Leadership and School Improvement in Context. A Systematic Comparative Analysis of North Rhine-Westfalia and California

近年来，在讨论学校成功改进的条件和特征时，学校领导的重要性日益得到强调，特别是在组织和教学过程中（这通常是在环境条件困难的学校中），需要改进的学校增加了。经验证据表明，学校领导对学校改进策略的设计和结果的相关性主要来自美国；到目前为止，只有少数研究调查了学校领导在改善德国发展需求增加的学校中的作用。在这方面，尚不清楚美国的研究结果在多大程度上可以转移到德国学校的领导中，特别是关于不同的背景条件，这些条件预先决定了校长在多大程度上可以实际影响和改变学校的进程。因此，目前的研究基础并没有提供关于校长在德国学校改善文献中经常处于中心地位是否合理的迹象。因此，所描述的研究项目使用了加州和北莱茵-威斯特法伦州发展需求增加的学校领导活动的比较研究，以研究相互依赖关系和行动逻辑以及校长的领导策略。奖学金用于在美国进行分析。在加州大学伯克利分校（University of California, Berkeley）停留的12个月期间，将首先使用网络分析和调查对6所发展需求增加的学校进行分析。第二步，将使用人类学方法对其中两所学校进行更深入的分析。研究的目标是找出德国和美国需要改进的学校的结构和历史文化背景的差异在多大程度上影响了领导力，并提出关于英语研究中的领导力模型是否可以转移到德国背景的假设。

In recent years, the importance of school leadership has been increasingly emphasized in the discussion about conditions and characteristics of successful improvement of schools with increased needs for improvement particularly in organizational and instructional processes (which often is the case in schools with difficult context conditions). Empirical evidence suggesting the relevance of school leadership for the design and outcome of school improvement strategies are mainly from the USA; so far, only few studies have investiagted the role of school leadership in the improvement of schools with increased development needs in Germany. In this respect, it is unclear to what extent the findings from the USA can be transferred to leadership in German schools, especially with regard to the diverging context conditions that predetermine how much principals can actually affect and change processes within the school. Accordingly, the current research base does not provide indications as to whether the central position the principal often has in the German school improvement literature is justified.The research project described therefore uses a comparative study of school leadership activities in schools with increased development needs in California and North Rhine-Westfalia to study the interdependencies and logic of action as well as leadership strategies of principals. The scholarship is used to conduct the analyses in the USA. During a stay of twelve months at the University of California, Berkeley, six schools with increased development needs will first be analyzed using network analysis and a survey. In a second step, two of these schoosl will be subject to deeper analysis using anethnographic approach. The goals are to find out to what extent differences in the structural and historical-cultural context of schools with increased need for improvement in Germany and the USA affect leadership, and to develop hypotheses as to whether leadership models from anglophone research can be transferred to the German context.