Leadership practices of school principals in collaborative innovation 3 61 3.4.2.3. Recognition of Bottom-up and Top-down practices Although we identified distinct leadership practices and patterns, we found a similarity between Key players and Facilitators, as both patterns display bottom-up and top-down leadership practices (see the first and fifth row of Table 3.4). For Key players, we found top-down practices in which the principals organize and handle everything related to the implementation of the innovation themselves. In contrast, Facilitators provide (strict) frameworks and take decisions in a top-down manner but delegate the actual organization of the implementation to teachers. Bottom-up practices exercised by Key players were the involving of teachers in decision-making processes, whilst being active themselves as well, whereas for Facilitators, they were the shifting of responsibilities to internal school coaches and teachers, whilst being passively involved themselves. 3.4.2.4. Educational sector differences We also identified small differences between educational sectors in leadership practices. Most primary school principals showed ‘our’ leadership practices (see Table 3.4). In contrast, most vocational education school principals showed ‘their’ leadership practices. 3.5. Discussion This paper explored how school principals enact leadership practices in collaborative innovation within schools. Based on interview data we identified leadership practices and leadership patterns that are discussed in turn. 3.5.1. Repertoire of leadership practices in collaborative innovation Confirming the expectation of finding a repertoire of leadership practices, we identified 11 leadership practices: Bottom-up, Involvement, Facilitation, Top-down, Motivation, Vision focus, Progress, Role Model, Student focus, Transparency, and Connect. The well-known ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’ practices are consistent with other studies on leadership practices (Fullan, 2016; Draaisma et al., 2018). Furthermore, in the leadership practices Involvement and Motivation, we recognize the established concept of the relation-oriented practices, and in the practices Vision focus and Progress, we recognize the task-oriented practices (Lee & Carpenter, 2018). Additionally, the four categories of leadership practices stated by Leithwood et al. (2020) can be related to those described in this study: Vision focus is related to ‘setting direction’, Involvement is related to ‘developing people’, and Connect partly to ‘redesigning the organization’. ‘Managing the
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