There is general agreement that teachers assume a wide range of roles to support student learning and their success. Furthermore, there is a common assumption that they are important leaders for schools as “learning organisations” (cf. Schratz & Steiner-Löffler ,1998).

In Austria and Italy, in order to develop teachers’ professional competences, teachers are required attend external training courses with pedagogical offers chosen by educational authorities. Unfortunately, there’s often an arbitrary selection of theory-based input which do not align with the real and specific professional needs of teachers. Moreover, there is a discrepancy between the general theoretical description and the real learning situation of students in their schools. School leaders often have minimal or no influence on the choice of their teachers’ professional educational development. Nevertheless, to improve student learning leaders have to have a clear idea on what teacher learning could be and when it occurs during everyday school life. Following a phenomenological-pedagogical understanding of learning, based on an understanding of “learning as experience” (Meyer-Drawe, 2010) the proposal perceives teacher learning as a phenomenon somewhere occurring between reproductivity and productivity, between the “self” and the “alien”, between “order” and “chaos” where it forms polarities which allow “a scale of intermediate possibilities” (Waldenfels, 1997, p. 89). “Responding to unexpected demands that disrupt an existing order and change the conditions of understanding and agreement”, it allows a “productive form of response” and we can “find the paradox of a creative response which we have not yet been able to give” (Waldenfels 1997, p. 53; translated by the authors). “Such experience[s] [are] crisscrossed by fault lines [...] in which movements break open and down and the new comes to the surface” (Waldenfels 2006, p. 9; translated by the authors). In everyday school life it seems essential to give such teacher learning appropriate space. As recent studies (cf. Sheppard, Brown & Dibbon, 2009) point out, school leaders can play a catalytic and supporting role in this context, having faster and more reliable access to research results. As a result, leaders can have a supporting function and therefore narrow or widen the range of creative responses of teachers (cf. Ball, Maguire & Brown, 2012). They foster teacher learning not just by shaping schools environments but also by school leadership behaviours (cf. Stein & Spillane 2005, p. 34). As a consequence, school leaders need to have a certain understanding of leadership. According to Leithwood and Riehl (2005, p. 13f.) leadership implies “social relationships and serves social ends, leadership involves purpose and direction, leadership is an influence process, leadership is a function, conceptual and contingent.” Only in line with this interpretation of learning and leadership, school leaders can become the agents of teacher leadership.

The purpose of the study is to explore the necessary intuitional conditions, tools and leadership practises in order to support and sustain teachers in their learning process. Therefore it will be asked which specific leadership practices lead to the success of new teacher roles and responsibilities as well as to enhanced student learning? What are the learning options given to teachers by their leaders in their schools in order to contribute to schools' success? And which concrete tools engage teacher learning without the need to resort to external educational offers?

As one tool for professional development we would like to propose vignettes (cf. Schratz, Schwarz & Westfall-Greiter, 2012; Baur & Peterlini, 2016). Focusing on the experience of learning, vignettes have the potential to address learning experiences as well as to raise awareness of school teachers own learning and their influence on students learning.

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