In this paper, we examine the role of principals in making schools more inclusive, which means enabling joint learning of all students. The article draws on empirical investigations from 2700 pages of legal documents on how international policies have been handled in two particular national contexts, Germany and Norway. We regard, in particular, school principals’ responsibilities for inclusive schools. The comparative design reveals the following findings: From a historical perspective, expectations for principals to open their schools for all learners has shifted from low-stake to high-stake governance means starting with solely stating general responsibilities of principals. Since this approach has not resulted in desired outcomes like making school organisations more inclusive, responsibilities have been coupled more with accountability. With this, the work of principals has become more complex and has been coped with differently in different contexts. German principals have wide areas of responsibility in a restricted scope of action because their work is embedded in highly developed but inflexible bureaucratic structures. Norwegian principals face sole responsibility with outcome-oriented accountability and even penalties in case of not achieving certain standards. The latter approach opens schools for “more” children with varying needs but is also more challenging for principals.

This article concerns the professional work of Swedish heads of local educational authority [LEA] school administrations) with a particular focus on their relationships with local politicians since the 1990s. In recent decades, Sweden has undergone foundational educational reforms, radically de-centralising - and then re-centralising - the school system. Thus, Sweden represents an interesting case for understanding both de-centralisation and re-centralisation processes. We cover seven empirical studies of superintendents to understand how municipal governance and the role of superintendents have changed over time in response to these large-scale reforms. We show that the de-centralisation reforms of the 1990s destabilised municipal administrative structures and superintendents' roles and duties with regard to politicians. However, during the 2000s, the municipal administrative structures and the role and duties of superintendents stabilised significantly. In the mid-2010s, reforms institutionalised superintendents' roles and bound them more closely to the state administration.

This paper investigates interprofessional cooperation in inclusive schooling settings, examining stakeholder experience and perceived collaboration, and how these perceptions relate to the organizational structures and work relationships underpinning effective cooperation. Using data from the large-scale study, “Expert mapping of special education and inclusive practices” (N = 10,387), we analyze how professionals in Norwegian schools, the Educational-Psychological Service, Child Welfare Service, and School Health Service engage in inclusion work. The study highlights tensions between political expectations and practical realities, showing that interprofessional cooperation is not a straightforward solution for inclusion. Instead, collaboration must account for the complexities of both educational and medical paradigms. Friction between professionals may be inevitable rather than exceptional, underscoring the need for a nuanced approach to cooperation in inclusive education.

This article analyses the Swedish case of the government’s funding for equity, which annually provides over 600 million euros to improve equity. Being one of the largest funding schemes ever for work towards educational equity it also provides full autonomy for local education authorities (LEAs) to use the money at their discretion. By studying local decisions through interviews and analysing applications and plans in nine cases, we deepen our understanding of governance relations between state, LEAs and schools. Our findings show that funding is used mostly for general purposes, rather than for specific measures to improve equity. Dynamics of governance that mitigate improvements in equity are also found. LEAs take advantage of their position as receivers and distributors of the funding to local schools, deciding what equity is and how to invest in improving it, rather than passing funds to their school units and let them decide on its use.

This article presents a comparative interview study (N = 45) with Swedish and German special educators working in inclusive school settings in order to gain an understanding of how inclusive education is operationalized by the provision of special education needs (SEN) support; and how both aspects are conditioned by nation-specific particularities. Drawing on our interview analyses, we suggest an analytical device for examining and comparing the provision of SEN support in school organizations from a comparative perspective. The device is a 9-dimensional matrix, understanding the phenomenon in terms of three levels (individual, group, organizational) related to three domains (educational, social, administrative). Employing this matrix, we explain national differences in operationalizing inclusive schools. Compared with Germany, in Sweden, special educators have much more power in the inclusive school, and significantly more important decisions regarding SEN are made at an organizational level, and not only regarding individual students in need of special support.

Purpose: The aim of this systematic review is to map and synthesize the literature of school leader autonomy (SLA) worldwide. Approach: The analytical work followed the PRISMA- model for conducting and reporting systematic reviews, generating 113 articles (n = 113) for final analysis. Realist synthesis protocols were also developed for each article to attain rigor in the analytical work. Findings: Aside from descriptive details of the current body of research, the analysis reveals that some decisions by administrators and school leaders (e.g., on curriculum, instruction, administration, budgeting, organization) are addressed more frequently, while others (e.g., on values, democracy, racism, student well-being) have been more sparsely addressed. In research focused on actors and their relations, principals are the most researched actors while few studies have focused explicitly on superintendents. A significant amount of research has instead approached SLA as a relational phenomenon that takes place between principals and other actors. Research has also addressed contextual particularities, but the number of articles that systematically consider the relationship between such particularities and SLA is limited. Additionally, few studies employ statistical modeling allowing robust knowledge of the impact of increased SLA. Instead, most use school leaders’ perceptions. Implications: Global trends have transformed school systems into ones characterized by decentralization combined with increased inspection and accountability mechanisms, constituting a complex landscape for school leaders across national, regional and local contexts to navigate. This article demonstrates that SLA is a key concept for understanding the complex relations between education policy and education practice.

This article focuses on the dynamics of inclusive education in the German school system by examining ocial statistics on pupils with formal individual education plans (IEPs) in special and general schools since 2007. An IEP manifests that a pupil with a formally identified disability receives specialised schooling, instruction, extra support, or related services. German IEPs, although they are assumed to have educational consequences, draw heavily on medical categorisations based on DSM and WHO definitions of disabilities and disorders. For this reason, IEPs show the peculiar relationship between medical and (special) education logic in inclusive and special education. From our longitudinal perspective, several intriguing phenomena illustrate frictions and regulative failures when inclusive education is implemented in country-specific school systems. We show that in the German case, the number of pupils with IEPs enrolled in general secondary schools has increased significantly. At the same time, the number of pupils in special schools remains stable. Moreover, only certain school forms are drivers of inclusive education in a tracked system such as the German system. Finally, we show the dynamic nature of special education categories employed for the pupil population with IEPs enrolled in general schools over time. Certain IEP categories grow in number while others decrease or stay stable. By applying a system-theoretical approach, we explain such dynamics as being due to opposing logics in health and education systems, which must be balanced in the practice of inclusive education.

This article focuses on the role of the principal in facilitating inclusive education policies in Sweden and Finland since 1990. It does so by analysing education union journals in both countries. These journals are taken to represent principals’ collective professional voice concerning the dynamics of major educational reforms. The findings show surprisingly similar attitudes towards inclusive education in both Sweden and Finland. According to the journals, inclusive education can only be accommodated by defining student disabilities and disadvantages and training special educators to take charge of separate special education environments. During the 1990s, resistance to inclusive education within the journals was very explicit. More recently their arguments have softened. Inclusive education is in principle a worthy aspiration, but the realities of school systems do not allow for it. These findings are explained by the classic special education theory of Thomas Skrtic, who argues that general education builds on various types of bureaucracies aiming to maintain the stability of their organisation at scale. In summary, the journals discussions regarding inclusive education can be generalised in three specific concerns: the student should be in focus, the organisational form of inclusive education is crucial, and responsibilities and resources must be clearly articulated.

Principal autonomy has been identified as an important ingredient in effective and healthy schools. However, little is known about the various dimensions of the phenomenon and how it takes form in different contexts. This article presents an analytical device contributing to further understand the complex nature of principal autonomy. The device follows the seminal work of Richard Ingersoll on autonomy in school organisations operationalised as decision-making and control. Moreover, we put forward a multidimensional device to organise decisions and control in several schooling domains: educational, social, developmental and administrative. By exemplifying the device on principals’ perceptions of autonomy in the very North of Sweden, Norway and Finland, we can reveal important differences between the three Nordic neighbouring cases. Related to these reforms, principals’ work can be compared in terms of different grades of complexity and risk, with corresponding consequences for their autonomy.

This paper starts with the increasing discussions on juridification in education. Concerning theorizing on such processes, we examine the poor implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, CRPD (2008) in the school sector of Germany. The paper considers the reasons for this failed endeavor by analyzing the complex, multilevel relations between policy and law in different national and historical contexts. With this, aspects of juridification as a process in education policy can be illuminated. In this regard, we suggest crucial aspects regarding juridification in public education: a focus on regulative failures in juridification processes, juridification's contexts, the mandate for putting it into action, the allocation of resources, and finally, its objective and subjective rights dimensions, i.e. how an individual can claim rights within the machinery of public education.