In what ways can «School-based professional development» (SBPF) be structured to ensure that the participants feel relevance, ownership, and opportunities to influence the content and design of the initiatives?

In a metropolitan network with 75 schools, this became a relevant question. A model for school development was needed, where the schools who needed professional development (PD) could participate within a reasonable time horizon. A group with partners from the university and the schools was established. Based on theories about school development (Robinson et al., 2009; Starkey et al., 2009; Timperley et al., 2007; Goodlad, 1988) they designed a model, “the resource group model”, to meet the network's goals. The aim of this study is to identify success factors in this model in a large-scale SBPD-project.

PD is a central part of the school's daily work, but there is disagreement about what the best means to achieve this are (Mausethagen & Helstad, 2023). While previous PD-schemes in Norway have been based on a model where a form of "competence transfer" was to take place from knowledge providers (universities) to knowledge receivers (teachers), the new model was based on co-creation in established partnerships between schools and universities (Meld.St. 21(2016-17)). SBPD should take place in schools where teachers and leaders develop knowledge about teaching and learning in the local school context (Postholm, 2018). An important aspect of this new thinking on school development is to meet the needs experienced by those who are closest to the students in the classroom.

Internationally, there has been a lot of research into factors that contribute to successful PD in schools. Several studies show that the leaders’ involvement is crucial for the success of collective PD (e.g. Stoll & Louis, 2017; Robinson, 2014). While it's important that the school leadership is involved in development projects, it is challenging if the leader must run the processes alone. This concerns that the initiative and chosen theme for the PD can be experienced as ”coming from above"; it is recommended to involve teachers (Postholm et al., 2018). Spillane (2006) uses the term "distributed leadership" for processes where the principal involves more than the formal leader group at the school, both in the design, implementation and leadership of development projects.

The schools that wanted to participate could choose between five different themes, maximum 5 schools per theme, and these were selected based on reported needs of the schools in the metropolitan network. The model is designed based on theories and evaluations of previous PD-projects.

The model presumes that each school participating in PD must establish a resource group (RG), consisting of teachers with a special interest in the topic they have chosen, and at least one person from the school management. The groups should be local promoters of the development work at their schools, and should work as a link between colleagues at the schools and professionals from the university. 

A key aspect of the resource group model is that participation takes place over time. The 1^st semester has common content and organization for all schools, and its main purpose is to prepare the RG to lead PD at their own school (Spillane, 2006). The 2^nd to 4^th semesters are devoted to topic-specific gatherings for the competence packages, with mandatory intermediate work at the schools.

The aim of this study is to respond to the following reseach question:

What experiences do the RG and the university employees in the metropolitan network have with the various elements in the resource group model, and what can these experiences tell us about which factors are important for success in a large-scale school development process?

To answer the research questions, we have collected both qualitative and quantitative data through two surveys and three focus group interviews. One survey is aimed at university staffs who have worked on developing and implementing the competence packages and the other survey has been aimed at the RG in the schools that have participated in the SBPD. Both surveys have a response rate of over 80. The surveys consisted of questions which were to map the previous experience the participants had with school development, and questions where the participants were asked to evaluate the model by taking stances on various claims. The participants were asked to grade the claims on a five-point scale, ranging from "to a very small extent" to "to a very large extent". The surveys also had text boxes where the participants could write free-text answers with their own reflections. The analyses of the two surveys were used as a basis for developing relevant questions for qualitative interviews with selected resource groups, teachers and university staff. The interview guides were designed based on the results of the surveys and the researchers' knowledge of the field. According to Cohen (2018), this form of data collection can be described as method triangulation. The focus group (FG) interviews were conducted as qualitative, semi-structured interviews with a phenomenological approach. By choosing a FG interview, you facilitate follow-up questions, exchange of opinions and analysis along the way (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2015). The FG's consisted of members of the resource group, teachers and school leaders. In the first FG there were six participants and in the second there was five. In the interview with university staff, two participants had contributed to both the development and implementation of the competence package. Audio recordings were made of the interviews, and notes were written during the conversations. The interviews were analyzed by the researchers together as a collective analysis (Eggebø, 2020), through a deductive analysis process based on the elements of the resource group model. Overview data: Survey University staff: 17 respondents/ 20 (85% of the population); Primary data Survey Resource Group: 14 respondents (by groups) /17 (82% of the RG-population); Primary data Interviews: 13 people / 3 interviews; Primary data Background documents: Secondary data Privacy in data handling has been approved by SIKT, and the guidelines of the National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and Humanities (NESH, 2021) are followed.

An overarching finding, which also appears in many evaluations of school development projects, is that the role of the leadership is crucial. Important factors here are presence and stability in the leadership throughout the project. An interesting finding is that the RG’s report that they have changed their teaching practice. A challenge, however, is that some RG’s did not meet the same enthusiasm and willingness to change when they tried to engage their colleagues. Based on the surveys, we find the ability to engage their colleagues appears to be a critical factor in succeeding. Empowering the RG to be able to lead the school development at their schools has been central. The start-up semester only partially met their needs. The findings shows that the theme-specific gatherings in semesters 2–4 were more important for the experience of empowerment. The RG highlight the co-creation between university and the schools, and the valuing of their experiences from intermediate work, as important for becoming confident in their role as leaders of the development work vis-à-vis their own colleagues. We also find that it is valuable when universities add new academic perspectives. In the literature, it is emphasized that external people can be a good support in the professional development of teachers. University staff expressed that their role required them to both bring something professionally new to the gatherings, while at the same time they reflect on the experiences of the RG’s. Put bluntly, we can say that even if the network work is largely based on co-creation and exchange of experience, exchange of experience is not sufficient. Our data supports the metropolitan network's intention that there should be a balance between co-creation, exchange of experience and new professional perspectives on the themes that each school will work on.

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