Session Information
26 SES 11 B, Nordic Superintendents: Agents in a Broken Chain (Part 1)
Symposium to be continued in 26 SES 12 B
Contribution
In this chapter we shall explore the ways in which influences, decisions and ideas are being taken from one level to other levels in the public education sector and how they are interpreted and translated: How do groups and individual, authorities and organisations find ways of operating and making sense in the stream of external expectations and internal interests and motivations? The focus of this investigation is the superintendents. In focus of our analyses in this paper are the means and ways things are done, be it through chains of governance or through formal or ad hoc networks involving both formal agents as well as non-formal agents. And we are interested in the what’s, the kind of decisions and ideas being taken from one level to the other. The Scandinavian branch of new institutionalism has brought evidence of a range of translation and sense-making practices employed by municipal managers in order to make central aims adaptable at the ‘street level’. Following this line of argument, superintendents employ differ-ent repertoires of translation in their dialogue with school principals and politicians – in order to maintain a work context that is manageable for the all groups. The project was build around surveys to school superintendents, school boards and school lead-ers in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and the theories used for analyses are Scott’s new institutional pillars: Regulative, normative and cultural-cognitive pillars and carriers of influence and values; of translations and sense-making processes and understandings in a combination with Foucault/Deans understanding of governmentalisazions and social technologies.
References
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