Provision of School Data and Research Based Teacher Professional Development: Does It Work? Data- and Research-Informed Development of Schools in the Danish “Program for Learning Leadership”

In the beginning of 2015, a consortium consisting of 13 Danish municipalities with 240 schools, almost 80,000 students and 10,000 professionals together with a university based research institution and a competence development center launched the school development project “Program for Learning Leadership.” The project provides data for teachers and school leaders in order to support pedagogical practices and school leadership. It also provides research based competence development packages with professional teams organized in professional learning communities as the central target group for receiving research results and transforming these results into professional practice. Based on a quantitative survey performed in 2015 and repeated in 2017, the project shows that school data and competence development can support positive school changes and improve teachers’ professional self-evaluation, and that competence development should focus on professional teams (professional learning communities) rather than on individual teachers. However, it is still too early to identify the effects for students’ learning and development achievements.