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This paper is situated in a larger research project concerned with how principals deal with controversial issues in their everyday practice. One early finding is that resistance to change is perceived as controversial issue by many principals (Rantala, forthcoming). In this paper I seek to deepen knowledge about the resistance from employees that principals meet and how they deal with it.

Having to change is inevitable. As society changes, schools and preschools also need to change to meet the demands which is placed on children and pupils both during and after their time in school. The principal, as a change leader, has the responsibility over and an important role in the improvement work that must take place (SFS, 2010:800; Timperley, 2011), but leading change work is no easy task (Holmes, Clement & Albright, 2013; Starr, 2011). Leading change involves dealing with resistance (Dolph, 2017; Starr, 2011) and resistance is always in relation to power (Foucault, 2002).

There is a vast body of research that describes how leaders carry out or should carry out change work (e.g. Fullan, 2015; Hargreaves et.al., 2010; Kotter, 2014). Research has also focus on strategies that principals need to adapt to enable change management to lead to change (e.g. Shaked and Schechter, 2017; Soini, Pietarinen & Pyhältö, 2016; Wang, 2018). But it also emerges, in research, that change leadership is complex and that the strategies even can collide (e.g. Homes, Clement & Albright, 2013).

Previous research on teachers' resistance to change has focused on resistance to specific changes, for example change in the curriculum (Kazakbaeva, 2021), resistance against educational reforms, for example introduction of in-service teacher certification (Choi, 2017) or quality assurance policies (Terhart, 2013). These studies show how resistance can arise when there is a lack of support and resources to create understanding for the change initiative (Kazakbaeva, 2021). Resistance can be expressed implicitly and that there can be prestige in the fact that the change initiative must succeed (Chio, 2017; Terhart, 2013). Research shows four factors that influence human resistance, self-interest, different values, low tolerance and lack of trust (Kotter & Schlesinger, 2013).

There are knowledge gaps in research regarding teacher's resistance to change in relation to principal's strategies, which is done in this paper. The aim is to study principals’ and deputy principals´ leadership of change, by analyzing principals’ and deputy principals ‘description of employee’s resistance and their strategies to handle it in school development work. This is then discussed in relation to power techniques. 

Amundsdotter et.al. (2015) and Linghag et.al. (2016) describes, anchored in Foucault’s theory of power techniques (2002; 2003; 2008), three different techniques, repressive, pastoral and regulated. They use these concepts both to describe employees' resistance and the principals' strategies for dealing with it. Amundsdotter et.al. and Linghag et.al. describes repressive resistance as clear and direct resistance, pastoral resistance takes more subtle expressions or is masked in other forms, e.g. lack of time or resources, and regulated resistance is about placing responsibility on others. Repressive strategies are for example when principals refer to laws or governing documents, blaming individuals, threats reporting or raising to a higher instance, pastoral strategies refer to offering help and guidance, demonstrating benefits, inspiring and motivating and regulatory strategies refer to building the change into the organization by emphasizing that it is a shared responsibility, reminding of the mission and what different roles entail. In this paper this concept is used to both to categorize and analyze the principals' and deputy principals' descriptions of employees' resistance to change and to categorize and analyze their descriptions of strategies they use to deal with the resistance.

Research topic/aim: School is often described as mirror that in its pedagogical practice and content captures or reflects societal challenges and opportunities (Johansson, 2015). Therefore, societal questions aligned with tension usually find their way into the classroom and the discussions that take place here between teachers and pupils in teaching situations. In educational research these so-called controversial issues are a well-known field of study and have been so for several years (Larsson & Lindström, 2020). In this study we want to learn more about how school staff, and especially principals, handles issues that are seen as controversial in school.

Our aim is to explore schools as sites for controversial spaces (CS) and we are interested to see what impact these have on school- and leadership practice. The main questions for this investigation are as follows: (1) What are the differences and similarities of CS depending on school context? (2) How does the content of CS influence leadership practices?

Theoretical framework: Our study draws on the theoretical concept of controversial spaces to capture how different controversial issues affect principal's leadership (Rantala et al, in press).  

Methodological design: In total, a set of 26 in-depth, loosely structured interviews with principals in pre-school, primary school, and upper secondary school. The overarching theme of the interviews was the impact and consequences of controversial issues on leadership and school practice, and the collected data were subjected to a conventional content analysis (Hsieh and Shannon, 2005).  

Expected conclusions/findings: Preliminary findings suggest that schools’ controversial spaces are aligned with urgent or low-pressure content depending on schools’ socioeconomic composition. Principals in socially vulnerable areas deals with urgent controversial spaces exemplified through issues such as gang crime, drugs, racism. Hence, the space is filled with issues that demand a leadership that instantaneously takes actions. Here leadership must communicate and interact with actors outside of school, for example the police, social welfare, or the pupils’ guardians.  

In contrast, principals in well-situated school contexts act within controversial spaces constituted by issues that are less imperative, for example sustainability. Principals that lead in these schools tend to solve these issues in-house in communication with staff and pupils, hence the controversial space of school is primarily an internal affair. 

The possibility of agency (focused on students'/children's learning and teaching) for the principal thus differs depending on the context. The more social unrest, less room for principal to advocate their agency directed to pedagogical enhancement.  

Relevance to Nordic educational research: This study has relevance for contemporary Nordic educational research as it contributes with theoretical concepts to understand and analyze controversial issues that principals deal with in all Nordic countries.

Fokus för denna studie är svenska förskolerektorers kontroversiella frågor, ett hittills obeforskat område. Syftet är att synliggöra några av de kontroversiella frågor som rektorer i förskolor hanterar i sin vardag med ambitionen att öka kunskapen om förskolerektorers ledarskap. Studien har en explorativ ansats och den teoretiska utgångspunkten grundas i begreppet dilemmatiska rum vilket vidareutvecklats till kontroversiella rum i artikeln. Vi menar att kontroversiella frågor är konstruerade i en specifik social kontext vilket påverkar hur rektorer positionerar sig. I analysen synliggörs hur de kontroversiella rummen är konstituerade. Resultatet grundas i sju semistrukturerade intervjuer. I resultatet synliggörs hur rektorerna behöver navigera i tre olika kontroversiella rum i relation till lojalitet, ledning och värden. Rektorers kontroversiella rum kan ses som ett uttryck för en utmanande position som kräver att man måste ta hänsyn till många intressen i sitt ledarskap. Att dessutom göra det i en verksamhet som präglats av en stark egalitär kultur gör själva ledarskapet till en utmaning. I denna kontext riskerar många ledarhandlingar upplevas som kontroversiella även om det är en naturlig del av att vara rektor.

The focus in this article is on controversial issues through the eyes of Swedish preschool principals. The aim is to make visible some of the controversial issues that principals encounter in their everyday lives, with an ambition to increase knowledge about preschool principals’ leadership. The study has an exploratory approach, based on seven semi-structured interviews, and the theoretical starting point is based on the concept of dilemmatic space, which has been further developed into controversial space in this article. We think that controversial issues are constructed in a specific social context, which affects how principals position themselves. The results demonstrate how the principals need to navigate in three different controversial spaces in relation to loyalty, management and values. We can see the principals’ controversial spaces as an expression of a challenging position that requires one to take many interests into account. Doing so in a preschool characterized by a strong egalitarian culture makes leadership a challenge. In this context, many leadership actions risk being perceived as controversial, even if they are a natural part of being a principal.

Controversial issues (CI) are a part of everyday life in schools’, inside and outside the classroom. How principals understand and manage these issues are therefore an interesting topic of inquiry. In this paper we set out to examine, from the theoretical standpoint of agency, principals understanding of what a CI is and how they can and cannot be managed. CIs has been a recurring topic in the educational literature for the last four decades (Hand & Levinson 2012; Anders & Shudak 2016) and in a globalised world characterized by polarisation and mediatisation the need for schools to handle CI has potentially become increasingly salient (Larsson & Lindström 2020). However, what is perceived as a controversial issue differs between contexts and can change rapidly.

The primary focus in the literature concerning CIs is teachers and teaching situations. This paper takes another point of departure focusing on principals and how they understand and manage CIs. Even though CIs are present outside formal teaching situations at the school, research on principals’ understandings and management of CIs are scarce and seldomly explicitly addressed. In addition, international educational policy discussions have underscored the importance that principals (not just teachers) manage and develop strategies in relation to CIs (Council of Europe, 2017). The aim of this paper is to explore how principals understand and manage CIs, more specifically the following research questions are applied:

What do school leaders understand as controversial issues in the Swedish education system?How and why do school leaders manage controversial issues in the Swedish education system?To categorize and analyse what principals understand as CIs (RQ1) the literature on what constitutes a CI is invoked. There is an ongoing debate on what criteria should be applied to deem something a CI (cf. Anders and Shudak, 2012). This debate differentiates between behavioural, political, epistemic, social, and theoretical criteria for defining an issue as controversial. However, this debate is primarily grounded in the question what teachers should (and should not) teach as a controversial issue which means that several of the criteria are unapplicable in principals professional practice. Based on the literature and the specific professional practice of principals’ we apply the following definition: a controversial issue is any issue that creates opposition or disputes at an organisational or societal level in schools and pre-schools.

In order to analyse how principals manage CIs (RQ2) we build on Emirbayer and Miche’s (1998) conceptualisation of agency as well as Eteläpelto et al (2013) conceptualisation of professional agency. Emirbayer and Miche’s (1998, p. 953) argue that agency should be seen as ‘temporally embedded process of social engagement’ informed by and directed towards the past, future, and present. This is complemented by Eteläpelto et al’s (2013) understanding of professional agency, which is dependent on professional knowledge and competencies as well as specific conditions of the workplace. Taken together, we understand professional agency as a dynamic concept rooted in temporal dimensions that emerges in relation to socio-cultural conditions of the workplace and professional identity, knowledge, and experience.

Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources Used: The empirical part of the study is made up of 29 interviews with principals in Sweden. In the selection process we elected a heterogenous sample aiming for maximal variation among the principals (Ritchie & Lewis, 2013). This process started with identifying central categories of principals to make sure that the sample would include principals in different contexts and with different prerequisites. This, in turn, allows our mapping of principals’ understanding of controversial issues to include several different points of view. The categories used in the selection process was: including both men and women (gender); principals working in schools from different education stages (education stage): whether the school was placed in a central or rural setting (city-countryside) and whether the principal was experienced or novel (professional experience).

Since the research on principals understanding of CIs is limited, we elected an exploratory approach to make sure that we did not steer the principals’ understandings of what a CI is for a principal. However, to provide some sort of guidance we presented the respondents with the following generic definition of a CI in the beginning of all interviews: by controversial issues we mean issues that arouse strong feelings and/or divide opinion in schools, communities, and society. After the respondents was asked to give a brief professional background, the respondents were invited to bring up the most pressing controversial issue in their role as a principal. To each controversial issue a set of follow up questions were asked including: “why is this a controversial issue; who are involved; who are affected; how do you manage this issue?”. After the respondent had brought up their most pressing CIs questions intended to help to broaden the respondents’ perspective was applied. These questions entailed aspects such as: previously encountered controversial issues; controversial issues regarding teaching situations, norms and values, or connected to the larger society or the immediate community.

To answer the first research question the answers from the respondents were categorised thematically. First, any issues brought up by the respondents that fell outside our broad definition of CI were sifted out. After that the controversial issues were thematically organised into specific topics (religion, sustainability, racism, LGBTQI etc) and types of controversial issue (social, political, behavioural etc.). To answer the second research question the respondents answers to how they handle and manage controversial issues were analysed through the concept of professional agency as depicted above.

Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or Findings: Preliminary results concerning the first research question show that themes concerning segregation, racism, LGBTQI and religion are recurring examples the principals give of CIs. Apparent difference can be found between the different categories of principals. For example, pre-school principals deal with CIs concerning the relation with parents claims to a larger extent than other principals. In addition, several issues brought up by the principals are not deemed controversial given the definition applied in this paper. The most salient of these issues are interpersonal issues between principals and teachers or other school staff. When these issues are not clearly connected to an organizational and/or a societal level they were not deemed a controversial issue.

Preliminary results concerning the second research questions show that how principals relate to and understand social-temporal aspects of their professional work influences how they perceive the CI at hand and have consequences for how they manage the CI. For example, how the principal understands racial tensions at his or her school influences whether s/he manages the issue proactively or simply deals with the issue as it flares up. Even though this paper is a first step in mapping and understanding CIs for principals more research is needed to provide a better understanding of how principals understand and manages controversial issues.

References: 

Anders, P. & Shudak. (2016) Criteria for Controversy: A Theoretic Approach. Thresholds in Education, 39(1), 20–30.

Council of Europe (2017) Managing controversy – Developing a strategy for handling controversy and teaching controversial issues in schools. A self-reflection toll for school leaders and senior managers.

Emirbayer, M. & Mische, A. (1998) What is agency? American journal of Sociology, 103, 962-1023.

Eteläpelto, A., Vähäsantanen, K., Hökkä, P. and Susanna Paloniemi, S. (2013) What is agency? Conceptualizing professional agency at work, Educational Research Review, 10, 45-65.

Hand, M. & Levinson, R. (2012) Discussing controversial issues in the classroom. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44(6), 614-629.

Larsson, A. & Lindström, N. (2020) Controversial societal issues in education: Explorations of moral, critical and didactical implications. Acta Didactica Norden, 14(4), 1-6.

Ritchie, J., Lewis, J., McNaughton Nicholls, C. and Ormston, R. (2013) Qualitative Research Practice: A Guide for Social Science Students and Researchers. SAGE.

This paper highlights the concept of controversial issues in preschool principals’ everyday practice. Controversial issues are something that teachers and principals have to address more frequently in schools and preschools in recent years (Council of Europe, 2017). One explanation for this development might be, according to the Council of Europe, that teachers and principals are working in a rapidly changing global environment. For instance, we have had a worldwide pandemic, conflicts in the surrounding world that increase migration, an ongoing climate crisis and a fast technological development that create insecurities. This development calls for a readiness capacity on the organizational level but also a leadership that is sensitive and able to identify controversial issues that arise in preschools today and tomorrow.

When reviewing research on controversial issues in preschools and schools it is evident that the main focus is directed toward teachers and their practice, i. e. on how they teach in relation to topics that are perceived as controversial in an educational setting (see e.g. Bautista, isco & Quaye, 2018; Sætra, 2019). Further, research on how controversial issues are perceived and dealt with from a principal’s perspective is scarce. The concept of controversial issues is not easily defined and there is no uniform definition of the concept. In this study we use a definition that controversial issues are all issues that create tension or disputes on an organizational and/or societal level such as, for example, segregation, migration, equality, religion, sexuality and gender which may be difficult to know how to handle and/or respond to (Council of Europe, 2017).

As described above, controversial issues are topics that is difficult to handle and sometimes there are no easy solutions or clear paths for the principal in order to deal with or in the process of deciding what to do. In other words, these issues could be described as professional dilemmas for the principals. A dilemma can be defined as a situation where values, obligations and/or commitments collide or conflict and there is, for the involved actors, no obvious right way to do or act (Honig, 1994, 1996). In order to describe and understand these professional dilemmas the concept of dilemmatic spaces is used. A dilemmic space can be understood as a landscape of interactions between different actors within a specific social setting and where frictions in relation to societal and professional norms and values manifest (Olsson, 2022). Through the concept of dilemmatic space, actors, norms, values and action patterns can be framed which can affect how principals are positioned or position themselves, which in turn affects their leadership practice. In this paper we understand the concept of dilemmatic space as being relational and dialectic (Fransson & Grannäs, 2013). This means that not only people are positioned based on their standpoints and their moral positioning but also in relation to various norms, values, patterns of action, decisions, rules, roles and functions are related and positioned in relation to each other, and these positions creates a space, an area where dilemmas might occur that principals have to deal with (Fransson, 2012; Fransson & Grannäs, 2013).

The aim of this study, which has an exploratory point of departure, is to analyze the controversial issues and discuss in relation to dilemmatic spaces. This is done by focusing on which issues preschool principals experience and articulate as controversial in their practice. Further, why these issues are perceived as controversial and how the principals are affected by them and how they position themselves or become positioned and what space they can operate in when trying to deal with them.

Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThis study is part of a larger project, CVIL (ControVersial Issues in Leadership), that aim to study controversial issues in Swedish (K-12) principals’ everyday practice. Within the project’s first stage 29 interviews with principals were conducted, seven of these were with preschool principals and are used as the data set in this paper. The interviews were semi-structured (Bryman 2012) and the principals within the study were from different contexts (in relation to socio economic context, rural/urban settings etc.). In addition, some of the interviewed principals had worked as leaders for some time and others were relatively new in their position. Five researchers, connected to the project, conducted semi-structured interviews. The two main questions in the interview guide were: Which controversial issues are most important to you right now as principal, and what are the controversial issues that you have had in the past?, Each main question was followed by probing questions such as: Why was it a controversial issue for you?, How did you handle this issue?, Who was involved?, Who was affected by it?. In what way, and so on, Each interview lasted between one to two hours

All interviews have been recorded and transcribed verbatime. The data was analyzed using content analysis (Berg 2001, Creswell, 2007) with a focus to identify dilemmatic spaces in the light of the principals' perception of controversial issues.Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsOur preliminary analysis consists of four themes: controversial issues in relation to traditions, norms and values, laws and regulations and local political demands. The first theme, conflicting norms regarding traditions, highlights dilemmas derived from frictions on how to celebrate holidays at the preschools and if all children should or are allowed (by the parents) to participate in these celebrations. These dilemmas can be related to both religious and cultural traditions.  The second theme, conflicting norms and values tend to be a theme which is made visible when the principals describe that ideological beliefs clash between teachers and parents regarding for example the preschool´s participation in activities to support everyone´s equal value such as participating in a pride festival.  

The third theme emerges when professional norms are challenged by laws and regulations or national or local goals and assignments. One of the principals describe that the Swedish National Agency for Education promotes concepts such as evidence-based education which this principal believes is not compatible with her view on how to teach children. The law that requires all abusive treatment between children to be reported is also triggering tensions, as principals believe that this law carries a risk of young children being labeled as victims or perpetrators. The fourth and final theme is when local political demands become a controversial issue for a principal. One example of this is a political initiative focusing a reading and writing guarantee for 5- and 6-year-old children which this principal think is an unreasonable demand on all children, and teachers.  

These results are discussed in relation to dilemmatic spaces that emerges and affects the principal’s need to position him or herself in favor of one side or somewhere in between, even if the principal wish to be able to take a different position.ReferencesBautista, N., Misco, T., & Quaye, S. J. (2018). Early childhood open-mindedness: An investigation into preservice teachers’ capacity to address controversial issues. Journal of Teacher Education, 69(2), 154-168.  

Berg, B.L., 2001. Qualitative research methods for the social sciences. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.

Bryman, Alan (2012). Social research methods. 4. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Creswell, J.W. (2007). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Fransson, G. (2012). Professionalisering eller deprofessionalisering? Positioneringar och samspel i ett dilemmatic space. I C. Gustafsson & G. Fransson (red.). Kvalificerad som lärare? Om professionell utveckling, mentorskap och bedömning med sikte på lärarlegitimation. Gävle University Press.  

Fransson, G., & Grannäs, J. (2013). Dilemmatic spaces in educational contexts–towards a conceptual framework for dilemmas in teachers work. Teachers and Teaching, 19(1), 4-17.

Honig, B. (1993). Difference, Dilemmas, and the Politics of Home. Social Research. Vol. 61, no 3.

Sætra, E. (2019). Teaching Controversial Issues: A Pragmatic View of the Criterion Debate. Journal of  Philosophy of Education, 53(2), s. 323–339. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12361

Wiman, Lena (2019). Att vara chef i förskolan - villkor, drivkrafter och uttryck. I K. Malmberg & A. Arnqvist (red.). Ledning i förskola - villkor och uttryck. Malmö: Gleerups.