General Description on Research Questions:

How can knowledge transmission in initial teacher education be carried out - taking up the famous quote from the field of cultural studies – to „cross the border“ between university and school and „close the gap“ (Fiedler, 1972) between research and practice? The project underlying our paper examines how school leaders in highly effective and improving schools in England understand and develop school quality and how their knowledge, experience and use of research evidence can be made useful for quality development in schools and in initial teacher education in Austria and England. The thematic example of school development under difficult conditions is to be used as a model to show how knowledge transformation processes between research and practice can be initiated in teacher training by dealing with empirical material from school research.  

The complex workplace of teachers requires practice-based engagement with research. We – as teacher educators and researchers at the same time - try to overcome corresponding dualisms between the logic of research and the logic of school practice  in initial teacher training by forcing - by means of confrontation with (qualitative) data - a direct encounter with research material. This was intended to serve  as a stimulus for knowledge transformation processes in students. Thematically, the focus lies on the responsibility of teachers and principals for the success of disadvantaged students at school.  In this context, special attention is given to schools with a high proportion of disadvantaged students and with pupils who don’t speak English as a first language in the city of London (“London effect”) and in the so called „Social Mobility and Opportunity Areas“ in England (Department for Education, 2017). The interviews conducted within the context of this study has served as a model for interviews conducted in Austria. Using the thematic example of school development under challenging conditions, it will be shown how qualitative data (interview material) can be used to force processes of knowledge transformation in teacher training.

 Objectives:

In line with a conception of research-informed professionalism in teaching,  teachers should not get a simple recipe for „what works“, but should use educational research in many different ways to reframe their problems, to strengthen their professional understanding, to make informed decisions and to evaluate the relevance of research findings for their own situation (Winch et al, 2015, 211; Burn & Mutton, 2015). School improvement by professionalising teachers´ attitudes, judgements and actions through research-engagement has some starting point in preservice teacher education programs. There are different ways to strengthen the research-informed knowledge base in initial teacher education (Munthe & Rogne, 2015). In accordance with translational educational research (La Velle, 2015) we sought to raise Austrian preservice teachers’ understanding of the relevance of school research by working with them on qualitative data providing exploratory insights into school leaders´ thinking about school effectiveness, school improvement and support through research.

Theoretical Framework:

This paper draws on the dynamic approach to school improvement proposed by Creemers & Kyriakides (2012) and Armstrong (Armstrong et al, 2012, 49). Within the plurality of dimensions of school effectiveness we focus  on the level of “Quality of Teaching” and how it might be improved in interdependence with the important dimension of “SLE” (School Learning Environment) (Creemers & Kyriakides, 2012; Armstrong et al, 2012, 49).

Since theoretical insights and research data have to be processed, evaluated and transformed into “knowledge for practice” (Guerriero 2017, 30). Therefore, the project is secondly related to translational educational research (La Velle, 2015), because we explore the modes of translating research findings into evidence-based practice by the practitioners concerned.

Methodology and methods: We explore one particular strategy for translating our findings about the importance of research-informed practice from the head-teachers’ perspectives into those of the prospective teachers. The structure consists of a three-step-approach: (1) investigating school leaders´ perspectives in two national contexts (expert interviews); (2) comparing these views due to different national frameworks of school improvement (in-depth content analysis) and (3) using the findings to contribute to the knowledge dynamics in preservice teacher education (focus group discussions stimulated by text material from the interviews). We used qualitative methodology, allowing us to approach the thinking and reasoning of our population and thereby to contribute to the understanding of the epistemology of a certain school, e.g. „how it is proposed that knowledge will transform practice for the better“ (Godfrey & Brown, 2018, 138). In the first phase (2019), 16 ‘expert interviews’ have been conducted with principals from highly effective and non-selective secondary schools in England (n=8) and Austria (n=8). All interviewees worked in schools in challenging circumstances, most of which had undergone recent processes of improvement. According to the proposed ecosystem of schools by Godfrey and Brown (2018), in our interview guide we focused two main meso dimensions of school quality: leadership and teacher professionalism. Full transcriptions of all interviews underwent content analysis. Within these main system elements of improving schools the category system was developed, zooming in on the sub-dimension of quality of teaching. By analyzing the interview material in an abductive way, we reconstructed three elements and six subcategories, which are reported in the results chapter. In-depth content analysis revealed remarkable differences according to different national understandings of how to establish knowledge transfer, transmission and transformation in school and between school and university. Data collection in England and Austria was subject to ethical approval by the institutions included. Data from this phase built the foundational structure for the third step (2020) in which we conducted three focus group discussions with preservice teachers in Austria (in their third year of study, each group 4 to 6 members) to examine how they made sense of the headteachers’ reasoning about school effectiveness and improvement and the particular value they attributed to research use. For this we used textual data from the fully transcribed interviews in order to stimulate the discussion by giving a vivid view of how head teachers may think and argue and thereby enabling to learn by recognising differences.

Results: Having analysed the interview material, we identified three elements and six subcategories: 1) Research-informed practice: information and knowledge base: being research-informed as a (head) teacher; data feedback and working with research results 2) Transformation process: development of teaching and learning; personal feedback according to personal practice; usefulness for the single teacher 3) Research-based cooperation: partners / forms of research-based cooperation Phase 1 results show that the school leaders interviewed in England and Austria use different kinds of research insights in “practical reasoning” (La Velle, 2015) to improve schools. In English schools, according to the data, great efforts have been made to support relevant research knowledge transfer. But even though there are different national models of educational governance and different national initiatives to foster evidence-based school improvement (Schreiner & Wiesner, 2015), it is suprising to see similar types of operations discussed, e.g. using research results: information, feedback and development, and similar problems as well (Cain, 2017). When preservice teachers compared the data from the two national contexts, they gained considerable insights into the importance of research for school improvement and into the different ways in which research can be used in school practice. From the view of teacher candidates this intensified their way of learning by comparison, difference and similarity. In our presentation we will show different phases of the analysis process (Elo et al, 2014) and beyond that anchor examples of the prospective teachers' engagement with the interview material in the focus group discussions. These demonstrate that it is not just about knowledge transmission but also about knowledge transformation processes in school and initial teacher education.

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