The Key Role of the School Principal’s Leadership in the Schooling of Newly Arrived Immigrant Pupils in Sweden : Experiences from an Interactive Action Research Project

When newly immigrated children and young people begin school in Sweden, certain challengesarise. These may result from weak Swedish-language skills and different schooling backgrounds,as well as organizational and pedagogical limitations in the schools. This generates demands onschool leaders to lead and develop the organization and teachers competences to meet these pupils’needs. This situation was behind the initiation of the project “New Immigrants and Learning—Competence Development for Teachers and School Principals.” The project ran in schools infour Swedish municipalities, its aim was to develop leadership, organizational and pedagogicalskills that would facilitate the schooling and integration of newly arrived pupils. This article aimsto describe and discuss a Participant Action Research (PAR) based on a think tank and researchcircles, drawing special attention to the role of the school leaders. It will also examine whether theresearch circles and the project overall served to develop educational and intercultural leadership,organizational conditions, collegial learning, pedagogical methods and competence in terms ofschooling for this pupil group.

Idrottsämnet och ämnessamverkan : Idrottslärares attityder och förutsättningar till ämnessamverkan

Our interest about interdisciplinary teaching has grown during our time at Högskolan Dalarna and especially during the subject physical education. It became clear that people learn in different ways. The theoretical education in school benefits the visual and auditory strong learners but the kinesthetic strong learners find it more difficult to absorb the information. We argue that integrating subjects is a good way to mix theory and practice and thus gives more students an opportunity to learn the content of the subject. The intention of this examination paper is to investigate the relationship between the attitudes of the teachers regarding interdisciplinary teaching, the practical restrains, possibilities and the presence of interdisciplinary teaching at three different schools. Semi-structured interviews with six physical educators and three principals have been performed. An ad-hoc method has been used, with categorizing (teachers), and narrative (principals). Teachers and principal’s definitions of, the pros and cons for, and the actual presence of interdisciplinary teaching have been investigated. The main results of our studies are: 1) That teachers and principals define interdisciplinary teaching as thematic work. 2) Teachers experience lack of time for collective planning due to others duties. 3) Teachers and principals understanding of physical education makes it difficult to integrate physical education with other subjects. Some of the conclusions from this study are that interdisciplinary teaching must be voluntary. Conditions to practice interdisciplinary teaching must be sufficient, e.g regarding collective planning time. An increased presence of interdisciplinary teaching that includes physical education requires a new understanding of physical education.

LEARNING STUDY: ROZVOJ ŠKOLY SKRZE KOLEGIÁLNÍ UČENÍ UČITELŮ : Learning study: school development through collegial learning of teachers

The aim of this article is to describe how the Learning Study method (LS) was implemented in a Swedish upper secondary school, as well as how the principals and the teachers involved perceived this to affect teaching at, and the development of, the school. It is an empirical study that was conducted as an action research project over a period of three years. The project to implement the LS method was based on the assumption that proper training is the result of collegial activity that occurs when teachers learn from each other. The teachers in this study were, in general, positive about using the LS method. It created opportunities to meet and talk about teaching skills, developed better professional relationships between colleagues, and offered a systematic method for planning, implementing and monitoring teaching. However, working together requires that time be set aside to allow for implementation of the LS method. This is crucial, as the LS method is a rather expensive way to make school development work. This places heavy demands on principals to create the necessary conditions for the implementation of the LS method.