Conference Agenda

This study examines how Sweden’s National School Leadership Training Programme (NSLT), and the educators who deliver it, interpret and adapt its content to support preschool principals’ accountability for quality work. Preschool principals’ leadership is widely recognized as central to ensuring high‑quality preschool provision, and several studies underscore the need for robust leadership competencies and professional training to meet the complex demands of the role (Douglass, 2019; Gibbs, 2021; Lee et al., 2025). Yet, as both the OECD (2019) and the European Commission (2019) emphasize, leadership training in preschools remains an area requiring sustained policy attention. According to UNESCO (2024), many countries still lack coherent pathways for leadership preparation, and this absence of formal, specialized training contributes to significant disparities in preschool principals’ pedagogical leadership, staff support, and the learning environments they cultivate. At the same time, UNESCO notes a gradual international shift: an increasing number of countries—including Australia, Finland, Malaysia, Singapore, and the United States—have introduced clearer qualification requirements for preschool principals that combine expertise in early childhood education with structured management or leadership training.

Sweden’s NSLT programme aligns with this international shift yet also distinguishes itself through a particularly far‑reaching, policy‑driven effort to strengthen preschool principals’ leadership (SOU, 2017). The NSLT programme is legally required to be initiated within two years of appointment as a preschool principal (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2025). However, this legal requirement is relatively recent: until June 2019, the NSLT programme was mandated only for school principals, while preschool principals could participate voluntarily (Ordinance, 2019:562). As preschool principals are now subject to the same legal accountability for quality, equity, and governance as principals in other school forms, the earlier distinction became increasingly untenable. The extension of the requirement sought to ensure that preschool principals are equally equipped to meet their expanded accountabilities (SOU, 2017).

The NSLT programme runs for three years and comprises 30 ECTS credits (Skott & Törnsén, 2018). The Swedish government oversees the national policy processes for the NSLT programme (Jerdborg, 2022, 2023), forming part of the state’s governance of preschool activity. The Swedish National Agency for Education sets the programme’s objectives in line with national legislation (Brauckmann et al., 2023). Higher education institutions apply to SNAE for authorisation to deliver the programme by demonstrating how they will interpret and implement its content and goals (Jerdborg, 2022). As of 2025, seven universities are commissioned to run the NSLT programme: Karlstad University, Linnaeus University, Mid Sweden University, Stockholm University, Umeå University, the University of Gothenburg, and Uppsala University (SNAE, 2025).

While the centralised structure ensures national coherence, it also raises questions about how national governance arrangements shape preschool principals’ accountabilities. The strong central governance embedded in the NSLT programme may unintentionally constrain professional autonomy by privileging state‑defined leadership ideals over locally negotiated understandings of quality. Previous research suggests that policy‑driven reforms concerning preschool principals’ accountabilities for quality generate new forms of complexity. Rather than simply strengthening principals’ quality work, such reforms may reshape professional patterns of work (e.g., Sundström, 2025), redistribute accountabilities (e.g., Rudeberg, 2025a), and introduce new accountability pressures (e.g., Rudeberg, 2025b) that complicate the everyday practice of quality work.

Against this backdrop, this study aims to explore and analyse how educators within the Swedish National School Leadership Training (NSLT) programme interpret and adapt the NSLT programme content in relation to preschool principals’ accountability for quality work. The study is guided by the following research questions:

1. How do NSLT educators understand and interpret preschool principals’ accountability for quality work?
2. How do NSLT educators adapt the national school leadership training programme content to support preschool principals’ quality work?

Leadership is central to sustaining pedagogical quality, yet it is increasingly shaped by overlapping and often conflicting expectations in early childhood education and care (ECEC). Previous research has shown that ECEC centre leaders face intensifying economic, managerial, and accountability demands alongside a growing emphasis on pedagogical quality (Hjelt & Karila, 2024; Toivonen 2024). Consequently, leaders work in contexts where pedagogical values, organizational rationalities, and administrative responsibilities intersect and compete.

The study offers a process‑oriented conceptualization of ECEC leadership that captures how leadership is assembled through discursive negotiations rather than enacted through stable roles. To illuminate this complexity, our study draws on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s (1987/2005) concepts of assemblage and desire. From this perspective, ECEC is understood as a dynamic assemblage rather than a stable system, composed of policies, governance structures, professional discourses, material conditions, staffing situations, time rhythms, and affective intensities that are continuously shifting and being re‑aligned.

Within this assemblage, ECEC leadership is not approached as a fixed role or an individual attribute. Instead, leadership emerges from relations between heterogeneous elements and takes shape in temporary stabilizations of the assemblage. Leadership is thus not located in individual leaders but produced through ongoing configurations of relations.

Assemblage theory enables a shift from role‑based or individualized accounts of leadership toward an analysis of leadership as produced at the interfaces of multiple assemblages. These interfaces are sites where relations are negotiated, tensions are managed, and subject positions are momentarily formed. Positioning is used as an initial analytical lens to examine leaders’ talk. The analysis then moves beyond positioning to explore how leadership is assembled through intersecting discursive practices and flows of desire. Leadership, in this sense, is inherently provisional and relational, continuously reconfigured as assemblages change (Paananen & Grieshaber, 2022).

Building on this assemblage perspective, the concept of desire plays a central analytical role. Desire is not understood as an individual trait or psychological motivation, but as a productive and relational force that circulates within assemblages (Deleuze & Guattari 1983). It moves through policy texts, accountability mechanisms, pedagogical ideals, organizational routines, and everyday encounters, shaping what becomes desirable, legitimate, and possible in leadership practice.

By focusing on flows of desire, the paper examines how ECEC centre leaders position themselves within and across assemblages characterized by pedagogical, economic, and organizational demands. These flows inform how leaders align with certain expectations, justify particular practices, and navigate tensions between pedagogical responsibility and managerial imperatives.

Empirically situated in the Finnish ECEC system, the study contributes to international debates on leadership under conditions of increasing complexity, governance, and reform.

The analysis is guided by two research questions:

1. How is leadership continually negotiated and re-configured through everyday discursive, material, and affective practices within ECEC assemblages?

2. How do flows of desire shape leaders’ choices and priorities at the interfaces of intersecting ECEC assemblages?

Research Objectives

Teacher leadership is a process whereby teachers take the initiative to influence colleagues to improve teaching quality, actively contribute to the school community, and take leadership responsibility to advance student development (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2009; York-Barr & Duke, 2004). Numerous studies have shown that equipping preservice teachers with teacher leadership skills is crucial for enhancing their professional learning and empowering them to become active agents of educational changes (Lenarz, 2023; Perines Veliz, 2018).

A few studies explored how professional learning in teacher education programmes prepared preservice teachers for teacher leadership (e.g., Leeper et al., 2010; Liu et al., 2025; Rogers & Scales, 2013). However, how well preservice teachers are prepared in teacher leadership skills and be ready to practice teacher leadership in their future educational and teaching work, have yet to be operationalized and measured.

This study addressed this gap by developing and validating a new scale of Preservice Teacher Leadership Readiness (PTLR) for measuring preservice teachers’ readiness in teacher leadership and examine its psychometric properties. Additionally, this study aimed to establish a conceptual model of teacher leadership readiness tailored for preservice teachers through the development and validation of the PTLR scale.

Theoretical Framework

York-Barr & Duke (2004) proposed seven key dimensions of teacher leadership practices, coordination and management, school or district curriculum work, professional development of colleagues, participation in school change, parent and community involvement, contributions to the profession, and preservice teacher education. Nguyen et al (2019) demonstrated those dimensions and found that teacher leaders play an equally important role in two new areas: action research and promotion of social justice.

Preservice teacher leadership readiness refers to preservice teachers have a clear understanding of these leadership attributes, and they have the motivation to take initial, specific actions to take on teacher leadership roles (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2009; King, 2017). Empirical research revealed the knowledge, skills, and competencies that preservice teachers themselves perceived as necessary for practicing leadership roles. In the research by Leeper et al. (2010), preservice teachers considered collaborative spirit, positive collegial relationships, solid instructional knowledge, and the ability to adapt flexibly to change and balance the needs of diverse stakeholders as the core essential qualities for teacher leaders. Sheppard et al. (2021) indicated that preservice teachers perceived curriculum and instructional decision-making and peer collaboration as key actions for teacher leaders.

Existing research has largely focused on the U.S. context, with relatively limited studies conducted in other countries. For example, King (2017) explored preservice teachers’ leadership development in the areas of collaboration, reflection, influence, vision-aligned change, and commitment to inclusion in the context of Ireland. A recent study investigated how Finnish preservice teachers perceived their teacher leadership skills development through personal assessment and collaborations in a learning group (Alho et al., 2024). Wang et al. (2023) identified potential attributes of emergent teacher leadership exhibited by preservice teachers in mainland China and emphasized the role of depth of reflection in enhancing teacher leadership. A study in Hong Kong investigated preservice teachers’ understanding of teacher leadership during their teaching internships, as well as the factors that influenced their leadership development (Ying & Ho, 2015). Razak et al. (2025) highlighted the importance of cultivating data-driven instructional leadership among preservice teachers in the Malaysian context.

These studies underlined the significance of collaboration, instructional expertise, reflection, professional vision and commitment, and data-based practice in developing preservice teachers’ teacher leadership. However, these studies primarily focused on conceptual frameworks and qualitative studies, leaving a gap in the measurement of preservice teacher leadership.

Leadership training for school principals represents a substantial investment in most educational systems, yet evaluations consistently yield mixed results regarding effects on student outcomes. A potential explanation is that most evaluations treat the individually trained leader as the unit of analysis, overlooking effects that may surface when multiple school leadership team members receive training over time. This study addresses this gap by examining whether leadership training effects display distributed properties when multiple members of a school leadership team are trained.

Distributed leadership theory posits that leadership is not primarily about one individual and a constellation of followers, but rather a practice "stretched over" multiple actors, tools, and situations (Spillane, Halverson, & Diamond, 2001). Empirical studies provide support for organizational benefits of distributed leadership, particularly in school contexts, demonstrating associations with school improvement capacity, teacher collaboration, and indirect effects on student performance (Heck & Hallinger, 2009, 2010; Silins & Mulford, 2002). However, the literature is dominated by cross-sectional designs and offers limited evidence regarding causal mechanisms—especially concerning student outcomes. Moreover, while leadership training is typically arranged to target one leader at a time, over time several individuals from the same organizations may participate in training programs, meaning that training of a school leadership team is effectively arranged in a distributed manner. No prior research has examined whether principal training effects operate through distributed mechanisms when multiple school leadership team members receive training over time.

Drawing on Gronn's (2002) analytical framework, we conceptualize two mechanisms through which leadership training may operate when multiple principals receive training. An additive mechanism refers to the accumulation of individually acquired skills, such that overall leadership capacity increases linearly as more team members are trained. A concertive mechanism, by contrast, involves coordinated and interdependent action through which knowledge and practices extend beyond trained individuals, generating multiplicative effects through what Gronn terms "conjoint agency"—the synchronization of actions and shared sense-making among leadership team members. Importantly, these mechanisms yield different empirical predictions: additive effects imply linear gains with each additional trained leader, while concertive effects imply diminishing returns as knowledge spreads through collaborative processes.

This study tests whether principal leadership training exhibits these distributed properties using longitudinal data from Sweden's mandatory Principal Preparation Program (2009–2021). We analyze 18,563 person-year observations from 3,783 principals and assistant principals across 1,997 schools, employing dynamic difference-in-differences and multilevel approaches. We examine whether training effects differ between sole-leader schools and team schools, and whether the sequencing of training—specifically, whether principals or assistant principals are trained first—moderates these effects. Outcomes include student achievement (grade point average) and teacher ratings of instructional leadership.

Results reveal that sequencing matters substantively. When principals are trained before assistant principals, concertive mechanisms produce substantial improvements in student achievement, while additive effects are negative. Paradoxically, teacher ratings of instructional leadership decline when principals lead training implementation, suggesting that leadership becomes redistributed across teams rather than concentrated in the principal. These contrasting patterns indicate that effective distributed leadership training works by embedding leadership in collective processes rather than enhancing the visibility of individual leaders.

The findings challenge individual-focused training evaluations and provide causal evidence for distributed leadership mechanisms, highlighting the strategic importance of training order within leadership teams.