Middle leaders’ triple logics for leading school-organized extra-curriculum activities: evidence from Shanghai’s junior secondary schools

Abstract With reference to the heads of departments of moral education (HDMEs) in Shanghai’s junior secondary schools, this paper explores middle leaders’ logics for leading school-organized extra-curricular activities (SEAs). This qualitative study, guided by Woulfin’s lived logic framework, found that the interviewed HDMEs actively reinterpreted the institutional logics with three logics—expressive, instrumental, and hierarchical—by manipulating policy circulation, responding to the performative accountability and micropolitics in the hierarchy, and using correlative thinking. The lived logics of leading SEAs reveal that, as heads of a marginalized department in schools, the HDMEs struggled to seek visibility by using correlative thinking, promoting the importance of their work, and aligning with more helpful senior leaders. The study responds to theories on school middle leadership and implementation logic. It could deepen our understanding of the paradoxes in China’s development and governance, especially in areas concerning both measurable performance and unmeasurable issues (e.g. ideology and sustainable development).