School development consultancy has become an integral component of system-level support for school improvement in the Austrian education system (Altrichter et al., 2021). School development consultants support schools in phases of intensified development demands, organisational change, and reform implementation, and operate at the interface between educational administration, universities of teacher education, school leadership, and teaching staff. Their work involves process-oriented and facilitative forms of support that structure school development processes and support coordination among multiple actors at the school level (Altrichter et al., 2021; Braun et al., 2025b). In this role, school development consultants act as intermediary actors within school development processes. Their positioning between normative governance expectations and locally situated conditions of action is associated with heterogeneous and partly contradictory role expectations (Braun et al., 2025a).

Consultancy work is frequently embedded in challenging phases of school development, in which schools experience heightened pressure, uncertainty, and increased demands for accountability. In such situations, consultancy is expected to provide orientation, process-related support, and professional reflection, while consultants operate without formal decision-making responsibility (Altrichter et al., 2021; Braun et al., 2025b). International research on advisory and facilitative roles in school improvement indicates that consultancy work in complex governance environments requires consultants to navigate shifting expectations articulated by different actors and governance levels (Odendaal & du Plessis, 2018). These conditions suggest that consultancy work is not only demanding in terms of content, but also structurally prone to situational tensions and experiences of strain (Dadaczynski et al., 2024). 

Previous research on school development consultancy has primarily focused on roles, functions, and intended contributions to school improvement, whereas the professional experiences and working conditions of consultants themselves have received comparatively little attention (Altrichter et al., 2021; Braun et al., 2025a). At the same time, research on educational leadership highlights role ambiguity, governance-related pressure, and restricted scopes for action as relevant contextual conditions for professional action (Hallinger, 2016; Leithwood et al., 2020; Dadaczynski et al., 2024). However, there is still limited empirical knowledge about how such conditions translate into concrete, activity-related experiences of strain in the everyday professional practice of intermediary actors such as school development consultants, particularly within system-level support arrangements across different governance contexts.

This paper addresses this gap by examining how experiences of strain emerge in the professional practice of school development consultants in Austria. Rather than conceptualising strain as a stable individual characteristic, the study adopts a situational and activity-related perspective, focusing on concrete constellations in which consultants’ professional knowing, role expectations, and possibilities for action come into tension (Hallinger, 2016; Leithwood et al., 2020). This understanding is further supported by context-responsive approaches that emphasise how professional action is shaped by situational and systemic conditions (Brauckmann-Sajkiewicz & Pashiardis, 2022).

By focusing on the situational emergence of strain in consultancy practice, the paper provides empirical insights into how school development consultancy is enacted as an intermediary practice under structurally demanding governance conditions. In doing so, it foregrounds strain as an analytical lens for examining the relationship between professional knowing and situated action.

The study is based on a qualitative multi-method design focusing on activity- and situation-specific experiences of strain in school development consultancy. Empirical data consist of shadowing (McDonald, 2005) sequences conducted during ongoing school development consultancy processes as well as semi-structured follow-up interviews with school development consultants in the Austrian federal state of Carinthia. Shadowing was employed as the primary methodological approach in order to capture strain-relevant situations as they unfold in consultants’ everyday work. By accompanying consultants during their professional activities, shadowing enables the observation of professional action in its situational context and provides access to concrete moments of tension, uncertainty, and decision-making that are often difficult to reconstruct retrospectively (McDonald, 2005). Particular attention was paid to situations in which consultants were required to clarify mandates, navigate ambiguous role expectations, or mediate between conflicting demands articulated at different system levels. Systematic observation constituted the core element of the shadowing process and was complemented by short situational conversations and reflexive exchanges during observation phases. This design allowed for tracing consultants’ activities across different phases of consultancy work, including preparatory tasks, interactional situations with school actors, and follow-up activities embedded in everyday practice. To complement and contextualise the observational data, semi-structured interviews were conducted after the completion of the shadowing field phase (Flick, 2018). These interviews served to reconstruct consultants’ subjective interpretations, evaluative frameworks, and perceived scopes for action. They were closely grounded in previously observed situations and functioned both as an analytic extension of the observational material and as a form of communicative validation, enabling the systematic relation of observable action and subjective meaning. Data were analysed using qualitative content analysis (Mayring, 2022). Observational protocols and interview transcripts were analysed iteratively, with a focus on activity types, situational demands, role attributions, and experienced strain. Observed practices and articulated interpretations were systematically related to one another in order to reconstruct patterns of activity-related strain and their situational conditions.

This paper aims to explore how experiences of strain emerge in the professional practice of school development consultants, focusing on activity- and situation-specific constellations. By analysing consultancy work as it unfolds in everyday practice, the study contributes empirical insights into the situational conditions under which strain becomes salient in intermediary roles within school development processes. Empirical observations indicate that experiences of strain tend to concentrate in situations where consultants draw on process-related knowledge, moderation expertise, and situational judgement under conditions of time pressure, competing expectations, and unclear responsibilities across system levels. In such situations, consultants continuously adapt their professional action, often prioritising immediate coordination and stabilisation over planned developmental work. Strain further intensifies where consultants sustain development processes despite limited formal authority. Observed practices suggest that consultants rely on situational interpretation and relational work to compensate for ambiguities in mandates and responsibilities. At the same time, organisational conditions such as fragmented schedules, documentation demands, and parallel professional roles constrain opportunities for reflection and deliberate action. From a Knowing–Acting perspective, strain appears where professional knowing remains available but its enactment is situationally restricted. In contrast, consultancy activities framed by clear agreements, explicit expectations, and strong alignment with consultants’ professional expertise tend to be associated with lower levels of perceived strain. This highlights the relevance of situational and structural conditions for understanding strain, rather than attributing it to individual coping capacities. Overall, the analysis suggests that experienced strain among school development consultants reflects structural tensions inherent in intermediary practices within multi-level governance arrangements. Rather than pointing to individual overload, strain can be understood as an expression of mismatches between demands, role attributions, and available possibilities for action. From this perspective, strain functions as an indicator of how professional knowing is enacted and constrained in concrete situations of action.

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