Leadership development in Swedish schools: Two complementary studies
Study 1: Evaluating Sweden's Principal Preparation Program
The first study provides a comprehensive evaluation of Sweden's mandatory Principal Preparation Program, implemented nationally since 2009. Using a longitudinal research design, we track principals over time before and after program participation, combining dynamic difference-in-differences analysis with multilevel modeling techniques. The study leverages capacity-constrained admissions during 2018-2021, comparing principals who were waitlisted with those admitted directly to strengthen causal inference.
The analysis examines effects on student academic outcomes including grade results and national test scores, as well as teacher assessments of principal instructional leadership. This represents one of the most comprehensive evaluations of a national principal preparation program to date, leaning on our interdisciplinary capabilities.
Study 2: Leadership Training as a Distributed Property
The second study investigates whether leadership training effectiveness depends on distributed leadership practices within schools. While research has established that leadership in schools is often distributed across multiple individuals and roles, training programs typically focus on individual principals rather than leadership teams.
This study examines whether training becomes more effective when multiple members of school leadership teams participate in professional development programs at different times. The research explores how sequential training of leadership team members might create different organizational learning patterns compared to training individual principals in isolation.
The analysis uses the same longitudinal dataset but focuses on schools where multiple leadership team members have participated in various training programs over time. This allows examination of whether leadership development functions as an organizational rather than purely individual phenomenon.
Together, these studies address fundamental questions about how leadership development programs should be designed and implemented. The research contributes to policy discussions about mandatory certification requirements for school leaders while advancing theoretical understanding of distributed leadership in educational contexts.