Principal instructional leadership and teacher collaboration
How do school principals improve student outcomes? School leaders play a crucial role in shaping teaching and learning - but through which mechanisms do they make the greatest difference? Is it their own leadership, or the professional culture they create within the school?
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Leadership that strengthens teaching
This project examines how principals influence student achievement by fostering collaboration among teachers.
Drawing on longitudinal survey data from teachers in nearly 2,000 Swedish schools collected over 18 years, the researchers investigate how instructional leadership affects both student performance and the way teachers work together. The project also builds on earlier research validating the key concepts of instructional leadership and teacher collaboration using data from the Swedish Schools Inspectorate, ensuring that both measures are reliable and robust.
The findings, published in Educational Management Administration & Leadership (2025), show that principals improve student outcomes in two important ways. Teacher collaboration is a key pathway through which leadership enhances students' final grades, while principals' instructional leadership also has a direct influence on students' performance on national standardized tests.
Understanding what makes leadership effective
The project highlights that effective school leadership cannot be understood by studying principals alone. Instead, leadership and teacher collaboration must be viewed as interconnected parts of the same organizational system.
By identifying how principals create conditions for stronger teaching and learning, the research provides valuable knowledge for leadership development, school improvement, and educational policy in Sweden and internationally.
Funding: The Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy (IFAU)