Multilevel Pedagogical Leadership in Higher Education

Front matter

Educational Governance Researc h 25 ann Michael Uljens Editors

Multilevel Pedagogical Leadership in Higher Education

A Non-Affirmative Approach

Contents

Grounding Higher Education Leadership Research

Michael Uljens and Janne Elo Levels of Pedagogical Leadership in Higher Education:

Janne Elo and Michael Uljens

Chapter 1 Grounding Higher Education Leadership as Research in Non-affirmative Education Theory

Michael Uljens © and Janne Elo

Abstract This chapter argues that higher education leadership research lacks sufficient theoretical underpinning and requires a more comprehensive theoretical framework. We propose that establishing a solid theoretical foundation involves a systematic exploration of three key perspectives: the why, how and what of leadership. First, recognising that leadership in and of educational institutions is relational and contextual, shaped by historical evolution, we advocate for a clarification of universities’ roles and responsibilities from societal, cultural, disciplinary, economic and individual perspectives—the why of higher education curriculum leadership. We argue that education theory provides valuable insights into understanding how the university, as an institutional context, and its tasks relate to these dimensions. Second, considering higher education institutions as knowledge-intensive organisations, leadership’s fundamental role is seen in facilitating the professional and personal development of both staff and students. Consequently, higher education leadership should articulate its position on pedagogical influence across various levels—the how of higher education curriculum leadership. Third, recognising that the primary focus of higher education leadership at different levels is the academic and professional learning of students, it involves providing direct and indirect support for leaders and teachers, as well as shaping the curriculum and organisation of study programmes. These aspects collectively constitute the what of higher education curriculum leadership. In light of these three perspectives, this chapter outlines the theoretical grounding for research on the pedagogical dimension of multi-level higher education leadership within the framework of non-affirmative education theory.

Keywords Higher education leadership - Multi-level leadership - Leadership for learning - Non-affirmative education theory

M. Uljens (È<) - J. Elo Faculty of Education and Welfare Studies, Abo Akademi University, Vaasa, Finland e-mail: michael.uljens @ abo.fi; janne.elo @ abo. fi

© The Author(s) 2024 1 J. Elo, M. Uljens (eds.), Multilevel Pedagogical Leadership in Higher Education, Educational Governance Research 25, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-03 1-55116-1_1

What is a university, what is it for and how is it led? These questions have been central topics of debate throughout the history of the university, and the answers have indeed varied and evolved over time (Barnett, 2004). Today, how these questions are practically answered is reflected in higher education leaders’ activities. Most of these activities are founded on these leaders’ professional identities, including their explicit or implicit ideas of how they understand higher education and the conditions under which universities operate. In addition, empirical research on higher education policies provides us with answers of this kind. However, in our search for a convincing vocabulary of what the university is and how it is led, we do not primarily turn to empirical research on education leaders’ ideas or their practices. Rather, in this volume, we are searching for a theoretical grounding for higher education leadership research. The reason for this is that we find educational leadership research, in general, to be under-theorised.

Our central claim is that such a theoretical grounding requires addressing three perspectives. First, we need to conceptually clarify the university ’s relation to other societal and cultural practices because how we as researchers explain this relation is intimately connected to how we view its leadership. In this sense, we take seriously the idea that leadership in and of educational institutions is relational, contextual and a historically evolved practice. Second, leadership is always the leadership of something. We thereby claim that any leadership is always partly related to its object and cannot be fully understood as a content- and context-neutral generic activity. From this perspective, to theoretically explain what higher education leadership is about, we need an articulated position regarding pedagogical influence in education, teaching and studying. Another aspect of the importance of an articulated position on pedagogical influence is that all leadership in knowledge-intensive organisations feature activities facilitating professional and human growth this leadership has a pedagogical dimension to it. We argue that while leadership influencing learning activities is often identified as crucial in knowledge-intensive organisations, the literature on leadership too often lacks elaboration on the pedagogical qualities of leadership. Third educational leadership, and the pedagogical dimensions thereof, is a complex undertaking simultaneously operating at different interrelated levels that must be dealt with in a theoretically and conceptually coherent manner.

Given the three perspectives described above, the mission of this volume is to theoretically ground research on the pedagogy of multi-level higher education leadership in non-affirmative education theory. Parallel to this, this volume problematises the approach by bringing it into dialogue with previous significant and highly esteemed contributions to higher education leadership research.

This volume contributes to the international research programme on non-affirmative education (Non-affirmative Education, 2023). The programme is based on Dietrich Benner’s interpretation of the non-affirmative theory (NAT) of education and Bildung (Benner, 2023). Dietrich Benner has developed this position since the 1970s but has primarily published in German. This approach garners

1 Grounding Higher Education Leadership Research in Non-affirmative. . . 3 steadily increasing international interest. Due to its character and its grounding in modern European Bildung, the position is regarded as a promising language for education in the twenty-first century, drawing interest from researchers across the Western, Eastern and Southern global regions. How the approach has gained interest is described in Uljens and Ylimaki (2017) and Uljens (2023a). The present volume is the third in a series, published by Springer. The volume from 2017 discussed how non-affirmative education theory succeeds in bridging research on teaching, curriculum and educational leadership. A recent volume digs into the conceptual core issues of the approach and investigates how this tradition of thought has influenced, and relates to, other approaches (Uljens, 2023b).

A Short History of University Leadership

The history of the university dates back to the Middle Ages, when universities were teaching institutions, often connected to the church and mainly concerned with reproducing societal elites. Since the seventeenth century, through a stepwise movement towards modernity, the educational task of the university has shifted from socialising to an existing teleological order in premodern societies to a modern view of a non-teleological development of society whereby the task of higher education is to educate for a future that is neither known nor knowable. The establishment of the modern Humboldtian research-based university marked a difference between the pedagogical activities in schools and those in universities. While schools typically focused on teaching based on a predetermined curriculum or syllabus, the new universities emphasised the teacher’s autonomy to construct a curriculum that was not only to be taught but that would serve as a point of departure for students, who would incorporate a critical treatment of its content into their studies. A unique difference between schools and universities is that both students’ and teachers’ personal learning is crucial in universities. The double and related processes of teachers’ and students’ Bildung provide a certain twist to educative teaching at universities. However, without digging into the sociological literature of professions (Abbot, 1988), it can be said that the differences between the disciplines are significant. The study of some disciplines aims at the achievement of qualifications for given professions, while that of others provides a more general understanding of a given field of knowledge structured as a discipline. In this respect, universities have always been connected to the labour market and citizenship in multiple ways.

In Europe, in particular, the nation-state became the dominant frame of reference, alongside working life, for universities. Education in general, with universities being no exception, became a key means of developing national identities ‘from within’ in many nations. Universities have played a special role in the education of the societal elite (state bureaucrats, officials, teachers and leaders) upholding, leading and developing nation-states. In this respect, universities have played a conservative and reproductive role in society.

With the gradual shift from a premodern teleological worldview to a modern view of the future as open, research has become one of the central tasks performed by universities. In the Western tradition, when knowledge was no longer perceived as something given from above or found within, but rather as something created or discovered by humans, research as an activity started to make sense. Although higher education institutions eventually became, and still mostly are, located in a nation-state framework financially, legally and policy-wise, the traditional Humboldtian idea of the university in the Western hemisphere has been that it is intended to provide universally valid knowledge that is public and accessible for all. The modern idea of educating the individual was directly dependent on the universal validity of shared knowledge. It was through this universally valid knowledge that the individual could be emancipated from the primary context, culture and socialisation. Moving into the sphere of universally accepted knowledge also gave rise to a new collective of intellectuals. Universal knowledge thereby, in a way, replaced religion and became connected to a new idea of humanity in the modern world. This view regards research as a common good that aims to benefit humanity, not merely as useful for single nation-states, nor did the Humboldtian idea view knowledge as a commodity or a private good on an exchange market. Although higher education institutions, in many ways, remain rooted in national frameworks, higher education has become increasingly interwoven in both local and global networks of influences, policy-wise, culturally, and economically. Paradoxically, parallel to various globalisation processes over the past three decades, universities have been localised and given a third mission: to instrumentally serve regional and national needs.

While we still very much live by the modern ideas of being and becoming an encultured and educated citizen, where acting out a self-directed will in relation to others’ interests is crucial, the operational environment of today’s universities is quite different from that of Wilhelm von Humboldt. With the move into a postindustrial economy, higher education has become a focal point for economic and labour market policies on a global level, and globalisation generates increased instrumental requirements in terms of the effects and use of knowledge produced, as knowledge is expected to serve regional needs for economic ends (Dobbins et al., 2011). Global discourses of a competitive knowledge economy, new public management and the entrepreneurial university affect higher education worldwide, although at varying speeds and in varying ways (Bruckmann & Carvalho, 2018; Frost et al., 2016).

In an era of academic capitalism, universities are not only expected to provide competence and innovations for a competitive market; they are also competing for fee-paying international students, research funding, rankings, prestige and the most productive and competitive scholars in a global educational and academic market (Kandiko & Blackmore, 2012; Kwiek, 2016; Maassen, 2017). During the twentieth century, especially after World War II, universities developed from institutions of elite education, clearly distinguishable from the rest of society, to institutions of mass education interwoven in many ways with the surrounding society (Barnett, 2004). The task of the mass university is to prepare a much broader range of societal

1 Grounding Higher Education Leadership Research in Non-affirmative. . . 5 elites, including the upper strata of all of society’s technical and economic organisations (Trow, 2007). The interpenetration of the university and the surrounding society has, in many ways, eroded the basis of the Humboldtian idea of the university as an institution. For instance, the creation of new knowledge through research is by no means the privilege of universities in a knowledge society, and the boundaries between universities and businesses have, in many cases, vanished through the emergence of the knowledge economy (Barnett, 2004).

If universities originally had a strong connection to the church, followed by a close affiliation with the state, at least symbolically, their affiliation with the state has, in many cases, been replaced by one with the market, for instance, through privatisation reforms. The increased formal autonomy of higher education institutions is often accompanied by increased control and steering mechanisms that involve more accountability and a diversified funding base (Christensen, 2011). Thus, increased autonomy has mainly been instrumental and efficiency-oriented and has seen the introduction of new managerial steering mechanisms within higher education institutions, resulting in the monitoring of leadership behaviours and functions. Research funding is largely guided by policies or other external instrumental interests. Institutionalised nation-state education, in general, is influenced by globalisation, technology and transnational policy-making and policy-borrowing, accompanied by a neoliberal shift towards new forms of governance that focus on the indirect regulation of the self-governance of institutions and researchers within and across countries (Lingard & Rizvi, 2009). In many cases, these trends have led organisational logic in higher education to be based on managerialism and marketisation (Bruckmann & Carvalho, 2018; Frost et al., 2016). As higher education institutions are developing from loosely coupled to more vertically connected systems, higher education leadership is increasingly in focus from many perspectives (Maassen & Stensaker, 2019).

Based on the short historical description above, it can be concluded that higher education is currently a focal point of interest for numerous actors and stakeholders in global society. It faces a multitude of expectations, ranging from economic and labour market considerations to political, social justice and environmental perspectives. In other words, many different and new actors in society want a say in how and where higher education should be led and developed, and the question of what a university is is itself on the table. Different views on what universities are are reflected in different positions regarding how they should be led and governed. The massification of universities, combined with the interpenetration of universities and the wider society and differentiation into sub-disciplines, has resulted in universities being, on the one hand, more internally heterogeneous and, on the other, more interwoven with different fields of societal practice than ever before. Thus, the questions of what higher education is and what it is for are at the forefront from several perspectives. Paradoxically, however, higher education leaders’ increased focus on managing the performativity and productivity of universities has turned their attention away from an internally driven discussion of the idea of the university itself.

Contemporary Perspectives on Higher Education Leadership Research

Partly as a consequence of the increased and diversified societal interest in higher education, the research interest in higher education leadership has been growing in recent decades, with a substantial number of articles and volumes published on the topic. Grasping the field of leadership in general, and higher education leadership in particular, is, however, a challenge. In addition to the inherent complexity of the university as an object of study, a multitude of approaches, theories, models and doctrines applied to the study of this complex phenomenon coexist. Transformative, transformational, transactional, shared, distributed, heroic, systemic, curriculum, ethical and various other concepts and theories of leadership attempt to illuminate aspects or perspectives of this elusive topic. Many scientific disciplines apart from education focus on leadership, for example, policy research, law, organisation theory, sociology, psychology and economics. Higher education leadership is currently approached from various theoretical or ideological standpoints, ranging from instrumental efficiency-oriented approaches to critical emancipatory perspectives. All of these approaches can produce valuable insights into higher education leadership but simultaneously have various limitations.

Adding to this complexity, higher education leadership is recognised as a phenomenon occurring at many levels, being exercised in various forms from the transnational policy arena down to the individual teacher level. Grasping higher education leadership as a holistic phenomenon requires the ability to handle its multilevel character in a coherent way. For instance, actor—network theory (Czarniawska & Sevón, 2005), discursive institutionalism (Schmidt, 2008), refraction (Goodson & Rudd, 2012), ecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), Europeanisation research (Maassen & Musselin, 2009), curriculum theory (Wraga & Hlebowitsh, 2001) and complexity theory (Morrison, 2006) provide examples of approaches to studying educational leadership as a multilevel or multidimensional phenomenon. What most of these approaches have in common is that leadership is portrayed as a mediating activity between different levels and actors. A hermeneutic dimension of translation is demonstrated in the element of interpretation always present in the mediating of interactions, negotiations and discourses (Mielityinen & Uljens, 2023). Our view, however, is that such approaches are not sufficiently distinct. Most previous multilevel approaches to educational leadership have generated vocabularies that are general and neutral with respect to the context or practice in question. The same conceptualisations can be applied to understand, for example, healthcare, education, private businesses and policies for public transport. The strength of these general frameworks—that is, their general validity—is simultaneously their weakness.

The various leadership theories mentioned above and the various approaches to leadership as a multilevel phenomenon have a limitation in common when it comes to the leadership of education: they all lack a specific vocabulary for the studied object, namely, education, pedagogical interaction and pedagogical leadership.

1 Grounding Higher Education Leadership Research in Non-affirmative. . . 7

Although they provide valuable perspectives, these theories are thus silent on the key questions of how we can understand what education is and what it is for. What is the societal role of the university in a liberal democracy? Given recent geopolitical developments, this is a highly relevant question that we argue that higher education leadership research needs to be able to handle conceptually and theoretically. While organisational, political, psychological, economic and sociological perspectives, for example, are important, they are not sufficient as a foundation for studying the leadership of education.

In addition to not fully meeting the challenges posed by conceptualising what education is, leadership theories also lack concepts for elaborating on what constitutes pedagogical influence. Such theories often state that leadership is about influencing the perceptions and understandings of others but remain silent on what constitutes this influence. As leadership theories lack a language for pedagogical interaction, they also lack a language to talk about the object of educational leadership: teaching and studying. This volume targets these perceived shortcomings and aims to explore how educational theory could be a fruitful point of departure for understanding leadership in and of education at various levels. We argue that the NAT of education and Bildung (Benner, 2015, 2023) could provide points of departure that can overcome some challenges associated with current higher education leadership research. In the following section, we develop this argument by pointing out three challenges that current higher education leadership research has not been able to deal with sufficiently.

Three Conceptual Challenges for Higher Education Leadership Research

As argued elsewhere (Elo & Uljens, 2023; Tigerstedt, 2022; Tigerstedt & Uljens, 2016; Uljens, 2015; Uljens & Ylimaki, 2017), current research on educational leadership struggles to handle leadership of and in education at different levels in a theoretically coherent manner. We identify at least three dimensions of these challenges.

Challenges Related to the Societal Role of Higher Education

Leadership of and in universities always occurs in relation to, and in complicated dialogues with, different stakeholders in society. From a historical and contemporary perspective, most research agrees that higher education leadership and curriculum work cannot be understood in a decontextualised fashion (McLendon, 2003). The question is thus how, not if, the relation between university education and other societal practices is understood by different conceptual positions on higher education leadership, policy and teaching. The question of what universities are for is therefore central. In this complex field, we identify two broad positions on how research understands the relation between societal fields and interests, on the one hand, and education and educational leadership, on the other.

In the first position, traditional leadership research has been based on structural functionalism, partly through organisational system theories (see Uljens & Ylimaki, 2017, pp. 48-54). Education and educational leadership are seen functionally, often subordinating them to contemporary economic or political interests. These positions can thus be seen as ideologically naive. Educational leadership research in these positions typically either focuses on uncritically reaching some predefined present-day need or fails altogether to articulate how higher education and higher education leadership relate to other societal fields. Examples of such positions are distributed leadership (e.g. Leithwood & Riehl, 2003), instructional leadership (e.g. Apkarian & Rasmussen, 2021) and team leadership (e.g. Koeslag-Kreunen et al., 2021). If higher education leadership fails to address the critical question of the role of the university in society by treating it as a closed system, leadership and leadership research can be put at the service of virtually any agenda or ideology. Positions focused on topics such as student employability, labour market expectations (e.g. Varga, 2006) or higher education rankings are examples of positions focused on meeting present-day conservative needs. From these positions, it might be natural to view the task of education rather uncritically as merely educating an employable workforce according to current and fluctuating labour market competence needs or to determine the value and quality of higher education based on international rankings or external accountability criteria. Positions such as these thus risk instrumentalising higher education and higher education leadership to serve interests external to the core tasks of higher education in a liberal democracy, namely independent academic research and the education of students to become self-determined, ethically reflecting and politically aware subjects. These positions thus, often unreflectingly, give education and educational leadership an instrumental societal role, as they are (merely) expected to accommodate the needs and demands of other societal fields and actors.

Second, normatively loaded critical and transformative research, often with a touch of political activism, often superordinates educational leadership and education to contemporary society (e.g. Giroux, 1980; McLaren, 2014; Shields, 2014). The normatively critical positions, in contrast to the ideologically naive functionalist positions, typically view higher education (in terms of both leadership and research) as a normatively driven force for transforming society. It is typical for traditional critical education research to view education as having the potential to ‘shape those who will go on to become future educators, lawmakers, and politicians’ (Tolman, 2019). Normatively loaded transformative higher education and higher education leadership, in their radical form, go beyond defending education’s emancipatory task as aiming at negative liberty (i.e. liberating students from represented prejudices and conventional practices; Berlin, 1969, pp. 118-172), by positioning leadership as superordinate in relation to existing society by striving for predefined future ideals representing its own interests (Uljens, 2023c). Research positions specifically targeting normatively closed understandings of equality and social justice, gender

1 Grounding Higher Education Leadership Research in Non-affirmative. . . 9 perspectives or sustainability, rather than identifying various positions to these issues as objects for elaboration, are examples of this category. Currently, these are topics on the rise in educational leadership research (McArthur, 2010; Wang et al., 2017).

The leadership research positions described above are viewed as end positions on a spectrum since much of contemporary research is positioned somewhere in between (e.g. Mezirow, 1991). What unites both positions is that they intentionally or unintentionally risk subordinating universities and higher education leadership to either existing societal interests or normative ideals of the future. Normatively closed external interests view education as a strategic instrument for reaching something decided upon in advance instead of treating universities, research or university students as representing ends in themselves, expressed in Kantian terminology. Cultural, political, economic and religious interests and ideologies, broadly speaking, represent societal practices regulating university research and teaching that can operate as both transformative and conservative forces. In our view, higher education leadership theory needs to represent a reflective position in this matter, striving to avoid instrumentalism. In other words, higher education leadership research needs to be theoretically sensitive and reflective towards the questions of what universities are, what they are for, and what their relations to other societal practices are. The non-affirmative position that this volume builds upon places itself beyond the positions described above, providing a third position and perspective on the question of the role of the university in a democratic society.

Challenges to Approaching Multilevel Higher Education Leadership

A shift in higher education leadership practices and policies from a collegial and bureaucratic model towards a neoliberally inspired model characterised by managerialism, accountability and leaderism has been evident in many countries (Bolden et al., 2014; Crevani et al., 2015; Croucher & Lacy, 2022; O’Reilly & Reed, 2010; Välimaa et al., 2016). Parallel to, and partly because of, this move from government in old public administration to governance in new public management, multilevel, contextual and situational approaches to educational governance and leadership research have strengthened, rooted in a variety of academic disciplines (Alvesson, 2019; Wang, 2018; Wang et al., 2017). A multilevel perspective is thus necessary for understanding the management, governance and leadership of higher education (e.g. Bolden et al., 2008; Elo & Uljens, 2023; Frost et al., 2016; Uljens & Elo, 2020). In the current research field, there are, however, challenges regarding how the multilevel character of higher education leadership is conceptualised and approached.

Actor network theory (Czarniawska & Sevon, 2005), discursive institutionalism (Schmidt, 2008), refraction (Goodson & Rudd, 2012) and other system-oriented models (e.g. Bronfenbrenner, 1979) exemplify some of the current multilevel approaches to educational leadership. These approaches use different terminologies but share common ground in that leadership is seen as a mediating activity between different levels and actors. A hermeneutic dimension of translation and interpretation is always present in mediation in the form of negotiations, re-contextualising and discourses. The weakness of many previous multilevel approaches to educational leadership, despite their obvious strengths, is that they offer universal vocabularies that are neutral towards the practice/praxis in question. For higher education, these practices are both education and the creation of new knowledge through research. The challenge with universal approaches to leadership is thus their insensitivity towards what is led and where leadership occurs, as they offer identical conceptualisations to understand the practice and policy of any societal field, such as education, private businesses, national defence or healthcare. The universal validity of these frameworks is thus simultaneously a strength and a weakness, as they lack a specific vocabulary to grasp the studied object. Insights into both research-based teaching and studying (the object) and the societal role of education (the context) are necessary for understanding higher education leadership at various levels. The specific character of educational leadership is not captured if leadership is theorised as separate from its context and object. The rich traditions of organisational or policy implementation research, and other fields of leadership expertise, provide important additional perspectives and are not to be disregarded, but their limitations as foundational points of departure need to be acknowledged.

If the context- and content-neutral universalist approaches to multilevel educational leadership described above are viewed as one end of a continuum, the other end is represented by particularistic positions, characterised by an isolated focus on specific subthemes, aspects or levels of educational leadership. The macro level is generally in focus for research on policy and policy borrowing (e.g. Capano & Pritoni, 2020; Rhoades & Sporn, 2002). The organisational or meso levels are generally in focus for research on academic leadership (e.g. Floyd & Preston, 2018; van Ameijde et al., 2009), while the micro level is typically in focus for research on learning and instruction (Didaktik), teaching theory, instructional theory and curriculum, (e.g. Bovill & Woolmer, 2019; Stes et al., 2010). The ability to provide vocabularies that capture nuances and details of the studied objects is an advantage of these particularistic approaches. Research-informed communication and dialogue between research on different levels is, however, hindered by the lack of a uniting theoretical framework, resulting in ‘siloed’ research leaving findings from different levels and fields unconnected (Wang et al., 2017). Thus, there is an obvious risk of losing the ‘big picture’ of higher education leadership. In this volume, NAT is proposed as a position capable of conceptualising important aspects of the multilevel character of higher education leadership without losing the how, what and where of leadership, namely, the pedagogical dimensions, content and context.

1 Grounding Higher Education Leadership Research in Non-affirmative. . . 11 Challenges in Understanding Pedagogical Processes

Current higher education leadership research faces a twofold challenge in the undertheorisation of pedagogical interaction. This means first that the pedagogical qualities or dimensions of leadership interaction within and between different levels are under-theorised. Second, higher education leadership research often lacks a developed idea of the core object of this leadership, namely, research-based teaching and studying.

Pedagogical Qualities of Educational Leadership

A wide variety of assignments and tasks are covered by educational leadership at any level, related to, for example, organisation, jurisprudence/law, facilities, technology, communication and economy. One of these areas of leadership is creating favourable conditions for professional learning, growth and the development of all staff (academic and professional), either directly or indirectly, as well as initiating and participating in processes of organisational and cultural change. To pedagogically and intentionally support the learning of others by direct or indirect measures is thus included in the leadership of any organisation. In this context, it is therefore important to point out the distinction between educational leadership and pedagogical leadership. With educational leadership, we refer to the leadership and governance of all the aspects of institutionalised education in a broad sense—legal, organisational, ethical, economic, architectural, relational, psychological, curricular, political, developmental, etc. The understanding and study of educational leadership thus concern and rely on many different fields of knowledge, reflecting the multitude of tasks and perspectives involved in leading institutionalised education.

We use the term pedagogical leadership to refer to deliberately influencing the Other’s understanding of oneself, the world and one’s relation to the world and to others. Pedagogical leadership aims to facilitate learning by transforming the perceptions, values, knowledge, understanding or actions of an Other. In this context, the Other can be understood both as a ‘generalised Other’ and as an individual, organisation or nation. At all activity levels, from the personal, organisational, institutional and national through the transnational, action, interaction and interpretation are carried out by and between individuals or groups of individuals. Parts of this intentional influencing may be aimed at influencing how others perceive the world or act in the world, that is, aimed at facilitating the learning processes of the others involved. It is this that we refer to as the pedagogical dimension of the interaction on and across all levels of leadership. If leading an educational organisation is divided into management (leadership of things), leadership (of people) and leading development, the pedagogical elements are especially prominent in leading people and leading development. Pedagogical leadership is, however, not irrelevant for management either, as management, for example, through deciding on an organisation’s frames and procedures, sets the stage for certain kinds of learning while possibly hindering other kinds. The leadership literature is insufficient on the topic of supporting professional learning, despite it being a decidedly central dimension of leading any expert organisation. The literature frequently states that leadership is about ‘influencing’ (Alvesson, 2019) or ‘influencing learning’, but it remains surprisingly vague what these statements mean conceptually or theoretically. Thus, there is a disturbing gap in the international literature between the key role of pedagogical activities and the core notions of educational leadership theories and models explaining pedagogical influence (Alvesson, 2019; Niesche & Gowlett, 2019; Wang, 2018).