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The purpose of this paper is to examine principals’ experience and sensemaking of collaboration with private companies, focussing on leadership and school improvement.

This paper is set against the backdrop of a project where three public Swedish schools collaborated with private companies within their communities. Data were collected over three years and consisted of semi-structured interviews, meeting notes, field observations, field notes and document analysis. A qualitative content analysis was performed using the Atlas.ti 6.2 software tool.

The study shows that important sensemaking for the principals in this collaboration between schools and private companies is related to the sense of collective responsibility and involvement, development of improvement culture and trust between key actors, and common improvement initiatives based on mutual interest. Challenges in the collaboration are related to principal changes, a lack of implementation of the collaboration, and that there was no clear vision of external collaboration in two out of three schools. In terms of possibilities, the collaboration was based on the needs of the school, a collaborative culture was developed, and the development/activities were undertaken between involved schools and private companies during the collaboration.

Inevitably, there are limitations that need to be identified and recognised in this study. First, the small number of cases in this multiple case study, as well as the specific social context, limits the possibility of generalising the findings. Second, the study was not independently selected, and the findings and analyses are linked to national and local contexts, which can be seen as a limitation and strength. Notwithstanding, this study contributes with in-depth information about how a beyond-school collaboration with private companies is practised as well as how involved principals made sense of the collaboration from the perspective of school improvement.

The originality is the collaboration between schools and private companies. The paper contributes with new knowledge about how principals experience and make sense of this collaboration as a vehicle for school improvement.

The purpose of this paper is twofold, first, it is to reflect on the development of professional capital in a three-year collaborative school improvement initiative that used collaborative inquiry within, between and beyond schools in an attempt to close the gap in outcomes for students from less well-off backgrounds and their wealthier counter parts. Second, this paper will reflect more broadly on the initiative as a whole.

This research and development initiative involved the research team working in a nested setting as second-order action researchers, consultants and critical friends with a range of actors across the system. The findings are based on mixed methods data collected from eight case study school partnerships. The partnerships involved over 50 schools across 14 school districts in Scotland. Social network analysis was also used in one of the school districts to map and quantify professional relationships across schools.

Over time, relationships within the partnerships developed and deepened. This occurred within individual schools, across schools within the partnerships and beyond the school partnerships. At the same time as these networks expanded, participants reported increases in human, social and decisional capital, not only among teachers, but also among other stakeholders. In addition, through their collaborative inquiries schools reported increased evidence of impact on positive outcomes for disadvantaged students.

The professional capital of individuals and organisations across and beyond schools is demonstrated as an important consideration in the pursuit of both quality and equity in education.

The purpose of this paper is to examine principals’ sense-making of a school–university collaboration taking an institutional perspective on organizational change. The study’s context involves three schools in a collaboration focusing on leadership and school improvement with one university.

The study draws on findings from a qualitative case study that examined principals’ sense-making of this type of school–university collaboration. Data were collected over three years and consisted of semistructured interviews, meeting notes, field observations, field notes and document analysis. A qualitative content analysis was performed using the Atlas.ti 6.2 software tool.

The findings showed that mattering sense-making for the principals in this collaboration is related to the cultivation of collective participation and responsibility, the development of trust and improvement culture among actors, and the sense of moving towards research-based and collaborative learning-oriented practices in their schools.

This study encountered several limitations that need to be addressed and recognized. First, the small number of cases in this multiple case study, as well as the specific social context, limits the possibilities for the generalization of the findings. Second, the study was not independently selected and the findings and analyses were linked to national and local contexts, which can be seen as a limitation and a strength. Nevertheless, this study provides in-depth information about the principals’ experiences and constructions of meaning as they helped lead a school–university collaboration in their schools. Finally, although the sample was small and not representative, the findings provided useful insights into and examples of how principals understand and interpret a school–university partnership in their schools’ improvement processes.

The findings provide an elaborated illustration of how intentional efforts to collaborate and develop the schools in a school–university partnership may affect the regulative, normative and cultural–cognitive aspects in schools.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate interactions of job demands and job resources in the facilitation of innovative work behavior (IWB). In particular, the paper aims at researching interactive effects of psychological empowerment and participative safety and their potential to buffer negative effects of job demands.

A cross-sectional questionnaire study with 239 vocational teachers was carried out. For hypotheses testing, multiple linear regression models were analyzed.

The study provides evidence for psychological empowerment and participative safety as individual and interactive predictors of IWB. Furthermore, the findings indicate that effects of job demands are substantially more positive when psychological empowerment is high and, conversely, when participative safety is low.

Future studies should address the issues of the current study using a longitudinal approach and additional data sources. Moreover, concerning generalizability, future studies could move beyond the current study context of innovative vocational colleges and teachers.

The paper highlights the importance of creating resourceful work environments, which empower employees and provide fellowship and minority acceptance. Furthermore, the findings call for paying attention to individually varying perceptions of job demands and corresponding needs for compensatory job resources.

The study adds to closing the gap of lacking insight into interactions among established predictors of IWB. In particular, this regards interactions among demanding and resourceful characteristics of the work environment that need to be balanced in order to activate proactive behaviors such as IWB.

This study tested a moderated mediation model of school leadership effects on teacher instructional practices. Specifically, the authors focused on the mediating effect of teacher professional communities and the moderating effect of instructional climate on the relationship between school leadership and teacher instructional practices.

The authors collected data from 958 teachers working in 72 middle and high schools in Türkiye and employed multilevel structural equation modelling (MSEM) with Bayesian estimation to predict structural links between the study variables.

Results affirmed a full mediation model where school leadership practices exerted indirect effects on teacher instructional practices through promoting teacher professional communities. The authors also found significant moderating role of instructional climate in the effect of school leadership on teacher professional communities and instructional practices.

This study illuminates the contextualized nature of school leadership by concluding that the effect of school leadership on teacher professional communities and instructional practices is closely tied to the extent to which a high-quality instructional climate is established in schools.

This paper draws on the findings of a program of research, which, over many years, has explored ways of promoting greater equity in schools and education systems. Using examples from the field, the paper provides an explanation of what this involves. In so doing it identifies potential barriers that have to be addressed and suggestions as to how these might be overcome.

The paper refelects on a series of studies what uses a ‘development and research’ approach This is one of a family of methodologies referred to by as ‘design-based implementation research’. These aim to transcend traditional research/practice barriers to facilitate the design of educational interventions that are ‘effective, sustainable, and scalable’. They are seen as occurring when researcher and practitioner knowledge meet in particular sites, aimed at producing new knowledge about ways in which broad values might better be realized in future practice.

The experiences described in this article suggest a way forward that policy makers could use to ensure that the impetus that comes from greater school autonomy will lead to improvements that will benefit all children and young people. This is based on an assumption that education systems have further potential to improve themselves, provided policy makers allow the space for practitioners to make use of the expertise and creativity that lies trapped within individual classrooms. The aim must be to ‘move knowledge around’ and the best way to do this is through strengthening collaboration within schools, between schools and beyond schools.

In thinking about how the approach described might be used more widely it is essential to recognize that it does not offer a simple recipe that can be lifted and transferred between contexts. Rather, it defines an approach to improvement that uses processes of contextual analysis in order to create strategies that fit particular circumstances.

The experiences described in this article suggest a way forward that policy makers could use to ensure that the impetus that comes from greater school autonomy will lead to improvements that will benefit all children and young people. This is based on an assumption that education systems have further potential to improve themselves, provided policy makers allow the space for practitioners to make use of the expertise and creativity that lies trapped within individual classrooms.

The article draws together findings from an extensive programme of research in order to develop new thinking regarding ways of promoting equity in education.

Historically, the school effectiveness and improvement movement has focussed its attention on “within school” factors associated with effectiveness and improvement and on the individual school as the primary unit of analysis for improvement and scrutiny purposes. More recently, research has focussed on school-to-school collaboration and engagement with a broader range of services and providers has highlighted the need for more adaptive and nuanced forms of collaboration and partnership. The purpose of this paper is to explore this complex landscape from the perspective of educational reform of the middle tier in Scotland.

This paper draws on perspectives associated with socio-cultural theory, its application to public service settings and insights gained from research and evaluation outcomes over a five-year period.

This paper focusses on the establishment of Regional Improvement Collaboratives in Scotland; an example of an attempt to generate system-wide change and a shift from the hierarchical cultures characterised by bureaucratic organisations to more egalitarian cultures characterised by mutualistic, laterally networked organisations. It highlights the importance of structure and cultural change, identity and agency, leadership capacity, outward perspectives, primacy of learning and teaching and variations and complexities in creating a more networked and collaborative education system. It offers cautions concerning potential unintended consequences in the quest to develop a “self-improving” or “learning system”.

This paper highlights the importance of maintaining and building social cohesion between different stakeholders within educational systems in order to support the implementation of educational reform.

This is the first documentation and reflective analysis for an ambitious reform agenda for the middle tier in Scotland. Its value lies in the lessons and considerations it offers to other systems embarking on reforms that endeavour to build more cohesive and agile education systems, without opening them up to neo-liberal approaches to education.

The aim of this paper is to report the process, findings and implications of a three‐year evaluation of integrated health centres (IHCs) established in three secondary schools in Cornwall by the School‐Based Integrated Health Centres (SBIHC) partnership.

When the partners had completed the capital works, an evaluation strategy was designed for 2009‐2012 to identify the extent to which each of the IHCs was meeting the aims set for the IHCs, and each IHC and school was contributing to the aims of the SBIHC project. Formative and summative evaluation used annual case studies to apply data progressively regarding: the use, users and operations of each IHC; students’ perceptions of the user‐friendliness of the IHCs; indicators of the general health and well‐being of students and their sexual and mental health; students’ exposure to crime, substance abuse and poverty; and students’ academic achievement, attendances and exclusions. This process culminated in this paper which reports and discusses findings, suggests implications for practice, theory and research and proposes future directions for the partnership.

All three schools engaged students closely in the design and decoration of their IHCs. Student ownership was extended into the selection of Coordinators and into centre management and governance. Budehaven Community School appointed a National Health Service (NHS)‐trained Coordinator for their IHC, The Haven, a mental health worker funded for one year by the NHS. After 2009‐2010, his responsibilities were shared by the NHS‐trained Receptionist and the Manager, an Assistant Headteacher. During Year 3, Budehaven added a “co‐location” building, Kevren. About 37 professionals are now located in or visit The Haven and Kevren. Student footfall doubled to about 4,000 in the second year and increased by another 25 per cent in the third year. The wide range of general, mental and sexual health services were highly valued by the students. The Crayon, the IHC in Hayle Community School, achieved a similar footfall over three years. It started with a Receptionist and the Pupil Welfare Officer. The Manager, a Deputy Headteacher, and the Headteacher moving most student support services into the IHC at the end of Year 1. From then on the Crayon had three full‐time professionals. By the end of Year 3, the Crayon had reached the limits of its facilities. A solely positive association was found between IHC usage and measured improvements to mental health and academic progress. The IHC in Penair School, Bywva, developed a wide range of general, sexual and mental health services, attracted a similarly strong footfall, and also reached capacity in Year 3. Penair refined their IHC's line management by an Assistant Headteacher and coordination by a Lead.

This paper offers a new conceptual model of the SBIHC model of health care centred on the reciprocity and integrity of relationships between students and professionals.

The purpose of this paper is to construct a policy map of professional learning networks (PLNs) in Spain. It includes initiatives prompted in Spanish schools in which social, political, cultural and educational elements are integrated. At the same time, it analyses which organization promotes each of the networks, the objectives pursued and the scope of the network in the territory in which it is created.

The methodology followed is essentially descriptive and incorporates the first experiences with school networks which have been disseminated in the Spanish literature. It stimulates reflection on the role networks are expected to play in relation to local developments in this specific school system.

The cases described (Castellon, Catalonia, Malaga and Seville) suggest a way forward for practitioners to advance toward an educational paradigm based on greater collaboration. This includes a partnership approach among professionals within and across classrooms, schools, communities, districts and education systems. In particular, the results place the focus of the network on the prevalence of the following school classification, included schools (community networks linking to the territory), extended schools (socio-educational networks), equity schools (equity fostering networks) and partnership schools (school-to-school support networks), whose objectives and scopes are reviewed.

With the Spanish context in mind, it is essential to recognize that more empirical evidence is still needed to make a significant contribution toward building knowledge in this research line. Indeed, sustainability seems to be an important point to consider in a short-term world where quick-fix solutions are required. However, PLNs need time to know how beneficial they really are, for example, in terms of student outcomes and school improvement.

The argument developed assumes networks as a mirror wherein the present and future of education takes place. In this sense, the scientific and educational communities have both a challenge and an opportunity to rethink the potential of networking and collaboration in education. The article tries to be attractive to a specialized reader or one simply interested in the problem of networks in education and the reality of PLNs in Spain.

The network society demands a network school environment where communities are part of a local character strategy.

This document offers an interesting view on networks that not only focus on education but on social and welfare issues and it aims to target education from a broader perspective; so resulting in opening schools to the community, which is not a widely covered topic in education research. In summary, the paper can be considered as a pioneer study in the Spanish context, which contains valuable information about PLNs, their origin and current status in this part of the world.