Background

In view of the ever-increasing responsibilities of school leaders for ensuring and enhancing the quality of schools, school leadership has in the last decades become one of the central concerns of educational policy makers. Providers of continuous professional development (CPD) for school leaders in Europe and elsewhere have over the last decades increased their efforts in creating effective learning contexts. Elements which are increasingly shaping the structure, content and methods of professional development programmes are the needs of the school leaders, new demands and expectations from stakeholders, school leaders’ changing practice, aspects related to applying knowledge and skills, and how to sustain learning. Consequently, it can be argued that CPD has to integrate diagnostic means as a starting point for training and development programmes to develop differentiated approaches in order to obtain the aims of CPD. Additionally, research on CPD for school leaders points to several challenges related to the need for a practical orientation of the programmes, integrating personal leadership development as well as finding ways to sustain learning beyond the period of participation in a CPD programme. This project aims to respond to these challenges by exploring the potential of integrating an ICT-based self-assessment instrument and group coaching as part of the CPD-programmes for school leaders in the participating countries.