{"title":"External facilitators’ practical work for school improvement: de-professionalising or developing improvement capacity?","authors":"Jaana Nehez, Marcia Håkansson Lindqvist","doi":"10.1007/s10833-024-09514-z","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article explores external facilitation for school improvement; more specifically, it examines the practical work of external facilitators. It is based on a Swedish case in which facilitators at the Swedish National Agency for Education support low-performing schools. The article aims to develop knowledge about how external facilitators in their practical work both promote and prevent developed understanding and improvement capacity. Based on observations and documents, facilitators’ endeavours and critical situations in their work to support school improvement are identified. The findings show five different endeavours to promote development of understanding and improvement capacity. However, they also show how taking ownership, simplification, and model focus, three of five identified recurring critical situations, prevent such development. The conclusion is that there are several aspects for external facilitators to balance to promote school improvement and turn around low-performing schools. When planning for external facilitation, it is important to consider how the facilitators’ practical work can be adapted to the local contexts of those who are facilitated in order to promote their ownership of the processes. Without balance and adaptation, external facilitation can lead to deprofessionalisation instead of development of improvement capacity.</p>","PeriodicalId":47376,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Educational Change","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Educational Change","FirstCategoryId":"95","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-024-09514-z","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This article explores external facilitation for school improvement; more specifically, it examines the practical work of external facilitators. It is based on a Swedish case in which facilitators at the Swedish National Agency for Education support low-performing schools. The article aims to develop knowledge about how external facilitators in their practical work both promote and prevent developed understanding and improvement capacity. Based on observations and documents, facilitators’ endeavours and critical situations in their work to support school improvement are identified. The findings show five different endeavours to promote development of understanding and improvement capacity. However, they also show how taking ownership, simplification, and model focus, three of five identified recurring critical situations, prevent such development. The conclusion is that there are several aspects for external facilitators to balance to promote school improvement and turn around low-performing schools. When planning for external facilitation, it is important to consider how the facilitators’ practical work can be adapted to the local contexts of those who are facilitated in order to promote their ownership of the processes. Without balance and adaptation, external facilitation can lead to deprofessionalisation instead of development of improvement capacity.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Educational Change is an international, professionally refereed, state-of-the-art scholarly journal, reflecting the most important ideas and evidence of educational change. The journal brings together some of the most influential thinkers and writers as well as emerging scholars on educational change. It deals with issues like educational innovation, reform and restructuring, school improvement and effectiveness, culture-building, inspection, school-review, and change management. It examines why some people resist change and what their resistance means. It looks at how men and women, older teachers and younger teachers, students, parents and others experience change differently. It looks at the positive aspects of change but does not hesitate to raise uncomfortable questions about many aspects of educational change either. It looks critically and controversially at the social, economic, cultural and political forces that are driving educational change. The Journal of Educational Change welcomes and supports contributions from a range of disciplines, including history, psychology, political science, sociology, anthropology, philosophy and administrative and organizational theory, and from a broad spectrum of methodologies including quantitative and qualitative approaches, documentary study, action research and conceptual development. School leaders, system administrators, teacher leaders, consultants, facilitators, educational researchers, staff developers and change agents of all kinds will find this journal an indispensable resource for guiding them to both classic and cutting-edge understandings of educational change. No other journal provides such comprehensive coverage of the field of educational change.