Abstract
This paper contributes to method development in educational leadership research. The focus is on a visual method and the inclusion of visual material in data collection and analysis. Core concepts in this paper are educational leadership, power and authority. The method was used in face-to-face interviews in a research project that studied the steering and governing in, and of, Swedish schools. The method enhances verbal narratives when informants reason and motivate their understandings of positions, relations and hierarchies within the organisations. We found that using visual material encouraged informants to reason and problematise formalised leader positions, their relations and the hierarchies that appear. The method helps to visualise the informants’ understandings of the power distribution within the organisation depending on whether positions are described as distant or close, horizontal or vertical. The method made the informants take a stand on complex matters, reflect, and gain insights about their organisations. It provided us, as researchers, with rich data material. By making subjective understandings visual, implicit assumptions were made explicit. This could challenge the knowledge on existing leadership and power norms within educational organisations, and most likely in other forms of organisations as well.
Highlights
The educational leadership research field relies on traditional research methods such as interviews and surveys
The following examples illustrate how we used the visual material in the face-to-face interviews to stimulate dialogue
The first example describes how the visual method was used to make one of the informants take a stand regarding her own position in relation to others
Summary
The educational leadership research field relies on traditional research methods such as interviews and surveys. This paper may not break new ground, but it attempts to inspire researchers in the field to reflect more on, and to scrutinise our choices of, method and approaches. Method development started during field work in a project about steering and governing in, and of, Swedish schools. The objective was to gain deeper knowledge of actors’ subjective understandings of leadership and governing within local school organisations. We wanted the informants to describe, and reflect on their own position and those of others. We decided to add visual material to the otherwise traditional face-to-face interview. The visual material, which was co-created with the informants, visualised their verbal narratives, and stimulated them both to reason and motivate their understandings of positions and relations within the local education organisation
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