To begin, the European community as well as other countries around the globe has witnessed massive social, economic, and political changes that have stimulated policymakers and citizens to more closely examine the goals and purposes of their educational systems as they address daunting challenges brought about by these changes early in the 21st century. Such forces as globalization, increased economic competition among nations, increased migration, social networking and advances in technology, dramatic political changes in Eastern Europe at the end of the 20th century, international comparisons using measures of student attainments, PISA, for example, and increased demands for good student outcomes and for accountability have intensified the work of educational professionals, especially school principals. These demands have led to careful analyses of the leadership roles, responsibilities, relationships, and work of school principals related to their effectiveness in meeting the challenges through the quality of education provided in their schools. Unlike in Australia, Canada, and the United States where scholarship on school principals is well established in universities, education agencies, and research centers we see that the research efforts in some countries are in the early stages of defining and setting a coordinated agenda for examining principals’ work. While there are important differences in research foci and findings on principals our purpose here is to highlight common trends and to indicate where research findings suggest that scholars have shared interests and thus might collaborate in cross-national research projects in the coming decade. In addition, our discussion of cross-cutting themes helps to highlight existing strengths in contemporary research on principals as well as indicate important areas currently not examined thereby giving direction to future research efforts in the field. This can be done despite or maybe because of the differences between the systems and there governing forms. Finally, our purpose is to identify major themes that cut across research on principals in the countries represented in this volume. Based on these reviews of research, in the final section we offer our recommendations for advancing research on school principals.

Ärlestig, H, Johansson, O. & Nihlfors, E. (2016) Swedish School Leadership Research – An Important but Neglected Area. In Helene Ärlestig, Christopher Day, Olof Johansson (Eds) A Decade of Research on School Principals: Cases from 24 countries (Dordrecht: Springer),