Curriculum and School Leadership – Adjusting School Leadership to Curriculum

This chapter looks at the role of school leadership vis a vis the curriculum. First, it offers a brief overview of school leadership in Germany, acknowledging the multitude of systems within the system as each German federal state has autonomy over educational matters. Next, curriculum development and research in Germany is briefly recapped, including historical aspects, and the curriculum work of school leaders on the school level is discussed. Then the discussion is linked to the international discourse on instructional leadership. Next, we conclude with the concept of organizational education (“Organisationspädagogik”) as a perspective for viewing school leadership in conjunction with the curriculum. Finally, based on the material presented before, we take a reflective look ahead and ponder possibilities and desiderata of school leadership in the context of curriculum. The chapter shows that school leaders in Germany regard themselves as education professionals deriving from the teaching profession. Instruction and pedagogical tasks and developing a collaborative school improvement culture is what they prefer. Administrative tasks and certain controlling aspects of management are perceived as strain. It is argued that the concept of “educational leadership” is strongly – even if even implicitly – aligned with the knowledge base of instructional leadership as well as of the curriculum discussion in Germany.