Summary S 169 horizontal and adaptive, and that leaders need to respect the self-regulating character of collaborative innovation processes (Angelle, 2010; Ospina, 2017). This is recognized in the distributed leadership theory that we use in this dissertation. This theory postulates that multiple team members can be considered leaders (Spillane, 2005). Leading (collaborative innovation) in networks Studying leadership as a social phenomenon that is enacted in interaction between several persons fits with a social network perspective, which is concerned with relationships between people or groups (Freeman, 2004; Raelin, 2016; Wasserman & Faust, 1994). Sociocultural contexts of leading collaborative innovation Teachers and school principals act in school organizations and interact with each other. Their interactions are mediated by aspects of the wider sociocultural context (Pea, 1993; Rogoff, 1990). Sociocultural activity theory states the importance of sociocultural contexts for leadership and other practices in schools (Rogoff, 1990; Spillane & Sherer, 2004; Tian et al., 2016). This means that leadership practices have to be understood in the contexts in which they are embedded (Powell & DiMaggio, 1991). While these theoretical underpinnings suggest that the sociocultural context needs to be considered when studying leadership practices in collaborative innovation, only a few educational researchers have studied the context. The ones that studied the context have mainly focused on one contextual level (Liou & Daly, 2014; Liu, 2021; Liu et al., 2018; Tam, 2019). This means that previous research has not yet studied the relationships between levels and contexts. 4. Research context In this dissertation, we studied Dutch schools that work with the educational program leerKRACHT (see https://stichting-leerkracht.nl/). In the 2012-2013 school year, the program was implemented for the first time by 15 schools. Up until 2022, more than a thousand primary, secondary, and vocational education schools had implemented this program. The aim of the two-year leerKRACHT program is to initiate a transformation to collaborative innovation and a learning school culture to improve the quality of education. To achieve this, the program uses a team-based approach, including the teachers and school principal(s), to improve processes step by step. The program’s method is based on four practical tools that are all working methods of collaboration: 1)
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