The starting point of this paper is that contemporary reforms in the Nordic countries mirror two seemingly incompatible governing strategies labelled respectively external control versus professional commitment of which mutual trust between governance actors is a key component (Rowan, 1990). The tensions between these models can also be interpreted as part of a larger battlefield between a “Building” versus an outcome discourse (Moos, 2017). The analysis, mainly based on a review of Nordic research, supplemented with more recent observations, reveal that state bodies, municipal school owners and school boards employ elements of both control and professional trust when they interact with school principals at the street level of the governance chain (Paulsen & Høyer, 2016), and superintendents mainly act as mediators. On the other hand, the review also shows that school superintendents and principals to a large extent activate professional learning forums and inter-personal day-to-day relations (Moos, Nihlfors, & Paulsen, 2016), in order to make collective sense of ambiguous and uncertain national reforms. Important learning conditions that emerge from the publications, on which the reviewed research is based, seem to cluster and cohere round learning climate, interpersonal trust, leadership support and a shared knowledge base between the school leaders and the municipal apparatus (Paulsen & Henriksen, 2017). More recent findings from a Norwegian action research study of municipal dialogue meetings populated by superintendent and school leaders support this notion. Finally, inferences from a Finnish study, where basic schoolteachers were observational units, also indicate that moral leadership exerted by principals paired with distributed leadership practices, where teachers were involved in pedagogical decision-making processes, to be a cornerstone of a trust-based school development strategy. Implications for school governance, school leadership and professional development are discussed.

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