Promovendin: Nadine Welten 
Keywords: value orientations, school leadership, school improvement, professional judgement, educational leadership
Gutachtende: Prof. Dr. Elena Makarova (Universität Basel), Prof. Dr. Pierre Tulowitzki (Pädagogische Hochschule FHNW)
Projektbeginn: FS 2026

Abstract 
Schools are increasingly challenged to respond to societal, technological, and educational policy changes while maintaining high educational quality. School improvement is understood as a long-term and systemic process involving the coordinated development of instructional practices, organisational structures, and professional capacities (Creemers & Kyriakides, 2015; Rolff, 2023). School principals play a central role by creating conditions that support instructional improvement, professional collaboration, and organisational learning (Hallinger, 2018; Hallinger et al., 2020; Leithwood et al., 2020). In the Swiss context, school leadership similarly encompasses responsibilities for school improvement, quality development, and organisational governance (Tulowitzki & Pietsch, 2020; Perrenoud & Tulowitzki, 2021; Pietsch et al., 2025).

School improvement requires principals to respond to competing educational goals, stakeholder expectations, and organisational constraints. Leadership can therefore be understood as a context-dependent process of professional judgement in which educational priorities must be interpreted, balanced, and justified. Value orientations may constitute an important source of such judgement by influencing how principals interpret situations, prioritise educational goals, and justify leadership decisions (Warwas, 2015).

The dissertation integrates perspectives from school improvement, educational leadership, professional judgement, and values research. Schwartz’s Theory of Basic Human Values (Schwartz, 1992, 2012) provides an important conceptual foundation for understanding value orientations as trans-situational goals that guide perceptions, evaluations, and behaviour. At the same time, values are understood as embedded within social and organisational contexts (Döring & Cieciuch, 2018). Schools constitute important contexts of values transmission, in which educational values emerge through institutional structures, social interactions, and school improvement processes (Makarova et al., 2025). Research further indicates relationships between educational values, educational goals, and school value climate (Oeschger et al., 2022, 2024).

Despite substantial research on school improvement, educational leadership, and values, these fields have rarely been systematically integrated. In particular, little is known about the significance of school principals’ value orientations for leadership during school improvement and about how such orientations inform professional judgement and leadership decision-making (Thien et al., 2023; Vlachou & Tsirantonaki, 2023). Building on previous research on values in German-speaking Swiss schools (Welten, 2022), the dissertation extends this perspective by focusing specifically on school principals’ value orientations in the context of school improvement.

The overarching research question is: What is the significance of school principals’ value orientations for leadership in the context of school improvement?

This question is addressed through three interrelated research questions:

1. How are school principals’ value orientations conceptualised and investigated within the international educational leadership literature, and what implications emerge for leadership in the context of school improvement?

2. Which value orientations do school principals draw upon when justifying and prioritising school improvement goals, and how do they explain these priorities?

3. What role do value orientations play in school principals’ professional judgement when competing educational goals must be balanced during school improvement processes?

The project is designed as a cumulative dissertation comprising three interconnected studies. Study 1 systematically reviews the international literature on principals’ value orientations in educational leadership and develops a conceptual framework that informs the empirical studies. Studies 2 and 3 form a qualitative multiple case study involving eight public primary school principals in German-speaking Switzerland. Study 2 combines organisational documents with semi-structured interviews to reconstruct the value orientations principals draw upon when justifying and prioritising school improvement goals. Study 3 uses Critical Incident interviews to examine how value orientations inform professional judgement in concrete leadership situations characterised by competing educational goals or stakeholder expectations. Where possible, the same cases are examined across Studies 2 and 3, allowing organisational priorities, reconstructed value orientations, and professional judgement to be considered within the same organisational contexts.

The qualitative material will be analysed through qualitative content analysis following Mayring (2015), combining theory-informed category development with inductive refinement based on the empirical material. Within-case and cross-case analyses will identify patterns within and across cases. Data triangulation, transparent documentation of analytical decisions, and independent coding of a subset of the material by a second researcher will strengthen the trustworthiness, consistency, and transparency of the findings.

The novelty of the dissertation lies in systematically connecting values research with educational leadership and school improvement and in conceptualising value orientations as an analytical perspective for understanding professional judgement in educational leadership. Rather than examining principals’ declared values alone, the dissertation reconstructs how value orientations become visible through the prioritisation and justification of school improvement goals and through professional judgement in concrete leadership situations. In doing so, the project aims to contribute to a more differentiated understanding of educational leadership as a value-informed process and to provide insights relevant to leadership preparation and professional development.

Literatur 
Creemers, B. P. M., & Kyriakides, L. (2015). School improvement. In J. D. Wright (Ed.), International encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences (2nd ed., Vol. 21, pp. 91–95). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.92081-6

Döring, A. K., & Cieciuch, J. (2018). Die Theorie menschlicher Werte nach Shalom H. Schwartz und ihre Relevanz für die Erforschung der Werteentwicklung im Kindes- und Jugendalter. In A. K. Döring & J. Cieciuch (Hrsg.), Werteentwicklung im Kindes- und Jugendalter (S. 21–27). Liberi Libri.

Hallinger, P. (2018). Bringing context out of the shadows of leadership. Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 46(1), 5–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143216670652

Hallinger, P., Gümüş, S., & Bellibaş, M. Ş. (2020). “Are principals instructional leaders yet?” A science map of the knowledge base on instructional leadership, 1940–2018. Scientometrics, 122(3), 1629–1650. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03360-5

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Makarova, E., Döring, A. K., Daniel, E., & Benish-Weisman, M. (2025). Editorial: Research on value development in the school context: New directions and approaches from an international perspective. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 40(4), Article 116. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-025-01003-y

Mayring, P. (2015). Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse: Grundlagen und Techniken (12., überarbeitete Aufl.). Beltz.

Oeschger, T. P., Makarova, E., & Döring, A. K. (2022). Values in the school curriculum from teachers’ perspective: A mixed-methods study. International Journal of Educational Research Open, 3, Article 100190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedro.2022.100190

Oeschger, T. P., Makarova, E., Raman, E., Hayes, B., & Döring, A. K. (2024). The interplay between teachers’ value-related educational goals and their value-related school climate over time. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 39(4), 3633–3660. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-024-00849-y

Perrenoud, O., & Tulowitzki, P. (2021). Images of educational leadership in Switzerland. In R. Normand, L. Moos, M. Liu, & P. Tulowitzki (Eds.), The cultural and social foundations of educational leadership: An international comparison(pp. 123–138). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74497-7_7

Pietsch, M., Tulowitzki, P., & Krein, U. (2025). Schulleitung und schulinterne Steuerung. In M. Syring, T. Bohl, A. Gröschner, & A. Scheunpflug (Hrsg.), Studienbuch Bildungswissenschaften 2: Unterricht und Schule gestalten (S. 279–301). Verlag Julius Klinkhardt. https://doi.org/10.36198/9783838562193-281-303

Rolff, H.-G. (2023). Schulentwicklung kompakt: Modelle, Instrumente, Perspektiven (4. Aufl.). Beltz.

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Schwartz, S. H. (2012). An overview of the Schwartz theory of basic values. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1), Article 11. https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1116

Thien, L. M., Adams, D., Kho, S. H., & Yap, P. L. (2023). Exploring value-driven leadership: Perspectives from school leaders. Journal of Research on Leadership Education, 18(3), 534–551. https://doi.org/10.1177/19427751221097988

Tulowitzki, P., & Pietsch, M. (2020). Lernzentriertes Leitungshandeln an Schulen—Leadership for learning. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 23(5), 873–902. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11618-020-00964-8

Vlachou, A., & Tsirantonaki, S. (2023). The importance of school principals’ values towards the inclusive education of disabled students: Associations between their values and knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and practices. Education Sciences, 13(4), Article 360. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci13040360

Warwas, J. (2015). Principals’ leadership behaviour: Values-based, contingent or both? Journal of Educational Administration, 53(3), 310–334. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-03-2014-0035

Welten, N. (2022). Wertekanon an Deutschschweizer Schulen: Eine Analyse schulischer Leitbilder [Unveröffentlichte Masterarbeit]. Universität Basel.