UNIVERSITY OF VAASA 

FACULTY OF BUSINESS STUDIES 

DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ksenia Sharapova 
 

MANAGING COOPERATION BETWEEN SCHOOLS: CAPACITY AND 

CONSTRAINTS 

A case study of Finnish and Russian schools  

 

 

 

Master’s Thesis in  
 Management  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VAASA 2014 



 1 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

 

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES              7 
 
 
ABSTRACT              9
  
 
1. INTRODUCTION             11  

1.1. Background of the Study            11      

1.2. Research Question            12 

1.3. Structure of the Research            15 

 

2. EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT, INTERSCHOOL COOPERATION AND 

FORMS OF COOPERATION IN THE EDUCATIONAL SECTOR         17  

      2.1. Educational Leadership and Management          17 

      2.2. Concept of cooperation          20 

      2.3. Reasons for interschool cooperation          22 

      2.4. Forms of Educational Cooperation          24 

             2.4.1. Team-teaching          25 

             2.4.2. Communities of practice          27 

              2.4.3. Collaborations          28 

              2.4.4. Online platforms and projects          31  

              2.4.5. Partnerships          33 

       2.5. Poles of Cooperation between Schools          36 

 

3.    RESEARCH DESIGN          40 

       3.1. Case Study as a Qualitative Research Strategy          40  

       3.2. Data Collection          42  

              3.2.1. Personal interviews          45 

              3.2.2. E-mail interviews          48 

              3.2.3. Documents          49 

              3.2.4. Data collection from textbooks, research papers and articles         51 

      3.3. Data Analysis          55 



 2 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 3 

                3.3.1. Essence of content analysis           55 

                3.3.2. Elements of content analysis           57 

                3.3.3. Qualitative content analysis           61 

        3.4. Quality of the Research            62 

 

4.     FINDINGS             67 

        4.1. Managerial and Leadership Tools for School Cooperation           67 

                4.1.1. Finding the right partner           68 

                4.1.2. Setting targets            70                    

                4.1.3. Distribution of power: municipal authorities and schools, principals and  

                          teachers             72     

                4.1.4. Developing operational model           77 

                           4.1.4.1. Challenges in cooperative procedures          79  

                           4.1.4.2. Needs in cooperation of school of different levels         80 

                           4.1.4.3. Development need of the education organiser                81 

                           4.1.4.4. Knowledge needs of teachers          82  

                           4.1.4.5. Business and work life needs that are laid into strategies      83 

                 4.1.5. Inner work group            84 

                 4.1.6. Communication: personal and virtual tools         86 

                 4.1.7. Coordination/Monitoring           89 

                 4.1.8. Analysis of the results            90 

                 4.1.9. Experiences            93 

                 4.1.10. Networking            93 

  

          4.2. Characteristics of Interschool Cooperation           94 

                  4.2.1. Interschool cooperation as multi-directional flows         94       

                  4.2.2. Interschool cooperation as a conversation          98  

                  4.2.3. Interschool cooperation as a policy of the city        100  

                  4.2.4. Interschool cooperation as a free-will endeavour            101 

                  4.2.5. Interschool Cooperation as a part of everyday activities       103 

                  4.2.6. Interschool cooperation as equality of conditions and possibilities  

      while facing differences         104 



 4 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 5 

                 4.2.7. Interschool cooperation as continuity        106 

                 4.2.8. Interschool cooperation as learning through sharing       107 

               

         4.3. Challenges in Managing School Cooperation        110  

                 4.3.1. Budgeting          111 

                 4.3.2. No direct contact          112 

                 4.3.3. Commitment          113 

                 4.3.4. Time, schedules, delays         114 

                 4.3.5. External events          117 

                 4.3.6. Trust           118 

                 4.3.7. Language problems          119 

                 4.3.8. Allocation of roles and tasks         120  

 

5.    CONCLUSIONS           122 

        5.1. Findings in the Context of the School Leadership Principles in Finland and in   

                  Russia           122  

        5.2. Framework of Managing Interschool Cooperation        130  

        5.3. Contribution, Limitations and Possible Applications of the Research           134  

 

REFERENCES           136 

 

APPENDIX 1. Questions for the interviews         141  

APPENDIX 2. An Example of a personal interview in Finland        144 

APPENDIX 3. An Example of an email interview with Russian participants       146  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 6 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 7 

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES  

 

FIGURES  

 

Figure1. Tripod of successful school management           18 

Figure 2. Poles of cooperation            21 

Figure 3. Cooperation through E-learning           33 

Figure 4. Poles and dimensions of cooperation in the educational sector         39 

Figure 5. Sources of evidence in data collection processes                                            44 

Figure 6. The Flow of the Data Analysis                                                                        58 

Figure 7. Operational model of cooperation with Russia          79 

Figure 8. International cooperation as multi-directional flows                 98 

Figure 9. Cooperation in the project “Allegretto”         109 

Figure 10. Sharing in Cooperation          110 

Figure 11. Framework of managing cooperation in the educational sector       133 

 

TABLES 

 

Table 1. Benefits of university cooperation through E-learning         32 

Table 2. Personal Interviews               45 

Table 3. E-mail Interviews            48  

Table 4. Documentation on the project “Allegretto”           50 

Table 5. Secondary sources            53 

Table 6. Findings             67 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 



 8 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



 9 

______________________________________________________________________ 
UNIVERSITY OF VAASA 
Faculty of Business Studies 
Author:   Ksenia Sharapova 
Topic of the Thesis:  Managing Cooperation between Schools:  

Capacity and Constraints. A case study of 
Finnish and Russian schools  

Name of the Supervisor:   Niina Koivunen, Associate Professor, PhD 
Degree:   Master of Science in Economics and Business  
   Administration  
Department:  Management 
Master’s Programme:   International Business 
Year of Entering the University: 2011  
Year of Completing the Thesis:  2014  Pages: 146 
______________________________________________________________________ 
ABSTRACT 
The present research studies inter-organisational cooperation in the educational sector 
from the managerial perspective. Generally cooperation between organisations is 
receiving much attention nowadays offering an opportunity of sharing experiences, 
breaking the vertical structures of organisations and engaging into horizontal 
endeavours and trying on new roles for improving work practices, acquiring new 
knowledge and increasing professionalism.  
This research concentrates on the educational sector as one of the most active sectors 
that emphasises the importance of cooperative activities. Often in the academic 
literature cooperation between organisations is described as having just positive 
influences. This research is to discover both capacities and challenges that organisations 
face in the process of cooperation, revealing features of interschool cooperation, tools of 
managing interschool cooperation and accompanying challenges constitute the 
problematic content of the research question.  
Theoretical background is formed out of the material on educational leadership, 
researches in the sphere of inter-organisational cooperation, the concept of poles of 
cooperation, interschool cooperation and forms of interschool cooperation.  
This research is a case study of the project on cooperation “Allegretto” that has been 
implemented between schools of Kouvola and St. Petersburg since 2011. Primary data 
were gathered from personal interviews with teachers and principals and representatives 
of municipal administration in Finland, email interviews with teachers from Russia and 
documentation on the project.  
Concept of poles of cooperation helps to create a framework for managing interschool 
cooperation that includes elements describing the capacity of interschool cooperation 
and challenges of interschool cooperation. The strategic dimensions describe the 
strategic capacities of schools, engaged in cooperation, while the issues presented as 
poles are not totally conflicting, but they contain contrasting essences that demand 
special attention from the management of cooperation. 
______________________________________________________________________ 
KEYWORDS: Interschool Cooperation, Capacity of Interschool Cooperation, 
Challenges of Interschool Cooperation, Poles of Cooperation, Forms of Interschool 
Cooperation, Educational Leadership 
 



 10 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 11 

1. INTRODUCTION  

 

The research is to discuss the problem of the inter-organisational cooperation in the 

educational sector. This chapter will introduce the research subject, explain the research 

question and discuss the research problems. It will explain the interest of the researcher 

in the studied area and the importance of the researched phenomenon in the 

contemporary managerial practices. 

 

 

1.1. Background of the Study 

 

Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley (2009) write about the so-called “Fourth Way” for 

schools. They enumerate the components of the successful formula of education that is 

explained by the demands the modern world is posing for the people. Among the main 

aspects of the Fourth Way are creativity and innovation, integration of actors, 

recognising the needs of the new generations, developing empathic and aware citizens 

of the world, removing the borders of the change implementation and cooperation 

between schools. In this research I would like to concentrate upon the latter issue. 

 

In the recent studies it was discussed that organisations started to build cooperative 

relationships with others even between different sectors and countries. The companies 

that engage in these relationships believe in numerous benefits. Inter-firm cooperation is 

regarded as a strategic move that is aimed at competing opportunities in the markets of 

today. (Nguen 2011, Ding, Dekker and Groot 2010, Walker and Stohl 2012) These 

researches demonstrate popularity of inter-organisational cooperation in different fields. 

Due to my personal interest in the educational sector I decided to consider cooperation 

between educational institutions.  

 

Cooperation between schools is an interesting phenomenon to be studied. It has 

different forms, it can be practiced at different levels: individual and organisational, it 

can be analysed from many perspectives: psychological perspective, effectiveness 

measurement perspective, leadership perspective, etc.  



 12 

I have to admit that it was rather difficult to search for the appropriate literature on the 

main concept of the research - interschool cooperation - and to identify what other 

studies concentrate on. What I found was mainly literature on the school networking; 

exactly this concept has been popular in the academic literature of the last decade, both 

concerning firms and schools. (Wade 1995, de Lima 2008)  

 

However, I consider cooperation to be a much more suitable and deeper term to 

describe the actual activities of organisations undertaken to achieve mutual goals. I 

might admit that sometimes authors use the terms networking and cooperation as 

interchangeable (Walker and Stohl 2012), though I would like to make a difference 

between the terms, because if one can analyse networks through connectedness, 

centralisations and density, these dimensions will not say anything about the quality of 

cooperation and for cooperation activities other determining dimensions must be found. 

 

 

1.2. Research Question 

 

Nowadays educational management is considered to be one of the main prerequisites of 

schools performance. It is well understood that not everything depends on the teachers’ 

efficiency in a classroom. The teachers’ role should be accompanied by the right skills 

of the school managers. (Bush 2008, p. xi) As Bush (2008), p. xi) justly mentions, more 

and more it is being discussed that having experience and knowledge in the teaching 

profession is not enough to become a successful and well-qualified educational leader.  

School leaders are to have special preparation and they are to be developed. Also in 

Finland the interest and understanding the importance of researching this sphere is 

growing. The first Master’s degree programme in Educational Leadership was launched 

in the university of Jyväskylä in 2007 (University of Jyväskylä n.d.). It means that 

importance of educational management as a field of study is increasing.  

 

In addition to the shifts in understanding where potential for school development lies, 

our time is very dynamic in its character. Macro-changes in the environment, in the 

distribution of power between countries, in the scheme of economic growth over the 



 13 

world, in people, in lifestyles lead to changes in organising businesses and leading 

organisations. Educational organisations cannot be left behind.  

 

In that context, the work by Thrupp and Willmott (2003) was very important in order to 

make a link towards the key concept: inter-organisational cooperation in the educational 

sphere. Their work contains multiple articles that discuss changes in the management 

paradigms that made interschool cooperation become an important strategic 

undertaking. For the same purpose I turned to other sources that did not discuss 

educational sphere rather they discussed processes that relate to the sphere of 

multinational companies. However, as far as the same processes can be found in the 

educational sector, it allows drawing parallels and referencing the literature of this type 

as well. A very important source in this connection is Jamali’s “Changing management 

paradigms: implications for educational institutions” (2005) because this work 

expresses the concern about teamwork, participation and learning. Integration, 

collaboration are the key factors of the management, thus it explains the importance of 

the chosen research topic and justifies the research project. 

 

When talking about the Fourth Way proposed by Hargreaves and Shirley in 2009 one 

cannot unilaterally say that schools are going to follow that. According to several 

authors it is possible (Sahlberg 2011) and even desirable (Harris 2011), especially when 

talking about cooperation. Those who advocate for the cooperation in the educational 

sphere think that targeted and planned cooperation destroys isolation of schools as 

institutions and teachers as institutional actors. According to them cooperation discovers 

potential. (de Lima 2008)  

 

Ding, Dekker and Groot (2010) declare that cooperation between organisations is a 

hybrid governance structure, because it should take into account the horizontal markets 

and vertical hierarchies of organisations. Those hybrid structures are difficult to manage 

because the participating organisations have different routines, cultures and principles 

of work. That is why from the management perspective it is highly important to design 

the relevant control practices, to align the partners’ systems and to jointly coordinate.  

 



 14 

As it was mentioned earlier cooperative practices are usually described through positive 

connotations as a voluntary strategic undertaking by organisations aiming at achieving 

better results. Still, being a complex phenomenon the school cooperation cannot be 

characterised through one-track approach. What is important is to see whether school 

cooperation contains both capacities and constraints. 

 

I will research peculiarities of managing school cooperation in the context of the 

Finnish school system. The research will cover such questions as why schools 

cooperate, what kind of objectives they follow, who are the main actors in the 

cooperation between schools and who manage them. The main research objective is to 

find out what are the capacities of educational organisation in cooperation and if there 

are any challenges in managing cooperation between educational organisations, if one 

can find a single formula for implementing cooperation.  

 

The process of cooperation between schools consists of several elements, and it is a 

complex and long-lasting movement. That is why it demands careful management. In 

order to understand the peculiarities of the certain case, one might consider peculiarities 

of educational management, principles of cooperation between schools in general, 

possible forms of cooperation. Implementation of the cooperation is possible only when 

all the actors have the right attitude towards it and contribute to the process in the best 

way. So, this means that the research is to find out what capacities and challenges might 

be traced in organising school cooperation taking into account the nature of school as an 

educational institute.  

 

The sub-problems of the research question can be defined as follows:  

 

1. What features does management of cooperation between schools have? 

 

2. How cooperation is managed? What are the tools and who are the driving forces 

of the process? 

 



 15 

3. What challenges may be traced in the process of managing interschool 

cooperation?  

 

It means, that first of all, the research will make an attempt to have a closer look at the 

cooperation between schools in the context of one particular case study. The theory of 

educational organisation management has outlined several features and will be 

interesting how this influences school cooperation. It will be interesting to discover 

problematic areas as well as the ones that open up opportunities for school cooperation.  

 

This type of research is designed to give an idea to the practitioners about issues to 

consider while implementing educational cooperation. There would be made an attempt 

to create a model of managing school cooperation, made out of challenges and 

capacities. 

 

 

1.3. Structure of the Research  

 

After introduction part that presents the research area, topic, objective of the research, 

including the research question and sub-problems that narrow down the research 

question, the research is structured in the traditional way having theoretical and 

practical parts. Theoretical part contains chapter 2. In this chapter based on the earlier 

introduced research question the main concepts are defined and are explained.   

 

The first section of chapter 2 discusses features of educational management and 

leadership in general. The second section concentrates on the concept of cooperation 

and introduces the concept of poles of cooperation that will be used later on for creating 

the framework of cooperation between educational organisations, in addition 

cooperation between educational organizations is discussed here in particular, including 

motives for cooperation and its forms. The third section starts creation of framework for 

inter-school cooperation based on the theory of poles of cooperation.  

 

The practical part of the research addresses the case study of cooperation between 



 16 

schools of Kouvola and school №200 of St. Petersburg.  Chapter 3 discusses research 

design: it starts with the choice of case study as a research strategy and justification of 

the choice. Processes of data collection and data analysis are described as well and it is 

explained how content analysis as a research technique for discovering similarities and 

differences in the answers of the interviewees and other texts that formed primary data 

for the research was applied and the quality of research is evaluated.  

 

Chapter 4 is the most prominent chapter because it presents the essential findings to the 

research question, using quotations from the primary sources. In Chapter 5 findings are 

validated through the use of secondary data and the background studies of Finnish and 

Russian school systems, the framework of inter-organisational cooperation is created in 

order to include strategic capacities and the possible constraints that are presented in the 

form of poles of cooperation and conclusions about scientific contribution of the 

research and limitations of the research are made.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 17 

2. EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT, INTER-SCHOOL COOPERATION AND 

FORMS OF COOPERATION IN THE EDUCATIONAL SECTOR   

 

This chapter can be considered as a theoretical basis for the research. The chapter 

discusses characteristics of educational management and leadership in general, because 

that will have a direct influence on management of cooperation between schools. It 

explains the concept of cooperation and introduces the theory of poles of cooperation. 

Further on inter-school cooperation and its forms are discussed in particular based on 

other researches in the sphere. As a conclusion, a framework of inter-school cooperation 

is initially created, for further refinement during the actual research.  

 

 

2.1. Educational Leadership and Management  

 

The presented research problem allows distinguishing several conceptual areas within it. 

Educational management and leadership is the first basic element that is important to 

take into attention and this sphere has been deeply researched by different authors from 

different perspectives.  

 

Here it is worthy to note that actually in the academic literature there are differences in 

understanding the concepts of educational management. Some scholars understand it as 

implementing the confirmed policy, others pay attention to the right use of resources in 

order to achieve certain outcomes, or as a complex of internal life of institutions and 

their external relations with environment, i.e. government, communities, etc. (Bush 

2008, 1-2). This probably also opens up the diversity of approaches towards studying 

and researching practices of managing schools. But on can see that all of the approaches 

have something that might be hold as important elements of one general definition.  

 

Bush (2008, 1) states that educational management is a field that studies operations of 

the educational organisations, the process of decision-making and goal setting in the 

educational context. For him the most important issue for an educational organisation is 

to be built around aims of education process, thus for a school manager the most 



 18 

important issue is to see to achieving these goals. Thus, the tripod of the aims, strategy 

and operations will be the platform for successful management as it is shown in Figure 

1. 

  
Figure 1. Tripod of Successful School Management (based on Bush 2008, 1) 

 

Of course, school managers should bear in mind that an educational institution cannot 

exist without its context: the community and the government. So, each institution 

should decide upon its aims in correspondence with the prescriptions of other forces. 

Still, without the initiatives of single managers and teachers there cannot be any 

changes, innovativeness and development toward better performance. That is another 

point for school managers to think over is how to combine both aspects that are vital in 

school operations.  

 

Publications that write about changes in the approaches towards management in general 

point to the following shifts: due to the drastic economic, social and technological 

changes organisations have to restructure their systems and practices of management. 

The classical strict managerial system that was based on hierarchies creates problems 

and inhibits development and competitiveness. Managers of today should become team 

developers, coaches and trainers and give their employees opportunities to discover 

their skills and talents, to show off their enthusiasm, innovativeness and creativity.  

(Jamali 2004) 

 

What is important for this particular research are the remarks by Jamali (2004) that 

management of the 21st century is to be based on the abilities to face and cope with 

Goals 

Operations Strategy 



 19 

dynamics, on developing cooperation with different players, on widening networks, on 

creating partnerships and alliances.  

 

All mentioned above is possible to apply to the sphere of the educational management 

with the notice that government and communities’ prescriptions are very strong and 

should be taken into account against the background of huge shifts toward new 

managerialism. This term describes management practices of educational organisation 

of today and is the main topic of the literature review by Thrupp and Willmott under the 

title “Educational management in managerialist times” published in 2003.  

 

For example, Thrupp and Willmott (2003) reference Exworthy and Halford (1999) that 

show how earlier management of the public sector was characterised by such features as 

red-tape, inflexibility, strict control and focus on minimising costs, while managers of 

educational institutions of today pay attention to other directions: innovativeness, 

supporting creativity and sharing power. Flynn 1999 (in Thrupp 2003) mentions that the 

features of commercial organisation may be well transferred to the educational sector, 

for the latter is following similar aims: making progress, improving school, 

implementing changes by achieving better productivity, i.e. higher performance 

expressed in better results of students, more skilful and knowledgeable workers, 

fostering innovation, i.e. new teaching methods, developing cooperation between 

schools, distance learning models, appraisal techniques, etc., by generating commitment 

of the workforce, by managers’ freedom, i.e. not only implementing prescribed norms 

and systems, but having visions for the future, more flexibility and empowerment. 

 

In the educational management one might discover three discourses (Ball 1994 in 

Thrupp and Willmot 2003). I find this research very interesting and in spite of the date 

when it was fulfilled I would say that it is essential. First of all, educational 

management is about plans for school development and their implementation. This is 

the essence of the manager’s profession and it contains rational and technical 

managerial practices, it has nothing to do with vision, values or policy-making. The 

second discourse is about financial decisions in an educational organisation, i.e. 

planning budgets, doing balancing and seeing what educational opportunities can be 



 20 

afforded financially.  As one can see, those two discourses are the part of the traditional 

view on the school management. The third discourse adds to the old concept the feature 

that makes people talk about the “new managerialism”. It includes market orientation of 

any school organisation, attempts at differentiation and surviving competition, creating 

images and brands. This all creates a new function for the manager of an educational 

organisation: being an entrepreneur. This statement includes permanent school 

development, making the school desirable for pupils and pupils’ parents, improving the 

results, encouraging teachers and pupils, being flexible and hard-working. 

 

What is important for understanding the concept of educational management of today is 

to see that it is not only a technical activity that can be implemented by a professional in 

the educational sphere, but managerialism in educational sphere is to define a system of 

beliefs, values and to behave in education the same way as in business. (Clarke et al. 

2000 in Thrupp and Willmott 2003, 22-25) In addition to that, based on other researches 

it is possible to talk about the forth discourse that is targeted nowadays: it is leadership 

that is based on building relationships with teachers, parents and communities (Bryck & 

Schneider 2002, Riehl 2000 in Ishimaru 2013) 

 

 

2.2. Concept of Cooperation 

 

After studying the literature on the educational management in the recent years one can 

notice that mostly researchers speak about networking. The terms of cooperation and 

collaboration are mentioned but are not studied in the extent interschool networks are. 

For this report I would choose the approach towards networks as a broad general 

concept that means a system, or linkages between nodes, while cooperation would mean 

working together for common goals, taking true actions, assisting, i.e. concrete 

activities that take place in reality.   

 

In business literature moves towards more cooperative forms of organisational activities 

started already in the middle of the twentieth century when workplace programmes 

turned to teamwork as a way to innovate and to improve organisational efficiency, to 



 21 

get access to missing resources, to cope with risks, to be more competitive in the 

markets (de Lima 2008; Ding, Dekker and Groot 2010). Similarly, in education moves 

towards inter-school cooperation have become a part of general policy. Many 

educational organisations became involved into new organisational forms regarding 

cooperation as a new strategy for changes. (de Lima 2008) 

 

Cooperation is a complex concept. This can be understood and studied on different 

levels: it can be cooperation between individuals, between groups, between 

organisations, between countries, etc. It has different forms and modes.  

 

Still, before transferring to the peculiarities of school practices one has to understand 

the key issues that concern the concept of cooperation. As European Council and 

European Commission (2000) justly mention, cooperation is difficult to implement in 

practice. Managing and organising cooperation is a challenging task. It involves many 

problematic areas that usually appear at the level of human relations and at the level of 

tasks fulfilment. Figure 2 depicts the so-called poles of Cooperation that cause the main 

impediments for smooth work in cooperation.  

 

 
Figure 2. Poles of cooperation (modified from Drs. A.P.R. Van Veen from Oomkes 

1994 in European Commission 2000) 

 

 

The relational problems start with the basic individual needs that influence their work in 

team. Each individual wants to be part of the team, he/she wants to have influence on 

the team and wants to experience affection. Character of cooperation - its length, its 

profundity, its quality – influence on the way these needs are manifested in working 

Individual Structure 

Tasks Team 

Work in 
cooperation 



 22 

together. The more the cooperation is important, the more the individuals will try to 

achieve their needs. Those who want more influence on the team will start to compete, 

those who lack influence and feel outsiders will try to draw attention to their persona. 

(European Commission 2000) 

 

Team pole challenges will concern the general atmosphere in the team by cooperation: 

lack of unity, heterogeneity of viewpoints, lack of contact, different understanding of 

objective and task processes, bad leadership, etc. (European Commission 2000) 

 

Challenges concerning implementation of tasks, first of all start with objectives. The 

way they are formulated, their importance, they clarity and precision influence 

cooperation. Clear and well-defined objectives open possibilities for clear measurement 

of the progress of cooperative processes. (European Commission 2000) 

 

To implement the tasks in cooperation individuals need structure as well: rules, ways of 

implementation, approaches and strategies, division of roles, power and control are 

important elements of the pole “Structure”. Each individual should be equally aware of 

those and accept them. (European Commission 2000)    

 

This explains that the main goal of cooperation management will be balancing between 

all these four forces and their interrelationship. Still, when cooperation is organised 

between different organisations there will be even more aspects to be taken account: 

that is the organisation, its culture and values, its goals and strategies. In addition to that 

if cooperation is done between educational institutions, then it is to be implemented 

within the framework of the governmental norms and communities’ programmes. That 

is why, the given formula of cooperation will be modified after discussing reasons and 

forms of cooperation.  

 

2.3. Reasons for Interschool Cooperation 

 

It is interesting to understand why organisations and in the case of this particular study 

educational organisations start to cooperate. According to Nguen (2011) cooperation 



 23 

may be explained through three levels: organisation, environment and the mediator. The 

research of Nguen (2011) was done for the companies but the results are suitable for 

other sectors as well.  

 

Under organisational set one may understand trust between organisations and the 

possible positive effect received from the cooperation, i.e. value of cooperation for the 

participants. What might be the results of cooperation is analysed and understood. The 

organisations have some expectations on that: they can make profit, learn something 

new and take other advantages.  (Nguen 2011) 

 

According to Nguen (2011) environmental set means mainly governmental 

prescriptions. Inter-school cooperation is possible to foster through governmental 

regulations. For example according to Busher (1996) the educational reform in the UK 

in 1988 that introduced Local Management of Schools increased schools autonomy and 

introduced marketing forces in the educational sphere at the same time. As a result 

schools started to cooperate, in order to decrease the market forces effect in education, 

to reduce costs, to implement the national curriculum and to cope with the situation 

when the local authorities did not have the main role. (Nguen 2011) 

 

The mediator in this particular research means cooperation intention, the element taken 

from the Theory of Reasoned Action. This model explains that prior to any behaviour 

there is an intention to perform that particular action. Cooperative intention will simply 

mean the desire and readiness to engage into cooperation with others to achieve 

particular goals. What is important is to distinguish cooperative intention from the 

goals. Goals will be a part of the cooperative intention that contains preliminary 

knowledge and necessary information as well, and then transfers impetus towards 

cooperative behaviour. 

 

I would make a reservation here, that trust and positive effect of the cooperation would 

be a part of mediator. More suitable influencers of the organisational level will be 

organisational structure, organisational culture, organisational readiness to cooperation 

and possibilities of cooperation in terms of company vision, strategy and resources.    



 24 

2.4. Forms of Educational Cooperation  

 

Cooperation between schools can take different forms and vary in its scope. Teachers 

can form small groups of colleagues to plan their lessons together or they can be 

engaged into bigger projects that would include thousands of teachers as for example. 

Schools can be involved into small arrangements of a couple of schools in the same 

municipal community or can become a part of international projects. Cooperation can 

take place between schools of the same level or it can involve institutions of 

comprehensive and higher education, educational authorities and communities.   

 

There is no uniform classification of the cooperation types in the literature. One of the 

approaches presented by Hodgkinson (1996) can be taken as a basis. The researcher 

distinguishes three types of inter-school cooperation according to their targets. The first 

one is cooperation related to curriculum or staff development. As it is justly mentioned 

this is the most frequent form used in practice and it is mainly based on the teachers 

sharing their expertise.  

 

Another type of cooperation is used to address administrative needs of schools. There 

are cases when schools share costs and timetables by having the same staff, for example 

support teachers that teach in all the cooperative schools. In the UK there were cases 

when cooperating schools created budget management group that involved school 

principals and secretaries or when several schools were situated in the same campus the 

principals were to cooperatively decide on the questions of organising and funding 

premises supervision and staff. (Hodgkinson 1996)  

 

The third type of school cooperation is about policy making. The principals can meet 

for policy consultation. This type of cooperation is closely connected to the educational 

sector specifics, i.e. its dependence upon the municipal, district and state policies. By 

this cooperation the head teachers can influence general practices: they can put pressure, 

they can lobby, debate and fight for changes. 

 



 25 

In terms of cooperation it is interesting to see what kind of managerial methods are used 

to organise cooperation. According to de Lima (2008) cooperation can take the form of 

alliances, clusters, trusts, development groups, partnerships, families, etc. As it is justly 

mentioned often the terms are intertwined and can be used interchangeably. That is 

why, after studying several materials, there were found some forms that seem to be the 

most interesting. 

 

2.4.1. Team-teaching  

 

Team-teaching is not a new phenomenon and is rather widely used as a cooperative 

tool. (Corbo 2010, Goetz 2000, Johnson and Madejski n.d., Leavitt 2006) It involves 

two or more teachers teaching different courses in developing a cross-disciplinary 

intervention that forms a basis for a new single learning module. The peculiarity of the 

module is that it allows studying scientific phenomena from various perspectives. 

According to those who have experienced team-teaching the process requires mutual 

accountability and responsibility. Trust and good working relationships are a must. But 

the achieved results are worthy of that. As far as it might be a new experience it 

involves excitement, as an opportunity to get away from usual routines and to refocus 

and re-energise working potential. (Corbo 2010) 

 

Team-teaching is possible to carry out within one institution and between different 

educational establishments. For this research, the second type of team-teaching is 

relevant. It can be realised through different techniques that will have their own 

peculiarities. For example, teachers can meet in order to share ideas and experiences 

and function independently, or they can create a common resource centre that will 

include lesson plans, text books, exercises and use them independently in their 

individual practices, or teachers can share planning, but instruct their own field of 

specialisation under the same course as it was described by Corbo (2010) 

 

From the school managers perspective there are several issues to think over when 

implementing this type of cooperation. Mostly, in the literature it is discussed that team-

teaching cases were undertaken voluntarily. It means that administration cannot force 



 26 

teachers to collaborate, though it could encourage them, motivate and give direction for 

instigating the idea of team-teaching. (Goetz 2000, Corbo 2010, Johnson and Madejski 

n.d) 

 

Another challenge of the administrative character will be to make the smooth timetable 

so that team meetings would be organised in time before the lessons or sessions, where 

teachers could use newly got resources. Generally to find free time for the meetings can 

be difficult: flexibility that is to be a platform for any mode of team-teaching is not 

usually available in the educational organisation due to the peculiarities of the 

educational management that were discussed. It is vital because some researchers report 

failures of team-teaching projects because of the bad scheduling. (Goetz 2000, Johnson 

and Madejski n.d.) 

 

The most important issue for the team-teaching management will be finding the right 

participants. It goes without saying that differences in the approaches and teachers’ 

philosophies might be a challenge to overcome in the process. On one hand similarities 

might make the process of cooperation easier, still differences might make the 

experience and the results more diverse. That is why it is advisable that the participants 

can choose one another. (Goetz 2000) Rather often there can be found the following 

complaints of the partners: lack of devotion from one of the partners, no support and 

suspicious attitude from other colleagues that were not participating in the team-

teaching projects.  

 

A very important issue to consider before starting team teaching projects is planning. 

Team teaching projects should be in line with the educational programmes, 

relationships between teachers should be developed beforehand, the time framework, 

targets, the material to be dealt with, organisation of the classroom activities, etc. And 

then later on the process should be followed up, problems should be analysed and ways 

of solving these problems should be thought over. (Cabo 2010, Goetz 2000, Johnson 

and Madejski n.d.) 

 



 27 

After having a look on the usual problems in team-teaching one can understand how 

challenging and sensitive this form of cooperation is, because mainly it involves two 

individuals that are to enter new relationships and to organise common professional 

projects.  

 

2.4.2. Communities of practice 

 

Bouchamma and Michaud (2010) studied a community of practice in the educational 

context that was organised in the province of New Brunswick in Canada with an aim to 

improve processes of teacher evaluation and supervision. 

 

Analysing the community of practice the researchers explain that learning is the central 

process that is possible through interactions between participants and through their 

common practices. Within the communities of practice experiences are shared and 

common knowledge is constructed in cooperation that in the end allows participants 

being more effective in their work duties. (Bouchamma & Michaud 2010) 

 

Communities of practice are suitable for the educational sphere. As it was mentioned 

earlier authorities and the governmental prescriptions influence schools and their 

management. School reforms are introduced on a regular basis and with the dynamics of 

the contemporary world schools should be ready to answer these changes quickly. 

Development activities are possible through creation of communities of practice 

because they make it possible to find solutions in a cooperative way and thus be more 

efficient in the complex situations, they also open doors to creativity and discovering 

new approaches. (Bouchamma & Michaud 2010)    

 

In the school practices communities of practice may be used at different levels including 

teachers and school principals. Communities of practice are important from the strategic 

point of view and are used to achieve different targets: either to develop the staff 

professionally, to acquire new knowledge, to improve relations between the staff and 

improve quality of teaching. (Bouchamma & Michaud 2010)  

 



 28 

Bouchamma & Michaud’s research (2010) studied the community of practice of teacher 

supervisors to help them in their new task of teacher evaluators. Community of practice 

session took place during two years and the researchers interviewed the participants 

twice during this period. Among the participants there were primary school principals, 

vice-principals and high school department heads. After the interviews the researchers 

found out the following benefits of this cooperation management tool. First of all, 

informal character of the meetings and everyone’s opportunity to train others was 

beneficial to incite participation. The discussions were not only about positive 

experiences, but about challenges and difficult situations as well: this allowed learning 

even more, because the members of the community discussed possible solutions for 

numerous problems. As far as the topic of the Community of Practice was teacher 

supervision participants realised the importance of supervising and its complexity, they 

did understand how much effort and time they should devote to that. (Bouchamma & 

Michaud 2010) 

 

There might be some doubts that everything stops after the community of practice stops 

to exist and the members would never remember the content they learnt and discussed 

with their peers. Still, in this particular case the knowledge got and shared in the 

Community of Practice was retained, it was taken into the future. It was found out that 

community of Practice helps to overcome the feeling of isolation; the person is not 

alone in his/her workplace with his/her expertise any more and more self-confidence is 

acquired in the process. It goes without saying that in the Community of Practice the 

atmosphere of listening and trust, the activities of sharing allow comparing. Comparing 

with others rather than what the person does brings better results, new ideas, more 

thorough analysis. (Bouchamma & Michaud 2010) 

 

2.4.3. Collaborations 

 

This type of cooperation is not mentioned in the literature about educational institutions; 

still I would like to transfer theories of collaborations between MNEs to the educational 

organisations. According to Walker and Stohl (2012) economic changes make 

companies work together, i.e. form collaborations across different sectors and countries. 



 29 

The researchers give an example of collaboration between engineering firms and 

discuss peculiarities of communication process. Beside that they explain the concept of 

collaboration and how it can be utilised by the management.  

 

The phenomenon discussed by Walker and Stohl (2012) may be well transferred to the 

sphere of schools. They justly mention that in the world of today boundaries between 

organisations are becoming vague because of the need to quickly adapt to the changes 

and dynamics. School systems are changing together with the world and are following 

the same rules. These dynamics make organisations develop relationships with others in 

order to have more confidence, get new knowledge, acquire resources and work on 

mutual benefits.  

 

According to the researchers Walker and Stohl (2010) interorganisational collaborations 

can be defined as creating and supporting through negotiations the structure that is born 

across organisational boundaries for a certain period of time. The structure involves 

representatives of the organisations with different abilities, among which resources, 

expertise and knowledge first of all that remain their autonomies and bear their 

individual goals while working toward innovative results equally important for the 

participants.  It means that the main features of collaboration are their temporary 

character, complexity and dynamics, volatility of the relations and no hierarchy. 

 

It means that collaborations seem to be similar to communities of practice. For me it 

was difficult to distinguish collaborations and communities of practice based on the 

researches by Bouchamma and Michaud (2010) and Walker and Stohl (2010). Still, 

collaborations can be regarded as much wider phenomena, including joint ventures, 

participatory federations, etc. Walker and Stohl (2010) find special interest in the 

temporary groups because they are focused on the task-related production and their 

management should see these specifics in comparison with the long-term, ongoing 

teams. In addition to that, I understand that in collaborations work in cooperation is 

more intense and has more evident, outstanding results than in communities of 

practices.  

 



 30 

Walker and Stohl (2010) analysed collaborative groups of the type discussed earlier and 

paid attention to the following issues. First of all, their research proved the so-called 

volatility of the relations in the collaborations: it means that within collaborations there 

happened changes constantly: participants made and broke connections with others 

continuously. Reciprocity is an important characteristic of the relations within the 

collaborative group. This might explain the changes in the connections, i.e. they are 

restructured within collaborations depending on the task and resource linkages. The 

participants communicate with those whom they need for a certain task fulfilment.  

 

In addition to that collaborations might be non-hierarchical because initially created 

decentralised collaborative structures are based on the horizontal responsibilities. 

Exactly those features as non-hierarchical and volatile connections allow collaborations 

being flexible and respond to the uncertain environment across the organisational 

boundaries. Researchers noticed that relationships in the collaborations develop based 

on task and specialisation, not on personalities and shared experiences because in the 

temporary collaborations participants implement tasks, i.e. depersonalised roles and 

through that trust becomes depersonalised. (Walker and Stohl 2010) 

 

Walker and Stohl (2010) develop ideas into hints for management in terms of 

organising the collaborations. What is important is to think about factors that influence 

whether the collaboration succeeds or fails. Will the routine forms of interaction be 

helpful or cause failure? Are instability and dynamism crucial for the success? As far as 

collaborations are created for achieving innovative solutions then probably tools of their 

management might be innovative as well. It goes without saying, that collaborations 

need to be responsively analysed, if they are used then the process of the development 

in the collaborations must be followed up and ways of measurement investigated and 

introduced into practice. 

 

As far as Bouchama and Michaud (2010) that studied communities of practice 

emphasised mostly positive effects of this type of cooperation, I included Walker and 

Stohl’s (2010) point of view on collaborations that revealed the challenging sides of the 

cooperative process.  



 31 

2.4.4. Online platforms and projects   

 

Information technologies are breaking barriers and formalities in the current social 

structures. They are a must have for any professional nowadays and they are widespread 

all around the world making communication outside the classroom and the school walls 

possible. (Mateo, del Rey and Hernández 2010) 

 

With the available World Wide Web tools can be easily used to support and organise 

cooperative work in the educational sphere. Klöckner (2002), for example, discusses the 

Internet platform that creates a shared workspace for those who cooperate. They use the 

term “workspace” in relation to the real life personal workspace where the person keeps 

all the necessary documents and materials. In case of shared workspace, cooperative 

members all have access to this and can save own documents and access others’ 

materials, communicate through online conversations.  

 

Advantages of WWW platform are evident: collaborative information sharing is 

plausible, the system requires only internet connection and can be used by nearly any 

operating system and the system is easy to use. Members can upload information from 

their computers and can control access towards their materials: either they will allow 

visibility for everyone or they will limit the circle of those who can see the photos, 

videos, text documents, spread sheets, links, etc. The particular platform worked out at 

Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology, known under the name Basic 

Support for Cooperative Work was used by 400 educational institutes by 2002. 

(Klöckner 2002) 

 

Another well-known tool is e-Learning and this is the most frequent tool that relates IT 

and education. Mostly this tool is used for education purposes in developed countries. 

Still, Mateo, del Rey and Hernández (2010) analyse methodology of using e-Learning 

as part of the university development cooperation in the Third World educational 

institutions. The idea is that e-Learning is a good tool for developing countries to 

overcome different obstacles to education. For example, shortage of teachers or lack of 



 32 

training of the available faculty members can be solved through e-Learning projects. I 

will present the benefits of the university cooperation through e-Learning in Table 1.  

 

 

Table 1. Benefits of university cooperation through e-Learning (based on Mateo, del 

Rey & Hernández 2010) 

Universities in developed countries  Universities in developing countries 

Increased student motivation Improved teaching materials 

Better quality of student training Expansion of knowledge 

Student are involved into development of 

society 

Transferring knowledge to the third 

groups  

 

 

The researchers turned to the concrete case of cooperation between the Universidad 

Poitécnica de Madrid and the University of Ngozi in Burundi. For that project the 

Technology for Development and Cooperation cooperation group that included 

qualified specialists in higher education and research on development was created in 

order to monitor, coordinate and manage the project. The cooperation group created 

Moodle platform (learning for cooperation and development platform) that was adapted 

for developing countries. Figure 4 describes functions of the main actors in the 

cooperation.  

 

 



 33 

 
Figure 3. Cooperation through e-Learning (based on Mateo, del Rey & Hernández 

2010)   

 

What is important in this type of projects is to lessen interaction between the Professor 

from the developed country university and the local students in order to support and 

increase the proficiency of the local Professor.  

 

After the cooperation between the Spanish university and the one from Burundi there 

was noticed an increase in the education efficiency rate, the amount of students that 

dropped courses was decreased and the targets that were set in the beginning: 

competency development of students from different perspectives, such as professional, 

social, technological, cultural and linguistic, was achieved, motivation was increased 

and technology transfer was implemented. (Mateo, del Rey & Hernández 2010)   

 

2.4.5. Partnerships   

 

Partnership as a form of cooperation in the educational sector is becoming more popular 

because of the belief that working together organisations can achieve better results 

(Butcher et al. 2011). Partnerships are suitable for the educational context: schools are 

individual and responsible organisations that are to provide better results in terms of 

Professor from the developed country university 
- starts the project 

- manages its development 
-supervises students 

-evaluates  

Professor from the developing country university 
-manages course contents for the local university 

-answers questions 
-extends content  

-schedules the course and executes 
-reports on the user-level technical issues 

Students from the developed country university 
-assimilate knowledge 

-develop course contents (together with the 
Professor) 

Students from the developing country univeristy 
-get access ti new knowledge  
-get better technology skills 

e-Learning 
platform (Moodle) 



 34 

student learning outcomes, better school performance during the national assessment 

exams while it is expected that schools are to demonstrate more active community 

engagement.  

 

Butcher et al. (2011) in their research outline two major forms of partnerships: 

transactional and transformational. The first type describes partnerships that do not 

generate changes in the institutions: a school may need new expertise, ways of 

development, some review of teaching practices and they access another school to find 

those. Interaction happens but stays at the level of exchange. It means that both parties 

engaging in the partnership are following their individual goals that are achieved 

through interchange of the considerations.  

 

Another type of partnerships that Butcher et al. (2011) talk about is called 

transformational.  This partnership is built by schools that have the common goals and 

through their cooperative work they develop and change. At that point I would like to 

make a remark that any partnership being a form of cooperation is built on the mutual 

interests between the parties. As I understand it, partnerships are mainly long-term, 

participants share capacities and resources and parties are being modified in the 

partnership activities. I would regard that classification into transactional and 

transformational partnerships rather critically, because I would find the features the 

researchers prescribe to the transformational partnerships to be characteristic for 

partnerships as a form of cooperation in general.  

 

In their research Butcher et al. (2011) study the partnership of the Australian Catholic 

University and the Parramatta Catholic Education Office. For the period of 15 years the 

partnership was developing different initiatives.  The cooperative projects of the schools 

included joint graduate and postgraduate courses, joint staff meetings joint efforts in 

overseas capacity development, a refugee support programme and joint research 

undertakings. For example, they organised a teaching-learning consortium, a 

programme within which undergraduate teacher education students were placed in the 

Parramatta Catholic schools for a semester in order to implement projects, observe and 

reflect. This measure was beneficial for both parties because university students could 



 35 

gain important experiences while the Parramatta Catholic school teachers received help 

while managing their classes.   

 

Another project within the framework of cooperation was called University Pathways 

programme that was about creating a link between schools and the university in order to 

make a university degree more attractive for the high school students. This programme 

gave an opportunity to complete two courses from the university level that would be 

accredited in their high school study programmes and they have two completed 

academic units in case of entering the university after high school. Establishing this 

programme the organisations managed to provide continuity in education. (Butcher et 

al. 2011) 

 

The discussed projects that were fulfilled in the long run were possible in the well-

established continuous relationships. Based on the case study of the Australian Catholic 

University and the Parramatta Catholic Education system Butcher et al. (2011) figured 

out the key characteristics of such partnerships. The first one is existence of the shared 

purposes and the mutual benefits should be understood at all the levels of the 

partnership: organisational and individual, overall partnership process and single 

projects.  Another principle of the partnership management is joint planning and 

collaborative leading and this means that each partner influences not only his own 

organisation but the other as well and this will be expressed not only in discussing 

together the main issues but in active influences on the results from both sides.  

 

As it was mentioned earlier speaking about other forms of cooperation: trust is one of 

the main prerequisites of the successful partnership. Butcher et al. (2011) mention that 

as well and notice that from the managerial perspective it is important to make sure that 

members can work with one another and informal meetings together with the formal 

ones might be one of the tools to develop atmosphere of trust. 

 

Butcher et al. (2011) name appropriateness of the resources as one of the partnership 

principles. In my opinion the question of resources is one of the central parts of 

partnership management. Resources in terms of the school cooperation mean both 



 36 

financial and human resources for implementation of the initiatives under the umbrella 

of a partnership. Each single project in the framework of the partnership cannot be 

implemented if resources are not sufficient and equally ensured by the partners. 

Equality will be a very important issue, because if the resources are not allocated 

equally then honesty, trust and mutual benefits will suffer. 

 

Last but not least is readiness to change. Each project undertaken within the partnership 

is planned with an aim of development, growth and creation of new knowledge. Those 

are possible when participants of the projects learn something new and develop 

professionally and willingness to learn in on the individual level is the key determinant 

for the development of each partner and the partnership organisation on the whole. 

(Butcher et al. 2011)  

 

It goes without saying there are other forms of interschool cooperation as well. For 

example in the UK of 1980s-1990s there were numerous families or clusters of schools. 

The term family is used because the cooperation of this type includes a secondary 

school and a primary school as its feeder. Those families of schools may be established 

to support and improve pupil transfer, to develop records of achievement and to develop 

curriculum and stuff. The terms reflect the essence of such cooperation: allocation of 

power is not equal. Usually secondary schools dominate the primary schools and have 

bigger budgets that allow them to subsidise inter-school cooperation. (Busher 1996) The 

terminology and typology may depend on the researcher as well.  

 

 

2.5. Poles of Cooperation between Schools  

 

After discussion of all the forms that I included into the work, it is evident that 

managing school cooperation is very challenging. In all the researches it was 

particularly mentioned what issues might be held in mind while managing the intershool 

cooperation. In spite of the fact different forms of cooperation are implemented in order 

to make school functioning more efficient and achieve better results there are always 



 37 

impediments that hamper implementation and long-term positive effects of school 

cooperation.  

 

My intention now will be to continue ideas about poles of cooperation (Van Veen from 

Oomkes 1994 in European Commission 2000), to add up issues to the discussed theory 

and specify that for the educational sector. As it was mentioned earlier cooperation has 

the following poles: individual and team that have challenges concerning the dimension 

relations, objectives and structure that have challenges concerning the dimension of 

tasks. Following the same logic and based on the analysis of the discussed researches I 

would outline the following poles.  

 

A very important issue in cooperation is motivation. Poles related to that issue would be 

environment on one hand and collaborative intent. Under environment I will understand 

educational system, authorities, community, educational laws and norms. When 

cooperation is undertaken between educational institutions, it is to be implemented 

within the framework of the governmental norms and community programmes that 

might either help or hinder cooperation. Another pole related to motivation will be 

collaborative intent. The term was taken from Nguen (2011) that researched reasons of 

inter-organisational cooperation. Into this term, I will include the expected benefit from 

cooperation, trust between the cooperative partners both on the individual and 

organisational level, voluntary actions towards cooperation. Why can those issues be 

regarded as poles? It is not always so that the environment has the same motives and 

intents for cooperation as the doers within the organisation. At the same time, if schools 

independently decide to cooperate, there is no guarantee that those tries will succeed 

without the environmental conditions.  

 

Another dimension of cooperation will be sharing, as it was mentioned by researches, 

discussing different types of interschool-cooperation (Bouchama and Michaud 2010, 

Klöckner 2002, Hodkinson 1996). Poles that concern this dimension will be 

organisation and non-hierarchy. What I mean under organisation is the structure of the 

educational organisation, its culture, strategy and administration, including scheduling 

and time allocation. Non-hierarchy that was mentioned by Walker and Stohl (2010) in 



 38 

their discussion of collaboration is another pole in this dimension, because this idea can 

be justly transferred to other types of interschool cooperation. Sharing runs more 

smoothly if the traditional hierarchical structure is broken. If partners that have the same 

position in their own organisations start to cooperate, no one would agree to be a 

subordinate of the other. Participants of cooperation start to fulfil horizontal 

responsibilities where hierarchical structures make no sense. Definitely, those poles do 

contrast each other, because organisation means certain traditional and sometimes 

bureaucratic leadership structures, while non-hierarchy principle is breaks them. 

 

Another dimension of cooperation in educational sphere will be continuity that was 

touched upon by Bouchama and Michaud (2010) in their discussion of communities of 

practice and Butcher et al. (2011) describing development of partnerships. Even if the 

projects are seldom and do not target development of deep relations and formation of 

mergers, still continuity can be traced in terms of the results got from cooperation and 

the developed relationships between participants. The two poles suitable for these 

dimensions will be: timeframe and resources. Timeframe means the planned schedule 

for the cooperation: temporal or long-time. Resources are crucial for any cooperation 

including both financial and human resources. The question to bear in mind will be if 

the resources volume and their suitability are checked and taken into consideration for 

implementation of cooperative practices (Butcher et al. 2011). Those poles contrast in 

case when finance or availability of participants conflict with the time planned for 

implementation and continuity might be achieved only when harmony is reached 

between the planned timeframe and the resources.  

 

Efficiency is another dimension for cooperation between schools and that covers the 

actual results achieved or missed in cooperation. On one pole I will place a joint action. 

Participation, mutual responsibility, implementing actual work-together operations and 

not only discussing them is meant here, importance of every single person in the 

process (Mateo, del Rey and Hernández 2010; Corbo 2010; Butcher et al. 2011). On 

another pole there will be quality of cooperation. Under this term I will include 

creativity, new solutions, development of new practices, comparison and crossing over 

differences, readiness to changes and something new (Bouchama and Michaud 2010; 



 39 

Mateo, del Rey and Hernández 2010; Butcher et al. 2011). Those issues are placed as 

poles, because joint-action is focused upon the processes and quality reflects the results.  

 
Individual Structure Environment  Organisation Resources Joint Action 

Relations Tasks Motivation Cooperation Sharing Continuity Efficiency 

Team Objectives Collaborative 

Intent 

 Non-hierarchy Timeframe Quality 

 

Figure 4. Poles and dimensions of cooperation in the educational sector  

 

Figure 4 depicts the ideas discussed above. This representation of interschool 

cooperation gives a broader view upon the phenomenon. This figure reflects first of all 

dimensions of cooperation that characterise cooperation between schools as a positive 

undertaking, as a capacity for development, because those dimensions were determined 

from the sources discussing interschool cooperation from the beneficial perspective. 

Poles of cooperation underpin the deeper levels of the problematic areas and point to 

plausible constraints that interschool cooperation might cause. This framework will be 

used to identify the processes in real-life in the context of one case study: interschool 

cooperation between a Russian school, school 200 of St.Petersburg and three schools of 

Kouvola region: Kirkonkylä school, Valkeala junior high school and Valkeala upper 

secondary school.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 40 

3. RESEARCH DESIGN  

 

This chapter explains issues concerning methodology of the research, including the 

choice of the research strategy and justification of the choice, describes data collection 

process and the main sources of the data, reveals how data analysis was implemented 

using content analysis as a technique and evaluates quality of the research.  

 

 

3.1. Case Study as a Qualitative Research Strategy   

 

For this research case study research strategy was chosen. First of all, the strategy 

belongs to the qualitative methods that is why it is necessary to discuss characteristics 

of qualitative methods in general. After that peculiarities of the case study strategy will 

be explained.  

 

The qualitative research allows access to real-world data, to empirical information; it 

provides “pluralisation of life” (Flick 2009, 12) with its attention to diversity, 

individualisation, to something local, temporal, situational; it gives an opportunity to 

investigate, to try to understand and get meaningful features of the complex real-life 

events. (Gummesson 2000, 14; Flick 2009, 12; Yin 2003, 2)  

 

According to Flick (2009, 15) the object of the study makes researchers choose 

qualitative methods. Significantly objects are not represented through single variables 

but are studied in their whole, including contexts of the phenomena and situational 

shades. Openness towards the research objects is a characteristic feature of the 

qualitative methods. (Flick 2009, 15) 

 

Because of the features discussed earlier and the goal of the qualitative research that is 

not to check existing theories but to develop and discover new theories, validity of the 

research is understood differently than in the quantitative studies. As Flick (2009, 15) 

justly mentions validity of qualitative studies is understood through reference to the 

objects of the research: whether findings are embedded in the empirical set, whether 



 41 

theories are appropriately chosen, whether data are relevant and whether proceedings 

are reflexive.  

 

Another feature of the qualitative research is the variety of perspectives, i.e. how 

different actors understand the studied phenomenon. The qualitative research allows 

revealing the subjective meanings of the research object, research participants’ 

knowledge about the object and their practices with that. (Flick 2009, 16) This variety 

of viewpoints allows the development of the new theories that qualitative methods 

usually result in. (Flick 2009 p. 17 ; Ghauri and GrØnhaug 2010, p.106) 

 

The qualitative methods presuppose researcher’s reflective analysis of the data. The 

researcher’s communication with the object and his/her interpretation of the data 

becomes an integral part of the knowledge and the research process. (Flick 2009, 16) 

The subjectivity of those who are studied and the researcher causes criticism about 

qualitative methods, but at the same time this gives the richness and deeper spectrum of 

the data.  

 

In general the logic behind qualitative methods runs as follows: subjective perspectives 

constitute a starting moment. After that follows a course of interactions and then the 

researcher makes conclusions and with that creates new theoretical structures. That 

explains why researchers face numerous challenges and why a lot depends on the 

researcher’s skills and experiences. Abilities of abstract thinking, avoiding bias, 

developing theoretical preunderstadning and social sensitivity are a few skills to be 

applied by implementing qualitative research. (Flick 2009, 16-17; Ghauri and 

GrØnhaug 2010, 105) 

 

Case study research in particular is a very popular qualitative method in business 

studies. Yin (2003, 14) defines case study as a research strategy of a full value, because 

it includes design, data collection techniques and data analysis peculiarities of its own. 

Case study research that will discuss the certain management situation will include 

gathering information through in-depth semi-structured personal interviews as well as 

documents of the organisations in question. What is important is to get enough 



 42 

information in order to explain and to analyse the processes of the studied situation and 

in the end to draw integrative interpretation (Selltiz et al. 1976 in Ghauri and GrØnhaug 

2010, 109). According to Yin (2003, 13) case study research is suitable when contextual 

conditions influence the phenomenon of the study. This is exactly the case of 

interschool cooperation when there are certain contexts of the schools participating in 

cooperation, the communities and the state school systems.  

 

Results of case study research may be general in their character, discussing a single case 

or a number of cases and coming to conclusions that might be applicable at the level of 

wider field of knowledge; or the results may be specific, discovering peculiarities of a 

case that incites special interest. (Gummesson 2000, 84; Yin 2003, 16) 

 

The choice of the case study depends much on the researcher’s approach towards the 

research question, on the researcher’s objectives: what he/she wants to receive as a 

result of the study. In my opinion one case study may perform different functions. For 

example, before explanations are done, there should precede some descriptions.  

 

Those characteristics explain suitability of case study for the research questions of the 

given work. There is no need in statistical methods and other quantification procedures. 

What is interesting is to see the details of the concrete case of interschool cooperation 

between schools of Kouvola (Kirkonkylä basic school, Valkeala junior high school and 

Valkeala upper secondary school) and school 200 of St. Petersburg, find out its 

circumstances, analyse practices and processes that are part of the inter-organisational 

cooperation in the educational context.  

 

 

3.2. Data Collection  

 

The idea about the research appeared in 2012 first of all due to the personal interest of 

the researcher in school management questions. After getting acquainted with numerous 

articles that discuss up-to-date issues in educational management it was decided to 

concentrate upon the school cooperation management. While formulating the main 



 43 

research question the researcher was pondering about the concrete case study. Initially 

there was an attempt done to contact a school from Hämeenlinna that had a wide 

experience in school cooperation projects and allegedly could be interested in the 

suggested research. But there was no answer received. Another attempt concerned a 

higher education level. Due to the upcoming reform of Universities of Applied Sciences 

in Finland it could be vital to see how cooperation between universities of applied 

sciences is carried out, especially under conditions that universities of applied sciences 

start to form alliances in order not to be closed. However, the contacted research 

directors in the Universities of Applied Sciences explained that they have nothing to be 

analysed according to the research question.  

 

A couple of month later there was an attempt done to contact Kirkonkylä School that is 

the primary school in Valkeala school campus. Being involved into Allegretto project, 

i.e. the project of cooperation between schools of Kouvola and a school of St. 

Petersburg, that was a new potential case for the research. Kristiina Strömmer, the 

principal of Kirkonlkylä School immediately gave her agreement advising at the same 

time to ask for permission from Veikko Niemi, head of education and well-being 

services of Kouvola. The permission for the research was received. Moreover Veikko 

Niemi gave further contacts of administration representatives and school principals that 

might participate in the research. From that point data collection process for the 

particular case of school cooperation in the city of Kouvola started.  

 

Yin (2003, 83-108) writes about using different sources of evidence in the process of 

gathering information about the case. What is important is to apply the correct methods 

of analysis with every source, because each source should be chosen with a special 

purpose and each source should bring its own special information that adds up to the 

whole data set of the case study. Another challenge in collecting data from different 

sources is converging the results in the final form that make their use sensible.  

 

Data for this case study was gathered from different sources as well. Different sources 

of data collation process are shown in Figure 5.   



 44 

 

Figure 5. Sources of evidence in data collection process (modified from Yin 2003, 100) 

 

 

This figure depicts the variety of data sources that were used in the research. The case 

study concentrates on the phenomena of managing school cooperation on the example 

of the Allegretto project that has been implemented between Finnish and Russian 

schools. In the project there is Kirkonkylä School, Upper School of Valkeala, Upper 

Secondary School of Valkeala and Upper Secondary School of Kouvola Common 

School, and School of Inkeroinen from Finnish side and School number 200 of St. 

Petersburg.  

 

 

 

 

managing cooperation 
between Finnish and 

Russian schools in the 
project Allegretto 

personal 
interviews of 

Finnish schools 
and education 

authorities 

project 
documents of the 
municipal level 

implementation 
plans for each 

school 

email interviews 
with 

representatives of 
Russian schools  

cooperation 
contract between 

Education 
Committee of St. 
Petersburg and 

Kouvola 

 researches on 
school leadership 

in Russia and 
Finland 

laws on education 
in Russia and 

Finland 



 45 

3.2.1. Personal interviews  

 

The main source of evidence for this particular research on school cooperation was 

personal interviews. After getting acquainted with the project Allegretto and the schools 

that participate the researcher planned to interview personally representatives of both 

schools in Russia and in Finland. Still, due to the shortage of time and numerous 

responsibilities of the Russian teachers personal interviews were held just on the 

Finnish side.  

 

Taking into account educational system and its management, where a big role is played 

by the municipal authorities it was decided to contact experts from the municipal 

administration of Kouvola besides school principals and schoolteachers. On the whole 

there were held 9 personal interviews and 13 persons were interviewed. The length of 

the interviews was from 25 minutes to 60 minutes depending on the time availability of 

the interviewee, his/her role and level of participation in the cooperation project, his/her 

awareness of the issues happening within the project and the number of interviewees. 

Table 2 contains information about the interviews, its length and participants.  

 

Table 2. Personal interviews 

N Participants   Position Date  Length  Notes  

1 Kim Strömmer Head of services 13.05.2013 41 min   

Kristiina 
Strömmer 

Principal of 
Kirkonkylä School 
 

2 

Anna Voipio Class teacher, 
Russian language 
teacher 

15.05.2013 47 min  The group 
interview, because 
of the different 
roles in 
management of the 
project participants 
differentiated who 
could answer what 
questions, based on 
the responsibilities  

3 Timo Tiainen Head of services 16.05.2013 30 min Small role and little 
information on the 
project  

Eeva Raaska Teacher of Arts 4 

Anu Sundvall English and Russian 
languages teacher 

17.05.2013 50 min  



 46 

 Eira Kantokari Domestic science 
teacher 

   

5 Pauli Pölönen Principal of 
Valkeala middle 
school 

17.05.2013 45 min  

Keijo 
Hulkkonen 

Principal of 
Valkeala upper 
secondary school 

6  

Marja 
Lindqvist 

Russian language 
teacher 

29.05.2013 40 min  

7 Veikko Niemi Head of education 
and youth services 
of Kouvola 

21.05.2013 64 min The key informant, 
coordinator of the 
project in Kouvola 

8 Katja Berbacka Head of teaching 22.05.2013 30 min The respondent is 
not within the 
project for a long 
time  

Marjatta Lehto English teacher 9 
Maria 
Petrasova 

Student assistant 
29.05.2013 35 min  

  

Before the interview started there was a small talk between interviewees and the 

researcher. The researcher gave some time in order to have a look at the list of questions 

prepared for the interview in order to orientate the interviewees and let them have some 

ideas of what the talk would be about.  

 

For convenience the interviewees had the list of questions in front of them, still 

interviews were semi-structured. Though the researcher followed the same list of 

questions, it was necessary to do several changes in each particular interview, due to 

specifics of the respondents’ positions, their awareness of the cooperation project and its 

implementation, their role in the project. Not all of the respondents had enough 

information to comment upon each particular topic. Respondents got different 

understanding of some questions: that is why researcher’s task was to have some 

additional explanations or questions to pose. Some of the questions were omitted from 

the list as they got answered while replying to other inquiries and the order of the 

questions were changed depending on the general flow of each interview. After initial 

interviews a couple of questions were re-modified in order to make answers more 

informative and valuable.  

 



 47 

Every interview contained about 25 basic questions, some of them more concrete in 

their character others more open and allowing interviewees ponder over the issues and 

tell the stories. The questions were made in order to cover wide issues in cooperation: 

division of roles, communication, motivation of participants, forms of cooperation, 

positive and negative sides, analysis of own work and experiences, planning and actual 

implementation of cooperation, directions of cooperation, analysis of results, future 

plans concerning the same cooperation project or other, correspondence of the project to 

the general strategy of the city.   

 

All of the interviews were recorded and based on the answers there was done a case 

study database that became the basis for the analysis later on and that became the source 

of quotations for the research findings.  

 

Definitely there were differences in the amount of information each respondent wanted 

to share. It depended upon the role of the respondent in the project, the respondent’s 

interest in the interview and the cooperation project Allegretto in general, the timetable 

given to the interview. For example, one of the respondents immediately in the 

beginning of the interview said that the time was restricted because in 30 minutes there 

was planned another meeting, but according to the respondent there was not so much to 

say and comment.  

 

Still, on the whole, the researcher was satisfied with the amount of information received 

for analysis and interviews’ contents. The respondents were relaxed and eager to tell. 

Something was more difficult to answer, but then pondering started and respondents 

came to the conclusions on the questions never asked and thought over before. The 

smooth contact was easy to settle and friendly atmosphere was present at all of the 

interviews.  

 

The interviews were held with the right people and real experts in the school 

cooperation. They were exactly the ones actively participating and being aware of the 

project and its development. The interviewees spoke out freely, emotionally and 

honestly, pointing out positive and negative experiences they faced.  



 48 

3.2.2. Email interviews  

 

After contacting Veikko Niemi, the head of education and well being services in 

Kouvola and receiving information from him about the participants in the project 

“Allegretto”, the researcher contacted school №200 from St. Petersburg. The answer 

was received quickly showing interest in the suggested research.  

 

The contact person from the school became Sizova Natalia Vladimirovna, the 

coordinator of the project. The researcher suggested choosing the more suitable form of 

the interviews: personal or email ones. It was decided by the staff members that a more 

suitable form for the respondents would be the email interviews. The actual research 

took place in the end of May 2013, the end of school year, when lots of tests and official 

work takes place. This can be probably one of the reasons why email interviews were 

preferred. Thus, the researcher sent the questions to the coordinator and then received 

all the answers through Sizova Natalia, who also became one of the respondents. In 

Table 3 we can see a list of respondents to the email interviews.  

 

 

Table 3. Email interviews  

№ Interviewee  Position  Notes  

1 Alieva Julia Finnish language teacher Participated in the project 
by organising open 
lessons and games-quizzes 

2 Simonina Maria  Finnish language teacher  

3  Gavrileichenko Elena  Finnish language teacher  

4 Sizova Natalia  Vice-principal  Coordinator of the project 
in school 200 

5 Isaeva Liubov  Finnish language teacher   

6 Treskunova Elena  Finnish language teacher  

 

 

All of the respondents except Sizova Natalia are Finnish language teachers. This is 

understandable, because the school was interested in the project exactly on the ground 

that Finnish language is taught here and on the ground that there will be an opportunity 



 49 

of profound Finnish language learning through the project. Still, if to compare the list of 

participants in the personal interviews that took place in the Finnish schools there is 

more diversity in the participating teaching staff, i.e. there are teachers of Arts, 

geography, English, etc. The researcher expected that the Russian school would provide 

the same range of respondents. As a result, allegedly the teachers from the same sphere 

might have similar experiences and opinions that narrow data analysis to a more 

unilateral content.  

 

Another weakness of the email interviews is that answers are more limited, more abrupt. 

In the personal interviews the respondents were expressing ideas that naturally came 

during conversation, one thought was interrupted by another and this flow in the end 

resulted in a broad range of data. Email interviews were terse. Definitely they contain 

the data necessary for the research but they did not open up those deeper and concealed 

levels that were possible to discover during personal interviews.  

 

One more feature of the email interviews is that the respondents are more precise about 

their answers controlling the information they give. They think more about what might 

sound well. That is why this limits the data for analysis that could be much more 

diverse and richer in content if the interviews were carried out personally.   

 

What the researcher appreciated in the personal interviews was the emotional 

background of the interviews. The respondents were drawn by the subject and wanted to 

share something that was really important and that was noticed through the intensity of 

feelings connected to the topic. Email interviews lack those data and look insufficient in 

comparison with the personal interviews. Still, the data were collected from the real 

people and real participants of the project and constituted the basic part of texts for 

analysis. 

 

3.2.3. Documents  

 

Another source of data that were used in the analysis were documents relating to the 

project “Allegretto”. They were kindly provided by Veikko Niemi, the head of 



 50 

education and well being services of Kouvola. The list of the documents used is 

presented in Table 4.  

 

Table 4. Documentation on the project “Allegretto” 

Name  Date  Notes  

The idea of the project on 
increasing cooperation of 
Kouvola schools with Russia 

10.01.2012 Explanation of municipal targets and strategies, 
importance of developing cooperation with 
Russia in the sphere of education 

Allegretto – Kouvola goes to 
Russia: the project plan 

 The project and the curriculum, creation of 
operation model of cooperation with Russia: 
one of the points of interest in the personal 
interviews, participants, schedule, estimation of 
results 

Agreement between the 
Education Committee (St. 
Petersburg, Russian Federation) 
and the European Committee of 
Kouvola (Finland) on 
cooperation in education 

12.9.2012 In Finnish and in English languages, general 
rights and responsibilities of the parts, 
programme activities for the years 2012-2013 

Allegretto operational plan of 
Valkeala upper secondary 
school and Kouvola co-
educational upper secondary 
school for 2013  

 Concrete and terse, schedule of the possible 
activities in 2013 

Project plan of Valkeala middle 
school  

24.4.2012/ 
updated 
14.1.2013 

Aims, implementation through activities, 
schedule, budget allocations 

Studying activities in learning 
groups of different subjects 
according to curriculum in 
Valkeala middle school 

 The subjects influenced by the project English 
language, Russian language, Finnish language, 
Geography, Biology, Textile Work, Domestic 
Science, Physics, Chemistry and Maths, Arts, 
Music and Religion. What is introduced and 
how in relation to the project?  

Allegretto/Kouvola goes to 
Russia: operational 
plan/Kirkonkylä school 

25.4.2912/ 
updated 
11.1.2013 

Activities and Expenses 

Emails between Veikko Niemi, 
the head of Kouvola education 
and well-being services and 
Kristiina Strömmer, the 
principal of Kirkonkylä school 

3.4.2013/4.
4.2013 

An example of communication between a 
principal and the coordinator of the project 

  
 



 51 

The enumerated documentation on the project “Allegretto” includes administrative 

documents, correspondence and operational plans. Those data are valuable because of 

their accurateness. They contain the exact names, dates and details of the case in 

question. In addition they exist by themselves, not as a result of a study, not as answers 

to the questions.  Vice versa, the researcher initially got acquainted with the documents 

before panning the in-depth interviews. They gave the idea about the project and its 

main targets, its main participants and implemented activities. Those documents helped 

to make the questions for the interviews and the most interested points were included 

directly into the body of the questions, especially concerning the range of the strategic 

plans and targets and their fulfilment in reality.  

 

The documentation helps to receive data not only based on the current happenings and 

memories as in case of the interviews, but it includes the information on the processes 

that took place earlier, in the very beginning of the project, at the stage of planning. 

Because of the stability and availability of the documents it has been always possible to 

revise the data that contain in the documents. The researcher planned interviews and 

used the documents as a starting point and then later on the documents were used as the 

data for analysis and for making conclusions out of the texts.  

 

During the data analysis documents were a good platform for confirming and 

comparing the issues received from other personal interviews and email interviews, as 

they have a more prominent status of being independent from the researcher’s 

perspective.   

 

3.2.4. Data collection from textbooks, research papers and articles 

 

As far as context is important while carrying out the case study and also because of the 

specifics of the educational sector management the researcher decided to study the main 

features of school leadership and management in both countries. Those features help to 

understand some basic conditions in the process of managing school cooperation and 

they revealed important issues that could explain the received results. In the process of 

gathering data on school leadership and management research papers, textbooks, 



 52 

monographs and articles were found. In 2007 Hargreaves, Halász and Pont that made a 

case study report for OECD on improving school leadership titled “School leadership 

for systemic improvement in Finland” where they discussed Finnish school leadership 

features in detail. Another research paper was written by Taipale in 2012 that included 

international survey on educational leadership. Being published for Finnish board of 

education the report largely covered the situation with educational leadership and 

management. Those sources were easy to find and immediately were chosen containing 

information relevant for the present research.  

 

With characteristics of the Russian educational management it was more difficult. The 

majority of sources available are mainly textbooks and lectures that are created on the 

basis of laws on education. Definitely they give certain data about division of 

management functions between different levels and players in the educational sector. 

But they do not contain more vivid information that could give more details about the 

real life of schools including concrete cases as for example those works about the 

Finnish school leadership discussed earlier. Work by Shamova in 2002 was a step 

forward when it converged the information based on laws and at the same time it 

touched upon the possible challenges that might be faced by school managers due to 

changes.   

 

After a more prominent search the researcher managed to find interesting monograph on 

the modernisation of Russian education by Beliakov where changes and challenges and 

many operational questions of management are addressed at a new proficient level. In 

addition to that a few academic articles written by school leaders and researchers were 

found relevant. Among them a work by Zhuravleva that deals with relevant questions of 

organising innovative activity in the modern school, an article by Jastrembovich and 

Zhuravleva that introduces technological approach towards management of innovative 

activity, a paper by Putinzeva that discusses a model of school management based on 

forms of state and public management and an article by Alekseeva and Rekichinskaya 

that describe innovative management used in an upper secondary school. The 

characteristic feature of those sources is that all of them discuss concrete cases based on 

experiences of schools connecting them to the general changes that the Russian 



 53 

educational system is undergoing. This is exactly the information that is needed in order 

to understand the narrower topic of school cooperation management.  

 

In order to see why cooperation between schools is important, how it is organised and 

what its capacities are on one hand and what kind of constraints the cooperation 

management might face in case of both countries Finland and Russia on the other hand, 

contextual knowledge of school leadership and management in Finland and Russia was 

collected from textbooks, research papers and academic articles and reports. Table 5 

contains those sources of evidence.  

 

Table 5. Secondary sources  

Title  Author Year of 
publica
tion 

Strength Weaknesses 

International survey on 
educational leadership: a 
survey on school leader’s 
work and continuing 
education  

Taipale, Atso 2012 -Prominent attention 
to Finnish school 
leadership 
  
-The most important 
features discussed in 
comparison with 
other school systems 

-No concrete 
examples from 
schools 
 
-Just positive 
features discussed  

School leadership for 
systemic improvement in 
Finland: A case study 
report for the OECD 
activity, Improving school 
leadership 

Hargreaves, 
A., Halász, 
G. and Pont, 
B. 

2007 -Qualitative research 
that addresses the 
school leadership in 
Finland very 
profoundly 
-Real examples from 
interviews, 
quotations 
-Both positive issues 
and problematic 
areas are addressed 

-Schools in the 
central regions of 
Finland and 
Tampere region 
are taken for the 
research: they 
have a number of 
specifics in their 
activities different 
from schools in 
smaller 
communities 

Modernisation of Russian 
education: improvement 
of management  

Beliakov, S. 2009 -Addresses 
problematic areas 
because of 
transformations in 
Russian education 
-Converges data 
received from legal 
documents and 
transfers them to 

-Big emphasis on 
economic and 
financial sides that 
are not of the first 
importance for the 
research of school 
cooperation 
management 
-too clumsy 



 54 

practical issues formulas that are 
not relevant in 
practice  

Relevant questions of 
innovative activity 
management in the 
modern educational 
institution 

Zhuravleva, 
N. 

2008 -Discusses changes 
in the modern school 
management  
-Works out a new 
management 
technology 

-Emphasis on 
innovativeness in 
schools  
-Concrete for one 
school  

Development of public 
management forms as a 
management model of 
publicly active school 

Putinzeva, I. 2008 -Importance of 
strategic