Leadership and knowledge sharing in vocational education and training

This is a text about how different management practices can affect knowledge sharing in vocational education. Data comes from a qualitative study of the Norwegian ‘Vocational Teacher Training Initiative Programme’. The text is based on the premise that different management practices can create varying relationships between external, formulated requirements for knowledge development and internal processes for sharing knowledge. Sekkingstad and Glosvik (2022) have previously identified three main categories of management practices: ‘management of operations’, ‘leadership through system and plan’, and ‘systemic leadership’. These characterise overlapping reflections between school managers and in the management groups in five upper secondary schools. The practices are used as analytical tools, and nine categories with relevance to the research questions are identified and presented as results. The main message is that the three practices are intertwined, but that ‘management of operations’ dominates. The main finding is that one practice puts the teacher at the centre, another the school as an organisation, and the third the needs of the pupils. Management practices in vocational education thus have an impact on what is perceived as collective learning. The results are first discussed in light of a perspective on organisational learning (Pedler et al., 2019), then in light of general approaches to school and educational leadership.