With the increasing complexity of school leader's role (Beausaert et al., 2023), leadership development research becomes more urgent. Investing in professional development of principals is key in raising the quality of teaching and education (Rodriguez-Gomez et al., 2020). However, there is limited research on professional learning of these leaders (Lovett et al., 2015). Moreover, the notion of effective professional development of school leaders lacks clarity (Daniels et al., 2019), and comprehensive research addressing the reciprocity between professional development activities and school leaders’ daily activities in practice is lacking (Daniels et al., 2019). Thus, this paper aims to answer the following research question: How did design criteria and contents of a professional development programme, according to participants, contribute to the development of their inclusive leadership behaviour? To this end, we followed 17 school and childcare leaders collaborating in Dutch child centres for education and childcare, who participated in a dedicated professional development programme (PDP) on inclusive leadership. Inclusive leadership is a promising leadership approach in context where teams are diverse, such as interprofessional teams in education and health care (Nembhard & Edmondson, 2006). Following the theoretical framework of Randel et al. (2018), inclusive leadership consists of two dimensions: facilitating belongingness and valuing uniqueness. We utilised qualitative data from observations and interviews, complemented by pre- and post-programme self-evaluations for a comprehensive analysis. Six distinct design criteria derived from the literature where tailored to developing inclusive leadership, which formed the basis for the programme that consisted of four sessions, spread over 5 months. The main finding suggests that participants' involvement in the professional development programme resulted in an augmented awareness of inclusive leadership which was manifested through the adoption of new behaviours or an increased application of inclusive leadership behaviours. Essential design criteria for this purpose, according to participants, included collective learning and participation in pairs, Organising collective learning is considered a crucial design criterion for PDPs tailored to school leaders, recognising that the role of a school leader is sometimes perceived as isolating (Service et al., 2018). Self-regulated learning through the use of learning logs and reflective interviews, was highly valued by the participants, particularly when learning logs and reflective interviews were combined. The non-parametrical Wilcoxon signed-rank test demonstrated a significant increase in two aspects of inclusive leadership. Furthermore, both in the pre-test and the post-test, it was evident that participants considered fostering belongingness to be more important than valuing uniqueness.

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