For about 20 years, educational leadership research has focused its research on the relationship between leadership and learning. Under the frame ‘Leadership for Learning’ (Townsend and MacBeath 2011) various research projects were carried out worldwide and different results were presented. An effect of educational leadership on the learning of students can be attested (f.e. Robinson, Lloyd, and Rowe 2008, Witziers, Bosker, and Kruger 2003). ‘Instructional Leadership’ (Halverson 2009) was identified as a successful leadership model and soon proved that this could lead to a deprofessionalization of teachers (Fullan 2014, Mehta 2013).

There are often two challenges in the ‘Leadership for Learning’-research:

On the one hand, research focuses strongly on the performance of the students. Learning-effective schools are considered to be those in which students achieve high scores in tests. However, it can be argued that learning, considering the mission of the school, involves much more than just producing high test results. If one considers the connection between leadership and learning exlusively under this premise, then only certain aspects of education are considered, which leave out several, but crucial facets of education and of the educational mission of the school.

On the other hand, leadership is usually tied to a position and thus to a person. Leadership is equated with the action of the leader. Although concepts such as ‘Distributed Leadership’ (Spillane 2006) are identified as successful leadership models (Day et al., 2009), at the same time they remain attached to the perspective of the individual.

Today's leadership research no longer focuses exclusively on the leader, but also focuses on the followers and the context. Leadership is understood as a social process between actors within a specific context. This is where the symposium begins.

From different perspectives and different interests, the question of 'learning-effective’ principalship is discussed. The basis for this is a comprehensive research project, which examines the educational leadership at the winning schools of the German school award. The learning effectiveness of the school is in this project not determined by test results, but by the six quality criteria of the school award (Beutel et al., 2016). In addition to students' performance as performance characteristics, process elements such as dealing with diversity, learning institutions or social responsibility also come into account.

Beutel, S. , Höhmann, K., Pant, H., Schratz, M. (2016) Handbuch Gute Schule: Sechs Qualitätsbereiche für eine zukünftige Praxis. Seelze: Kallmeyer in Verbindung mit Klett. Day, C., Sammons, P., Hopkins, D., Harris, A., Leithwood, K., Gu, Q., Brown, E., Atharidou, E., Kington, A. (2009) The Impact of School Leadership on Pupil Outcomes. Final Report. Nottingham: University of Nottingham. Fullan, M. (2014) The Principal. Three Keys to Maximazing Impact. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Halverson, R. (2009) New Instructional Leadership. Wie Schulleitungen die Kompetenz entwickeln können, schulisches Lernen systematisch zu verbessern. Die Deutsche Schule 101 (4):323-340. Mehta, J. (2013) The allure oforder: High hopes, dashed expections, and the troubled quest to remake American schooling. New York: Oxford University Press. Robinson, V., Lloyd, C., Rowe, K. (2008) The impact of leadership on student outcomes: An analysis of the differentiel effects of leadership type. Educational Adminstration Quarterly 44(5):635-674. Spillane, J. (2006) Distributed Leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Townsend, T., MacBeath, J. (2011) International Handbook of Leadership for Learning, Springer International Handbooks of Education. Heidelberg, London, New York: Springer. Witziers, B., Bosker, R., Krüger, M. (2003) Educational Leadership and student achievement: the elusive search for an association. Educational Adminstration Quarterly 39 (3):398-425.