Sustainable school development

In this follow-up study, we explore the practice architectures that enable and constrain the realisation of sustainable school development with a focus on the role and function of change agents in schools as organisations. In municipalities, the change agents go by names such as development leaders, teacher leaders, process leaders, middle leaders, etc. Their function can be broadly described as acting as pedagogical leaders with the task of promoting and driving school development. In the study, we return to a municipality that, within the framework of an action research study in 2009–2011, introduced change agents in their preschools and schools. The results of the study show that there are clear differences between the leading structures of schools and preschools, where the preschool's distributed leadership promotes sustainability while the autonomous principal limits the sustainability of the school organisation. The study is carried out in collaboration with Professor Ulf Blossing from the University of Gothenburg. A publication from the project can be found in the right column.