Educating Danish school leaders to meet new expectations?

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 and have to live up to, and thus need to be educated to master. After that it gives a short introduction to contemporary concepts and theories of school leadership. All of them are based on concepts of leadership for learning. Those two tendencies are discussed in relation to educating school leaders. The discussion is illustrated with Danish school leaders' situations.