At an international level it is asserted that high caliber principals are considered especially important to the organization and function of successful, flexible and autonomous schools. As a consequence school principals at autonomous schools are re-faced with growing strategic leadership tasks in terms of specifying school development goals and their conceptual implementation.
The first push for an increase in the interest of what tasks school leaders perform in the teaching and learning processes in their schools stems from the effective schools research and development activities (Hallinger & Heck 1998; Marzano, Waters, & McNulty 2005; Hoy & Miskel 2008; Huber, S.G., & Muijs, D. 2010). At an international level, more research has been conducted on the key qualities, skills and work activities central to successful principalship such as, for instance, the way school leaders prioritize their work load.
Less research has been conducted on the contextual conditions which enable or constrain principals’ priority setting with regards to performing certain tasks (Horng et al. 2009;  Rosenbusch et al. 2007). Variants in the distribution of time on strategic and operative tasks have so far been partly assigned to systemic influence factors (e.g. degrees of autonomy and accountability), to the institutional influence (e.g. school form, school size) (see Goldring et al. 2008) or to situative factors (Vroom & Jago, 2007). In view of the generally small size of random samples used in the assessments so far, their explorative character should be emphasised. As a consequence we need to know more about what school principals choose to do (tasks) and for how long (time) and under what conditions (occupational stressregulation) in order to enhance student teaching and learning in our schools.
The SHaRP project aims at assessing the current legal conditions and the concrete conditions of the work of school principals are facing in different German Laender (federal states) and if these conditions can be regarded as appropriate considering the new educational governance driven demands on school leaders´ roles and functions. Therefore the SHaRP study shall deliver representative findings on the tasks and time structures of school principals with different degrees of autonomy. It will pursue the question as to whether autonomous school principals spend more time on conceptual than on operative tasks. The study shall provide information whether heavier timely demands are a consequence of school autonomy, or if they are due to the organizational context of individual schools (e.g. school form, school size, responsibilities within the school and governance boards) or to rather personal characteristics of school principals.
We expect to find
•    differences between offered and actually used enhanced decision-making powers by school form (primary vs. secondary school level)
•    different activities of school principals (e.g. time constraints in the field of activity of conceptual work and operative work), depending on contextual features (e.g. school size and school form)
•    differences between timely workload depending on person-related features (e.g. personality traits, self- efficacy, self-regulation)
•    different development stages with regard to support systems (provision and assurance of additional resources) from educational administrators according to the degree of autonomy in the German Laender (federal states)

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