S CHOOL STRUCTURE

Five functional subject departments that approximately correspond with the occupational domains, into which the school aims to train and socialize their recruits, structure the Alpha site. All departments are headed by a middle manager, who also serves duty as teacher in a minor part of the position. The line structure also includes a contact teacher function, aiming to strengthen the coupling between the management core and the students within each of the departments. Each contact teacher is responsible for a group of 15

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students. Teachers in academic subjects are subordinated into the vocational subunits. This deliberate choice was made in the early 1990s, in order to ensure a satisfactory fit between academic and occupational knowledge in the teachers’ practical instruction. The whole department structure was re-designed with the purpose of stimulating teachers in academic subjects to adapt their instruction closer to the didactical conditions of the vocational specializations. A former department of general academics was closed and the teachers were transferred into pure vocational subject departments.

7.4.1 The team-based design

At the end of the 1990s, a major restructuring of the subject departments was launched¹⁰⁰. The motives, as emerge from the descriptions, arose from the perceived need to better master a more heterogeneous student population, due the changed intake regulations as well as to the fact that the school maintained their inclusive policy. The key component of the restructure was the introduction of a team-layer in the operating core of the school design. In practical terms, each of the subject departments was fragmented into five or six teams. More importantly, the teacher team became a clearly specified unit in the school’s formal structure, anchored in the teachers’ tariff agreement. Each teacher thereby became coupled to a team, and to the students. The purpose was to create a collaborative teacher context close to the work of the students.

The core team, which is the official label, is a formal work group of teachers designed to take responsibility for a defined number of classes and students.

Membership and participation are compulsory, and besides, the teamwork is to some extent self-governing. This means that teams have certain degrees of freedom to make instructional decisions in accordance with the members’

joint priorities. The core teams may for example design individual programs for students in accordance with their professional judgments. Teams are furthermore empowered to make decisions in time-planning issues, preferred curricula components, project work and prioritizations of instructional materials. The decisive point is, thus, that the core team possesses significant degrees of freedom and local autonomy in order to construct and adjust a defined set of frameworks and local routines that govern the individual team members’ work in the classroom.

100 The restructuring process is laid out more in detail in subchapter 7.6

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The underlying rational is, as such, firstly to enable relatively rapid didactical adjustments when needed. Secondly, the team structure knits the teachers that share a technical domain, i.e. a number of classes and students, closer to each other. Thirdly, this close-knit structure is anchored in objectives of creating a collaborative context that may help the individual teacher to better master complexities in the daily work. As such, the teams were induced to the department structure in order to create a ‘supportive belt’ round a more complex context of instruction. Coupling mechanisms are co-location and clearly defined responsibilities. Seen from a line management point of view, the governance line is drawn from the middle manager to a group of core teams. The functional structure, after the implementation of a core team layer, is illustrated by figure 7.1.

Figure 7.1: The team-based functional design of Alpha

Middle

According to the descriptions, the department as a functional unit has also gradually changed its mission towards a context for diffusion of information and experience between teacher teams. Important issues related to coordination, planning and short-term decision-making have been delegated to the team-layer, which changes the nature of the subunit. As one of the middle managers puts it:

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After the implementation of the team structure, the nature of the subject department meetings gradually changed towards an arena for sharing experiences. The conflict level of department meetings also decreased, because many issues were already resolved when the meeting was set.

(Informant No 2, middle manager, second interview)

However, this construction of a team layer within the subject department has also formed a more complex organization to manage from the middle level:

On one hand, the middle manager is the superior for a group of individual subordinates in a line management structure. On the other hand, the middle manager also has to support, lead and manage a small collection of core teams within his or her subject department. From this perspective, the middle manager’s job is ‘double knitted’: On top of the line management duties, he or she is required to support and facilitate a series of within-team processes.

Besides, diffusion of knowledge and information between them also becomes an important task. Consistently arising from the interviews is the description of a radically more complex work technology to manage. On the upside, as described by the interviewees, the team-based subject department provides more opportunities for dealing more effectively with more demanding interactions involved in teaching.

7.4.2 The leadership core

The line structure displays a small apex at the top of the school hierarchy, where the school principal is a full-time manager with overall responsibilities for the school’s operations. The principal is empowered to undertake negotiations with trade unions on behalf of the regional county.

There is, as such, a civil servant element included in the principal role, because he/she is a subordinate of the county administration. The associate principal is in a number-two position in the school hierarchy and the principal’s substitute in the event of the principal’s absence. The apex also includes an administrative manager responsible for personnel planning and administrative tasks. An office deputy manages the mercantile staff unit, and the staff is responsible for accounting routines, official statements and financial reports. Tasks and responsibilities of each management role are specified in table 7.1.

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Table 7.1: Responsibilities of the school managers

POSITION MAJOR TASKS AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Principal Strategic planning, external relationship, follow up of middle managers, reporting to board and civil service Associate principal Overall planning, instructional routines, quality assurance

systems, student assessment, and student related issues Administrative

manager Human resource management including vacancies, pensions, turnover, staff recruitment

Middle manager Head of department, management of department staff, educational planning, budget control, workplace relationships

Office deputy Budgeting, accounting routines, financial reporting

The interviews with the management actors, both at the top and in the middle line, display a strong rhetoric of team behavior and team philosophy inherent in the work routine of the school management group. Based solely on interviews and secondary documents, it is not easy to distinguish between artifacts and realities in terms of implemented practice. However, one area of their practices in particular is consistently exposed during the interviews.

The participants underscore the importance of the management team meetings to create shared understandings and conceptions. For example, one weekly meeting is reserved for thorough discussion of reform concepts, the way regulations are to be understood, what the content of pedagogical principles is, and how organizational routines are to be practiced across the school territory. The principal puts it this way:

We spend a lot of time on discussion and dialogue in the school management group. I have established a weekly meeting with this objective, aiming to establish common and widely shared understandings of important concepts. Similarly, through dialogue and discussion among the members, we work towards a gradually shared understanding of how rules are to be practiced across the school.

(Informant No 8, principal, first interview)

The participants argue for the importance of working towards shared conceptions and understandings, where rules are practiced in a relatively convergent manner. This particularly concerns rules that govern teacher behavior and expectations and demands to student behavior. The accounts

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emerging from the interviews are significantly supported by secondary evidence, such as written agendas, minutes of meetings and protocols.