philip Woods stressed that social justice should also be interpreted in a broad way and proposed 4 dimensions of the concept: cultural, participative, distributive and developmental.

Coming back to Jacky Lumby’s reflection on the possibility that equity and learning as a horizontal theme might become subsumed as an issue within a wider discussion, the evidence from our experience in the VIP does not underpin this fear. On the contrary, equity and learning appeared to feature relatively strongly in the discussions. In fact, it appeared in rather diverse ways, from general and theoretical approaches to specific examples of various policies. Yet, a dimension that could be strengthened in the future is the actual school practice on equity; we only had few examples of how a school (the leadership team and teachers) work for equity. It might enrich our dialogue to know more about the challenges schools face during the implementation of equity aims and how they overcome them.

The teacher education perspective Justina Erčulj1

1

The author is the past president (2010-2013) of the Association for Teacher Education in Europe (ATEE hereinafter) but her views may differ to a certain extent from those of the association as she has not discussed them thoroughly with the members of the Administrative Council. On the other hand she has been the chair of RDC Education Leadership and Management which makes the relations between leadership and teacher education highly relevant.

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) This section of the report is intended to relate aspects of leadership discussed and developed within the EPNoSL project with issues in teacher education. The report is organised around the themes suggested for the National Networks (except School leaders' selection, preparation and development) develop complemented by Year 2 leading theme, i.e. leadership for equity and learning.

About ATEE The Association for Teacher Education in Europe (ATEE2) is a non-profit European organisation, whose aim is enhancing the quality of Teacher Education in Europe and supporting the professional development of teachers and teacher educators at all levels. It is a multicultural association with a wide expertise on the various fields of teacher education. It tries to increase the co-operation between individuals and institutions involved in Teacher Education both inside and outside Europe by promoting international networks. The ATEE tries to reach its aim through active dialogue and international exchange of research and practice in initial and in-service teacher education.

The Research & Development Communities (RDCs) are the core of this organisation, creating a backbone for social coherence within the association. They provide the first platform for dialogue, exchange and joint international activities between individuals and institutions. In political dialogues the ATEE does not represent personal political opinions or standpoints, but takes a professional position, based on a shared knowledge on the required professionalism and professional development of teachers based on the collected theory and practical experience of its members.

School governance and teacher education Control, autonomy and accountability have been the focus in teacher education for many years. The concepts are closely related to the notion of trust which has been frequently raised also during the PLA in Vilnius. At the teacher level we should emphasize the importance of trust in teacher professionalism by school leaders. This is probably related to the wider scope of trust to schools and school leaders. However the accountability measures have increased the need for transparency at all levels so teachers perceive their work to be highly (over)loaded by bureaucracy which de-professionalizes their role and work. From this point of view the need for autonomy at school leadership level should be broadened to teacher level and the issues of professionalism should be more explicitly discussed and also resolved in the framework of control, autonomy and accountability. If trust in teachers is raised they will become even more responsible for student outcomes.

The role of school leaders This could be the central theme of our view on connections between leadership and teacher education.

While we are aware that the impact of school leaders on initial teacher education is limited due to the autonomy of universities, their role in continuing professional development (CPD) is crucial. Although in some systems the content and structure of CPD is strongly influenced by the central authorities, there is still a large scope of activities left to schools. School leaders should focus on (to mention only a few issues):  

2

needs analysis at school level – focusing on teachers and their practices not on programmes offered; monitoring teacher performance for development purposes;

More about ATEE can be found on http://www.atee1.org

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010)   

establishing networks within and among schools; establishing the conditions for peer learning; evaluating the impact of CPD on teacher practice.

We should also mention that school leaders play a vital role in maintaining teacher interest and motivation throughout their careers that are being extended to rather late ages in most EU countries. Therefore the questions of working with teachers in their late-career stage and leading learning communities of teachers representing at least »two generations« will have to be put on the leadership agenda.

Generally, we could claim for leadership for learning focused on connections between teachers' learning and student outcomes. If we want to strengthen this aspect of leadership it will probably be important to develop the existing and also new programmes for leaders' professional development. They should stress school leaders' role in improving learning at all levels and in developing the whole school commitment to lifelong learning. There is also a message for policy makers, namely that school leaders should be relieved at least from some administrative tasks.

System leadership Although system leadership refers to leaders and their role in bringing about system transformation, we can relate it to teacher education, specifically to their CPD. As already mentioned under the previous heading, the need for networking and peer learning has increased during the last years. It is a way of connecting theory and practice but also a way of creating new knowledge in and about teaching. We understand school leaders' role in this context as establishing and/or developing conditions for effective teaching and learning not only in one's own school but in a system wide by supporting joint (action) research, collaboration and networking among teachers and schools, and preparing proposals for researchers and policy makers to learn from theory AND from practice.

Autonomy – room for manoeuvre Generally speaking, teachers claim for more autonomy in all respects of their work. It has been acknowledged that autonomy in schools is always limited for schools serve public interest and teaching profession is subjected to certain professional standards. On the other hand autonomy is a very contextual notion, so school leaders have relatively strong influence on »in-school autonomy«. From this point of view we should tackle again the issue of trust connected to teacher professionalism. They are closely related so school leaders should ensure the conditions for teachers to develop their professionalism and then give room for applying their competences in classrooms.

The second issue related to autonomy is developing leadership skills in teachers and offer them as many opportunities as possible to apply them. We refer to leading projects, work in school development teams, getting involved in decisions about school policy, etc. It is about distributed leadership in practice.

Leadership for equity In the WP 2 report »Critical Factors in the Discourse on School Leadership from the Perspective of Equity and Learning« we can read about factors that may shape the capacities and potential of school leaders to implement strategies that would lead to higher equity in their schools and beyond. The report and discussion during Vilnius PLA indicated a strong need for involving all stakeholders, to communicate with them and (again) to establish trust. If we want to achieve this we need the best people in leadership

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) positions but also political coherence and financial resources. We believe that the issues of equity should become an integral part of both teacher and leadership professional development.

Conclusions Several questions have been opened in the perspective of teacher education. If we try to summarise this report we would suggest the following:      

it is important that the best candidates are selected for school leaders' positions; school leaders' training programmes should be reviewed and/or revised to ensure that they equip school leaders with competences required to cope with the above mentioned challenges; teacher training programmes should follow the development of theory, practice, and contextual challenges; teacher training programmes should be based on networking, collaboration, (action) research, and peer-learning activities – here the school leaders' support is essential; teachers should be given sufficient autonomy to apply new competences; teachers should be given even more opportunities for developing their leadership skills and applying them in practice.

Statistical analysis Lilla Lukács

VIP participation statistics In this section we will summarise the statistics of the knowledge management activities of the 2nd phase of the European Policy Network on School Leadership (EPNoSL). The statistical analysis will contain descriptive statistics with regards to the VIP and the national networking activities, as well as the analysis of the selfevaluation of the national networking activities by EPNoSL partners and the overall evaluation of the EPNoSL VIP events.

As presented before, six webinars and five forum discussions were organised (see page 23.) in the 2nd phase of the EPNoSL. The webinars and forum discussions count 21 contributors as presenters or keynote article writers and three people who were responsible for the organisation and the IT support of the activities.

Webinars had all together 185 views, where each viewer is counted as many times as the number of webinars she/he viewed. A participation (view) in a webinar was considered valid from ten minutes of attendance; those who only attended the webinar for a shorter period of time were not counted. Figure 9 shows the number of participants per webinar. Thus the average number of participants is approximately 30.

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Figure 9: Number of participants

As far as the presence of the different stakeholder groups is concerned, we cannot give precise percentages of the 4 groups defined as not every participant’s professional background was known. Nevertheless, Figure 10 gives us an idea of the distribution of participants according to which stakeholder group they represented.

Figure 10: Percentage of webinar participants by stakeholder group

In the following we will overview some statistical data gained by the examination of the EPNoSL VIP portal.

Data was extracted for the time period of 1st April 2013 and 10th January 2014, as the VIP was launched in May this covers the period of the second phase of EPNoSL when the VIP subpage was active. The portal (www.schoolleadership.eu) - in the given time period – had 14673 visitors (with 9053 unique visitors), and 52 821 page views (not unique). The average time a visitor spent on the portal was 1:25 minutes.

The data provided by Google Analytics, show however that the EPNoSL VIP subpage behaves somewhat differently from the main directory of the portal. It is ranked as the 7th most visited page of the portal (it is

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) also ranked high among the first and the second interaction pages), with 1571 unique page views of the EPNoSL VIP blog (“Discussions” subpage of the VIP platform), and around 600 unique page views of the Resources subpage (where webinar recordings were uploaded), that is, the VIP page counts all together more than 2100 unique visitors. The average time spent on both of these subpages (EPNoSL VIP Discussions and Resources) is approximately 3:00 minutes. Furthermore, both the bounce and exit rates3 of the EPNoSL VIP blog are about half of the corresponding rates of the main page (www.schoolleadership.eu). This data suggests that people who visit the VIP are more likely to stay within the VIP platform (not bouncing to and fro the VIP and other subpages of the portal), spend more time on the chosen page, and are less likely to quit or abandon the page.

As for the forum discussions, let us see some data on both the active and the ‘passive’ participation (or ‘lurking’). Regarding the comments and posts created, the five forum discussions altogether have generated 57 posts, the highest number of posts was generated in Forum 1 (see details in Figure 11 below). As for the number of visits, the most visited discussion was the one on distributed leadership with 413 unique page views, also with the longest average time spent on the discussion (approx. 7 minutes), while the least visited one was the last forum on inclusion. (See details in Figure 10 below)

Figure 10: Number of unique visitors of the forum discussions

When comparing the number of contributors and the number of visitors in the forum discussion the rule of thumb is largely confirmed again, in our case the proportion of active participants (contributors) varied between 2 and 7% of the total number of discussion followers. Actually 2-7% of active participation seems to be high compared to the 1%, which would be the typical behaviour of people in collaborative websites according to the rule of thumb.

3

For all sessions that start with the page, the bounce rate is the percentage that were the only one of the session, while for all page views of the page the exit rate is the percentage that were the last in the session.

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Figure 11: Number of posts generated in the forum discussions

Let us now shortly summarise participants’ evaluation of the VIP events, data gained from the final evaluation questionnaire of the VIP series, filled in by 26 participants. As for the overall satisfaction of participants of the various events, nearly every programme was rated satisfying or totally satisfying by over 70% of those who answered. Participants were somewhat less satisfied with the involvement of the different stakeholder groups, only a bit more than half of them (approx. 58%) considered it satisfactory, both practitioners and policy-makers were mentioned among the groups that should be more involved in the future. Open questions referred to the potential uses and benefit of the knowledge gained in the professional work and in the professional development of participants, as well as the ways in which they transmitted and shared this knowledge. More than 70% of the participants said they regularly promoted or used the content of the webinars and forums among their colleagues or other national stakeholders. With regards to the interest of the participants the three most popular topics were: school autonomy, educating school leaders and distributed leadership. (See the detailed results of the evaluation in Annex 3.)

National network statistics Statistical data on the national networking activities have been extracted from the reports on national networking and the information partners provided us with in emails. Comparing networking in the first and the second phase of EPNoSL, there has clearly been an increase in the number of the involved countries.

While in the first phase of EPNoSL (2012) 16 countries were engaged in national networking, in the second period (2013) 20 countries have sent information on their networks, which amounts for an increase of 25%.

As far as the number of events is concerned, partners engaged in networking reported on 8 seminars, 17 workshops, 14 conferences all together. Some events involved several countries (e.g. the conference on Educational leadership in Latin Europe in Rome or the one in Germany). Partners also reported on 7 research projects about policies on school leadership linked to national networking. Although not all partners organised face-to-face events, all national network reports give evidence on intensive networking and information sharing activities, (e.g. press releases and coverages, or national associations involved). By adding up the number of participants in all national network reports, minimum 22000 people were reached through lists, forums and newsletters. (For the exact numbers on workshops and participants see the table in Annex 1: National networking events). Regarding the participation of the different stakeholders groups we do not have precise and comparable data, as the partners interpreted the numbers in different ways.

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) Let us now summarise the self-evaluation carried out by partners with regards to national networking on the basis of the 13 full reports received. (For the set of questions see any of the national reports in Annex 1.)

Figure 11 shows the results of all the answers (of all the countries). Most countries are more satisfied with their work, promotion, involvement, and given documents. The lowest average concerns the involvement of the policy-makers – a topic we have discussed in more details in the section on national networking.

Figure 11: Summarized answers and data for the questions listed above, not country specific

The results of the self-evaluation are represented by country in Figure 12.

Figure 12: Summarized points of the countries’ self-evaluation, all questions

On the whole, most of the countries are mostly satisfied with their work on networking; the average is 3.7 points. Lower marks often indicate deeper reflections on their own work and may refer to a deeper commitment to make it better.

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Conclusion Considering the results of the knowledge management activities in the 2nd phase of EPNoSL in view of the original objectives of Work Package 3, it seems that these latter were very satisfactorily achieved with regards to both the international and the national spaces created for this purpose. We have seen that the two spaces were strongly interconnected, while we have found extensive evidence for the wide use of the international discourse in the national networks, in some cases the outcomes of national networking also featured in the VIP discussions. Furthermore the analysis of the stakeholder involvement showed that all stakeholder groups – practitioners, researchers, policy-makers and knowledge agents – were represented although not to the same extent. They all engaged in the dialogue in diverse ways with diverse content, thus actively contributing to a transnational knowledge sharing.

The theoretical introduction on knowledge management showed that educational systems are complex systems, and stressed that due to this complexity the results of any particular policy measure or local innovation are not predictable with certainty. Similarly, knowledge is shared and created in a highly complex manner in a transnational platform as the one of EPNoSL, thus the real impact and outcome of such activities is difficult to measure or to predict. It seems clear however that networks – in particular those which build on and connect natural networks and different stakeholders – play a key role in enhancing the global knowledge of the educational community. The motto of connectivism theory – “Knowledge is Connections”, that is knowledge cannot be regarded as a physical entity, rather it is something that grows as we create more connections (Siemens, 2005) – holds for the world of education as well, and is particularly nicely demonstrated in the work of EPNoSL. Although some specific implications appear in the various discussions (for example the need to develop leadership skills of teachers was an implication in discussions on autonomy, distributed leadership and educating school leaders or the need to strongly integrate issues on equity in teachers’ and leaders’ professional development), it was not in the scope of the present analysis to draw general conclusions or implications from the discourse. One must also have a certain caution with regards to formulating specific implications because – as formulated by G. Halász – “we can see what the main characteristics of effective educational systems and educational governance are, it is however important to stress that elements of these can only be interpreted together, as they form one coherent system.” (Halász, 2014 forthcoming) The objective of the national and international discourse in EPNoSL was not to come to certain agreed conclusions or implications but to enhance knowledge in general across Europe.

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References Bagley, C., Ward, S. C., 2013: Policy Response: A Critical Engagement. EPNoSL VIP keynote paper: http://www.schoolleadership.eu/sites/default/files/carl_bagley_sophie_ward_policy_responsea_critical_engagement.pdf Barabási, Albert-László, 2005: Taming complexity. Nature Physics 1: 68-70.

Boukhelifa, F., Révai, N., 2006: « Quand les demonstrations s’écrivent ou se disent… », études de cas en classe de seconde. Cahier de Didirem 53/2006.

Downey, C., 2013: School Effectiveness: issues for equity and quality. EPNoSL VIP keynote presentation: http://www.schoolleadership.eu/epnosl_vip/resource/epnosl-webinar-6-leading-equality-changing-europe Earley, P., 2013: Leading and managing change: why is it so hard to do? EPNoSL VIP keynote presentation and paper: http://www.schoolleadership.eu/epnosl_vip/resource/epnosl-webinar-2-leading-and-managingchange-why-it-so-hard-do and http://www.schoolleadership.eu/sites/default/files/peter_earley_leadingand-managing-change.pdf Friederichs, H., 2013: School leadership: A holistic approach. EPNoSL VIP keynote presentation and paper: http://www.schoolleadership.eu/epnosl_vip/resource/epnosl-webinar-4-educating-school-leaders and http://www.schoolleadership.eu/sites/default/files/huub_friederichs_school-leadership-holistic-approach2013_5.pdf Gladwell, M., 2000: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Little, Brown and Company, USA Grigorjevs, I., 2013: Accountability. EPNoSL VIP keynote presentation: http://www.schoolleadership.eu/epnosl_vip/resource/epnosl-webinar-3-accountability Halász, G., 2014 forthcoming: A jövő oktatási trendjei. In B. Tier, N., Szegedi, E. (eds): Alma a fán – a tanulás jövője. Tempus Public Foundation, Budapest. (Educational trends of the furure. In Apple on the tree – the future of learning.)

Hamilton, T., 2013: Educating school leaders in Scotland. EPNoSL VIP presentation: http://www.schoolleadership.eu/epnosl_vip/resource/epnosl-webinar-4-educating-school-leaders Johansson, O., 2013: Democratic Distributed School Leadership: Ethics, Responsibility and Authority. EPNoSL VIP keynote presentation and paper: http://www.schoolleadership.eu/epnosl_vip/resource/epnosl-webinar5-distributed-leadership-0 and http://www.schoolleadership.eu/sites/default/files/distributed-leadership2013_7.pdf Koren, A., 2013: Accountabilities for equity and learning. EPNoSL VIP keynote paper: http://www.schoolleadership.eu/sites/default/files/accountability-2013.pdf Kukemelk, H., 2013: School autonomy – challenge or privilege for school heads? EPNoSL VIP keynote presentation: http://www.schoolleadership.eu/epnosl_vip/resource/epnosl-webinar-1-school-autonomychallenge-or-privilege-school-heads Lumby, J., 2013: Leading for equality in a changing Europe. EPNoSL VIP keynote presentation: http://www.schoolleadership.eu/epnosl_vip/resource/epnosl-webinar-6-leading-equality-changing-europe Lundvall, B.-Å. and Johnson, B. (1994), “The learning economy”, Journal of Industry Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, December 1994, pp. 23-42.

Lundvall, B.-Å. (2003), „Economics of knowledge and learning”, Department of Business Studies, Aalborg University

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European Policy Network on School Leadership (EAC/42/2010) Mac Ruairc, G., 2013: Including Inclusion – Exploring inclusive education for school leadership. EPNoSL VIP keynote paper: http://www.schoolleadership.eu/sites/default/files/exploring-inclusive-education-forschool-leadership-2013.pdf Mazurkiewicz, G., 2013: Why is it so hard to change? The answer is simple. EPNoSL VIP keynote presentation: http://www.schoolleadership.eu/epnosl_vip/resource/epnosl-webinar-2-leading-andmanaging-change-why-it-so-hard-do Moos, L. 2013: Diverse perspectives and hopes on autonomy in school leadership. EPNoSL VIP keynote paper: http://www.schoolleadership.eu/sites/default/files/diverse_perspectives_and_hopes_on_autonomy_in_sch ool_leadership.pdf Specific Work Programme 2012-2013 for EPNoSL OECD, 2000: Knowledge Management in the Learning Society, Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, OECD. Pashiardis, P., 2013: Successful school leadership - theory and practice for sustainable school improvement.

EPNoSL VIP presentation: http://www.schoolleadership.eu/epnosl_vip/resource/epnosl-webinar-5distributed-leadership-0 Révai, N., 2012: National Platforms on Educational Policy on School Leadership. EPNoSL Deliverable 3.2 / Phase 1.

Révai, N., Kirkham, G. (ed.) (2013): The Art and Science of Leading a School. Tempus Public Foundation.

Budapest.

Risku, M., 2013: Accountability. EPNoSL VIP keynote presentation: http://www.schoolleadership.eu/epnosl_vip/resource/epnosl-webinar-3-accountability Schratz, M., 2013: Beyond the reach of Leading: Exploring the Realm of Leadership and Learning. EPNoSL VIP keynote presentation and paper: http://www.schoolleadership.eu/epnosl_vip/resource/epnosl-webinar-4educating-school-leaders and http://www.schoolleadership.eu/sites/default/files/leadership-for-learning2013.pdf Siemens, G., 2005: Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age, International Journal of Instructional Technology and Distance Learning, Vol. 2 No. 1, Jan 2005 Uljens, M., 2013: Educational Leadership for School Development as Shared and Distributed CriticalConstructive Activity. EPNoSL VIP presentation: http://www.schoolleadership.eu/epnosl_vip/resource/epnosl-webinar-5-distributed-leadership-0 Verboon, F., 2013: School autonomy – challenge or privilege for school heads? The School head’s perspective. EPNoSL VIP keynote presentation: http://www.schoolleadership.eu/epnosl_vip/resource/epnosl-webinar-1-school-autonomy-challenge-orprivilege-school-heads Ward, S. C., Bagley, C., Woods, P., Lumby, J., Hamilton, T., Roberts, A. 2013: Scoping paper on school leadership and equity. EPNoSL WP2.

Woods, P., Roberts, A., 2013: Leadership is distributed. EPNoSL VIP keynote video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5F0MNrDSpY

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