Coordinator

Ulf Blossing
Karlstad University
ulf.l.blossing@kau.se

Description

We use the concept school development with the purpose to grasp the knowledge building about school organisations development. School devel-opment means that the functionality improve in those parts that a school is built of and that the functions of the parts are coordinated in a way that the school as a whole better succeed in its strivings. To understand and explain school organisations development there is a need to make the inner parts of schools and its infrastructure apparent.

In the School Development network we are aiming at attending to both the knowledge building which is a result of investigating schools spontaneous development over a long period of time, as well as the knowledge building resulting from more intense improvement efforts of schools. Contribution from many places can foster school development by stimulating it. Some-times this is not enough and thus a necessity has to show. This can happen when pedagogues or groups of teachers contribute or when students and parents challenge current working patterns, or by community or state initia-tives.

When building knowledge of the spontaneous school development the un-derstanding of changes in the world around the school, the political steering, changes in student composition and in teacher experience are important. In the knowledge building of the more intense school development is the or-ganisation of the improvement work and the leadership in focus. The intense school development is a dynamic process which imply that conscious and knowledge based changes are incorporated in the local school culture.