Shared Leadership and Governance in Swedish and Norwegian Schools

Shared leadership has gained impact in educational research and policy, and is often portrayed as key to quality enhancement in schools. However, intricate soft governance strategies, increased focus on school leaders’ responsibility for results and external quality assessment can all cause dilemmas due to differences in professional cultures, traditions and expectations of involvement in decision-making processes. In the Nordic countries, school leadership is often characterised as shared; however, these countries use different governance strategies to ensure quality, and research on shared leadership practices within quality work is limited. This comparative, mixed-method study aims to investigate and compare conditions for school leader autonomy in Sweden and Norway through exploring characteristics of shared leadership and school leaders’ experiences of governance in quality work. The two countries share a social-democratic background but have developed different approaches to education governance. Results show that governance and shared leadership in quality work in Sweden is characterised by comparatively clearer task division and roles. Governance strategies in Norway are more diverse, with more actors involved in sharing leadership, highlighting how different governance strategies can contribute to creating different conditions for school leader autonomy in the two countries.