Especially schools in socioeconomic disadvantaged areas have to face challenging circumstances caused by external conditions: low students’ basic learning skills, unfavorable socioeconomic background, insufficient parental support (Teddlie et al., 2000). But schools’ underperformance or failure cannot only be attributed to external context factors; it can also be considered as a result of insufficient process quality at school and classroom level (Holtappels, 2008). Thus, studies show that unexpected effective schools in challenging circumstances exist, where students attain high academic achievement despite of unfavorable conditions for successful pedagogical work in the social context (Muijs et al., 2004). Therefore, strategies for improvement have to focus mainly on the development of the internal structure and culture of schools’ organisation to enhance the educational quality on class and school level (Harris & Chapman, 2004).

Research findings about school and classroom factors in schools with difficulties show that in particular insufficient leadership competencies, low intensity of teacher collaboration and a poor learning culture constitute important predictors for failing (Hargreaves, 2004; Harris & Chapman, 2002; MacBeath & Stoll, 2004). Beyond this, schools in trouble often do act in a wrong direction by using inappropriate change strategies: no clear and realizable goals, short-time planning, developmental concepts with too little scope. With regard to schools in challenging circumstances, previous studies reveal conducive conditions for school turnaround: appropriate leadership practices, professional learning communities, readiness for innovation and commitment towards school development (Muijs et al., 2004).

The principal leadership styles depend on school’s student body composition and school’s effectiveness (Teddlie et al., 2000): In schools with low SES-students principals are more initiators and in middle SES-schools more managers. In effective and improving schools instructional leadership has taken place, which means that principals mainly focus on teaching and learning (Teddlie & Stringfield, 1993). Effective leadership patterns in schools facing challenging circumstances are characterized by strategies for building teams, delegating responsibility to teachers and encouraging teachers to set developmental goals and to work for improvement (Chapman & Harris, 2004; Reynolds et al., 2001). These empirical results are linked with the approach of leadership for learning (MacBeath & Stoll, 2004; Townsend, 2014): This type of leadership sets a clear focus on learning, provides supportive conditions for learning, promotes a dialogue about goals and quality of teaching, enables the teaching staff for sharing leadership and establishes a shared sense of accountability. Additionally, leading practices focusing on collaborative learning of teachers (Sharatt & Planche, 2016) and on shaping conducive learning environments for students as well as shared and distributed leadership seem to be key factors for effective heads even in schools with difficulties (Harris & Chapman, 2002).

With regard to school quality models (Kyriakides et al., 2010), we draw attention on relationships between principal leadership patterns, professional collaboration of teachers, collective self-efficacy of teachers, working climate and readiness for innovation as well as on teaching development and teaching quality. Previous studies about effective schools confirm these relations (Holtappels, 2013). We assume that in schools with a higher level of leadership for learning systematical approaches of teaching development strategies are used more intensively and teaching quality is on a higher level than in other schools.

Our analyses will follow four research questions:

1) What kind of leadership patterns can be identified in schools in challenging circumstances, differentiated for student body composition of schools?

2) How strong are relationships between perceived leadership patterns and teacher collaboration, collective self-efficacy of teachers, working climate within the staff, affective commitment towards school and readiness for innovation?

3) Can we identify an influence of leadership for learning, teacher collaboration and teachers’ attitudes and beliefs on teaching quality and instructional development?

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