Collegial learning for school development: Consensus building regarding the Swedish upper secondary diploma project (swe)

To attain the upper secondary school diploma, students need to pass a diploma project. This project involves supervising teachers from different subjects. The supervising teachers might have different focuses on supervision and therefore see the (writing) process and the (text) product from different perspectives. Regardless of the subject, however, the research project must be a preparation for higher studies, with similar format as university level (NAE, 2012). Since there is no clear description of the difference between the two levels, upper secondary school teachers are expected to make this interpretation themselves (Calissendorff & Ståhle, 2021). This means that supervising teachers need to have some basic consensus about the design and purpose of the research project.
As part of a school improvement project, in which researchers and school practitioners have collaborated to strengthen the scientific basis of education, the aim of this study is to explore how the awareness and consensus regarding various quality aspects of the upper secondary diploma project can be developed and improved through teachers’ collegial learning. Designed as a case study of collegial learning, with participating teachers from the Natural Science Programme, the empirical data has been collected by digital questionnaires, meeting notes, written reflections, and interviews. The empirical data covers interdisciplinary collegial discussions, as well as reflections linked to teachers’ supervision of high school students’ writing process. The analysis is based on Desimones (2009) factors for successful continuing education of teachers; focus on content, active learning, coherence, duration, and collective engagement. Through the study teachers’ view of both the supervision process and their collegial learning have been made visible, and furthermore also show an example of how to design a school improvement project on scientifically ground in an upper secondar school.
The results show, among other things, that an increased awareness of how colleagues work with and reflect on supervision affects teachers’ own supervision. The results also show that the principal’s support is an important prerequisite for collegial learning, both in terms of concrete organization of the work and anchoring of approaches in the ongoing activities. The study is relevant for the Nordic context of educational research, as it can provide a deeper understanding of the active role that practitioners have in research and evidence-based educational practice. The study is also relevant for the broader international context, since it provides an empirical example of how to translate policy proposals of collegial learning as a key strategy for research-based education in a local educational context.