Ben van der Hilst

343 and educational program team and between administration and middle management. Due to the strong division of labor at the level of teachers, there is usually also a weak connection between teachers and a student’s comprehensive development. Each teacher contributes his part, but there is usually no single, identifiable actor within the organization who is responsible for the holistic development of the student. There is therefore a need to look for ways to adjust the organizational structure so that the number of weak connections is reduced. The management task of the school leader can therefore be reformulated as follows: Which type of organizational structure strengthens connections within the organization so that quality, agility and job satisfaction are ensured? This management assignment forms the research question of this study. A practice-based theory of the school leader’s task Experiences from prac- tice in the author’s professional career may provide an answer to the above question. Chapter 4 therefore reports on the development of an organizational model in a sec- ondary school where the author, as a school leader, forms small teams of approxi- mately five teachers that are responsible for groups of about one hundred students. These teams, in this study referred to as education teams , have extensive powers to fulfill their mandate for the development of a specific group of students. The fo- cus on student development rather than the instruction process, distinguishes the education team from the educational program team . Later, this organization model is dubbed the team centered organization structure (TOS). The introduction of the TOS was accompanied by several hitches, but it also led to a large number of educational developments as well as a great deal of enthusiasm among teachers. In addition to smoother implementation of innovations originating from within the organization, the execution of externally driven innovations, such as the introduction of the renewed second phase HAVO/VWO and the VMBO 13 , also became easier. During his career, the author improved his knowledge about this organiza- tional model by introducing it into a number of organizations, and gained practical knowledge about the model through his work as lecturer and consultant. This resulted in a practice-based theory about the TOS. Chapter 4 summarizes this theory with a description of the TOS in fourteen ‘building blocks’ and presents the following claim regarding the effects of introducing the TOS: Introduction of the TOS (according to the fourteen building blocks) leads to a professional school organization in which quality is improved, teachers are in charge of their professional practice and job satisfaction increases. In this organization, wor- 13 Different capability levels in Dutch secondary education Summary Teamgericht organiseren