Leadership at the Intersection of Didactic Tradition and Hybrid Governance: A System-Level Mapping of Danish Upper Secondary Education

This study provides a system‑level mapping of formal leadership roles across two governance regimes within the Danish upper-secondary education system. Drawing on a full‑population dataset, it shows how leadership structures, professional backgrounds and role distributions vary systematically across institutional types. Academically oriented upper‑secondary institutions are characterized by compact, didactically anchored leadership structures, whereas vocational and professionally oriented institutions rely on more layered and functionally differentiated leadership architectures aligned with labour‑market coordination. The findings demonstrate how governance regimes shape leadership capacity and legitimacy, with important implications for policy and practice as hybrid institutional forms become increasingly prominent.