This transatlantic symposium is designed to bring together scholars on educational leadership and curriculum/Didaktik from Europe and the US. We address three dilemmas for educational leadership research and curriculum studies.

First, while working realities for educational leaders from schools to transnational level become increasingly intertwined and complex, educational research continues to differentiate into different subfields. Although producing qualified and specific knowledge this development runs the risk of resulting in knowledge of limited validity for practitioners. This calls upon the need of dialogue between educational leadership research and curriculum studies, evaluation research, policy studies and philosophy.

Second, in Europe, the intensified a focus on educational leadership is partly driven by neoliberal policies, evaluation practices, and curriculum standards, as is the case in the USA. Such societal changes, including the move from a European social-democratic welfare state towards a neoliberal outcome based model, run the risk of limiting leadership into a question of technical efficiency. A dilemma is that such an education model may be counterproductive for democratic and creative citizenship European states as USA confess to. Given this, what shape and form should a theory of educational leadership take?

Third, while European countries have gone through a process of differentiation and decentralization of curriculum an opposite movement is occurring in the USA. Transnational evaluation affects both education systems. Consequently this symposium considers educational leadership, curriculum work and evaluation as multi-level phenomena - educational leadership occurs from local schools to transnational levels. However, we lack not only substantive empirical insight in how e.g. the EU level affects its different member states and the other way around. There is also need for conceptual developments of how these levels interact.  In addition, although we are familiar with international policy and curriculum borrowing since centuries, educational leadership and curriculum research has typically been conceptualized as a nation state problem, while lacking a language for transnational dimensions across different kind of polities.

By addressing these and related questions the symposium (Part I & II) wish to contribute to a principled and theoretically more solid framework that could inform new research studies and fields, as well as create a coherent language for policymakers, school leaders, school development programs and teachers. A blind spot in curriculum studies/Didaktik is the limited attention paid to leadership forms/structures and interactions (Gundem, 2010), despite an increasing interest in curriculum governance, in the development of curriculum guidelines, as well in evaluation of curriculum reforms on a state level.

Thus, the symposium asks if and how educational leadership studies and curriculum theory/Didaktik could benefit from a closer dialogue? However, the approach in this symposium is that a simple merging of curriculum theory/Didaktik and educational leadership studies is not possible. To address the above questions in a structured manner may require new openings.

Given the transnational character of contemporary evaluation practices, increasing homogenization concerning aims and contents of national curricula this symposium is structured as a comparative dialogue between traditions within Europe and between Europe and the USA (Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, USA).

The contributions in this symposium look for theoretical openings that on the one hand draw upon existing research and models within educational leadership and curriculum studies/Didaktik as and, on the other hand, bring in new theoretical perspectives as discursive institutionalism (Schmidt, 2008) well as foundational theories of education like non-affirmative education theory (Benner, 1991). A more sensitive take to different political, historical and cultural traditions is clearly present. The contributions assume that a historical and cultural point of departure is necessary in understanding and comparing how transnational policies are differently adopted and mediated by educational leadership in various countries. 

Benner, D. (1991). Allgemeine Pädagogik: eine systematisch-problemgeschichtliche Einführung in die Grundstruktur pädagogischen Denkens und Handelns. Weinheim: Juventa. Crossley, M. (2000). Bridging cultures and traditions in the reconceptualisation of comparative and international education. Comparative Education, 36(3), 319-332. Hopmann, S. (2015). ‘Didaktik meets Curriculum’ revisited: historical encounters, systematic experience, empirical limits. 2015, 1: 27007 - http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/nstep.v1.27007 Gundem, B. B. (2010). European curriculum studies. Continental overview (pp. 354-358). In: C. Kriedel (ed.), Encyclopedia of curriculum studies. London: Sage. Gunter, H. (2016). An Intellectual History of School Leadership Practice and Research Gunter. Bloomsbury. Schmidt, V. (2008). Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse. Annual Review of Political Science 11, 303–26.