Abstract
Education is of fundamental value for a society; to raise and foster a new generation of citizens in a global and local multicultural context. It is therefore crucial to identify the competences that are needed for multiple actors in the school governance chain, with the aim of achieving this mission in different contexts over time.
An underlying question in this chapter, when dealing with competence and understanding, is what the purposes of education are and who has the power to decide how national decisions should be understood and realized locally. In this chapter some of the prerequisites for discussing this question will be problematized. The focus is on political and professional leaders at the local level and their possible impact on the prerequisites for education. The research results presented here are derived from analyses made of the statements of different leaders – both political and professional – preferably at the municipal level, and of their work in the governance chain in a municipality.
The empirical data are analysed from descriptions of what is required to translate individual knowledge into joint or shared competences, which in turn may increase the possibilities for action in order to achieve educational policy goals. To this is added the importance of understanding one’s assignment to increase the organizational competence in a municipal organization. A guiding presumption of this chapter is that if leaders who govern schools – both political and professional leaders at different levels – are able to take charge of different areas of knowledge within the organization and translate that into joint competences, shared and used by all, the possibilities of identifying and determining the relevant prerequisites for education in a broad sense will increase.
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Nihlfors, E., Høyer, H.C., Kofod, K.K., Risku, M. (2016). Competence and Understanding in the Governance Chain. In: Moos, L., Nihlfors, E., Paulsen, J. (eds) Nordic Superintendents: Agents in a Broken Chain. Educational Governance Research, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25106-6_9
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