In this paper, following a discursive-institutionalist approach, we argue that the ways in which social and educational questions become intertwined in globalizing reforms are dependent on cognitive and normative ideas in the public sphere and the interactive discursive processes and argumentation by which these ideas are produced, conveyed, and potentially led to collective action (Schmidt, 2015). Based on foreground discursive abilities, which comprise actions through the ways in which people distance themselves from everyday institutional activities and discuss and reflect upon how school leadership education is developed and designed as an institution, the paper show how school leadership education changes from an “outside” perspective (OECD 2011). Thus, globalization can be explained by foreground discursive abilities that provide the basis for a coordinative discourse characterized by the creation, elaboration, and justification of a certain policy across the nation-states programs for educational leaders

The paper  addresses how school leadership education, constituted as a field of professional knowledge, has evolved into a new policy space that serves governance purposes while simultaneously facilitating learning among current and future leaders. By examining globalization and learning as prominent features, we explore how the development of school leadership programs enables a borderless policy space through problem statements and strategies formed by transnational organizations like the OECD and the EU (Sivesind & Wahlström 2017). Drawing on curriculum theory (Sundberg & Wahlström 2012) and discursive institutionalism (Schmidt 2015), we utilize an ideational approach to research leadership education as a policy field (Béland & Cox, 2011). By comparing two sets of country-specific policy texts about school leadership development at the national level in Norway and Sweden, the paper identifies how two neighboring countries in Scandinavia act within a globalizing discourse while approaching their shared problems differently. The discursive-institutionalist approach is helpful for identifying how globalization takes place inside the national arena (Sassen 2013). Combined with a curriculum theory approach (Uljens & Ylimaki, 2017; Wahlström & Sundberg, 2017) , it becomes possible to demonstrate how policies about school leadership development connect with local practices that are partly transformed by researchers as change agents.