ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks answers to the question: ‘What do we know about leadership?’ Ministries or Departments of Education would say ‘quite a lot’. A quick scan of their websites in countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada, New Zealand and Australia tells us that most have defined leadership through ‘Standards or Capabilities Frameworks’. These frameworks describe in detail the kinds of skills, competencies or dispositions employers believe their school leaders should have. The frameworks are used for a variety of purposes: as recruitment and selection instruments, as self-reflective devices for those considering whether they should make a move towards leadership, as guides for professional learning programmes and as formal assessment tools for promotion purposes. Most of these frameworks carry explicit messages about the type of leaders that school systems want to appoint by laying out expectations about what is acceptable.
