General description of research questions, objectives and theoretical framework

In 2020, a quality development program was initiated at eight vocational schools in the four East-European countries, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. The purpose of the program is to improve the quality of the VET at the schools and to ensure that the results of the school developments are sustainable, sustainable meaning that the activities developed at the schools are maintained after the termination of the project, and that the schools develop a culture of change.

The program has a duration of four years, followed by research during the four-year period.

The overall aim of the research project is to develop research-based knowledge about factors that have an impact on the implementation of sustainable quality development at VET schools. Research has indicated that organizational change is a complicated and not straight-forward process. In many development projects the results are few, and only few of the results are imbedded in the organization on an organic way (By, 2005; De Keyser, Guiette, & Vandenbempt, 2021; Schwarz, Bouckenooghe, & Vakola, 2021).

The research project focuses on three factors, which are anticipated to be important for sustainable organizational change: leadership and management (Schein, 2010; Thoonen, Sleegers, Oort, & Peetsma, 2012, Kenney, Jordan, & Curnow, 2019), teacher training (Ellström, 2010), and systematic formative evaluation (Gillon, 2018; Palmer, Dunford, & Buchanan, 2017).

The project encompasses a comparative perspective by examining the differences between the VET-school development process in the four countries.

The project examines whether the management at the individual school have developed a strategy and whether the management follow the strategy.

It is assumed that the development of the strategy will be promoted if there is a fundamental readiness and capability at the school to develop and implement quality. The leaders’ competence and experiences are important in this process.

The research project does not focuson whether the activities are improvements of the national VET-programs or not. Rather, it focuses on the degree to which the new activities and new strategies are implemented in the structure and daily practice of the schools, and on the how this implementation proceeds. The project studies school development and school improvement. Thus, the project provides knowledge about organizational learning and change.

Research methods The data are gathered continuously alongside the process of the total development program and the actual development processes at the VET-schools. The methodological approach is a longitudinal design. The data collection follows the school-development from the beginning till the end. The data collection encompasses longitudinal data from each of the eight schools. 1. Systematic observations are gathered during two visits at the schools. How visible are the changes? Are the teachers involved in the process? 2. Semi-structured interviews with project-management and teachers are conducted three times. The interviews focus on the actual change and the leaders’ capacity for change. Furthermore, on the teachers’ roles in the process and the teachers experience from being engaged in the project. 3. Systematic written evaluations of the progress of the improvement projects are gathered every second month from the management. 4. Questionaires to managers and teachers about the changes in the organizational culture of the school throughout the change process. The data gathering process began spring 2020 and will continue until 2024.

Results and expected findings The preliminary research data indicates that the development process differs among the eight schools. The differences are greater between schools than between countries. Each school has developed concerning the implementing of new activities and concerning developing new ways of thinking. However, the development of ‘change capacity’ as a condition for a sustainable change is only in progress. Of the three factors mentioned above (management, teacher involvement, and evaluation), continuously evaluating the implementing of new activities and reflecting on gained experiences seem to be most important for supporting ‘change capacity’. Two main obstacles have been pinpointed in the development process: The first is the leaders’ lack of experiences with and competences to conduct pedagogical development processes. The second obstacle is the managers’ focus on realizing and implementing new activities and thereby overlooking the importance of reflection on the outcome of the new activities. In the subsequent phases of the research project, we will focus further on the relative importance of the different drivers and obstacles in the development process.

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