Leadership practices of school principals in collaborative innovation 3 49 3.1. Introduction Schools operate in demanding and rapidly changing environments. Therefore, school principals and teachers are expected to continuously innovate their school practices to maintain their educational quality (Serdyukov, 2017). In his theoretical work, Fullan (2016) argues that shared responsibility is essential for innovations to succeed. This sharing of responsibility in turn requires work on innovations to be collaborative (Fullan, 2007, 2016; Hill et al., 2014), an approach that has been described as collaborative innovation in recent organizational literature (Bekkers &Noordegraaf, 2016; Sørensen &Torfing, 2016). In this paper, we study primary, secondary, and vocational education schools in the Netherlands that all implement the same large-scale program aimed at stimulating collaboration between school principals and teachers. These program’s innovation processes focus directly on enhancing collaboration and shared responsibility that both indirectly may lead to improved approaches to “classroom-based teaching, learning and assessment, as well as changes in the school organisation” (definition of OECD in Looney, 2009, p. 5). School principals have a vital role in creating suitable conditions for innovation processes and in leading these processes (Bush & Glover, 2014; Fullan, 2007, 2016; Hallinger & Heck, 2010). However, school principals often struggle with their role in innovation and collaborative school processes (Drago-Severson, 2012; Wildy & Louden, 2000). On the one hand, they are expected to collaborate with teachers and to be democratic and participative (Wildy & Louden, 2000). On the other hand, they have to decide and direct, and assume overall responsibility for their school’s educational quality and the establishment of essential innovation conditions (Fullan, 2016; Wildy & Louden, 2000). This paper aims to explore Dutch school principals’ leadership practices in leading collaborative innovation. We study their leadership practices during the first year schools work with the program, as this year entails the implementation phase. This intensive implementation year provides an interesting opportunity to study how school principals enact leadership practices when challenged with searching for how they should (re)form and enact their leadership in collaborative innovation. 3.2. Theoretical framework 3.2.1. Collaborative innovation in schools The concept of collaborative innovation is mainly used in the public sector context (Bekkers & Noordegraaf, 2016; Sørensen & Torfing, 2016). It is characterized by a multi-actor approach to innovation, both vertical and horizontal, wherein resources,
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTk4NDMw