122 6.1. Conclusion 6.1.1. Introduction to the conclusion Innovations in schools often do not turn out as intended. One important reason is that the vast majority of teachers and school principals are not involved, or do not feel to be involved, when decisions are made on the content and implementation of (nation-wide) innovations. The number of collaborative forms of jointly led innovation, however, is increasing. These forms of innovation require changes in teachers’ and school principals’ professionalism. The schools that we studied chose to use the leerKRACHT program to work on education in more collaborative ways. This program is aimed at stimulating socalled ‘collaborative innovation’. Collaborative innovation is characterized by a multiactor approach to innovation, with both vertical and horizontal working relations. In this dissertation, horizontal relations refer to working relations between teachers. Vertical relations pertain to working relations between teachers and school principals. These relations need to be led. Based on theoretical studies, leading collaborative innovation is considered to be distributed. Distributed leadership means that multiple team members can be considered leading. However, it is yet unclear how leading collaborative innovation actually happens in schools, and what this means for leadership practices of both teachers and school principals in day-to-day working contexts. The aim of this dissertation is to understand better how collaborative innovation is actually led by school principals and teachers. We used key concepts that helped us study how collaborative innovation is led, derived from different bodies of knowledge: changing professionalism, collaborative innovation, leadership, networks, and sociocultural contexts. By bringing these bodies of knowledge together, we have tried to develop a more overarching perspective on leading collaborative innovation in schools. Here multiple levels of analysis (individuals, teams, schools) and multiple factors (organizational, cultural, educational) are interwoven. We studied the following main research question: How do school principals and teachers lead collaborative innovation in schools? In order to answer this research question, we conducted four related studies, each with a specific sub-question: 1. How do horizontal and vertical working relations in school affect collaborative innovation practices? 2. How do school principals enact leadership practices in leading collaborative innovation?
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