I artikeln undersöks hur rektor i sin roll som pedagogisk ledare agerar som stöd åt lärarna i samband med ett IKT-baserat skolutvecklingsprojekt (Information och kommunikationsteknik). Studien bygger på en fallstudie i ett EU-finansierat nordiskt skolprojekt där målet var att utveckla gränsöverskridande pedagogiska modeller för undervisning mellan klasser i de tre deltagande länderna Sverige, Danmark och Norge. Projektet byggde på virtuell kommunikation mellan skolorna med hjälp av digital teknik. Studien undersökte hur lärare från två skolor som deltog i projektet upplevde sina rektorer i IKT-relaterade frågor. En kvalitativ metod användes där lärarna intervjuades för att ta reda på hur de upplevde det stöd de fått från rektorerna gällande pedagogiska frågor, teknisk utrustning och IKT-kompetens. Som analysmodell användes tre funktioner som enligt Dexter (2008) anses gynna ett IKT-ledarskap, nämligen "att formulera mål och visioner", "att utveckla personalen" och "att se till att organisationen fungerar". Resultatet visar på två typer av ledarskap. Det ena hade likheter med ett kollektivt ledarskap eller ett så kallat distribuerat ledarskap, där rektor arbetade nära lärare och IKT-pedagoger. Det andra liknade mer ett traditionellt, formellt ledarskap där rektorerna hade en positiv inställning till IKT-utveckling, men där de olika yrkesrollerna arbetade var för sig. I ett utvecklingsprojekt där IKT ska integreras i undervisningen krävs olika typer av kunskaper och erfarenheter och därmed behövs samverkan mellan olika yrkeskompetenser. Projekt som arbetsform kan därför ses som en möjlighet för att utveckla ett distribuerat ledarskap.  

The principal of the Swedish school has among other duties the responsibility for the pedagogical development of the school. This article analyses how the principals act as pedagogical leaders in a collaborative ICT project (Information and Communication Technology). The analysis is based on a case study of an EU funded Nordic school development project where the goal was to develop cross-boarder educational models between the national education systems in the three participating countries Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The project was based on virtual communication between the schools using digital technology. The study investigated how the teachers from two schools involved in the project experienced the leadership of the principals in ICT related matters. The teachers were interviewed to find out how they perceived the support they had received from the principals on pedagogical issues, technical equipment and ICT competence.  The interviews were analysed using Dexter’s three basic features, “setting direction”, “developing people” and “making the organisation work”.  Two kinds of leadership were found. The first one resembled a team-based leadership or even called a distributed leadership, where the principal worked closely with teachers and ICT managers. The second one resembled more a formal leadership where principals had a positive attitude towards ICT development but conventional organisational roles were retained. In development projects where ICT will be integrated into teaching requires different types of skills and experience, and hence also between different professional competencies. The project as a working method can in the study be seen as a model for developing a distributed leadership. 

This article focuses on the leadership used by the principal in a collaborative ICT project. The case study chosen was a school project conducted within the NCCE project (Nordic Cross Country Education). The EU funded project ran for three years in grades 5-9 in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The goal of the project was to develop cross-boarder education models between the national education systems in the three countries. The project was based on virtual communication using digital technology. The study focuses on how the Swedish teachers from two schools involved in the NCCE project experienced the leadership of the principals in ICT related matters. A qualitative method was used by interviewing the teachers in order to inquire about what kind of support they had received from the school leadership on pedagogical issues, technical equipment and ICT competence.  The ICT leadership was analysed by Dexter’s three basic features: setting direction, developing people and making the organisation work.  The result showed two kinds of leadership. The first one resembled a distributed leadership, where the principal worked closely with teachers and ICT managers, almost like being one of the team. The second one resembled more a formal leadership where principals had a positive attitude towards ICT development but did not participate personally in the project work.

The project presented in this report concerns teaching and practices in one-to-one computer projects in primary school from the perspectives of teacher leadership, texts and text practices, and language learning. The aim of this project was not to study the implementation of the computers as investigated by many before. The focus was rather on classes where the technology had been used for some time. The teaching in four classes in year 3 and 5 at a school in western Sweden was observed by three researchers with the purpose of finding out what role the teacher assumes and what space the students get, whether the text repertoire widens and the text practices become more varied or different, whether the computer becomes a communication or production instrument for language learning. Recurring participant observations in the classes were made during one term in years 3 and 5. The students in year 3 were also followed during one term in year 4. Semi-structured interviews were conducted about the informants’ experiences of the work with computers. The analyses concern the daily access to a computer in the classes in conjunction with the traditional learning activities, resources and forms of representation in the teaching, as well as the forms of collaboration visible in the classroom. We summarize the conclusions from years 3 and 5 as: Motivated students and teachers – it was fun to work with computers. Development of digital competencies – the teachers stimulated the students to learn skills that gradually built up their knowledge regarding their IT competency. Enriched working methods – the students were offered both digital and more traditional resources and produced presentations, films and animations in which pure text was accompanied by modalities such as pictures and sound. Printed sources dominated – online text sources were not regarded as being as good or easy to find, the students mainly sought and fetched pictures from the Internet. Somewhat widened text repertoire – communicative texts appeared alongside narrative and expository texts in year 3. Narrative and expository texts dominated in year 5. The students used other text types and modalities – activities initiated by students offtask involved other texts and presentation forms, often based on pictures, film or sound, communication and took place more online. Individual and collaborative work in year 3, while having your own computer in year 5 meant individual work. More teacher-controlled than student-controlled classroom work – the teacher decided what to do and how to do it and the majority of tasks presupposed that all students did the same thing. Unclear balance between teaching content and technology – the technology was in focus and the teaching objectives were less clear. The transition for the year 3 students to year 4 resulted in an implementation of a more individualized instruction with less challenges for development and creativity. The activities mainly concerned writing, gathering of facts or practicing English. The teachers owned the technology and the students did not get to express their digital experience.

Svenska elever visar över tid i internationella jämförelser försämrade resultat i matematik (TIMSS, 2008; PISA, 2009; PISA, 2003). Detta har lett till att ledarskapet i lärarens pedagogiska utövning fått en ökad uppmärksamhet (Granström, 2007; Skolverket, 2009; Skolverket, 2010). Dessutom har regeringen gjort en särskild satsning i det så kallade matematiklyftet, en nationell fortbildning för matematiklärare med start hösten år 2012 (U2012/2103/GV).  Forskning har visat ett positivt samband mellan elevens självuppfattning eller självbild och elevens skolprestationer i ämnet matematik (Linnanmäki, 2002; Tapia & Moldavan, 2007). Däremot är det inte lika lätt att hitta forskning som handlar om hur ett ledarskap i matematikundervisning på klassrumsnivå utövas som bidrar till att stärka elevens självbild.  Frågeställningen i artikeln handlar om hur berättelsen som redskap i matematikundervisningen kan bidra till att stärka elevens självbild och därmed förändra elevens negativa attityder till ämnet. En studie, mattitydprojektet, har genomförts tillsammans med fyra matematiklärare som undervisar sex klasser i årskurs 1 på gymnasiet. Under ett läsår samarbetar forskare och lärare utifrån ett aktionsforskningsperspektiv. Som komplement till lärarens genomgångar och elevers räkneövningar ger läraren under matematiklektionen utrymme för berättelser i klassen utifrån en modell som presenteras i artikeln. Resultatet av projektet visar att lärarna i sitt pedagogiska ledarskap blivit mer medvetna om sammanhangets betydelse för att motivera eleverna att arbeta med matematik. De upplevde eleverna mer positiva på matematiklektionen. En attitydundersökning visar att eleverna generellt sett upplever matematikämnet som mer intressant efter projektet i jämförelse med innan. Antalet icke godkända betyg har minskat betydligt i jämförelse med motsvarande elevgrupp under tidigare läsår.

This is an EU-funded project related to cross boarder collaboration for educational purposes supported by information and communication technologies between Danish, Norwegian and Swedish schools. The project started in 2011 and extends to 2014 so this empirically dominated paper reports on early findings related to cross-border collaboration challenges. The aim of the project is to develop innovative cross-border teaching models by the means of user-driven, practice-based co-design processes between practitioners and researchers. In the first year, 18 classes from 13 schools in Denmark, Norway and Sweden in the Öresund-Kattegatt-Skagerack region participated. Organized in so called Nordic class-match groups (consisting of students and teachers from one class in each country) new cross-border teaching models are co-created, tested and evaluated in an iterative process. Since teaching models are subject dependent, the project develop teaching models in several subject domains, i.e. math, language, science and social studies / history. Heretofore findings show, however, that organizational and technical issues have superseded and squeezed out subject-oriented discussions due to surprisingly many practical issues that needed to be handled first. We have identified three major thresholds to overcome. The first is related to technical difficulties in schools when diverse IT systems are to be synchronized. The second threshold concerns scheduling coordination difficulties in order to allow synchronous cross boarder collaboration. The third threshold concerns linguistic and communication difficulties rooted in participants communicating in their respective Nordic language. Being able to communicate within Nordic languages are explicit learning goals in all three schools systems, and therefore part of the project aim and consequently all participants are expected to use their native languages when communicating. The next phase of the project is therefore to find solutions to these technical, organizational and linguistic barriers, and already now we see some barrier breaking models taking shape in the active network of Nordic teachers, students, school leaders, IT support teams and researchers.

This article focuses on computing in teaching. It focuses on the differences between a traditional view of teaching and a view where the teacher no longer is the knowledge broker but more of a coordinator or a coach. The empirical examples stem from a research project called "One computer one pupil", a study of two classes in year three with children aged 9 and two classes in year five with children aged 11 in a Swedish primary school. When the project started the pupils had been using the computers for about 2,5 years. In contrast to the teacher in grade five, the classes in year three had teachers with a great interest in developing ICT. The children became very skilled in using ICT and working with the laptop was very popular. According to the theoretical model of Voogt (2008), features of a "traditional pedagogy", like prescriptions of the activities, were mixed with elements of an "emerging pedagogy", where the pupils in collaboration performed their tasks in a creative way. However, some of the classroom work was quite unfocused relative to the goals of the subject. Instead of using the technology to reach the goals of the subject, the technology more or less became a goal in itself. To follow up ten Brummelhuis’ and Kuiper’s (2008) terms technology push and educational pull, we have added the term "technology pull."