From responsibilities to accountabilities: school principals’ expected roles in composing inclusive schools since 1994

Abstract

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.

Keywords

• School principals’ responsibility
• regulation histories
• inclusion policies
• accountability
• thematic document analysis