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Head teachers’ management of schools with a demanding and ever-changing commission : On leadership and equality assurance

Head teachers have a central role to play in ensuring that schools fulfil their commissions, goals and plans for development. One of the duties of a head teacher is to lead other members of staff to ensure that the regulations concerning equality assurance are met to prevent abusive treatment, discrimination and harassment. The goal of schools’ equality work is to create a safe environment that contributes to pupils’ learning and development. The aim of this thesis is to examine how a defined group of head teachers and a representative of their School Heads’ organisation describe, relate to, and deal with the task of ensuring equal treatment, and how this is reflected through their leadership in practice. The theoretical framework and the analysis of the results are grounded in, and draws on, curriculum theory. The data is comprised of semi-structured interviews and written documents such as the legal framework concerning equality assurance and documents produced in schools, and it was collected during the school year 2012-13. The results of the case study reveal that all head teachers consider equality assurance to be an important but complex and changing area of work and responsibility, and that it takes place in and depends on regulations, decisions and actions in different contexts and school arenas. Moreover, the results show that the task of assuring equality in schools poses several leadership challenges and that the ability to ensure that the goals for equality assurance are met depends on a number of preconditions and factors. The results also show that the head teachers are able to identify which were likely to produce successful outcomes and which posed greater challenges.