The Art of the Deal? Coping with the Idea of More Power and Responsib...

It is likely that contextual and educational governance structures, as interpreted by school leaders, influence the leadership styles adopted by them in their work. Patterns of centralization or decentralization as well as evaluation and accountability arrangements set the backdrop for each school leader. From an educational policy maker´s point of view it is taken for granted that school principals should care about this new output-oriented steering paradigm because those institutional reforms are supposed to lead to an expansion and intensification of the principal´s traditional role (Brauckmann, S. & Schwarz, 2015). Ignoring the existence of particular contextual and governance issues at play, is in effect similar to examining school leadership in vitro instead of in the particular conditions in which it is in fact taking place.