Cross-professional collaboration in the context of research-and-development projects in secondary education

Cross-professional collaboration between education researchers and school practitioners is seen in research-and-development projects in secondary education in the Netherlands. Because an analysis of this collaboration has not yet been executed, the research question states: What is the nature of cross-professional collaboration between teachers, school leaders and education researchers/consultants in research-and-development projects in terms of reasons for collaboration, division of roles, and communication structure? Data were collected through interviews with stakeholders of twelve projects added by document analysis. The results show that stakeholders generally agree on reasons for collaboration, and in some cases education researchers have additional goals. Education researchers are in control, with the exception of projects in which practitioners are responsible for research tasks. Communication structure is closely related to division of roles. On the basis of these results four types of collaboration are distinguished, which differ to the extent of control in research by schools or external parties.