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Images of Educational Leadership in Switzerland

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The Cultural and Social Foundations of Educational Leadership

Part of the book series: Educational Governance Research ((EGTU,volume 16))

Abstract

This chapter presents the cultural and social foundations of educational leadership in Switzerland. Switzerland has the particularity of being a federal state with 26 cantons and as many education systems that are different in their specificity and similar in their common and harmonized foundations. We will present the Swiss system and its articulation by linguistic regions before showing how the conception of the role of school leaders is illustrated in this multi-level context and how the notion of leadership is accepted within schools and school principals.

Public governance in the field of Swiss education is stretched across multiple demands: exercising control by setting rules, standards and objectives within the space that brings together different actors, but also administering said space by managing the relationships between the actors and by following the evolution of the system, all the while ensuring its effectiveness. In this context, the coordination of actions within schools is a hybridization between a structural management logic that is still hesitant within a teaching community in which the notion of leadership remains a hidden dimension, and a leadership logic consisting marked by a vision of service in the development of a common good and the trust in professionalism of teachers. Local governance is often no longer linked to the pilot but rather to the purpose of the steering and control arrangements, while leadership is built in a matrix way within each institution.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Teacher Education, HEP Vaud, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Olivier Perrenoud

  2. FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Windisch, Switzerland

    Pierre Tulowitzki

Authors
  1. Olivier Perrenoud
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  2. Pierre Tulowitzki
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Correspondence to Olivier Perrenoud .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France

    Romuald Normand

  2. Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Lejf Moos

  3. Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Min Liu

  4. Campus Brugg-Windisch, FHNW University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Windisch, Switzerland

    Pierre Tulowitzki

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Perrenoud, O., Tulowitzki, P. (2021). Images of Educational Leadership in Switzerland. In: Normand, R., Moos, L., Liu, M., Tulowitzki, P. (eds) The Cultural and Social Foundations of Educational Leadership. Educational Governance Research, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74497-7_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74497-7_7

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-74497-7

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