Towards Intercultural Educational Leadership : Constructions of Leadership in a Heterogenous Language Centre

Abstract: This paper investigates educational leadership of an intercultural employee group in a large language centre providing first-language tuition in Sweden. The project is based on engaged scholarship (Van de Ven, 2007), which describes research in which the researcher works closely with multiple actors on different levels in an organisation in order to establish an overall picture. The views of both management and teachers with regard to national culture, language and norms are explored, in order to establish which intercultural aspects play a role in how leaders manage the heterogenous employee group. An important starting point for this research is the idea that individuals’ own cultures and norms affect motivation and engagement for workplace learning. A democratic, discussion based educational leadership style is held as an ideal in Swedish school principal training. However, “mother tongue” instruction stands out as an area within Swedish school provision as having a workforce comprised predominantly of non-Swedish native employees but that is subject to Swedish management principles. The findings of the study show that the intercultural language centre environment gives rise to difficulties in communication, target-setting and expectations regarding authority, while an educational leadership style with focus on rapport, personal development and trust helps to counteract some of these difficulties.