Learning and Development are considered to be an integral and central part of school - however, this does not only refer to students’ and teachers’ (professional) growth, the qualification of school principals is also coming to the fore in view of social transformation processes and the resulting (new) demands on schools. Apart from activities in the field of teaching, pedagogical work, management and leadership actions, school principals also have a central role in the context of school development (Prasse, 2012; Brauckmann, 2014; Klein & Tulowitzki, 2020). Although the relevance of further training of school principals is clearly evident, their general qualification and further training in Germany resembles a "patchwork quilt" (Klein & Tulowitzki, 2020, p. 265). Several problems become apparent in this regard: On the one hand, the provision of continuing education takes place in a variety of forms and by different organizations (including those outside of schools); on the other hand, these continuing education offerings are usually not linked to one another or empirically verified with regard to their impact (ibid.). And even though there have been many theoretical and empirical attempts to specify, at what time, where and how professional learning opportunities are most beneficial for the attendees (e. g. Lipowsky & Rzejak, 2017), the persons who carry out these trainings seem to be a blind spot so far. Since this group of people can include all persons who are actively involved in the professional development and professionalization of teachers or school principals (European Commission, 2013), one of the difficulties lies in the heterogeneity of further education trainers in the school context (Lünenberg, 2010), who can differ immensely in terms of their education, professional background, and professional attitudes. This raises questions about the influence of the personal and professional characteristics of further education trainers on the impact of trainings, since the influence of the attributes of the training program as well as of the participants have already been demonstrated (Huber, 2011). Since this group of people has received little empirical attention so far, this paper would like to address this exact issue and explore what expectations school principals themselves have of their further educators.
Therefore, the aim of this article is to provide a glimpse into the requirements of further education trainers from the perspective of school principals and to elaborate on their characteristics and attributes. The focus is on empirical interview data with school principals, which show what demands are placed on this group of people. As such, our guiding research question is relatively straight-forward: What are the requirements of school principals for further education trainers in the school context in terms of their characteristics, professional background and attitudes?