Recursive and adaptive processes in strategic work: municipality leaders’ and school leaders’ accounts of their work for educational reform

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to contribute insights into strategic work in an educational reform context. Empirical data were collected from four cases in Norway, where the national educational authority recently initiated a renewal of the national curriculum for primary and secondary education. The theory of strategy as practice was the analytical framework applied in this study. The aims were to investigate municipal and school leaders’ accounts of strategic work and the relationships between strategic work at the municipal and school levels. The informants experienced they had leeway to decide on how to realize the national reform in their local contexts. In their processes of strategic work, they included both well-known strategies and practices that had worked previously and structures and procedures that were adapted to the situation at hand. We found a smooth alignment between recursive and adaptive processes across the organizational levels. The informants implemented their perceptions as the intention of the national reform in many ways. In demonstrating the complexity of educational reform work, the findings of this study showed that the SaP approach may be used to make valuable theoretical contributions to our understanding of reform work in education.

KEYWORDS:

• recursiveness/adaptation
• Curriculum reform
• practice theory
• strategic work
• school leadership

Introduction

In recent decades, educational reform has been called for and implemented across the world (Cheng, 2020), echoing the question posed by Larry Cuban in 1990: ‘Why do reforms return again and again?’ (Cuban, 1990, p. 3). Numerous phenomena, such as challenges connected to globalization, international competition, technological innovation, and economic transformation, have led to calls for reform in education (Cheng & Townsend, 2000). Although change is often seen as endemic and ongoing, in education, such incremental processes are intercepted by reform (Cuban, 1990). Repeated calls for reform are typically made because of unsuccessful attempts or the perceived need to renew or change curricular content or practices. To meet this call for change, there has been increasing interest in strategy and strategic leadership in education (Davies & Davies, 2004; Eacott, 2011). In the literature, strategies are commonly conceptualized as the outcome of rational processes at the management level. Strategies are forward-looking and intended to guide the organization’s activities in desired directions. The results of reforms indicate the success of such strategies at the organizational level. Thus, it makes sense to describe strategies as inherent in organizations. In contrast to studying strategies that are specific to organizations, this study focuses on the processes through which employees in the organization perform strategic work. Strategic work is conceptualized as ongoing practical and cognitive actions (Carter et al., 2008; Grandy & Mills, 2004; Knights & Morgan, 1991; Oakes et al., 1998; Whittington, 2006).

Previous research on reform in education has shown that the process from intention to actual change is long, complicated, and sometimes serendipitous (Hess & McShane, 2018). When reform is studied using an ‘input-output’ approach or a ‘what-works’ approach, the actual change process may be neglected (Ottesen, 2006; Rasmussen & Ludvigsen, 2009). Because the results of change work are achieved through process (Engeström, 2011), insights into local processes are valuable when reform is required. Interpretations of intentions and priorities on various levels have often been overlooked (Olson & Fazio, 2003). The relationship between intentions and results may not be direct (Barowy & Jouper, 2004). Moreover, controversy may arise when reforms are interpreted and implemented locally (Karseth & Møller, 2014). The strategic work performed by a range of actors forms the ways in which reform initiatives are interpreted and executed in concrete actions in schools and municipalities (Røvik et al., 2014).

In this study, we used a strategic work approach to explore ongoing processes during the realization of the national reform LK20¹ in compulsory schools in Norway. Moos et al. (2016) argued that municipalities and schools are linked in the governing of education. However, they often work independently of each other (Sigurðardóttir et al., 2018). According to Louis et al. (2010), superintendents serve the following functions: setting directions, developing people, refining, and aligning the organization, and improving teaching and learning programs.

In this study, we investigated how reform work engendered strategic work among actors across institutional levels in their interactions with artefacts and contextual circumstances. Previous research has revealed that school leaders may play a pivotal role during change processes, and that they experience reform work as balancing preservation and transformation (Fullan, 2005; Rosenblum & Louis, 2013). To investigate the perceived need for maintaining balance within and across school and municipal levels, we used a strategy-as-practice (SaP) approach. This conceptual framework allowed for the study of strategies as emergent in municipal leaders’ work without losing sight of the societal structures and social practices that may influence their strategic work (Vaara & Whittington, 2012).

As part of an ongoing larger research study that evaluates the new national curriculum reform, we interviewed school leaders and superintendents² in four counties and municipalities³ in Norway regarding their strategic work with LK20 (Ottesen et al., 2021). Empirical data for this study were collected from interviews with school leaders and superintendents. These data were analysed to address the following research questions:

RQ1:

How are processes of change and stability reflected in municipal and school leaders’ accounts of strategic work with educational reform?

RQ2:

What are the relationships between strategic work at the municipal and school levels in a reform context?

In the following sections, we briefly describe the Norwegian reform context and review the relevant literature on the SaP. Next, we elucidate the theoretical framework and the key concepts applied in the data analysis. We describe the ways in which a SaP approach may be used to enrich the analysis and interpretation of municipal and school leaders’ accounts of strategic work within an educational reform context. In the methodology section, we clarify the scope of our empirical material as well as the strategies applied to ensure the reliability of the findings for their application to daily strategic activities. We then present and summarize the findings. In the discussion section, we focus on recursive and adaptive processes in strategic reform work and their synergies across organizational levels. Finally, we describe the contribution of the study, its limitations and implications, as well as the need for further research.

Brief description of the Norwegian educational reform context

In Norway, compulsory education consists of primary education (levels 1–7) and lower secondary education (levels 8–10). All students have a legal right to three years of upper secondary education, or alternatively, four years of vocational education according to the Ministry of Educational Research (MER, 2020).⁴

The Ministry sets broad aims for education and decides on a national curriculum. Although it is obligatory to follow the national curriculum, municipalities and schools are given extensive leeway in fulfilling the aims of the curriculum. Hence, superintendents, school leaders, and teachers interpret and negotiate national expectations and overall intentions according to local practices.

In 2006, the Knowledge Promotion (LK06) was introduced as a systemic and curricular reform. Subsequent evaluations of its implementation showed that, in some areas, the reform was not entirely successful in fulfilling policy intentions, which resulted in variations in the quality of teaching and learning. For example, competence criteria might have been too vague, or national intentions were not adequately communicated (MER, 2016). Therefore, the Norwegian White Paper no. 28 (MER, 2016) called for a renewal of the curriculum. The new curriculum (LK20)⁵ was developed through an extensive process in which, among others, teachers’ unions and the Association of Local and Regional Authorities participated. Preliminary texts authored by groups of teachers and subject specialists in higher education participated in formal hearings before the curriculum was finalized by the central government for implementation in August 2020. The main intention of the new curriculum was to strengthen coherence between and across subjects and the new core curriculum.⁶ Furthermore, the scope of competence goals was reduced, and three interdisciplinary themes were introduced: public health, life mastery, democracy, citizenship, and sustainable development (MER, 2016; Ottesen et al., 2021).

As part of its strategy for implementation, the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training (the Directorate) has published several tools available on its website.⁷ The tools consist of short videos, explanations, suggestions for work in professional communities and extensive competence packages that address aspects of the revised curriculum. The national curriculum is presented on a web-based platform as an online interactive tool that allows for different kinds of search actions and offers explanations for words and concepts in the curriculum. A tool for planning and collaboration was launched on the same platform. Thus, the central government has established a support system to help local actors understand and realize LK20. Local authorities and schools may use these resources. The government has also financed a system for decentralized competence development in which schools and municipalities may team with higher education institutions (HEI) to work on the curriculum reform.

Literature review

Strategy as practice

In recent decades, the literature on strategy in educational reform has shown a great deal of interest in strategic leadership. Early research often focused on linear and rationalistic models of strategic leadership, whereas more recent research has tended to focus on strategy as a process (Davies & Davies, 2004), specifically the planning process (Eacott, 2008). While there has been a tendency ‘to adapt corporate developed models to educational settings’ (Eacott, 2008, p. 264), we did not find that the SaP approach has gained prevalence in the context of educational reform. Although this is a new strand of strategy research in education, the literature on the SaP in other organizational contexts is extensive. Ontological and epistemological perspectives, theories, concepts, methodologies, and empirical practices have been presented and discussed, for example, in several books and journal publications (e.g. Carter et al., 2008; Jarzabkowski & Paul Spee, 2009; Johnson et al., 2007; Mirabeau et al., 2018; Vaara & Whittington, 2012).

Vaara and Whittington (2012, p. 6) pointed out four distinct features of SaP research. The first feature is its positioning in social theories of practice rather than in economic theories. Second, the authors claimed that the SaP goes beyond linking outcomes only to economic performance by extending the understanding of performance to how leaders perform their role to achieve outcomes of social practices and the political outcomes of strategy episodes. Third, SaP research has addressed strategic practices in a wide range of types of organizations beyond private firms, such as non-profit organizations. However, there has been a limited amount of research on educational organizations. Lastly, although some studies have been based on quantitative data, most SaP studies have been qualitatively oriented.

In this section, we review empirical studies on strategic work. These studies were chosen because they highlighted nuances in the interplay between change and stability.

Instead of studying the applicability of traditional top – down strategic planning, Horst et al. (2019) studied strategic processes in a German media organization. They used the concept of emergent strategy to denote ‘an organizational pattern that is the outcome of the interplay of local actions, practices, and intentions of all staff contributing to strategy making in the organization’ (Horst and Järventie-Thesleff, 2019, p. 6). Furthermore, their analysis of interview staff members showed that the various actors in the company contributed to ‘strategy emergence’ through their actions. They found that different groups of employees contributed to different types of actions that became conducive to strategy emergence. Searching and learning were typical actions of the employees, facilitating, and questioning were characteristic of managers, and guiding and reflecting characteristic of consultants. The authors defined shared inquiry as a continuum of responsive actions for strategy emergence, ranging from recursive to adaptive actions. Their study showed that emergent phenomena and social processes may be beyond an individual’s ability to predict or control. They argued that for changes to occur, there is a need to create space for improvisation, learning, and sensemaking. Their approach resonates with research by Jarzabkowski (2004), who, on a conceptual level, distinguished between recursiveness and adaptation in strategic practice, mirroring the tendencies of stability and change in organizations (Mintzberg, 1994; Scott, 2000).

Recursive and adaptive activities were also addressed in Paroutis and Pettigrew’s (2007) study of strategizing in multi-business firms in the United Kingdom. They found that the actions and knowing of these teams were dynamic, collective, and distributed within and across teams, each of which involved recursive and adaptive activities.

Andersson (2022) focused on recursive and adaptive activities in a Swedish context in which the national educational authority initiated a teacher certification reform. Based on a single case study, Andersson explored the ways in which the reform demands were translated and made sense of in terms of organizational routines. He found that the actors made sense of the demands based on prior knowledge and beliefs regarding the identity and qualitative endeavours of the educational program, which in turn shaped ‘scripts’ of routine performance. However, when the scripts collided with performative constraints on organizational capacities, the school actors developed pragmatic routines that then further shaped routinized actions.

Meetings may be arenas for strategic planning. Jarzabkowski and Seidl (2008) studied meetings as strategic practices at universities in the United Kingdom. Their analyses showed that such meetings had the potential to stabilize or destabilize existing strategic practices. Hence, meetings are a strategic tool that affects strategic outcomes by contributing to stability and change. Their study also showed that meeting practices could be maintained, developed, selected, or de-selected. These findings are important for our study because development work in Norwegian schools is seldom a top – down endeavour in terms of providing detailed descriptions of how to collaborate. It is up to the local actors to develop ways to implement the reform initiative, including local conversations and meetings.

The reviewed studies provided important insights into aspects of strategic work. As already mentioned, only a few studies have used SaP to focus on strategic work in educational settings, such as Andersson (2022) and Jarzabkowski and Seidl (2008). However, these previous studies did not examine strategic reform work, which is the focus of the present study.

Theoretical and conceptual frameworks

To examine the strategic work performed in schools and municipalities in implementing the new curriculum, we applied conceptual tools that allowed us to examine the informants’ accounts of their daily work and the ways in which the instruments and methods they reported were applied in their strategizing activities. We applied SaP to explore the strategies used in situated and social activities, such as what people in organizations do rather than what organizations have (Whittington, 2006). The SaP can be conceptualized as a process theory (Sawyer, 2002, p. 291) because it captures processes that are fundamental in real-life situations. The unit of analysis consists of situated and social practices rather than the bounded individual (Jarzabkowski & Sillince, 2007; Johnson et al., 2007; Whittington, 2003, 2006). This theory can be linked to neo-institutional theories (NIT), which focus on how organizations search for stability (Eriksson-Zetterquist et al., 2015). In Scandinavian versions of NIT, researchers have argued that organizing professional work requires a combination of change and stability. This approach includes translation theories (Røvik et al., 2014; Røvik, 2007). Translation may be considered as follows: reproductive, in which the intentions of a reform are reproduced in a school or municipality; modifying, in which reform goals are adapted to the local context; and radical or innovative (Røvik et al., 2014). He focused on translation rules or modes of translations, whereas SaP enabled us to go beyond translation to delve into the ‘actions, interactions, and negotiations of multiple actors and the situated practices that they draw upon’ (Jarzabkowski & Sillince, 2007, p. 7–8). SaP research takes ‘social practices seriously’ (Vaara & Whittington, 2012, p. 285). The assumption is that many actors participate in strategic work, which is not merely a top – down issue.

To conceptualize strategic work, we used the three-tiered conceptual framework developed by Whittington (2006), in which ‘strategy praxis’, ‘strategy practices’, and ‘strategy practitioners’ constitute the key concepts. The point of departure was strategy praxis, which refers to the actual activity (i.e. day-to-day work) and what people do in practice, that is, ‘all the various activities involved in the deliberate formulation and implementation of strategy’ (p. 619). These processes may occur in episodes or sequences of episodes, such as in board meetings and team briefings. Practitioners draw on strategy practices that include ‘shared routines of behaviour, including traditions, norms, and procedures for thinking, acting, and using “things”’ (p. 619). These practices constitute a pool of available resources that provide the behavioural, cognitive, procedural, discursive, and physical resources that enable actors to interact with and accomplish collective activity (Jarzabkowski & Paul Spee, 2009, p. 9). Strategy practices are multilevel because they are organization-specific (i.e. intraorganizational); that is, they are embodied in routines and procedures as well as in organizational culture (Whittington, 2006). They can also be extra-organizational, that is, derived from a larger field or system. Whittington (2006) explained the concept of strategy practitioners as follows: ‘Practitioners are strategy’s actors, the strategists who both perform this activity and carry its practices’ (p. 619). They are ‘those people who do the work of strategy, which goes beyond senior managers to include managers at multiple levels of the firm as well as the influential external factors such as consultants, analysts, and regulators’ (Jarzabkowski & Whittington, 2008, p. 282). In collaboration with external strategy practitioners, internal strategy practitioners may include an external strategy in the organization’s praxis. According to Whittington (2006), ‘None of these practices is fixed in its trajectory over time. As they draw on these practices, strategy practitioners reproduce, and occasionally amend, the stock available for the next episode of strategizing praxis’ (p. 621).

Because the world is always changing, organizations need to adapt to changing circumstances. However, organizations may need basic stability to retain the efficiency of other functions (Mintzberg, 1994, p. 184). According to Jarzabkowski (2004, p. 529), ‘In practice, there is a co-existent tension between recursive and adaptive forms of strategic action that spans multiple levels from macro-institutional and competitive contexts to within-firm levels of analysis to individual cognition’. Her argument was that this tension is better understood by examining how management practices are put into practice.

Following Jarzabkowski (2004), in this study, recursiveness is conceptualized as routinized and prone to inertia, while adaptation refers to praxis as flexible and prone to learning and becoming. Recursiveness and adaptation are useful concepts in our analysis of the strategic work of schools and municipalities in implementing the renewal of curriculum reform.

Methodology

The present study was part of a larger case study⁸ (Yin, 2003), which was designed to be a research-based evaluation study with attention to the ongoing processes (2019–2025). Four cases were strategically selected based on their geographical location and school size. The data collection took place in 2020 and 2021, and the cases were selected before the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools of different sizes were selected to include variations that reflected the national educational system in Norway.

Before January 2020, there were 426 municipalities in Norway. Through extensive regional reform, the number has been reduced to 365. It should be noted that two of the cases (Cases 3 and 4) had recently undergone reorganization, which may have delayed their reform work to some extent.⁹

In this study, the ‘school owner’ of primary and lower secondary schools is the educational authority in a municipality, while the school owner of upper secondary schools is the educational authority at the county level. Both the educational municipality authority and the educational county authority have the overall responsibility for ensuring that pupils receive education in line with the curriculum.¹⁰ They are jointly responsible for ensuring that the school has the necessary competence, and that competence development is in line with the requirements of professional renewal. The municipality is responsible for supporting, developing, and strengthening professional communities within and across schools.

In this study, the analysis was based on interview data collected in interviews with four cases of municipal and school leaders: Municipality 1, Municipality 2, Municipality 3, and Municipality 4. Table 1 provides an overview of the cases.

Table 1. Cases (Ottesen et al., 2021).

	Municipality 1 (M1)	Municipality 2 (M2)	Municipality 3 (M3)	Municipality 4 (M4)
Geographical location	Northeast	West	North	Southeast
Merged municipalities	No	No	Yes	Yes
Enrollment	About 300 students	About 600 students	About 100 students	About 400 students
Year/level	Years 1–7 (primary school)	Years 11–13 (upper secondary)	Years 1–10 (primary and lower secondary school)	Years 8–10 (lower secondary school)

Semi-structured interviews were conducted at both municipal and school levels. In the semi-structured interviews (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009), the informants were asked about their perceptions of the purposes of LK20, the strategic work involved, the conditions of realization, the resources provided by higher levels, and the dissemination of communication and information (Ottesen et al., 2021). Each interview lasted 45–80 minutes, and all interviews were conducted on site and facilitated by two members of the research team. The interviews were conducted between February 2020 (before the pandemic) and November 2021. Table 2 lists the informants from different geographical locations and of different size of schools.¹¹

Table 2. Informants and interview times.

	Municipality 1 (M1, Northeast)	Municipality 2 (M2, West)	Municipality 3 (M3, North)	Municipality 4 (M4, Southeast)
Municipal leader level	Municipal leader (M1) August 2020	Municipal leader (M2) January 2020	Municipal leader (M3) January 2020	Municipal leader (M4) February 2020
School level Time	School leader (S1) February 2020^12	School leader (S2) January 2020	School leader (S3) January 2020	School leader (S4) February 2020

All interviews were transcribed. The analysis was conducted in five stages. First, we read the transcribed interview data to obtain an overview regarding ‘here-and-now’ praxis and whether day-to-day activities reflected institutional practices, and/or any adaptations within and across school and municipal levels.

In the data re-analysis for the present paper, we paid attention to the informants’ accounts of strategic and daily work and how any instruments and methods they reported were applied in their strategizing activities (praxis), their reports of who did the work (practitioners), and their accounts of accepted or institutional ways of doing things (practices). Second, we listed examples of activities that indicated recursive and adaptive work across the four cases based on Jarzabkowski’s (2004) conceptualizations. Third, we looked for relationships between strategic work at the municipal and school levels in the reform context. Fourth, we sorted the examples into three areas of strategic activities (praxis). Fifth, we selected examples and citations of the ways in which processes of recursiveness and adaptation in strategic work were conceptualized by the municipality leaders and school leaders.

We selected the three following areas for closer analysis: strategizing for collaboration strategizing for enlisting external partners and strategizing for the use of digital support resources. The three areas were interlaced; that is, in many cases, the praxis included several areas. For example, external consultants took part in collaborative activities, and digital resources were important for strategic work in a school. Dividing the text into three separate areas helped to clarify our analysis. We will return to the issue of overlap between areas in the discussion section of this article. We described strategic praxis in the four cases in the three areas that, according to our analysis, stood out as key areas for the informants. However, we were aware that other areas could be of interest, such as activities in the dissemination of information and cooperation with parents or students. These and similar issues emerged sporadically in our empirical data analysis. However, we find that the selected areas were robust and sufficient enough to address our research questions regarding recursiveness and adaptation in schools’ and municipalities’ strategic work, as well as the relationship between work at the municipal and school levels.

Several methods were applied to confirm the credibility of the study in terms of reliability, validity, and generalizability (Silverman, 2015). The interviews were recorded and transcribed to strengthen the study’s reliability regarding ‘the fit between what the researcher records as data and what actual occurs in the setting being researched’ (Cohen et al., 2018, p. 270). Making the theoretical and methodology of the study transparent to the reader has also been a way of strengthening the reliability of the study, as well as presenting illustrating excerpts and analysis based on the data material. We believe the selected strategy (a case-study with four cases from different parts of Norway) and methods for the re-analysis (analysis in multiple stages) are appropriate for examining what is intended, as well as appropriate for providing a convincing conclusion (cf. Silverman, 2015). The data has been collected to inform the Directorate about ongoing processes, which may become a threat. Following the schools over time, interviewed multiple actors may reduce this threat.

Although the findings study cannot be generalized because of the paucity of cases, our study contributes to the theoretical debate (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009) in the SaP literature, and to the general theoretical debate on strategic work. Because all primary and secondary schools in Norway are tasked with implementing LK20, our findings may have some ‘generative power’ (Wardekker, 2000, p. 271) in terms of their relevance to other Norwegian schools engaged in strategic work for the implementation of LK20.

The Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research approved the overall study. Ethical guidelines were followed, and all informants provided appropriate informed consent for their participation in the study.

Results

Three strategic activities

In this section, we present the findings of the study. Based on our analysis, we focused on three central areas of strategic activities (praxis): strategizing for collaboration, enlisting external partners or consultants, and exploiting tools for curriculum work. Based on our findings, we discuss how reform praxis is constituted in the interplay between social practices and practitioner agency, particularly processes of recursiveness and adaptation. In each subsection, we discuss the relationships between strategic work at the municipal and school levels in a reform context.

Strategizing for collaboration

In the four cases in our study, school development teams were a key organizational structure in the strategic work needed to implement LK20. The use of school development teams for school improvement has been an institutional practice in Norwegian schools for several decades. Such teams are composed according to the individual school’s discretion. In addition to the school leader, they may consist of team leaders, grade-level leaders, and teachers.

Our analysis showed that in the four case schools, the distribution of tasks among team members was adapted to local needs regarding LK20. For example, in Case 1, the school leader (S1) explained how the distribution of tasks had changed:

We have a strong school development team … . From being participants in the school development team, they are now taking care of…. Okay, for example, it could be on Tuesday, during staff time, that I sit down right away because colleague A in the school development team takes on leading along with colleague B. Then, they run an entire session, and I am a participant … . I am proud to have gotten where we have a school development team that works. I select the people who sit there… Getting people who are drivers and main owners of this [LK20 work] is important.

(S1)

According to S1, the institutional practice of forming a school improvement team was retained, while the division of labour within the team was adapted to better fit the situation. The citation shows S1 has delegated leading tasks to members of the school improvement team.

The superintendent in M3 also used collaboration as a strategic activity. A municipal team was established and modelled after the school’s improvement team: ‘I have a municipal planning group with school academic advisers and coordinators in various disciplines. We meet regularly’. The team included representatives of the pedagogical psychological service and the teachers’ union: ‘We try to coordinate and be…. Ensure a good flow of information, and constantly be able to seek out the complete picture. What steps are important to take to make the right things happen?’ the municipal leader asked. This excerpt indicates that established social practices were applied in the strategic praxis, but in their execution, they were modified to fit the national expectations for implementing LK20. It also showed that strategic activities were ‘stretched over’ actors at the municipality and school levels, and even beyond.

The analysis showed that a plethora of routines and structures were applied in collaboration in both schools and municipalities. Such established ways of working were maintained during the initial phase of LK20, but the collaborative groups were often extended. For example, superintendents could invite school development teams, union representatives, or leaders of pedagogical psychological services to participate in strategic activities. In Case 3, for example, the municipal leader talked about how the team of school leaders that she led now included members of the school’s development teams as partners in strategy development. One reason for this was to ensure that the work was grounded locally. She offered the following:

It is important to set up the structure and keep the momentum going, but that is not the only thing that is crucial. The crucial thing is how we manage to anchor it [LK20] in school. This is because I think it is well established at the municipality level and at the school leadership level, but I do not think all school leaders have succeeded in embedding it in their own schools. (…) It is an important key that we have some teachers on the floor who are part of the thinking and are part of leading the implementation in the schools.

(M3)

M3 adapted the strategic work to the situation by inviting teachers to collaborate at the municipal level. Although the adaptation of well-known structures and practices was common across the schools and municipalities in all four cases, we also identified strategic endeavours that were new to the organizations. In Case 3, a designated leader was appointed to supervise the work in implementing LK20 and to follow up the municipality’s commitments in an HEI partnership.¹³ This leader worked in a large district consisting of several municipalities. She not only initiated activities but also managed development by reminding the superintendents and school leaders of their duties in the project.

She is a kind of spearhead; she introduces new things. She makes sure that we are on the ball and that we deliver in and between meetings. She makes summaries for us, and she represents us in meetings in the county. It is really important for us to have that kind of person, who checks the cards and reminds us, and also takes charge in meetings. She plans all meetings with our contact person at the HEI. That is important.

(M3)

The appointed leader can be conceptualized as a ‘strategy practitioner’ in the municipality (Whittington, 2006), who works across sites (i.e. school and municipal levels).

In Case 4, teachers were appointed as ‘rope holders’ at the municipal level. That is, they were tasked with keeping the work on track and making sure the focus was on important issues. M4 explained:

We have eight rope holders who lead groups of seven to eight teachers. They meet on a regular basis, and at first, they are given a problem to address. Eventually, we want them to come up with their own issues.

(M4)

This strategy was inspired by the social practice developed for action learning in a government-funded program for professional learning (Postholm, 2016). The excerpt indicated that an institutionalized and interorganizational social practice may be adapted to the enterprise at hand at the discretion of the practitioners, and that a practice developed elsewhere and for other purposes may be included in strategic activities and adapted to a new contextual circumstance. Moreover, the excerpt exemplifies the interplay between the processes of strategic work at the municipal and school levels.

The findings also showed that principals could decide to change the existing composition of school development teams. In Case 1, the principal suggested that it might be necessary to establish an extended school development team. This process had already started, but it was complex. The principal’s intention was to use as much time as necessary to enlist people who were motivated and skilled: ‘[Getting the people who are drivers [of the curriculum renewal] and main owners of this here [displaying ownership to the process], that’s important’.

The municipalities that had recently been merged faced additional strategic challenges. For example, the analysis showed that the newly appointed municipal leader in Case 4 needed to explore the status quo of the schools’ work with LK20. Only then could she assess the needs of the schools. Her strategy was to hire new staff members to support the work in the schools.

In the beginning, I examined what they [the school leaders] did with it [LK20]. Are you up and running? Almost all the schools did it in their own way … . Then, I hired people. Now I’m starting to have the staff work on the different elements [of the reform work], and I’m not directly involved.

(M4)

In the schools, strategic work was outsourced to staff in the municipal administration, allowing municipal leaders more time to deal with other issues in the merged municipality. The strategic activities in the original municipalities required adaptation in ways that were deemed adequate for both former municipalities. Moreover, the analysis revealed that both school leaders and superintendents engaged more strategy practitioners in intraorganizational reform work.

Strategizing for enlisting external partners and consultants

A common strategy in school development is to invite experts to contribute to professional learning, give talks about pertinent issues, and motivate staff (Coburn & Penuel, 2016; Jensen, 2020; Mintrop, 2020). Our analysis showed that the schools and municipalities in all four cases in our study engaged experts to a smaller or greater extent. In Case 2, the reform work began with large-scale municipal gatherings:

In the fall of 2017 and spring of 2018, we arranged a large meeting [with the school leaders and teachers in the county]. We invited well-known persons from academia and the union to give keynote speeches. Then, a few people from the region gave talks about the curriculum.

(M2)

This excerpt illustrates that a social practice (i.e. inviting experts to meetings for information and/or learning purposes) was adopted as a strategy within the process developed by the strategy group for the implementation of LK20 in the municipality. The structure or routine was well established as a practice; only the content to be delivered was adapted to the situation at hand. In a follow-up strategy, the municipality invited an expert in professional development to contribute. He first lectured the principals at a school leaders’ meeting. A year later, he paid a follow-up visit to each school:

Later, [a well-known researcher] came and talked about professional development. The schools knew that in 2019—that is, the following autumn—he would return to the leader groups in every school to follow up their work.

(M3)

The first excerpt was related to providing staff and leaders in schools with information that might help them in their strategic work, whereas the second excerpt indicated that a new praxis was established in which the external consultant directly participated in the schools’ strategic work.

In Norway, formal partnerships between schools and HEIs have been encouraged, initiated, and supported financially by the national educational authority over the last two decades (Blossing et al., 2010; Gunnulfsen & Jacobsen, 2019; Lødding et al., 2018). Such partnerships are currently maintained in the national initiative, Decentralized Competence Development in Schools. The purpose of the initiative is to strengthen schools’ collective competence through collaboration with HEI (Directorate, 2021). In addition, in the LK20 reform, schools and municipalities may establish partnerships with consultants or private businesses, as well as with HEIs. Among the four cases, two municipalities had already engaged with HEIs prior to LK20. Their contracts were extended, and the aim was adjusted so that it would fit the work required to implement LK20.

In Case 4, the focus of the original project was ‘inclusive learning and learning environment’. The municipal leader explained:

We have planned a joint project to create an inclusive learning environment together with HEI…. We realized that it was going to be so extensive that we also had to put the whole curriculum renewal into it … . At the beginning of August, we started with this HEI project … . There, we first worked in all schools for them to learn a specific mode of analyzing pedagogical situations.

(M4)

In Case 4, the current strategic enterprise in the municipality was to adapt the existing structure of the project to gradually include LK20 through interorganizational work. As indicated in the above excerpt, the collaborative project remained in the foreground, and work with LK20 was fitted into it.

In Case 3, an analysis of pedagogical situations was developed with the HEI. In this municipality, the strategy was to first establish the project in the leader group.

Our focus, both for implementation and for cooperation with the HEI, was first on the municipal level and on the school leaders, and thereafter on group facilitators and finally on staff … . In our discussions, we agreed on some common frameworks for the work so that each school leader allocates 90 minutes each week to this … . In a way, we have narrowed the school leaders’ discretionary space because we have set the structure. However, they have participated in setting this structure and making a three-year plan. Furthermore, they were explicitly invited to participate. However, by doing this, we, of course, limited their space for action.

(M3)

The agreed-upon structure for working on the project was strict, including set times and procedures that were followed by all actors. Hence, the municipality reduced the option of choosing strategies at the school level. Although the school leaders were invited to partake in the development of the municipal strategy, the resulting universal approach may pose problems for strategy work in individual schools.

So, yes, we’re setting aside a lot of time, more time this year, for school development, as we’re going into a new curriculum. For me and my way of leading, this is a little too much control. The purpose is good; we’re part of this development. But it gets too much, like, “Then we do this, and then we do that, and then we are supposed to end up in a good place in the end.”

(S3)

In Case 1, the findings revealed another approach to cooperating with external partners. The municipal leader’s concern was to identify the optimal external partners for reform work. Building on prior experiences and practices in their actions to develop competence in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in the schools, she wanted to ensure that eventual consultants and HEI representatives would be able to meet both the strengths and the challenges of the schools in Case 1.

[In the measures to develop ICT competence], we explored different options, asking other municipalities about their experiences and which professional environments they used. We chose a private company that could deliver methods and a mindset that was in line with our strategic plan and understanding of implementation. (…) Presently, we are in dialogues about collaboration. How do they think? Is that [their thinking] consistent with our current needs?

(M1)

In Case 1, the principal did not refer to external experts related to the work with LK20; instead, he spoke enthusiastically about their work with a range of ICT companies, such as Dragonbox and Apple Teacher. Regarding HEIs, he appeared to be more reluctant.

The challenge is to find the time to “take it down” and give the information … . When they [HEI representatives] were here, we wanted them to not just come to the schools, but also to communicate to the staff what they were doing in classrooms. In this way, we could use each other. That is, when things come alive, when the staff really participate.

(S1)

In individual schools, it was important that external providers met their needs. In Case 1, based on prior experience, the principal decided whether and how he wanted to use an external partner in developmental work at his school.

Strategizing for the use of digital support resources

In contrast to earlier reforms, in LK20, the Directorate developed a range of online resources: short videos and questions for reflection, a digital and searchable version of the curriculum, and packages of module-based units for staff learning. Elements of these resources were used in all four cases in this study. However, the strategic work on including digital resources was adapted according to local circumstances.

In contrast to the modules developed by the HEIs, the resources from the Directorate did not specify a particular order. Thus, it was up to the local schools to decide which resources to use and how to apply them, which M4 indicated as follows:

Our strategy was that all the schools … had to use what the Directorate had developed about the general part [the core values and principles] until we could have a common structure starting in August 2019. Everyone did it in their own way. I did not tell them how to do it; they worked with the video clips [from the online national resources], the questions, and the tasks.

(M4)

In Case 4, the strategy was to fill the gap until a common structure (i.e. work with HEI) was established. In Case 1, the school leaders first worked with the resources (both those offered by the Directorate and the HEI) and shared their experiences before applying them in staff development.

In addition to the regular school leaders’ meetings, they can share experiences with what we do with the Directorate material, what lies out there, and the project [the inclusion learning project] that we are now trying out. We have started with this and, as such, created a sharing arena, specifically on what has to do with the material that exists … . I have not said that it should be used from the beginning and to the end, but that “Here is this; this is a good starting material on which to plan and conduct good sessions.”

(M1)

The municipality’s (M1) praxis was to inform and use the resources to gain insights among school leaders so that they could develop local strategies according to the perceived needs, contextual restraints, and affordances in their schools. Case 2, which was an upper secondary school, did not find the resources useful. The school leader found the resources superficial and instead suggested a local structure for working with the content in depth:

I find what the Ministry has published, these “snippets”, a bit problematic. For me, they remove some of the issues that are important to in-depth learning; they make it too easy. All teachers [in our schools] have reflected on and analyzed [these issues], and I know that they have been doing in-depth learning. When the Directorate posted videos with an extra 20 minutes of analysis and reflection, it fell short for me. We’ve found it a lot tougher.

(S2)

Our analysis revealed varying results concerning how school leaders perceived the relevance of the online resources developed by the Directorate and HEI. Regarding the municipalities, our analysis showed that their approaches ranged from detailed instructions about how schools were expected to use the resources for optional deployment.

Summary of findings

The main finding from our four cases is that day-to-day praxis in reform work was constituted by the interplay between recursive and adaptive processes. Faced with expectations of preparing for the implementation of the LK20 reform in the autumn of 2020, the informants referred to work in schools and municipalities that used well-known strategies and practices that had worked in previous reforms and school development processes. For example, there was a strong focus on collaboration and involvement, which was reflected in the perpetuation of different forms of collaborative teams in schools and municipalities. However, our findings showed that structures and procedures changed slightly to adapt to the situation at hand. School development teams were expanded by new members who were sometimes more skilful or motivated or who held different positions, such as union representatives. Municipal schedules, such as meetings for principals, intensified, and included middle-level leaders or teachers. The findings also showed that two of the schools and municipalities conducted projects that were already underway before the reform, but they strove to include LK20 work in their projects.

Strategic praxis concerning the enlistment of external partners, consultants, or HEIs indicated a strong reliance on previous experience and practices. The findings revealed the tendency to apply previously successful strategies. Collaborating with external partners was not new in the schools and municipalities, and we found that two praxis strategies were evident in our cases. One was the renegotiation of projects with partners in order to align with the reform work. The other was to ensure that external experts identified with the schools’ needs and cultures. Both approaches contained elements of recursiveness and adaptation.

The availability of digital resources developed by the authorities to aid in the implementation of the curriculum constituted a new circumstance in reform work. We found that neither the municipalities nor the schools used these templates to define their development processes. Instead, their strategy was to use the resources at their discretion regarding both content and progress. Although these tools provided innovative approaches to implementation, the findings showed that recursive and adaptive strategies were also used. The findings revealed a smooth alignment between recursive and adaptive processes in strategic work. Municipalities supported ongoing work in schools and were ready to assist in several ways. Moreover, the municipalities’ strategies included co-creation and involvement.

Discussion

The departure point of this discussion is strategic reform work. In this section, we discuss how recursive and adaptive processes led to strategic praxis in schools’ and municipalities’ reform work, as well as potential synergies across organizational levels.

Strategic reform work: the interplay of recursive and adaptive processes

Our analyses of the educational leaders’ accounts showed that in these four cases, organizational structures for governance remained unchanged in the initial phase of the LK20 reform. In general, tasks and responsibilities remained as they were before the reform. The school leaders and superintendents we interviewed were committed to their roles as reform leaders responsible for local renewal processes. How they chose to approach the required strategic work varied across the cases, reflected the expectations of the national government:

Changes in the curriculum will not be extensive, and schools do not need to make major changes to school development. However, schools and municipalities may have different starting points. Teachers and school leaders may build on established practices and routines that they find effective.

(MER, 2016, p. 70)

Thus, it was expected that previous strategic practices would be recycled, which is in line with the findings of the present study. Social practices that were previously deemed effective were sustained and incorporated into praxis in LK20 strategies.

The findings showed that one example of prolonged social practices was the use of professional school development teams. An organizational structure with teams of school leaders (at the municipal level) and teams of teachers (at the school level) was chosen as a recurring strategic practice in reform work or as a ‘script’ of routine performance (Andersson, 2022). However, the findings also showed that the strategy was adapted based on the discretion of practitioners to better align with the demands of the situation. Inviting developmental teams of teachers at the school level to help superintendents and school leaders enact reforms at the school level could be conceptualized as an ‘adapted’ or a ‘new’ praxis. The new praxis coincided with international trends in which leaders increased their engagement in teachers’ work (Robinson et al., 2008). This phenomenon is concurrent with the Norwegian national policy of co-creation (Ottesen et al., 2021; Torfing et al., 2020) and reflects a way of creating a local space for improvisation, learning, and sensemaking (Horst et al., 2019).

Our study of municipal and school leaders’ accounts of strategic work showed that strategic work is not merely recursive or adaptive. Instead, our findings showed that strategic work emerges as an effect of the interplay between recursive and adaptive processes. The school development team seemed to be a key organizational structure in the strategic work of realizing LK20, whereas the distribution and constitution of tasks were adapted to the new circumstances. For example, the findings showed that teachers took on leading roles in the school development team (Case 1) or that the meeting schedules in schools were changed according to a municipal agreement (Case 3). This emergent aspect of strategic work aligns with Horst et al. (2019, pp. 202–229), who showed that ‘employees, managers, and consultants create the conditions that enable them to cope with continuous change and manage strategy emergence’. This suggests that an effective strategy may depend on practitioners’ motivations and willingness to adapt social practices to local circumstances.

In the present study, the findings revealed that meetings were organized locally to realize LK20. These included meetings for teams, networks, leadership, and teachers. Meetings have the potential to stabilize or destabilize existing strategic practices. In an analysis of strategy meetings at a university, Jarzabkowski and Seidl (2008, 1418) found that within the authority structure of a meeting, ‘some of the professional structures through which they practice their everyday work’ were relinquished, opening the opportunity for participation by a wider group of practitioners in strategy work. Meeting practices have the potential for variation to emerge and for strategies to be maintained, developed, selected, or de-selected. Our findings indicate that different kinds of meetings constitute recurring arenas for strategic work. Moreover, the structures were maintained, and the distribution of tasks and participants was adapted to meet expectations at the national level.

In the present study, two municipalities had entered into extensive partnerships with HEIs prior to LK20. The contracts between the two municipalities and HEIs had to be renegotiated to meet national expectations for work on LK20. Thus, adaptation was not only an internal issue for schools and municipalities but also involved external practitioners (Whittington, 2006) who collaborated with local actors in strategic work to adjust their social praxis.

The findings showed that external institutions not only helped schools become familiar with the content of LK20 but also cooperated with superintendents to create a structure for working with the LK20. In the two cases (Case 3 and 4) with HEI contracts, the actors offered programs that directly facilitated school leaders and schools by offering online tools and methodologies for school evaluation and development. In the other two cases, more casual relationships were formed with external experts, who were invited to contribute their individual capacities as needed. External experts thus played different strategic roles that were adapted not only to the issues at hand but also to contextual circumstances and prior experiences.

Based on their study of strategic work in a media firm, Horst et al. (2019, p. 219) found that ‘employees, managers, and consultants create the conditions that enable them to cope with continuous change and manage strategy emergence’. In Horst et al’.s framework (Horst et al., 2019, p. 218), these conditions were demonstrated as a continuum of recursive actions (i.e. existing actors, practices, and structures) and adaptive actions (i.e. updating practices, structures, and individuals). Our study showed that it was difficult (or even futile) to categorize certain aspects of praxis as either recursive or adaptive. Instead, we argue, further research is needed to determine how strategic work in each context emerges in the interplay between recursive and adaptive elements.

Strategic reform work: synergies between organizational levels

Although LK20 is a national educational reform, the Ministry has clarified that it is not a top – down process of reform: ‘In schools there are different actors who interpret and make use of the curriculum according to their understanding and existing practice’ (MER, 2016, p. 67). The citation indicates the reform is not intended to be a top-down process. The Ministry seem to be aware of that actors at a school level must make sense of the national curriculum themselves. According to our analyses making sense of a renewed curriculum is not only an individual task but a task for many actors. The leaders at both the school and the municipal level refers to many settings across levels in where many actors meet to interpret and execute reform initiatives into concrete actions (cf. Røvik et al., 2014). As Moos et al. explain, municipalities and schools are linked in the governing of education.

Meta-studies of implementation research have pointed out that sustainable and systemic reforms require good links between the various levels of management which presupposes dialogues across levels in an early phase, but also in further processes of realization (Karseth & Møller, 2014). Inviting teachers at the school levels to participate in leadership team at a municipal level requires mutual trust among the many actors. Correspondingly, partnership across schools and HEI also implies mutual trust.

The leaders refer to strategic work where multiple actors are engaged in at the municipal and school levels. However, the local strategic work does not only exist within levels. The analysis reveals strategic work has emerged as an interplay between national initiatives (e.g. information, resources, funding, etc.) and local resources, ambitions, and competences.

The findings of our study showed both similarities and differences regarding how schools and municipalities orchestrated strategic work. In strategic work in the educational system, any praxis is formed in the complex interplay between national, regional, and local expectations and ambitions. Our study demonstrated that strategic praxis, both regionally and locally, is influenced by national policies, such as those regarding curricula, national ‘encouragements’, and support structures. School-level strategic work is also affected by strategies and decisions at the municipal level, such as in meeting routines, contracted external facilitators, and soft surveillance. Nevertheless, our study showed that practitioners learn, adapt, change, facilitate, support, connect, communicate, mediate, and contribute ‘from within’ (Chia, 2017).

It is not surprising that strategic work (i.e. praxis) differed among the four cases in our study because leading strategic work locally requires ‘practical judgement’, that is, the experience-based ability to notice ‘what is going on’ and sense what is most important in a situation (Stacey, 2012, p. 108). Praxis is the outcome of complex emergent processes over which no single actor has control (Shove et al., 2012). Consequently, there is a need to pay attention to the ongoing processes, not at least because the results are achieved in the processes (cf. Engeström, 2011). In reform work across levels, openness, and flexibility in relation to

local conditions and solutions, local leadership and commitment from school owners, principals and teachers are important prerequisites together with financial follow-up and competence development at the operational level (Karseth & Møller, p. 454).

Conclusions

In the introduction to this article, we referred to Fullan (2005) and Rosenblum and Louis (2013) in describing strategic reform work as balancing preservation and transformation. We applied the SaP approach to examine the strategic work performed in municipalities and schools to implement the LK20 educational reform. This approach enabled us to view strategic work qualitatively from a micro-perspective, based on leaders’ accounts of their day-to-day activities. This approach was also helpful in our investigation of the interplay between institutionalized practices and educational reform.

The findings of the data analysis revealed that in all four cases, recursive and adaptive processes were smoothly aligned with the goal of implementing the reform. Several overall strategies remained stable (i.e. recursive), such as the enlistment of external partners and the use of structures for collaboration within schools and between schools and municipalities. However, despite these recursive patterns, structures, and procedures were slightly changed to adapt to the situation at hand (Karseth & Møller, 2014). In their strategic praxis, practitioners adapted strategies by including elements of alternative social practices. One example is the use of digital resources by the schools and municipalities. In our study, neither the municipalities nor the schools used these templates as scripts to define their development processes, instead adapting them to address issues in their local contexts. A potential consequence is that, when resources are offered to schools and municipalities, they need to be flexible and adaptable: one size does not fit all. The role of municipal leadership is vital in educational reform work (Henriksen & Paulsen, 2021). This study demonstrated that superintendents’ strategies varied according to contextual issues in the municipality. However, in all four cases, the strategies employed by the schools and municipalities were aligned.

This study has the following limitations. The findings were based on the self-reports of municipal and school leaders. Because multiple actors are involved in strategic reform work, other voices could be important such as the voices of actors in HEI, pedagogical psychological-services, and unions collaborating with the municipalities and schools. In addition, the number of cases was limited. Although we found few variations based on the size and grade level of the schools and municipalities, it is possible that a larger sample might have modified our findings. In a future study, data on the implementation of the LK20 educational reform could be collected by observing strategies as they are applied in daily work.

Acknowledgments

The authors thank colleagues in the research team of The Evaluation of the New National Curriculum: Intentions, Processes, and Practices (EVA2020) and colleagues in the research group of Curriculum Studies, Leadership, and Educational Governance (CLEG) for helpful comments on drafts of this article and the project group.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. At first, LK20 was referred to as a curriculum renewal. However, because the curriculum has been changed in structure, scope and form of presentation (it has an integrated digital format), it is now usually referred to as curriculum reform.

2. This is the head of the local educational authority in a Norwegian context.

3. Upper secondary schools are governed by districts leaders. For simplification, we refer to ‘municipality leaders’ as a common term.

4. https://lovdata.no/dokument/NLE/lov/1998-07-17-61.

5. The acronym LK20 refers to both the Norwegian curricula and the Sami curricula (LK20S).

6. The core curriculum was published in 2017 and consists of values and principles for education in Norway (see https://www.udir.no/lk20/overordnet-del/?lang=eng).

7. https://www.udir.no/laring-og-trivsel/lareplanverket/stotte/stotte-til-innforing-av-nye-lareplaner/.

8. https://www.uv.uio.no/forskning/prosjekter/fagfornyelsen-evaluering/.

9. https://www.regjeringen.no/no/tema/kommuner-og-regioner/kommunereform/reform-of-local-government/id2548429.

10. https://www.udir.no/laring-og-trivsel/lareplanverket/stotte/arbeid-med-nye-lareplaner-forventninger-og-ansvar/.

11. The sizes reflect typical divisions of schools. https://www.utdanningsforbundet.no/var-politikk/publikasjoner/2021/nokkeltall-for-grunnskolen-t.o.m.-skolearet-202021/.

12. This study includes on interview data collected before the shutdown.

13. We used the term HEI partnership to denote long-term collaboration between a school/a municipality and a higher education institution.