As we have seen throughout these chapters, the conceptions and practices of school leadership do not correspond to disembodied standards promoted by international organizations. Their influences are highly dependent on the historical, cultural, and social context within each country and its education system. Some of them have a strong tradition of…

This discussion builds on the analyses in the chapters in this volume. As the OECD has been and remains a powerful agent in the development of public governance, and thus in education governance, the discussion is also structured on the basis of OECD governance and leadership reports. Some of the results from those reports are used but that does…

This chapter analyzes dominant discourses of European school leadership over the timespan of the last three decades and across the school systems participating in this research project. A large body of literature has portrayed a transition of ideas about school principalship toward the image of the school principal as a relatively autonomous and…

Looking back at the history of society, culture and institutions in Denmark can produce snapshots of the foundation of education and educational leadership. In some respects, the history of culture, society and education goes back at least 200 years. Educational theories, institutional structures and leadership practices can be framed as a quest…

Danish society, governance, education, school leadership, teaching and purposes of education are analysed and discussed as an interplay of two discourses: the Welfare State Discourse and the Competitive State Discourse. The Welfare State Discourse emerged shortly after World War II and the Competitive State Discourse in the 1980s. However, that is…

This volume identifies cultural and moral foundations of country-specific school leadership and it presents the foundations and principles of social justice and the diversity of common goods that often guide leadership practices in schools. Political and cultural backgrounds for educational and leadership policies, that frame the practices of…

The neo-liberal move to depoliticise and deregulate governance of public sectors by transferring them to the technocratic and administrative marketplace management endangers the political and democratic processes at all levels. It influences education and educational leadership at their very core: the purpose of education is shifting from…

Educational systems, schools and school leaders are caught in the global crossfire between two sets of political expectations: students' academic outcomes must be at the top of league tables, and students must acquire excellent innovative and creative competencies. It is timely to reflect on the effect of this dilemma. We need to find out if basic…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how important the choice of theoretical perspective is on the analyses of empirical data from a Danish case study. Design/methodology/approach: The empirical bases for the analyses are qualitative, longitudinal case studies of school leadership in the International Successful School Principalship…

There is no shared understanding of what school leaders are expected to do. Schools have many external as well as internal stakeholders and each of them has different expectations as to leadership practice. Thus school leadership is a "fluid signifier". This article first outlines external expectations that school leaders are faced with…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the findings of the follow-up studies of successful school principals in six countries: Australia, Denmark, England, Norway, Sweden, and the USA. Design/methodology/approach: Data were categorized according to stakeholder expectations, the concept and practice of leadership, and the…

In order to be able to discuss, in meaningful ways, how school leaders should be educated one needs to sketch the context in which they are going to lead, that is the visions and purpose of education and the schooling, which is dominant in society. In most societies one sees clashes of many discourses and cultural/political fights. In order to…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to revisit three successful schools to see how the principals and the schools had sustained success over a period of five years. Design/methodology/approach: A case study research design was used building on the 2005 design. This time the principals were interviewed. Findings: The study is a case study over…

This article will argue that diverse national, regional and local contexts leave different rooms for manoeuvre for school principals. The social technologies applied by the authorities (like accountability systems) can be "tight" or "loose" and so leave little or much room for principals' interpretations of what a good school…

Many educational systems, like many public sectors, find themselves in the midst of rapid changes. In many cases, decentralisation is the order of the day, often alongside re-centralisation. The new relations between supra-national, national, local and organisational levels create novel conditions for leading schools and for establishing…