SYNERGIE – Systematic, Sustainable and Evidence-Oriented Professional Development in Schools

Project Description

In view of the current challenges facing schools, teachers and other pedagogical staff are constantly required to further increase their professional skills. Ideally, the necessary professional development measures should be embedded in an overall school development concept. However, current practice in schools often differs from this ideal. The SYNERGIE project aims to qualify principals to plan in-service professional development in a targeted manner and to embed it in the development of the entire school. To achieve this, a modular professional development (PD) series for principlas in being developed and evaluated. The joint project comprises 2 sub-projects: In sub-project 1, school principals are qualified to create a PD concept for their school and establish it over a period of one school year. With a field-experimental design, we will investigate the extent to which the training is more effective when it takes into account scientific evidence on the topics of the PD programme developed, in addition to the use of internal school data. Sub-project 2 comprises a training of multipliers with the intention of scaling up the developed concept, using the PD structures that are already established within the federal states.

Project Objectives

The project aims to provide sustainable support for professional development processes in schools by qualifying school leaders. In the course of the project, school leaders will be trained to create a common vision for tailormade development of their school and teaching measures. Based on this vision, they will learn how to systematically organise in-service professional development and evaluate its success. The project focuses on the question of the extent to which systematically guided professional development planning shows measurable effects on central aspects of school development, student orientation and orientation towards internal school data and scientific evidence. To this end, knowledge, attitudes and actions of school leadership staff will be investigated in an experimental mixed-methods design.

Funding

Cooperations

Universität Potsdam (Prof. Dr. Dirk Richter; network coordination)

Bergische Universität Wuppertal (Prof. Dr. Cornelia Gräsel)

Project Management

• Dr. Ulrike Hartmann
• Prof. Dr. Mareike Kunter

Project Team

Project Details