Christa Krijgsman

Postdoctoral researcher on the NRO research project: "Promoting a sustainable research-engaged school culture: working inquiry based on educational quality".

In changing educational environments, answers to complex issues are not always well evidence-informed. This project therefore aims to sustain a research engaged school culture in nine participating schools, in which teachers and educational leaders work systematically and evidence-informed on educational quality. Based on the Research Engaged Schools model, this project focuses on four focus-areas that mutually reinforce each other: inquiry based working, multilevel distributed leadership, the school as a learning organization and systemic perspective. Teacher researchers, research coordinators and educational leaders jointly create interventions to anchor, scale up and/or constantly improve these areas of interest in ever-changing contexts, so that research plays a role in sustainable innovation. The central role for the four focus areas and sustainability have been elaborated in this research project in research at three layers: teacher research (Layer A; school context), educational design research (Layer B; cross-school context) and longitudinal research (Layer C; monitor cross-school context). Layer A focuses on its own research question aimed at a school-specific issue. Layer B designs interventions in cross-school professional learning communities (PLCs), aimed at making the four focus areas more sustainable and investigates the influence of the interventions on the research engaged school culture in their own school context. Layer C examines the role of interaction about inquiry based working between teacher leaders and educational leaders within their own school and the cross-school PLCs; Layer C also focuses on the dynamics of the research engaged school culture by examining developments in the four focus areas. Mainly questionnaires and focus group interviews are conducted during six repeated measurements, over three school years. The project contributes to theory development about promoting a sustainable research engaged school culture and to school development aimed at strengthening educational quality.