Exploring visual method in the field of educational leadership: Co-creating understandings of educational leadership and authority in school organisations

This paper contributes to method development in educational leadership research. The focus is on a visual and the inclusion of material data collection analysis. Core concepts this are leadership, power authority. was used face-to-face interviews research project that studied steering governing in, of, Swedish schools. enhances verbal narratives when informants reason motivate their understandings positions, relations hierarchies within organisations. We found using encouraged problematise formalised leader appear. helps visualise informants’ distribution organisation depending whether positions described as distant or close, horizontal vertical. made take stand complex matters, reflect, gain insights about It provided us, researchers, with rich material. By making subjective visual, implicit assumptions were explicit. could challenge knowledge existing norms organisations, most likely other forms organisations well.