Preparing School Leaders – International Approaches in Leadership Development

Abstract

In view of the ever-increasing responsibilities of school leaders for ensuring the quality of schools, school leadership development has recently become one of the central concerns of educational policy. Based on data from an international study of school leadership development, an overview of international efforts to develop school leadership is given and international trends in school leadership preparation are identified and discussed, e.g. central quality assurance and decentralised provision; new forms of cooperation and partnership, preparatory qualification; extensive and comprehensive programs; multi-phase designs and modularisation; the communicative and cooperative shift; from administration and maintenance to leadership, change and continuous improvement; qualifying teams and developing the leadership capacity of schools; needs, experience and application orientation; new ways of learning; adjusting the program to explicit aims and objectives; new paradigms of leadership; orientation towards the school’s core purpose. In addition, this gives a conclusion and provides recommendations for designing and conducting training and development programmes.