The aim of this chapter is to explore the relationship between curriculum and leadership research with examples of three recently completed mixed methods studies of assessment cultures and leadership as interlinked activities of governance and school management. We employ curriculum theoretical concepts like e.g. codes and arenas to illustrate their usefulness as a point of departure to further theorize a changing educational landscape. In our study, we illustrate how curriculum and leadership research are historically linked. We put forward some concepts to address the increased complexity of the governance system, and we stress the need to strengthen how different ways of forming the steering system interplay with key curriculum questions. Leadership researchers have, to a large extent, studied school development on a municipality- and organizational level asking questions on how to manage and guide school development. In contrast, curriculum researchers have studied school development from a reform- and governmental perspective more asking questions on how to steer educational development through law, curricula and evaluation. We suggest that these research traditions ought to be further united in order to develop both traditions in less normative, and more, critical ways, and to answer crucial educational questions in glocal times (Marginson and Rhoades. Conceptualising global relations at the glonacal levels. Paper presented at the annual international forum of the Conference of the Association for the Study of Higher Education, Richmond, VA, November 15–18, 2001). This chapter concludes with an argument for a new comparative curriculum code due to major shifts including curriculum practices, message systems, levels, arenas and number of curriculummakers engaged.