Educational Governance

The course focuses on the new school leadership role at primary and secondary level. It provides knowledge about new forms of educational governance, with special emphasis on national curriculum plans, governing by objectives and evaluation systems at national and local level and on New Public Management. The relationship between transnational, national and municipal governance and local autonomy is discussed, how teachers’ “professional space of action” is developed, what constitutes school culture, and how “the school as a learning organisation” makes a frame for teaching, for the teacher role and for school development. Questions about educational quality are discussed from different points of view, and what conditions "bildung" as an educational aim has in today’s society. Evaluation systems, for instance national tests, are discussed, both as a part of school development and as a tool for control and quality improvement. The students get insight into how research on school development, school evaluation and school leadership can be conducted, and there are research projects available that the students can join for their master thesis. The course is organised as lectures and seminars, and visits to selected development oriented schools.

The main learning objective is that the students acquire knowledge and understanding of the interaction between society’s expectations to schools, how school leadership and management are being conducted at systems level, how curriculum plans and evaluation systems work in practice, and how schools change over time. By the end of the course, the students will:

- Have knowledge about the school leadership role, and how school leadership can be developed through practice.
- Have knowledge about the management strategies like New Public Management that apply to the education field, on international, national and municipal levels, and the consequences they have for the practical school work, with special emphasis given to primary and secondary level.
- Have advanced knowledge about the function curriculum plans serve on different levels and how they develop in the tension between cultural change, politics and trans-national governing systems.
- Have knowledge about some main juridical principles for schools and main principles of the agreements of teachers’ work conditions.
- Have knowledge about the school as an organization, the leadership role and what contributes to development and change in schools.
- Have knowledge about different understandings of education quality and bildung, basic principles of quality assessment and how different systems of quality assurance and assessment are practiced in the education system.
- Be able to analyze questions relating to management, leadership, curriculum plans, school development, the role of the teacher, assessment and quality assurance, and relating the analysis to different research approaches.

Lectures 4 hours/week and seminar 2 hours/week. A compulsory, written assignment of 2000-3000 words plus a reference list ( Corresponds to 5-7 pages, Times New Roman 12 pct, space 1.5) has to be handed in, in order to take the individual, written exam. Guidelines for the assignment are available. The theme of the written assignment must be approved by the lecturer in advanced and no later than October 15th. The assignment must be submitted before the individual, written exam.

The deadline for handing in the written assignment is November 1st. in the fall semester and April 15th. in the spring semester.


If less than 10 students sign up for the course it may be cancelled.