International research has highlighted teacher leadership as a means to improve teaching and learning by distributing instructional (learning-centered) leadership to teacher leaders. Simultaneously, there has been an increase and alteration of teacher leaders in schools. One example is the 'first teacher' position in Sweden implemented in 2013.…

The aim of this study was to investigate in what ways children's language development could be supported from the staff at Swedish preschools in the 'Tambour situation' (the transition time at the preschool's reception area). The support of Physical Language Learning Environment and Language Learning Interactions were observed for children (1-5…

Entrepreneurship in school is a widespread issue within the school system and it is therefore important to problematise teachers and their role when entrepreneurship is emphasized in their school practice. The teachers in this study, from the secondary and upper secondary levels, were all participating in a Swedish three-year school improvement…

The current study reported here is one within a research project aimed at the identification of enabling and constraining factors in a two-year school-development project at a large secondary school in Sweden, where all teaching staff were involved in improving the quality of instruction through collaborative analyses. In this project a…

With the increasing focus on inclusion, special needs educators (SNEs) are now expected to share responsibility for pupils with teacher colleagues and to lead school development, but it is a challenge to enact this role in schools. The aim of the study was to explore how professional roles of Swedish SNEs are enacted in local school contexts. From…

This study aims to provide a better understanding of teachers' managing roles when using group work in the classroom. Building on Granström's 2 concepts of leadership and teachership, a more specific aim is to investigate teachers' managing roles when using group work and how teachers' presumptions affect the way in which they manage the…

The purpose of this study is to investigate school district administrators' perspectives concerning the professional activities and influence of special educators in Norway (n?=?266) and Sweden (n?=?290). We examine three themes drawn from a survey of practices and policies in each country: (a) the organisational arrangements in which special…

In this article we investigate educational leadership as a site of practice, utilising the notion of "practice architectures" as our lens. The latter shifts Etienne Wenger's more individualising notion of 'learning architectures' to a broader study of the systems and organisations that prefigure educational practices and potentially,…