School improvement processes are often hindered by tensions caused by encountering paradoxes. Teachers and leaders feel stressed moving between seemingly opposite poles such as excellence and diversity. Ignoring these paradoxes often leads to vicious cycles, where tensions keep existing. Paradox theory can help cope with paradoxical tensions, but little educational research has used a paradox lens. We conducted a case study searching for fine-grained insight into the tensions experienced by teachers and leaders in secondary education. We found examples of tensions related to paradoxes of learning, connectedness, organization, and performance. Further, our results showed that educators mainly used defensive responses and mentioned less strategic responses to cope with tensions. Our findings highlight the need to better recognize and deliberately manage paradoxes in education. Dispositions such as a paradox mindset are important in that regard. We have translated our results into recommendations for research, policy, and practice.
Vanlommel et al. (Mon,) studied this question.