Session Information
26 SES 04 C, Ethics, Trust and Professional Discretion in the Realm of Educational Leadership
Paper Session
Contribution
What happens in leader´s professional communities when lacquer of development is corrected with economic incentives? To be able to answer this question is the overall purpose of this paper. The question has its origin in a wide national context where politicians for a long time has tried different actions and reforms in order to improve school outcomes. In Sweden the government has tried to reform the school system in order to counteract the declining results of the students in Swedish schools. These reforms has proved to be non-effective due to the fact that Sweden has a negative trend in relation to the results shown in international surveys such as TIMMS and PISA. In 2015 the Department of Education appointed a committee that had as its primary task to identify the underlying causes for this development. One outcome of the committee was that the reforms imposed on the schools system had caused weaknesses in the system itself and therefor contributed to the decline of school and student outcomes rather than being driving forces for improvement. The committee suggested a number of actions such as developing trust and sustainability within the schools system and principals and teachers were prioritized and highlighted as important actors and resources. In order to change the academic trend in Sweden they suggested actions that were imposed to strengthening the teaching in the classroom as well as the pedagogical leadership. One step in that direction has been that during 2016 the Swedish government has introduced an effort to improve the status of teachers work and their career paths by a “salary-lift”. The Swedish government gives the municipalities a contribution of three billion SEK (about 300 million euro), all together, in order to implement this initiative. This “lift” is directed towards teachers that are perceived as specially skilled and qualified and to identify who these are, in each specific school, is assessed by each principal. The teachers that are perceived as especially skilled will get 2500-3000 SEK in additional salary each month. Another reason for focusing on teacher’s salary is that a study done by the OECD (2014) over teachers ' purchasing power in different countries show that the Swedish teachers ' purchasing power is below average. This initiative has not gained the teacher profession as a whole, rather a minority of teachers has been fortunate enough to benefit from this effort which, in it self, can create a breeding ground for conflicts and disappointments. As a teacher you might have a different approach towards your work if your part of the group that is perceived as the “the best” or if you are part of “the rest”. This development and reforms might therefor effect the collective trust and collective efficacy within the specific organizations (Goddard 2001, Seashore-Louis 2015, Hoy & Tschannen-Moran 1999). Miller (1996) argues that organizations will have difficulty in achieving the goals for the organization when economic incentives based on specific assessment criteria, on the one hand, rewards individuals who is expected to act in the “right way” but, on the other hand, fail to reward those individuals whose not perceived as sufficiently talented. Rewarded employees will continuously try to avoid an unprofitable behavior. Employees placed outside of the reward system will lose trust in the assessment criteria, management's judgement and their own and/or colleague's ability. Miller (1996) argues that economic incentives for the organization's governance create a spiral of mistrust among employees. A growing mistrust in the organization and its governance will undermine the socio-cultural incentives, which is crucial for creating a well-functioning organization.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Creswell, J. W. (2013) Qualitative Inquiry & Research Design – Choosing Among Five Approaches, Thousand oaks: SAGE Publications Goddard, T (2001) Collective efficacy: A neglected construct in the study of schools and student achievement, Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 93 (3): 467-476 Hoy, W. & Tschannen-Moran (1999) Five Faces of Trust: An Empirical Confirmation in Urban Elementary Schools, Journal of School Leadership, Vol 9 (3): 184-208 Hoy, W. (2012) School characteristics that make a difference for the achievement of all students, A 40-year odyssey, Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 50 (1), 76-97 Manning, P. & Cullum-Swan, B. (1994) Narrative, content and semiotic analysis, In Denzin, N. K. & Lincoln, Y. S., Handbook of qualitative analysis, Thousand oaks: SAGE Publications Miller, G. J. (1996) Hierarkins ekonomi - Att styra effektiva organisationer, Stockholm: SNS Förlag OECD (2014) Education at a Glance 2014: OECD Indicators, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/eag-2014-en [20170119] Seashore-Louis, K. (2015) Linking Leadership to Learning - State, District and Local Effects, Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, Vol 1, 7-17 Van Maanen, J. (1997) Tales of the Field - On Writing Ethnography, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
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