Remark: An earlier version of the project has been presented two years ago. We previously presented preliminary results of this study.

Our rapidly changing society influences the work of schools. Today, public schools in different countries are under enormous pressure to adapt and change as they need to to deal with technological improvements and cultural changes that leads to the increase heterogenization of societies (cf. e.g. OECD 2019, 2016; Imlig, Lehmann & Manz 2018; European Union 2016; Altrichter & Maag-Merki 2016).

In spite of the abundant literature about the conceptual and practical notions and processes of educational change, there is still a need to learn more about the ways to conceptualize and put into practice transitional change processes in individual schools and how to conceptualize and put into practice transitional change in individual schools and school district (Steffens, Heinrich, Dobbelstein, 2016; Reinbach 2016). Transitional change processes refer to the steps and strategies that a district takes to implement significant changes in its operations and policies such as curriculum reform, or the implementation of new technologies. Transitional change processes can be complex and multi-faceted, involving a range of different stakeholders, such as students, teachers, administrators, and community members.

For principals, teacher leaders and project managers in charge of implementation processes at different levels, these accelerated changes raise the question about how to bring successfuland sustainable implementation that is accepted and carried through by all those involved?

Many leaders have assumed and taken on willingly the challenge of implementing numerous, simultaneous and, in part, highly complex transitional processes. They are often confronted with scepticism, reserve, doubt and even outright boycott, often by politicians, staff and parents (Rasmussen 2017; Landert 2014).

This is where the project Shaping Transitional Processes in Dynamic Societies comes in. This project was conducted by a research group of the Zurich University of Teacher Education and the education authority of the Principality of Liechtenstein. The project aims at developing relevant and helpful support services and practices for school principals and project leaders with which current and future reforms and improvements can be mastered alongside the demanding daily school routine.

In order to answer the questions and to advance the research process of the project as transparently and comprehensibly as possible, the approach of Design Based Research (DBR) was used (Euler and Sloane 2014; Euler 2017). Due to its methodological design, the chosen approach opens up the possibility to think and design practical school improvement processes in complementarity with school improvement research (Rau, Gerber u. Grell 2022, 353) and thus to consider both the relevance for practice and the further development of theoretical findings.

The project follows an approach by Euler and Sloane (2014), which provides five different phases and is guided by the following design principles: The research started with a literature review on school improvement followed by interviews with principals, teachers and members of school authorities. Af-terwards the results were then triangulated: Results compared, terminology reviewed, sharpened and condensed, redundancies cleaned up, individual factors combined and subcategories formulated. A challenge was to understand the statements beyond the cultural context, to assign them to the factors accordingly, to compare and superimpose English and German terminology in order to gain a deeper understanding of how changes can be mastered successfully. At the end of this work there were sev-en factors with their sub-factors. After finishing the literature review, the evaluation of the interviews and triangulation of the results, a prototype was developed. For the design of this prototype it was important that the factors can be presented and described so that - the entire spectrum of factors important to school improvement are represented. - the description is comprehensible and accessible without diminishing complexities, - it supports principals and project leaders in constructively coping with transitional processes in their own schools - it supports principals and project leaders in competently initiating transitional processes in their schools, to recognise snags early on and handle them constructively. At the end of this step, a first prototype of a model was available at the end of 2020 (Brückel, Kuster et al. 2022). To test whether the model and the material are relevant to stakeholders, dialogue workshops (Brück-el, Larcher et al. 2019; Bohm 2008) with school and project leaders (20 to 25 participants) were held. The aim of the workshops was to test - how target groups receive the model and the material (f.eg. are they using the framework to manage their change projects?), - whether they are considered helpful and goal-oriented, - what could be missing, and - how the material can be supplemented and improved. Each workshop was divided into two phases: in phase 1, each individual examines the model and the material for him or herself; in phase 2, the model’s and material’s practical sustainability was dis-cussed in a group. A diversified group is critical to these workshops to ensure that all relevant perspectives are considered. Finally, the result is a science-based model that meets the demands of practice.

The paper presents the project and its objectives, shows how the design-based research process was conducted, and discusses the model and the school improvement factors that emerged from research as being salient. The results show that there are certain school improvement factors which are rele-vant and consistent in any change process. These factors can be determined beyond a national con-text and are not culturally driven: Learning of students, mindset, communication and cooperation, induvial and organisational competences, framework conditions, process design, multi-level school system,+ leadership and dynamics. Some limitations became apparent during the research process for example, there is no consistent wording for school development, school improvement or educational change. In consequence a litera-ture review must address the question of which papers are considered. Due to a lack of resources, only a limited number of interviews were analyzed. And finally the question of how to translate research results into a model which is relevant for princi-pals and project leaders has to be discussed critically.

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