Swedish teachers and school leaders as researchers within their own practice

This paper reports findings from a Swedish school development project in which the development process was designed and structured as a course in systematic-knowledge-building based on day-to-day issues. The concept knowledge-building is frequently used inthe presentation and denotes learning processes in which the learners are active co-creators of knowledge by acting as researchers. Findings suggest that teachers’ motivationto engage in the work is dependent on their choice of questions to work with and howthey construct these questions. As a more general result, we found that variation plays animportant role in these processes and that teachers’ capacity to handle and make use ofvariation when learning together is essential. On the basis of these findings, it is suggestedthat school leaders at least to some extent take on the role of a research leader within theirown school.