Continuous professional development (CPD) for school leaders has been a high priority internationally over the past decades. This symposium reports on findings from an EU-funded (Lifelong Learning Programme, Comenius) project where nine countries tried new formats of continuous professional development (CPD) for school leaders by adapting, integrating and piloting an online self-assessment inventory, personalized feedback for reflection and group-coaching activities into current CPD programs. Completion of the inventory generates a personalized feedback report for each participant, which is structured around key leadership competencies that help the participants identify strengths and weaknesses, and suggest areas for improvement. While the feedback aims to improve the participants’ understandings of their motivations and competencies with respect to the way they exercise leadership, the following group-coaching activities facilitate reflections on leadership behaviors, linked to the individual work roles and contexts. The participating countries were seven EU-funded European countries, Switzerland, Cyprus, Czech Republic, England, Denmark, Norway, and Spain. In addition, the US acted as a critical friend (third country partner) and Sweden and Australia (Queensland) were associated, self-funded partners.

The session has two overall objectives. First, it presents and discusses findings from the project and promising approaches to CPD activities, which can support school leaders in their daily practice. Second, it addresses challenges with respect to comparative research, development work, and approaches that take the different cultural features and work contexts into account. The symposium includes three paper presentations, first a presentation of the statistical and social validation of the scales and issues related to country adaptation is provided. Second, the learning experience of participants is investigated across various implementation models. Third, the interplay between feedback and coaching is explored as well as the impact on participants’ learning. Finally, the discussion provides opportunities to exchange knowledge and experience with a wider international audience.

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