Leading the process of reculturing: roles and actions of school leaders

In this article, we focus on the role and actions of individual school leaders in initiating and governing the process of reculturing. First, we elaborate on the core elements of the process of reculturing, referring to a complex learning process of finding a new balance between cognitions and emotions both individually and collectively. We then review the literature for issues related to school leaders’ roles and actions during reculturing. We argue that the role of leadership power largely has been left out of the picture so far while at the same time leadership power is so crucial for teachers’ roles and actions in educational innovation processes. To illustrate our line of thinking, we analyse the stories of three school leaders about their roles and actions during successful processes of reculturing and retrospectively analyse the role of leadership power during these processes, building on a framework of Hetebrij (2006) for judging the quality of power use