Leadership and School Improvement in Context. A Systematic Comparative Analysis of North Rhine-Westfalia and California

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Esther Dominique Klein
• Subject Area: Education Systems and Educational Institutions
• Term: from 2015 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 279117632

In recent years, the importance of school leadership has been increasingly emphasized in the discussion about conditions and characteristics of successful improvement of schools with increased needs for improvement particularly in organizational and instructional processes (which often is the case in schools with difficult context conditions). Empirical evidence suggesting the relevance of school leadership for the design and outcome of school improvement strategies are mainly from the USA; so far, only few studies have investiagted the role of school leadership in the improvement of schools with increased development needs in Germany. In this respect, it is unclear to what extent the findings from the USA can be transferred to leadership in German schools, especially with regard to the diverging context conditions that predetermine how much principals can actually affect and change processes within the school. Accordingly, the current research base does not provide indications as to whether the central position the principal often has in the German school improvement literature is justified.The research project described therefore uses a comparative study of school leadership activities in schools with increased development needs in California and North Rhine-Westfalia to study the interdependencies and logic of action as well as leadership strategies of principals. The scholarship is used to conduct the analyses in the USA. During a stay of twelve months at the University of California, Berkeley, six schools with increased development needs will first be analyzed using network analysis and a survey. In a second step, two of these schoosl will be subject to deeper analysis using anethnographic approach. The goals are to find out to what extent differences in the structural and historical-cultural context of schools with increased need for improvement in Germany and the USA affect leadership, and to develop hypotheses as to whether leadership models from anglophone research can be transferred to the German context.

• DFG Programme: Research Fellowships
• International Connection: USA
• Host: Professor Heinrich Mintrop, Ph.D.