Research topic/aim: In Sweden, plans for a National Professional Program for School Principals (NPPSP) are currently in the making. This program includes both a structure for competence development and a merit system. This ongoing reform can be considered as part of the ‘standards movement’ (Leithwood, 2001; Berkovich & Bogler, 2020), which has become a key component of educational reforms in many countries in recent decades (Møller, 2009). Emphasizing school leadership as a central mechanism for school improvement, leadership standards and competency frameworks have become a policy idea intended to strengthen the public educational system (McMahon & Torrance, 2022; Riveros & Wei, 2019). Defining standardization as ‘a process of constructing uniformities across time and space’ (Timmermans & Epstein, 2010, p. 71), it follows the idea that all school contexts will be identical, and that ‘we already know everything we need to know about leading schools’ (Militello et al., 2016, p. 76). Endeavors to standardize school leadership have however been criticized for decontextualization, rational and managerial underlying assumptions, tensions between development and regulatory purposes, and limited focus on the capacities of individuals.

Theoretical framework: Drawing on discursive institutionalism as a theoretical and methodological framework (Schmidt, 2008), the aim of this study is to critically explore cognitive and normative ideas within NPPSP at three levels of generality (policies, programs, and philosophies).

Methodological design: The empirical data, consists of policy documents, linked to NPPSP.

Expected conclusions/findings: Preliminary findings indicate similar background ideas, as underlying normative assumptions, as previous research has presented, i.e., emphasizing global competition, and accountability, but we also found context specific background ideas about the Nordic school model, a school for all, and equality. Furthermore, it indicates cognitive foreground ideas, at the policy level and programmatic level, having implications for the interactive processes of conveying and translating the idea of school leadership standards to district and local school level. Such examples are: balancing professionalization ‘from above’ and ‘from below’, tensions between individual or collegial training programs, and the alignment to already existingreforms.

Relevance to Nordic educational research: From a Nordic perspective, the Swedish case is an example of how, and with what implications, the global standard movement will be translated into a specific and local setting.