Norway recently launched a national program for school leader development, organized through the Directorate for Education (see Lysø et al 2011). NIFU and NTNU Samfunnsforskning were asked to evaluate the program, and this is the second of four reports from the on-going evaluation. In the current report, the program offers from six higher education institutions in Norway are analyzed with the aim of exploring the following research questions in more detail:
•What characterizes the program providers’ intentions regarding their study programs, and what ideas and practices are seen as central in the development of their program offers?
•How do participants in the programs assess their studies with respect to quality and relevance, and what are the expectations of the participants regarding their participation?
The main conclusion from the evaluation of these six programs is that they are very different. The programs have been designed with various intentions in mind, and their pedagogical design reflects this despite the fact that the programs offers also contain a number of similar elements. The participants experience the programs as both relevant and of high quality – regardless of which program they attended
