R ATIONAL AND BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Several scholars have argued that schools are surrounded by complex, turbulent and uncertain environments (Leithwood & Louis, 1998; J. W.

Meyer et al., 1992). Especially, it has been claimed that school are profoundly affected by educational reform initiatives directed towards altering the ways they are structured governed and led (Björk, 2001).

Developing adaptive responses, most commonly conceived as a capacity for organizational learning (Marks & Louis, 1999), is therefore a recommended strategy of school improvement (Hallinger & Heck, 2003). Organizational learning theories see adaptation as the organization’s endeavors to improve the match between its own actions and demands imposed from the external environments through learning from experience (Cyert & March, 1992).

From this chosen perspective, organizational adaptation is seen as an experiential learning process that encompasses both outward and inward looking sequences: Organizational actors focus on demands imposed from the environments, at the same time as those demands are internally filtered through incremental adjustments of action repertoires based on new insights (March, 1994b).

Accordingly, the adaptive learning perspective sees all schools as potential learning systems (Leithwood, 2000). But this does not mean that organizational learning is equated with organizational rationality (Thompson, 1967) or organizational intelligence (March, 1999).

Organizations exhibit several impediments to effective learning (March &

Olsen, 1975). For example, the inferences drawn from experiential learning may be ambiguous, myopic and superstitious in nature (Levinthal & March, 1993). Learning may also fairly well be interrupted by cognitive barriers among individuals and groups (Fiol & Lyles, 1985) as well as by lack of political will to adjust practices (Lawrence, Mauws, Dyck, & Kleisen, 2005).

The adaptive learning perspective is, thus, a theoretical lens that analyzes the target oriented interplay between organizational actors and their environments, activated in order to improve the organization’s fit with its external stakeholders (Levitt & March, 1988).

The notion of adaptive learning reflects a broad sensitizing description that requires some degree of initial specification. Firstly, the motivational drivers are to reduce gaps and mismatches between school practices and demands from dominant external stakeholders. Adaptive learning is, as such, problem based and target oriented (Cyert & March, 1992). Secondly, scholars have argued that adaptive learning is most effectively activated from the local

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level of the school organization (Orton & Weick, 1990), undertaken by people that possess the necessary skills and expertise (March, 1994b, p.

193). As argued, mismatches between organizational actions and environmental demands often refer to problems that are close in time and close in cognitive and social distance. Adaptive actions therefore aim at responding to local feedback and improving the match with local environments (March, 1994a). Thirdly, adaptation is shaped by incremental adjustments in action repertoires based on previously re-negotiated understandings. Professionals and their managers seek to “adapt to their environments through small steps, observing and analyzing the consequences of incremental movements and making marginal adjustments”(March & Lounamaa, 1999, p. 157). And fourthly, models of adaptive learning see the process as cyclical and iterative in nature, simply because organizational problems occur and re-occur. This is not at least the case in educational organizations, since new populations of students enter the school every year (Dibbon, 2000).

Although organizational learning is increasingly seen as a strategic instrument of educational change (Leithwood, 2000; Leithwood & Louis, 1998), the research literature of educational administration exposes several

‘blank spots’. The first issue refers to the mechanisms, through which the technical, i.e. instructional, sides of schooling are adapted to environmental contingencies. These possible mechanisms are generally underspecified in the current literature. Dominant conceptions and explanations also tend to be un-nuanced and taken for granted in some areas of the research literature.

New institutional theorists have, for example, long communicated the pessimistic image that school managers nearly always protect and buffer their teachers from influence from the environments (J. W. Meyer & Rowan, 1992). The notion of conservative schoolteachers that always make preference to persistence and inertia in their school practices is also wide-spread (Cuban, 1988). The adaptive learning perspective challenges, or at least nuances, these views by pointing to possible spaces for maneuver in strategies at the local level that may strengthen schools as adaptive systems (Leithwood & Louis, 1998).

The second blank spot issue refers to the important level of analysis, which is seldom taken into account in studies of organizational learning in schools.

For example, intermediate levels of learning between the individual teacher and the whole school are relatively absent in empirical studies. Micro level analysis is generally underestimated, despite wide recognition that teaching is an extremely local and domain specific technology (Mintzberg, 1993).

The third blank spot refers to the possible contribution to adaptive learning from managers of lower levels of the school hierarchy. The adaptive learning perspective highlights local leadership influence, simply because we talk

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about local adjustments in school practices (Orton & Weick, 1990;

Shrivastava, 1983). Most research foci on leadership contributions on school improvement have investigated principal practices (Marks, Louis, & Printy, 2000), although their direct effects are mostly restricted to cultural homogeneity (Mulford & Silins, 2003). Their action repertoire is, as known, not on very close social distance to the technical classroom behavior (Leithwood & Jantzi, 1999). Turning to research on middle management in schools, we know something about what kind of tension school middle managers perceive in their jobs (Wise, 2001). But paradoxically, we know not so much about how they exert influence on their professional environments (Bennett, Newton, Wise, Woods, & Economou, 2003). This thesis seeks to address these three briefly mentioned issues through the exploration of how middle managers² facilitate and promote adaptive learning from the locus of their knowledge domains.

1.1.2 The field of investigation

The chosen empirical context of this study is Norwegian vocational training.

The overall mission of vocational schools is to qualify students for apprenticeship training in the workplace through designed courses of two years duration³. Since the mid-1970s, vocational training has been an integrated part of the Norwegian upper secondary school system. The major growth of upper secondary education towards a matured sector took place in the 1970s and 1980s (Opheim, 2004). The enrollment capacity was radically increased, and in the beginning of the 1990s, the system was capable of absorbing about 80% of a leaving cohort from compulsory schooling (Bergesen, 2006). At the heart of this development of systemic integration and growth in capacity was the new upper secondary legislation of 1974⁴ followed by a stream of regulations and directives. This regulatory basis integrated most lines of upper secondary schooling into a coherent national framework of national curricula, tariff agreements and teacher credentials.

2 Middle managers in secondary education are typically heads of their subject department, besides being professional teachers in minor positions. They are, thus, leaders, managers and professionals themselves in combination (Harris, Jamieson, &

Russ, 1995)

3 These two-year courses are subsequently followed by two years training in the workplace, regulated by a formal apprenticeship contract. Since the vocational training curriculum as a whole is composed by discrete and dispersed activities in separate locations, I use the term distributed curriculum to coin the arrangement.

The term is more explicitly discussed in chapters two, six and nine.

4 The regulatory framework was labeled the Upper Secondary Act of 1974, and it was implemented from August 1976

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Moreover, powers and authorities to govern the schools were in 1976 transferred from the state department to the 19 regional counties (Iván, 1998).

At the organizational level, the mainstream design is the one of a so-called combined school, an assemblage of all subject domains and lines of schooling in the same organization (Nylehn & Presthus, 2001). Norwegian upper secondary schools are, thus, large complex organizations grounded on a diverse collection of subject knowledge domains and occupational fields.

Considerable internal diversity and fragmentation must therefore be expected because the domains reflect different traditions of teacher recruitment, curricula and pedagogical orientation. They are normally structured into relative autonomous subunits, ‘federal’ subject departments (Busher & Harris, 1999), which constitute the technical core of the school organization. Compared with their primary counterparts, secondary schools are therefore argued to be less integrated and more loosely coupled systems (Gray, 2004), and the Norwegian design is assumed to represent an archetypical case of this phenomenon.

The upper secondary sector in Norway underwent radical changes from the mid 1990s, due to the systemic reform labeled ‘Reform 1994’. In vocational training, two major reform components in particular radically changed the school’s external environments. Firstly, the regulatory sides of the reform ensured all applicants statutory right to enter upper secondary schooling in their home environments⁵. When Norwegian pupils leave compulsory primary school after their tenth year, they are thus ensured enrollment into upper secondary schooling, most commonly in accordance with one of their top-three priorities (Iván, 1998). Stable observable effects have been a more diverse student population in the classes (Helland & Støren, 2004) alongside a more complex core technology of instruction (Midthassel, 2004; Opheim, 2004). The second major change in the environments of vocational training schools took place through the implementation of a radical new curriculum structure. Aiming to raise the practical relevance of the training programs, paired with increased working life involvement, a distributed curriculum⁶ of training was launched.

5 This change in intake regime did not radically increase the number of enrolled students, since the more than 80 % of each cohort was already admitted to upper second schooling (Bergesen, 2006). Rather, and in accordance with the reform intentions, the shift in the intake regime ensured opportunity to enter the system for residual groups that formerly systematically fell outside (Iván, 1998)

6 The analytical label distributed curriculum is the author’s term. Most commonly, the label ’2 + 2 model’ is used to describe this arrangement (Grøgaard, 2006)

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The curriculum structure implies that a four-year training program is split equally between in-school instruction and apprenticeship training in the workplaces. More importantly, there are no structural instruments that may guarantee students the right to complete the training program. Seen from the school’s point of view, half of the training chain takes place outside its organizational territory. And the working life institutions control the intake of apprenticeship candidates, because they, so to speak, select those they prefer. Furthermore, assessment and certification also take place in the workplace domain. This arrangement implies per se a case of strong dependency on contingencies and conditions determined in the local environments of the school (Grøgaard, 2006). School professionals of vocational training are therefore assumed to develop adaptive strategies in order to deal with external constraints and contingencies. From this stance, adaptive learning is assumed to be a key function of effective school management and a crucial condition for quality and successful performance.

1.2 Theoretical foundation