Normativ styrning i förskolan: En fallstudie

Abstract

Normative control in the pre-school: A Swedish case study

The project “Normative leadership in the pre-school” is a series of case-studies which aims at clarifying how normative leadership is practiced and negotiated, as well as which norms are created by leaders and co-workers. The amount of research into leadership in pre-schools is currently low, despite the comprehensive nature and significance of the institution. Relation to theory is often weak, as is the connection to more general research on leadership. I have chosen the theory of normative control of organisations as a framework for my analysis. The empirical methods are a combination of interviews and observations. In this first case study, the subject is an unusual leadership task. A number of new pre-schools are to be established, and the leader is to create a vision for these. Tension arises between vision and daily reality, however. It is the vision that must confront everyday life, and not the other way around. A common understanding must gradually be established, with its foundation just as much in norms and ideas as in security and common experience. The results indicate that negotiation and re-negotiation are important aspects of normative control in the pre-school. I propose the concept distributed normative control as the collaborators and the leader share the normative power in the daily round.