‘Taking root and growing wings’: on the concept of glocality from the perspectives of school principals in Israel

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ABSTRACTRecent discussions of glocalisation call for acknowledging the role of agents of glocalisation. School principals, by holding a mid-level position that is increasingly evaluated by global standards and yet acutely responsive to community-level capacity, both formulate glocality and practise it. By recording the role perception of school principals in Israel, we propose a novel outlook on glocality. From the perspective of these agents of glocalisation, we (1) redefine glocality as a matter of orientation and (2) extract a typology of the practice of glocalisation. First, based on school principals’ understanding of what accounts for global and local, we show that while they all report that their work requires the integration of international testing standards, ministerial policies, and the needs and preferences of pupils, parents and teachers, they differ in their orientations, or inclinations, towards what they regard as global or local. Second, we show that such orientations are associated with a particular type of glocality: School principals with strong orientations towards the global also express a sense of hybrid glocality, whereas school principals with strong orientations towards the local also express a sense of strategic glocality.