School leadership and the principal’s important role in implementing national goals, efficiency in economy and administration and school development has gained increasingly interest the last decade. Both among politicians and researchers we find a lot of suggestions what kind of leadership is the most efficient to raise standards and solve the problems of decreasing student results and an increasing inequality between schools.  In the Swedish context, there is a school form that rarely is mentioned in this debate – the folk high school. On its own path, beside the ordinary school system, the folk high schools during 150 years, has brought education to adults from rural - and working class, served as a knowledge centre for the civil society and, during last years, played an important role in the integration of refugees and immigrants. The leadership in this school form is hardly at all investigated and needs to be highlighted.  The aim of this study is to give voice to principals in the Swedish folk high school and describe how they talk, and what they say, about their mission and their leadership.  This work builds upon qualitative interviews with eight principals in different folk high schools. Their stories have been processed by using a discourse-analytic approach. I have also identified the presence of different institutional logics working in their organizations. In the analysis, I have used theories made around the organizational field and the social context in schools.  My respondents describe a mission that is wide and quite open. The schools are small and the board consists of people who work voluntary to befriend the school. The principle has a large ability to design the mission him/herself. The mission also rephrases in the everyday interaction with the staff and the local culture, a culture where teachers, by tradition, has a lot of independence and great influence. This situation affects the principals’ possibilities and range of action. He/she is at the same time free and bounded. I also find that the principals, increasingly, must deal with multiple institutional logics, that affect ways of thinking, talking and acting, in their organizations.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1989. / Also available in print.

The objective of this Thesis is a theoretical analysis of the educational counselling system and an analysis of the contemporary educational counselling system at primary school facilities in Usti nad Labem. The theoretical part disserts upon a system of school counselling services and from its structure resulting educational counselling system at primary schools. Theoretical experiences are then transformed into practical analysis of the Usti nad Labem educational counselling system settings which is amended by an investigation in the participiant institutions and an empirical probe, having been made with the usage of survey questionnares, between educational counsellors at primary schools in the city.