Collaboration practice while initiating and following through Master’s courses for school leaders within a municipality

This study focuses on school leadership courses at Master’s level that have been developed in collaboration with a municipal school intendent in 2023. The training is designed to allow school leaders to work on the improvement of their own pedagogogical leadership in relation to an identified  aspect of local school improvement by the use of action research. The aim of the study is to, by research, follow the collaboration practice between Karlstad University as the educational organiser and the municipal school intendent as well as school leaders while initiating, completing and evaluating the training. Research results from a previous study by Forssten Seiser and Portfelt (2022) on collaboration practice between researchers and school leaders are applied and evaluated in practice. Examples of research questions:

• What happens when the university and the municipality initiate and complete  a collaboration project as part of contract education?
• How does the collaboration practice emerge?
• In what way(s) does the emergent collaboration practice agree with or oppose previous research results?
• How can future  education at Master’s level for school leaders in local school settings be improved, based on this project?

The research questions enable the use of a variety of theoretical frameworks and the participation of different school improvement researchers. Forssten Seiser and Portfelt will apply the theory of practice architecture.