Headship: issues of career

‘Effective School Leadership in a Time of Change’ was a three-year project involving 34 school leaders from three countries: Denmark, England and Scotland. During initial interviews we asked the school leaders to tell us something of their careers and their experiences of headship. Analysing the data seemed to show that our respondents went through a number of stages after appointment and that there was a certain commonality in what happened during each of these stages. We then asked the school leaders to draw their career lines from the time of their appointment to a headship until the present to check the interview data. This paper presents the results of the exercise and suggests the outcomes have important implications for the training and support of headteachers