The professionalization of school leaders is high on the agenda. There is a need for standardized offers which provide systematic feedback to professionals interested in assessing their strengths and individual development needs. Suitable instruments are still scarce. The Competence Profile School Management (CPSM) offers participants the possibility to reflect their strengths and weaknesses in different requirement areas of school leadership, and to compare their individual results with peers from the school context, thus gaining valuable information on their individual profiles when planning their professional development and careers. To provide a valid and reliable self-assessment tool for school leaders which also meets the social validity of participants, a comprehensive evaluation on the CPSM self-assessment version 2.0 leading to a third version is reported.

The first version of CPSM was comprised of 30 requirement dimensions, grouped into six job requirement areas. The job requirement areas and assigned requirement dimensions have been deducted from:

-        theoretical work / theories of school leadership (see Moos & Huber 2007),

-        studies of the job profiles of school leadership (see Huber 2004; Huber & Schneider 2007), and

-        reviews of international studies from the field of school effectiveness and school improvement (see Huber & Muijs 2010).

The tool is designed as an internet-based self-assessment. It attempts to help participants to clarify their career choices and identify whether a leadership position in the educational setting might suit them.

It was developed in cooperation with eligo, experts in web-based aptitude testing, led by Wottawa, chair of methodology, diagnostics and evaluation of the psychology department at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. Using the requirements of educational leadership positions as a base, suitable testing scales were chosen from the eligo portfolio of existing test scales. If necessary, items were reworded to fit the school leadership context; new items were added to broaden or adapt concepts. In the end, 30 test scales made it into the pilot study, which was conducted in Germany in the fall of 2007.

After analysis of the pilot data, the second version of the tool (CPSM 2.0) has been reduced to 24 job requirement dimensions (test scales) grouped into six job requirements areas. We integrated achievement tests to focus on various forms of cognitive ability as well as different personality measurements (questionnaire format and motive grid). A fuller description of the inventory including results of the pilot study, the standardization, and the psychometric data analysis of the first version of CPSM (CPSM 1.0) is provided by Huber and Hiltmann (2010) and in various conference papers presented at AERA, ICSEI, ECER in the years 2008, 2009, 2010.

Immediately after finishing the self-assessment, the participant receives an email on how to download the personal feedback report (password protected). The feedback report comprises extensive feedback on all of the six requirement areas with the 24 requirement dimensions (scales).

On a voluntary basis, a workshop linked to CPSM is offered, which addresses participants who have completed the self-assessment. This workshop is taken by nearly 100% of the participants of CPSM.

Huber, S.G. & Hiltmann, M. (2011). Competence Profile School Management (CPSM) – an Inventory for the Self-Assessment of School Leadership. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability (in print; published online 9th of December Educ Asse Eval Acc DOI 10.1007/s11092-010-9111-1). Huber, S.G. (2010a). School Leadership - International Perspectives. Dordrecht: Springer. Huber, S.G. (2010b). New Approaches in Preparing School Leaders. In: P. Peterson, E.Baker, B. McGaw (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Education. Volume 4, pp. 752-761. Oxford: Elsevier. Huber, S. G., Hiltmann, M. & Lehmann, M. (2008). Evaluation des Kompetenzprofils Schulmanagement (KPSM) 1.0. Projektbericht. Institut für Bildungsmanagement und Bildungsökonomie, Pädagogische Hochschule Zentralschweiz, Zug. Huber, S.G. & Schneider, N. (2007). Anforderungen an Schulleitung: Was wird in den Ländern von pädagogischen Führungskräften in der Schule erwartet? In: A. Bartz. J. Fabian, S.G. Huber, C. Kloft, H. Rosenbusch, & H. Sassenscheidt (Eds.). PraxisWissen Schulleitung (10.24). München: Wolters Kluwer. Huber, S.G. (2004). Preparing School Leaders for the 21st Century: An International Comparison of Development Programmes in 15 Countries. In: J. Chrispeels, B. Creemers, D. Reynolds, & S. Stringfield (Eds.). Context of Learning. London/New York: Routledge. Huber, S.G., & Muijs, D. (2010). School Leadership Effectiveness - The Growing Insight in the Importance of School Leadership for the Quality and Development of Schools and their Pupils. In S.G Huber (Ed.), School Leadership - International Perspectives. Springer.