New Book on School Management by PPP member Justine Grønbæk Pors

New Book on School Management by Justine Grønbæk Pors

Justine Grønbæk Pors, assistant professor and member of the PPP cluster shifting forms of public governance just published a new book on school management.

With the title (translated from Danish) ’Noisy government’ Justine shows why it is not necessarily the case that more management simply will encourage  and cause more well-functioning schools. Instead she argues that there is a special tragedy built into attempts to improve management: Management reforms create often unruliness, which only calls for new measures and more management, which then again increases unruliness.

The book is launched in a time where the primary schools are experiencing turbulent times. One major reform calls for another and there is a fundamental transformation not only of the school itself but also in regard to the relationship between the school and the local authority, the school and the concept of learning, the school and the teacher profession as well as the school and the surrounding community.

To understand this development we cannot just study the recent reform instead Pors argues that we should take into consideration the last decades of revolution in the way schools are managed and governed.

Today, elementary schools are required both to manage while at the same time promoting unruliness. Each school must dare to take risks when reinventing, innovating and experimenting in the search for the future welfare state. But the schools must also through documentation and evaluations ensure that welfare benefits are being delivered as expected, committed and determined.

The book is in Danish. Find the book and read more here.