International perspectives on leader development: Definition and design

The purpose of this special issue is to critically analyse the state of school leader development across a number of societies. As such, it aims to contribute to previous efforts to examine broad global trends in this domain (Brundrett and Crawford, 2012; Hallinger, 2003; Huber, 2004; Lumby et al., 2008); as well as in more geographically defined slices, such Europe (Muller and Schratz, 2008); Asia (Walker et al., 2008; Walker et al., 2007) and the USA (Young et al., 2009). Completed and in-train studies in the area range from investigations across societies (comparative), studies examining the intersection between policy and leader development, and research at the programme level.