On January 1st 2015 a consortium consisting of 13 Danish municipalities, the Laboratory for Research-based School Development (LSP) at Aalborg University, and the National Centre for Public Competence Development (COK) launched a school development program with the title “Program for Learning Leadership". With its 13 municipalities, the consortium represents a total of 242 schools (land registers), almost 80,000 students and 10,000 professionals (teachers, pedagogues, school leaders, and administrative staff), which corresponds to approximately ten percent of all Danish primary and lower secondary schools and students. The program will run started in 2015 and will run till the end of 2019. The program focuses on the effect of data- and research-informed professional competence support and development of learning environments on students’ learning achievements and wellbeing. The program and the evaluation of the program are informed by data from all students, educational professionals and parents involved in the program. The program is conceived as a social laboratory for school development. Two of its hypotheses are: 1. That an effective way of linking research and practice is by using a capacity building approach, that is to collaborate in the practical school context with a problem based learning approach (the capacity building hypothesis) 2. That data- and research-informed professional competence support and development of learning environments will improve the professional performance of teachers and school leaders (the output effect hypothesis) In 2015, the first round of data collection and analysis was completed. In 2016-2017, informed by the analysis, seven competence development packages were launched. In 2017 the second round of data collection and analysis was completed. Today we know the effect: That it has improved the professional performance of teachers concerning teaching practices and professional collaboration among teachers and school leaders. In the paper, the main results of the 2017 data analysis will be presented.

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