As data collection in designed action sampling is almost entirely done using the form in Figure 4.2, all eight data collection techniques below are linked to different parts of the form.

Experience sampling is an established scientific method for collecting data from participants in research studies. The action-reflection link means that each reflection collected should be based on a completed action. Longitudinal data is what you get when many forms with different tasks over time are completed many times by the same people. Deep reflection is not easy, but requires thought, methodology and training for both the peer learning leaders who design the tasks and the teachers who then fill in the form. Mixed methods involve collecting both text and numbers in a single study and facilitate deep and time-efficient analysis. Emotional rating provides a quick indication of how teachers perceive a task and is done quickly and easily using a five-point scale. Effect coding significantly simplifies analysis and is based on ‘grounded theory’ – a scientific method for building theory that is well grounded in empirical data. Feedback from peer learning leaders strengthens teachers’ learning and also builds a mutual relationship in the research process.

Collection of experiences – same reflection questions for everyone

The designed action sampling form is designed to capture participants’ experiences in the moment, as soon as possible after completing a task. Preferably in the same hour or on the same day, so that the feeling from the completion remains in the body. The form is also designed to be easy to complete in just a few minutes. It should not take more than three minutes. Some participants will of course write slightly longer reflections, but the idea is that they should not be very long texts. The most important thing is that the feeling and thoughtful reflection of the moment is captured on paper, in a way that works in the teachers’ everyday life.

The form also includes a brief description of the action-oriented task that is expected to be completed. Ideally, this should be the main information given to participants about what the task is about. This simplifies the work and ensures that all participants have received the same information prior to implementation. Any variation in reported outcomes can then be attributed mainly to how things went, rather than to variation in instructions or questions.

In terms of scientific theory, this design of the questionnaire is based on a psychological research method called the experience sampling method (ESM). This method was developed in the 1970s by the Hungarian-American researcher Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. By capturing subjective experiences with high precision, he and his colleagues achieved a much higher reliability in data collection than previously possible.[1] It was the combination of behavioural observations, diary entries and questionnaires with precise scales that made this possible. The designed action sampling form therefore combines four different perspectives: a task that has just been completed, a quick diary entry, an emotional assessment and a choice of some pre-defined tags that then allow for mathematical calculation of effects.

Linking action-reflection – in all data collection.

As each completed form is linked to a specific action-oriented task to be completed, each data set collected is linked to a specific action of interest to the research. Reflections and estimations are thus not of a general nature, as is otherwise often the case with traditional questionnaires and interviews. Instead, all data collected are causal in nature – they always say something about the relationship between causes and effects. The action is the cause, reflections and estimates show effects.

Each data set collected is also linked to a specific point in time – just when a task has been completed, or at least shortly thereafter. This distinguishes designed action sampling from both surveys and interviews, where instead the timing of the survey or interview determines when the participant is expected to contribute with their thoughts. This reduces retrospective bias, i.e. bias due to trying to remember what happened some time ago.[2]

The link between action and reflection also applies in reverse, i.e. backwards in time. If a deadline is set for when everyone should have reflected upon a certain completed task, this triggers action among the participants. You cannot reflect upon an action you haven’t yet completed. As the deadline approaches, the participants will thus feel an increasing pressure to perform the task agreed upon and described on the distributed form. It is therefore advisable that a task deadline does not coincide with other demanding tasks.

A content package with many tasks needs to be spread out over time in a way that makes each deadline manageable. Many participants have found that a fortnightly deadline is reasonable. However, an appropriate time between deadlines depends on the complexity and time commitment of the tasks. It is not completing the form that takes time, it is rather the development work itself that takes time. Some tasks are also difficult to fit into a given week, which may require months of time for the possibility of implementation to materialise, see examples 5 and 9 in chapters 6 and 11.

Longitudinal data – collection over time and on a weekly basis

When the same form is completed many times over time by the same people, the data collected becomes longitudinal in nature. You could say that the data collected extends along the time axis. We then have a longitudinal study: data collected from the same individuals repeatedly over time.[3] This is different from cross-sectional studies, where data is collected on a single occasion, such as a student or employee survey. Longitudinal studies can be expensive to conduct but have some key advantages. For example, it is possible to track changes over time at the individual level. It is also possible to see in detail how different individuals are affected by different circumstances. While a cross-sectional study can only demonstrate the occurrence of a phenomenon, a longitudinal study can also describe how or why different phenomena occur and what effects they have. In research on dynamic processes, such as school development and learning, longitudinal studies are therefore always preferable if possible.[4] If you are also studying change processes, cross-sectional studies may even be inappropriate. It is only over time that change can be observed.[5]

The difference can be said to be similar to that between photo (cross-sectional) and video (longitudinal).[6] A photo taken at a time determined by the photographer certainly tells us something about what it looked like exactly at that moment, from a certain angle. But a video recording, at its best, can provide a dynamic and detailed account of crucial moments in people’s lives. Researchers in a longitudinal study can become fellow travellers or companions to the people being studied.[7] This makes the study form more intimate, personal and relational than a cross-sectional study. However, it requires mutual trust, good research ethics and some level of confidentiality. The close relationship also means that the participants often expect the research leaders to give something back, as a balance between giving and taking needs to be maintained in the relationship between them. This is known in sociology as reciprocity – relational equilibrium between giving and taking.[8]

Because designed action sampling is based on content packages with multiple tasks that are reflected upon preferably on a weekly basis, many of the unique advantages of longitudinal studies are realised. Each participant makes a new reflection approximately every two weeks. The research leaders then become trusted co-travellers on the teachers’ everyday journey and also gain a dynamic and detailed picture of when, how and why different phenomena occur and the resulting effects. The form and the concise task descriptions also mean that this is done in a time-efficient way. The school avoids the main disadvantages of longitudinal studies – time consumption and cost.

The participants themselves choose the approximate time when they reflect on an assignment they have just completed. This allows data to be collected in real time and close to when something interesting has been done. This makes the data collected more reliable, more detailed and more emotionally charged. Especially in comparison to a cross-sectional study, where data is usually collected at a time determined by the researcher, who then rarely manages to pinpoint dynamic processes or crucial emotional moments in the school. An exciting way of working longitudinally is given in Example 7.

Example 7: Values-based work in primary schools

Working with students’ values is an important part of promoting safety and well-being in schools. However, a difficult question is how this can be done in practice. In a development project at one school, around 70 students were asked to carry out concrete actions aimed at strengthening their sense of community. The goal was a healthy school with a good atmosphere, good relations and few cases of offence.

The tasks could be about everyday actions such as looking the school restaurant staff in the eye and saying thank you with a smile, saying hello to someone they don’t normally say hello to, being kind enough for someone else to say thank you, getting someone who rarely talks at lunch to talk a little more, supporting a friend who seems to be left out, or getting as many people as possible to participate in a joint activity. After each completed task, the students had to write a short reflection, report the feeling and estimate the effects. Students then received feedback from an adult. Tags captured effects such as “More people cheering for each other”, “More people doing things together” and “More people caring for each other”.

The project was so successful that it was both extended and spread more widely in the municipality. The responsible special educationalist Åsa Sourander and the author John Steinberg wrote a book about the project: Värdegrundsarbete i praktiken: metodbok för skolan (Steinberg & Sourander, 2019, in English: “Values based work in practice: a method book for schools). They called the approach ‘behaviour-based values development’, and it involves illustrating abstract concepts such as solidarity, equality, respect, consideration and acceptance with concrete behaviours that students themselves can try out in practice. A new task is tested every week for six weeks. Important elements are that all students are involved, that the students’ actions are systematically followed up via written reflection afterwards and that an adult provides feedback.

When all students had to complete the same task at the same time, the impact was greater. The actions led to many interesting conversations between students, both in class and during breaks. The atmosphere in the school became calmer and more pleasant. In the school restaurant, students talked to the staff in new ways.

This way of working requires perseverance. After a round of six missions, you can take a break. Then a new round is needed. Some tasks were difficult to implement in practice, such as getting a shy friend to talk more.

Deep reflection – everyone thinks on a deeper level

The most important field on the designed action sampling form is the written reflection that teachers are asked to do after completing their assignment. Reflection plays a key role in all learning. This is especially true for action-based learning, where learning takes place actively and practically, inside or outside the classroom. Simply doing something is not enough for deeper learning to take place. Doing must also be linked to content knowledge and previous experiences through deep individual personal reflection. Only then is new useful knowledge created that the individual can apply in their future problem solving. Reflection on the form in Figure 4.2 is thus not only a way of collecting data, but also fosters teachers’ learning. Time set aside for reflection is a kind of ‘glue’ that helps teachers in the all-important task of combining theory and practice.[9]

For many people, reflection is an automatic and unconscious thought process. As early as the 1970s, researchers Argyris and Schön coined the term ‘reflective practitioners’ to describe managers, architects, teachers and others who developed in their professional role through individual critical reflection on their own actions.[10] Particularly competent practitioners often dared to challenge established ways of thinking in the workplace through so-called double-loop learning: a type of learning where norms and goals are critically scrutinised.

A frequently used way of explaining double-loop learning is based on an ordinary heating element in a room, with a thermostat set at 20 degrees. Single-loop learning is then about the thermostat constantly trying to maintain the target value of 20 degrees in the room. Double-loop learning is instead about the thermostat exercising a kind of self-criticism and questioning whether 20 degrees is even a suitable temperature for the room.

A high and increasing pace in schools risks crowding out the all-important time required for individual critical reflection on one’s own practice and its goals. Neo-liberal school policy has also led to increasingly strict target management through various steering documents, with ever more detailed formulations of objectives that must not be questioned.[11] Reflective practices can thus perhaps be said to be an endangered species in schools. Here, designed action sampling can contribute with an increased focus on critical reflection.

If school leaders ask all staff to engage in a few minutes of individual written reflection at least every two weeks or every month, over time the priorities in the workplace will change. In the long run, this leads to more self-aware and more critically reflective teachers. If individual written reflection becomes the norm in the workplace, employees will also spend more time developing their teaching, as they will be forced to stop and think more deeply about how they work and why they do so. Teachers’ efforts to verbalise their thoughts also contribute to stronger ownership and deeper insights into various attempts to develop their own practice.[12]

Reflection should be timed close to the actions to which it relates, preferably on the same day. This is called reflection-in-action.[13] This makes the reflection more emotionally alive. It also makes it easier to mentally recreate one’s own actions in order to review and reassess them critically.[14]

There is a risk that written reflection becomes superficial and uninteresting, both for the teachers who write down their thoughts and for the peer learning leaders who read and give feedback. It is therefore important, as a peer learning leader, to encourage the teachers, already in the task description, to:[15]

• not only describe what they were doing, thinking and feeling, but also reflect on why they were doing, thinking and feeling that way.
• try to relate their practical experience to relevant theory and literature
• try to formulate any new insights
• try to write down what surprised them
• try to relate to the feelings the task led to – what made them feel strongly positive or strongly negative, and why do they think they felt that way?

Good reflection often requires taking a step back and considering alternative ways of perceiving the situation, and thinking about how others might view the situation. The deepest level of reflection involves trying to articulate your changed beliefs and values at a deeply personal level.

Peer learning leaders need to guide teachers towards deeper reflection. This is best done by using the form in Figure 4.2 at the end of each task description to describe how teachers should reflect after an action. If the peer learning leader is then not satisfied with the depth of the reflections, he or she may need to reconsider. It may be necessary to revise the task description, more specifically the part that instructs teachers how to reflect. Peer learning leaders may need to try things out and continuously ask themselves questions:

What wording in the task description makes teachers’ written reflections interesting and deep?

Another way to get deeper and more interesting reflections from teachers is to give them regular and thoughtful feedback on their reflections.

Not everyone is initially able to reflect in depth in writing. It is also quite common for some individuals to resist or even refuse to reflect.[16] Over time, however, these problems pass, especially if the school management insists on the importance of written individual reflection. Teachers develop a good ability to reflect deeply in writing over time, through practice and with good support from their peer learning leaders. The peer learning leader feedback box on the form in Figure 4.2 could be used to provide teachers with different tips for deeper reflection.

Mixed method – collection of both text and numbers

Designed action sampling is based on mixed methods. Mixed methods in a research study means collecting both qualitative data (e.g. text) and quantitative data (mainly numbers) in the same study.[17] Some advantages of this are the ability to:

• be able to analyse through triangulation – studying an issue from several different angles.
• be able to simultaneously see both the details (zoom in on the text) and get an overview of the whole (zoom out via numbers).
• flexibly switch between two different worlds of analysis – text and numbers.[18]

Despite many advantages, mixed methods in the social sciences are extremely rare. One reason is that the social science research community is divided into two camps – qualitative and quantitative research. According to this division, researchers should work only with numbers and statistics from, for example, surveys, or only with text and other qualitative statements from people via for example interviews, video, audio, photos, observations, case descriptions, field notes or archival documents. This bitter struggle between two camps has been called a paradigm war, where too much effort has been put into describing and emphasising the differences[19] – although there are actually more similarities. For example, both camps are trying to:[20]

• reduce and describe the collected data in a summarised and clear manner.
• analyse collected data using different analysis methods
• build explanatory models
• draw meaningful conclusions.

With such common goals, co-operation should be a better research strategy than war.

The form in Figure 4.2 shows that designed action sampling is based on mixed method. The form has several fields for both qualitative free text and for selection of emotions and tags that can then be quantified and analysed numerically. This achieves many of the benefits traditionally associated with mixed methods. The work of hundreds of teachers on multiple tasks can be relatively easily visualised numerically in a single summary table. If you then want to know more about the details, the analysis turns to qualitative data. Text analysis can then tell the story behind the numbers: why they are the way they are.

The designed action sampling form always has the same structure and thus always contains both free text and quantifications. This leads to an important advantage: all text from each participant is always linked to quantitative data. In the analysis phase, peer learning leaders can therefore always easily go back and forth between text and numbers. For each number, there is text from many participants explaining underlying cause-and-effect mechanisms. For each snippet of text, there are numbers (emotional states and tags) that link the text to other participants’ texts so that overall patterns can be searched for and visualised.

Emotional rating – all reflections are emotionally rated

Each time the form in Figure 4.2 is completed, teachers are also expected to rate their experience emotionally on a five-point scale. The choice is made by selecting a suitable image from five different emotional states. The teachers’ choice of image is then converted into numbers, with each image representing a number between -2 and +2. The negative numbers represent negative emotional states, and the positive numbers represent positive emotional states. Zero represents a neutral emotional state. The numbers can then be used to quickly sort all the data and calculate averages. This makes it easier to analyse, see next chapter.

The five-image scale is derived from psychological research on emotions.[21] The original version dates from 1980 and is called the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM). The researchers who developed SAM wanted to find a simpler way to collect people’s feelings in different situations than the relatively complicated text-based scales that were dominant at the time.

A picture-based scale makes it easier and faster for participants in research studies to rate their emotional state, without the researchers losing reliability compared to text-based scales. SAM has been used to allow participants to rate their experience mainly in medical, psychological and marketing research.[22]

People’s feelings about a phenomenon say a lot about how they will choose to act in relation to it in the future, often even more than their thoughts.[23] Therefore, the calculated mean value of many teachers’ emotion rating on the form in Figure 4.2 can provide a relatively reliable indication of how likely it is that they will choose to continue working on the action of the task in the future. Therefore, when comparing different completed tasks, it is always interesting to look at the mean value of all participants’ emotional assessment of each task.

Effect coding – all data is tagged according to effects

An important part of the form for designed action sampling in Figure 4.2 is the tagging of different effects. A tag is a short phrase of a few words that summarises an effect, experience or behaviour of interest to the research being conducted. Tags can therefore be both positive and negative. All eleven examples in this book contain concrete examples of tags used in each study.

After writing a reflection and estimating the emotional state in the form, the participant chooses among different tags that represent interesting effects and experiences of different kinds. It is possible to choose more than one of the tags, if there are several that fit. The main purpose of this tagging is to collect quantitative data on what effects the participants could see after a completed task. Thus, tagging is an important part of enabling and facilitating the analysis of causal cause-and-effect relationships.

The tags that participants will be able to choose from are decided by the peer learning leaders at the start of a study. Participants can also be invited to the process of deciding which tags to choose from. However, it is not easy to come up with a good set of tags. It requires creativity, experience in the area to be studied, a lot of thought and many attempts. Therefore, the first time a content package is used, peer learning leaders may start with a sufficiently good set of tags. Each time a content package is used again, the set of tags can be further developed based on how it worked last time. Which tags worked well? Which tags were missing? Which tags captured interesting phenomena and relationships well?

A tag should not be longer than four to five words and can be even shorter. This makes it easier for participants. Tags should be tested on a smaller group of participants before a study starts, to ensure that many participants understand roughly what each tag means.

The idea of tags is derived from a very established qualitative research method called grounded theory. It was developed in the 1960s by sociologists Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss. Their approach was mainly inductive, which means trying to build theories from empirical data, mainly qualitative interview studies. This is why it is called ‘grounded theory’ – it refers to theories that are well grounded in empirical data.

In grounded theory, coding of text-based interview data is an important step. The researcher looks for patterns and relationships by analysing interviews that have been recorded and then transcribed, i.e. written down word by word. The analysis is done through a creative generation of different conceptual words, called ‘codes’. At best, the codes describe the studied practice in a good way, and at the same time form a conceptual basis for a theory of how a certain phenomenon works more generally. These codes are then linked to relevant passages in the interview text using software specifically built for this purpose. [24]

In grounded theory, coding of interview data is an important part of linking from practice to theory.[25] In line with this, tags are used in designed action sampling to facilitate linkages from practice to theory. However, it is the participants themselves who code their own data, unlike in grounded theory, where the researcher has to code all the text afterwards with the help of software. Having the participants code their data themselves saves a lot of time, but may involve a small risk of misleading coding. Especially if participants do not understand, or misunderstand, what some tags mean.

The methodological literature on grounded theory contains many good tips that can be used in the process of designing tags for the designed action sampling form. Ideas for suitable tags can, for example, be drawn from perspectives and effects that are perceived as particularly interesting or important, from what has emerged in previously collected data and from literature in the field. [26]

There are also some creative tricks. Corbin and Strauss (1990, pp. 75-95) write about the importance of analysing collected data by:

• asking many questions – what, who, when, where, how, how much, why?
• analysing key words and key phrases that appear in the collected data – what does the word/phrase really mean?
• trying to turn situations around and see opposites – what would be the opposite of what we see in our data?
• systematically comparing two or more instances of the same phenomenon – what similarities and differences do we see?
• comparing with something completely different – what can we learn about this from some completely different phenomena?
• never taking anything for granted – is it really always/never a certain way around this phenomenon?

Such questions generate ideas for appropriate codes, or tags as we call them in designed action sampling.

Feedback – everyone gets quick feedback from peer learning leaders

Once the peer learning leader has received a completed form, it is important to promptly provide feedback on the content of the form back to the teacher who completed it. Preferably within a few days, or by a specified deadline. Therefore, there is a feedback box at the bottom of the designed action sampling Form, see Figure 4.2. The peer learning leader needs to first fill in the feedback box with their own thoughts and tips and then make a photocopy of the form. The copy is returned to the teacher. Through this procedure, both the teacher and the researcher have access to all the information. The teacher can save their own reflections and go back to them later. The researcher saves all completed forms for the subsequent analysis phase. Of course, if the work is done with some form of digital support, all the paperwork is avoided.

Feedback is like rocket fuel for learning[27] and is just as important for teachers’ learning as it is for students’ learning.[28] Teachers who receive feedback on their reflections feel seen, get clues and suggestions for their own learning, and get important information about how they are doing in relation to various expectations. These can be expectations from peer learning leaders, school leaders or teacher trainers. Feedback from those leading the work is also particularly powerful in organisational development work.[29] Getting quick feedback from an expert can be particularly motivating. Here is what one teacher said:

The feedback on our task reflections came immediately and I felt that wow, this is so much fun! Getting feedback from an expert is a huge development for everyone!

Teachers who do not receive feedback risk losing both their own motivation and trust in management. If no one in a leadership position seems to care enough to read and give feedback on their reflections, one might wonder what the point is of reflecting and working with development at all. Teachers who do not receive feedback also miss out on important clues in their learning process and thus risk losing their focus on development.

Lack of feedback may even be one of the main causes of poorly functioning organisations, as it leads to a harmful imbalance between practical action and theoretical reflection.[30] The intimate and relational nature of designed action sampling also makes it particularly important for peer learning leaders to provide feedback to each participant, as it is an important part of perceived reciprocity; that there is a relational balance between giving and taking. All in all, as a peer learning leader, you should definitely not forget to fill in the feedback box at the bottom of the form in Figure 4.2. In the worst case scenario, this can lead to the work you have done being in vain.

Some peer learning managers may find it difficult to give good feedback. It can be reassuring to know that it is often enough to acknowledge the participant with a short sentence or two, and perhaps include (at most) one in-depth question for further reflection. It is also more important to give quick feedback to everyone than to give perfect feedback. Therefore, peer learning leaders should not be more ambitious with their feedback than the time available to give everyone quick feedback allows.

Research on formative assessment can provide many concrete tips on feedback. Hattie has suggested that feedback providers start with the following three questions, asked from the recipient’s perspective:[31]

• Where am I going?
• How am I doing?
• What is the next step?

It is also important not to focus too much on pleasant but trivial praise such as “Good job!”, as this is the least effective form of feedback.[32] It is better to provide confidential and personalised feedback on a detail in what the teacher has written in his/her reflection, for example something which aroused the peer learning leader’s genuine interest.

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[1] ESM as a method has been shown to have very high ecological validity, meaning that the information collected is very much in line with the reality experienced by the participants. See further details in Hektner et al. (2007, s. 7) and Stone et al. (2003, s. 28).

[2] For a longer discussion on how the ESM reduces such bias, see Stone et al. (2003, s. 28).

[3] See Yin (2009).

[4] For a detailed discussion, see Wunsch et al. (2010).

[5] See Neale (2018, s. 15).

[6] Read more about this difference in Neale (2018).

[7] Full chapter 4 of Neale (2018) is about this.

[8] Read more about reciprocity in qualitative longitudinal research in Neale (2018, s. 82-85).

[9] Read more about the glue metaphor in Hägg (2018).

[10] See for example Argyris and Schön (1974) and Schön (1983).

[11] See Karlsson (2017), Bornemark (2018) and Crocco and Costigan (2007).

[12] For a detailed review of the value of reflection, see Moon (2004, s. 79-94).

[13] See Schön (1983).

[14] A model for such reflection has been proposed by Boud et al. (1985). See also Boud and Walker (1993).

[15] These tips are taken from Hatton and Smith (1995) and from Kember (1999).

[16] This is described by Moon (2004, s. 89).

[17] See definition in Venkatesh et al. (2013, s. 22).

[18] For a review of the various advantages of mixed methods, see Onwuegbuzie and Leech (2005).

[19] Read more about this in Bergman (2008) and in Onwuegbuzie and Leech (2005).

[20] These similarities are described by Onwuegbuzie and Leech (2005).

[21] See Bradley and Lang (1994). See also Lackéus (2014).

[22] See for example Morris et al. (2002).

[23] This is described by Morris et al. (2002).

[24] See also the use of software in coding in Hutchison et al. (2010).

[25] See Corbin and Strauss (1990, s. 74).

[26] See recommendations by Corbin and Strauss (1990).

[27] For a comparison between feedback and other learning strategies, see Hattie (2011).

[28] For an overview of the value of feedback, see Gamlem and Smith (2013).

[29] See Huisman (2006, s. 14).

[30] On this, Kolb writes (1984, s. 21-22) in his book on action-based learning.

[31] See Håkansson and Sundberg (2012, s. 213).

[32] See Håkansson and Sundberg (2012, s. 214).

When we come to the eight working models, we leave philosophical deep questions and become more concrete. This is about what to do in practical terms and how to do it. However, we are still at a relatively general and strategic level. The models can be said to constitute general principles that we then try to follow and be inspired by in our practical work with data collection and data analysis.

The first of the eight working models describes what is meant in this book by a task: a hypothesis about an action that might create value for learners. The closely related concept of actions is then taken from action research: action-based interventions staged by researchers to develop an organisation while trying to learn something about a more general issue. The classic scientific experiment is given a new and more social science-like form: social situations “provoked” in the classroom. Design principles describe what needs to be done to achieve a desired effect in a given situation and thus facilitate the bridging of theory and practice. Fine-grainedness is a principle that means that teachers’ own learning (theory focus) and teachers’ value creation for students (practice focus) need to be mixed in everyday life every week or two. Protocols are used to ensure teachers’ accountability in school development and to follow up in a structured way that all teachers receive formative feedback on their reflections. Written collegial learning is an alternative to the usual oral collegial learning and allows for a better balance between depth of understanding, time spent analysing and dissemination. Confidentiality means that not everyone reads everything, but rather that sensitive information is shared on a limited basis in small groups.

Task hypotheses – What can help students?

Now we come to perhaps the most important part of designed action sampling as a method, namely the action-oriented tasks that teachers receive from those who lead the research work (teacher colleagues, school leaders or experts) and which all teachers are then expected to try out in their own classrooms or lecture halls. After all, it is only when something is done differently in the classroom that there is the slightest prospect of better development for students. An all-important change in teachers’ thought processes that does not lead to a change in classroom practice can never reasonably create value for students.

At the same time, tasks to teachers are also perhaps the most challenging and difficult part of designed action sampling. It cannot be emphasised enough how sensitive and difficult it is to advise others on how to do their job better. At the first sight of a person who thinks they know what teachers need to do differently, many teachers become wary. This is natural, given the number of times teachers have to endure unsolicited advice with little relevance to their daily lives. Teachers have many opportunities to practise listening politely and perhaps even dutifully acknowledging important visitors, often with fancy titles, when they speak in the school auditorium. Then teachers go back to their classrooms and ignore the advice given, often deliberately and with good reason. Teacher Roberth Nordin (2017, pp. 19, 27) jokingly describes a typical professional development day:

“The speaker offers a great solution to a problem you don’t have. You get something that you never asked for or ever needed. You usually end up with at least a couple of newly invented tasks to squeeze into your schedule. […] The advice is endlessly varied, but the message is the same: here you get more to do, it’s good if you do it with a smile on your face. And if it doesn’t work right away, try new approaches.”

To understand the delicate nature of the situation, it is worth drawing a parallel with other situations in life when people receive advice they have not asked for, see Figure 6.1. For example, parents receiving advice on how to look after their child, from in-laws or from other parents. Or perhaps even from people who do not have children themselves. Like the guest lecturer in education who has never worked as a teacher.

Figure 6.1 Three cartoons by teacher Erik Johansson, illustrating how badly people dislike unsolicited advice.

One solution to the problem of unsolicited advice is to be inclusive and rigorous in the process of deciding which value-creating tasks should be tested by all teachers. Even when experts possess respectable and undisputed insight, it is perfectly reasonable to allow those teachers who will later test a set of expert advice to be involved in some way in formulating, selecting, or at least having a say in which actions to test.

You can also allow teachers to formulate their own tasks, which are then tested by everyone in the department or school. In any educational organisation, the collective pedagogical expertise is both broad and deep. There are probably also many teachers around Sweden who need to let go of the Jante law (don’t think you’re so smart and special) and take on the role of peer learning leader – to “lead colleagues’ professional learning and development [to] create good development, learning and teaching in all classrooms – not just their own” (Rönnerman et al., 2018, pp. 25, 28). Designed action sampling has been shown to contribute to more people taking that step, see example 3 below.

Another solution to the problem of unsolicited advice is to be careful to constantly emphasise that every assignment is just a hypothesis. According to pragmatism, no one can know whether an activity will work well for a particular teacher in a particular classroom. Each action-oriented task test that each teacher undertakes is therefore its own little experiment that can have both varied and unexpected outcomes. Calling a task a hypothesis is also a good way for an expert or fellow teacher to show humility towards the complexity of other people’s reality. Despite the expertise or long experience on which the task may be based, you can never be sure how well it will work for others.

A third solution is to see the journey of testing mission hypotheses as a collective and long team journey. This does not involve deduction – an expert, like a parent-in-law, telling everyone what “must work”. Nor is it a question of induction – that a teacher “knows” what works for other teachers. Rather, it’s abduction – teachers, school leaders and experts working together and persistently moving between theory and practice. With a good deal of creativity and humble intuition, they try to find out together what could help many teachers and students in their own school or organisation.

No matter how you choose to approach the problem of unsolicited advice, it is a problem that educators need to address. It is not compatible with either educational laws or professional ethics for teachers to reject ideas they themselves do not immediately like. So when Nordin (2017b, p. 97) suggests that teachers should “be left alone without politicians, pundits and other less knowledgeable people telling them how the noble art of teaching should be applied”, this is neither realistic, reasonable nor legal. Instead, every educational institution needs processes in which many teachers, even sometimes reluctantly, continuously and systematically try out new ideas in their own teaching. These can be ideas from colleagues, from experts and from others.

Task hypotheses are thus probably an indispensable part of everyday life in every educational institution with ambitions to create as much value for students as possible. The systematic development work needs to focus on jointly designing or selecting a reasonably large set of value-creating tasks each term, which all the teachers concerned try out in their classrooms or lecture halls and then document and analyse the effects.

Example 3: Empowering employees in pre-schools

A training programme for 190 staff at 11 municipal preschools used designed action sampling as a method. Staff were invited to five lectures in 2018 on tools for better co-operation, communication, leadership and conflict management. At each meeting, fifteen minutes were given for individual written reflection immediately after the lecture. Between each session, staff were given action-oriented tasks to carry out in the workplace and then reflect on. The tasks could involve giving a colleague developmental feedback, helping a colleague out of their victim mentality or trying to replace colleagues’ disappointment with others with clear agreements on change. Tags captured effects such as “Good tool”, “Good co-operation” and “Motivated others”.

Many were unused to reflecting in silence and wondered what kind of text they were expected to write. Such doubts disappeared over time. Towards the end of the exercise, participants realised that they were writing for their own personal development, not for the ‘right’ answer. They learnt to reflect on their own development in a way they had not been able to do before. The tags provided much appreciated guidance for reflection.

In preschool, many are used to working together in groups. Here, however, it became more individual-centred. Each participant was allowed to reflect on their own thoughts and actions instead of being coloured by those who are usually the most vocal. The basic idea was that if everyone takes a small step forward in their own development, we will get further than if a few people take big steps forward. A stronger focus on the self provided a clearer individual responsibility to move forward in one’s own development.

The assignments were a successful element of the programme and consolidated the new knowledge among the participants. Getting feedback on their reflections from the project manager boosted their self-esteem and gave them the courage to talk more at the next meeting. Over time, the initiative led to more people stepping forward and applying for positions as unit developers. More people became more confident in their leadership in everyday work with children and carers. Many were strengthened in their conviction that they can make a difference and made more suggestions for improvements to the organisation.

Actions – teachers do action research on and together with each-other

Designed action sampling is essentially an action research method, as it involves collaboration between researchers and practitioners. Action research takes practice as its point of departure and aims primarily to improve the everyday life of professionals through various actions that are staged in practice.[1] Action research in schools is a major movement both in Sweden and internationally.[2] Opportunities include being able to conduct research that is more relevant to schools, being able to better bridge the gap between schools and universities, and being able to combine a need to build the knowledge base of the profession with a need to develop one’s own organisation and staff. Action research is a common strategy for working both with professional collegial learning and with a scientific basis in education. Olsson (2018, pp. 72-73) describes in a concrete way what this is often about in practical terms:

“Professionals formulate questions about their practice, stage an action, follow the process systematically and reflect on what happens. The process ends with some form of documentation. The knowledge of their own practice becomes a basis for further development and improvement work. Action research is conducted in a collective context, for example by starting with the team, which meets regularly and discusses the ongoing improvement work.”

However, action research is very difficult. The practical and scientific challenges are significant. Among researchers more generally, action research is therefore a contested and marginalised form of scholarship, both in education and in other sectors of society. A common criticism is that action research is rarely generalisable, publishable, rigorous or even relevant to a wider audience.[3] The methods often applied in action research are further criticised for being too subjective and with a weak focus on validity, reproducibility, the possibility of external criticism and links to previous research.

Action research is also criticised by practitioners. With so many options for how the research can be conducted, there is a great risk of the process being perceived as vague, anecdotal, fuzzy and ineffective. Collaboration between practitioners can also be perceived as difficult and forced. Being open and honest in the many and time-consuming oral reflection meetings is not natural for all participants.[4]

Designed action sampling can be seen as an attempt to address many of these challenges in a new way and as an attempt to make action research simpler and more powerful. Table 6.1 summarises ten classic features of action research, and how they are handled somewhat differently in designed action sampling. Through a clarified, more focused, more written, more individualised and more theory-oriented process, many of the challenges of action research can hopefully be better and more easily managed. Time and cost are also reduced when schools are not as dependent on an external researcher from a university. Teachers and educational managers can to a greater extent take on the role of research leader themselves. Time is also saved when much of the learning dialogue takes place in writing rather than orally. It is also easier to manage research in terms of scheduling when there is less need to bring together researchers, school leaders and teachers in many long oral discussions.

However, the key difference is that a mainly written and individual (but still collective) scholarship becomes more rigorously documented and thus more generalisable, more theoretically relevant, more reviewable and ultimately more publishable. Whether this benefit comes at the expense of the participants’ perceived relevance and personal development remains to be seen. However, the projects implemented so far do not suggest that this would be the case.

Table 6.1 Comparison between action research and designed action sampling

Classic features of action research	Comparison with designed action sampling	How designed action sampling develops action research
Collaboration between researchers and practitioners	Researchers can participate, but practitioners can also do science on their own.	Clarified process removes requirement for researchers to be involved in the work, lowering costs
Actions aimed at changing practice	Actions aimed at creating value for learners	Narrowing the purpose clarifies that the focus is on student outcomes.
Based on practice and its problems	The starting point can be either theory, practice or design principles.	The focus shifts slightly towards theory, with a better balance between practice and theory.
Oral learning dialogue between practitioners in focus groups	Written, structured and confidential learning dialogue, with written confidential feedback.	Dialogue documented in writing and more confidential, research is more rigorous, time is saved
The aim is to improve practice rather than produce new knowledge.	Design principles provide better balance between practice and knowledge	New way of describing, disseminating and validating insights increases chance of generalisable new knowledge
There are many different ways to conduct action research.	Clear methodological choices, work processes and techniques for data collection and analysis.	Easier and less fuzzy for practitioners to participate, higher chance to make theoretical contributions.
Focus on problem solving and dialogue between researchers and practitioners	Focus on experiments and subsequent structured documentation and analysis.	Better able to meet critics’ high standards of scientific rigour and scrutiny
Democratic process where everyone is involved in formulating actions	The democratic aspect is mainly that everyone can document and analyse outcomes.	The requirement for consensus and dialogue has been slightly reduced, in favour of more rigorous data collection.
A wide range of different data collection methods	All data is collected via deep reflection forms after the action is completed	Great time saving yet improved analysis capacity through mixed structured data
Reflection takes place orally in a group, some time after the action has been completed.	Reflection is done individually, in writing and as soon as possible after the action has been completed.	More reflections are deeper and in the moment, and are not as tainted by other participants’ experiences.

Experiments – we test in the classroom how it works

The scientific experiment is perhaps the most important scientific method of all time. Since Francis Bacon showed in the 17th century that observation is not enough, but that we must also manipulate our world to reveal its secrets[5] , the history books have been filled with famous experiments. Galileo, with a little help from the Tower of Pisa, demonstrated that a stone and a feather fall at exactly the same speed if ignoring wind resistance. Pavlov (1927) proved the phenomenon of the conditioned reflex by ringing a bell just before each dog meal, causing the dogs to salivate even when no food was served. Milgram (1963) proved that we humans are capable of injuring or even killing another human out of sheer obedience, by having volunteer participants administer what they thought were potentially lethal electric shocks to people screaming in pain, hidden behind a wall. However, no people were harmed in the experiment, as it was hired actors pretending to be in pain. Mischel et al (2011) proved that life is slightly better for those who have the willpower to wait for rewards. In the famous ‘marshmallow experiment’, they gave candy to young children, noted which ones were able to wait to eat the candy and then followed them in life for thirty years.

Experiments are also common in medical research. A common experiment is the randomised control trial. Participants are randomly divided into two different groups – one receiving active medicine and one receiving sugar pills. Various effects of interest are then monitored in the study, which is preferably ‘double-blind’ – that is, neither the doctor nor the patient knows whether the medicine or the sugar pill is being administered. Such a study is often called a ‘gold standard’ study, which suggests that many people think it is the best kind of experiment you can do.

It is important in an experiment to be able to vary preferably only a single variable (called the ‘independent variable’) while keeping many other variables constant (called ‘control variables’), see Figure 6.2. It is only when such control over surrounding influencing factors is achieved, that causal relationships between cause and effect can be studied with high reliability in an experiment.

Figure 6.2 Experimental method illustrated with a simple example from biology.

In education research, there are strong differences of opinion on whether it is possible or appropriate to use experiments as a scientific method.[6] Proponents of experimentation believe that if we can just design the perfect randomised control trial, we can finally begin to build an increasingly strong body of evidence about what works in education.[7] Instead, critics argue that it is not possible to control the myriad of influencing variables involved in an ordinary and highly complex educational situation.[8] Social science, unlike natural science, also deals with meaning-making individuals who are constantly learning and thus constantly changing their behaviour from time to time.[9] What educational research tries to study – meaningful learning – is thus also what makes such research methodologically very difficult.

Within critical realism, the idea of randomised control trials in the social sciences is completely rejected. Sayer (2010, pp. 3, 116) writes:

“Social scientists are invariably confronted with situations in which many things are going on at once and they lack the possibility, open to many natural scientists, of isolating out particular processes in experiments. […] it  is often said that progress is inhibited in social science by […] the impossibility of experiments.”

However, not all critical realists reject experimentation as a method. What is needed, however, is a different approach than the traditional experiment where variables are isolated in laboratory-like environments. Danermark et al. (2002, pp. 103, 105) label what is required a social experiment conducted in a natural environment, preferably via emotionally strong situations and with comparisons of many different outcomes with each other:

“The  experimental element lies in the circumstance that the researcher consciously provokes a situation in order to study how people handle it. […] [A good method is] to compare  several  completely  different  interaction situations  in  order  to  be  able  to  discern  the  structure  all  these  cases  have  in common.”

In designed action sampling, task hypotheses are at the heart of the social experiment. The task written on the form that is handed out (see Figure 4.2) is a guide to teachers on what kind of situation or event they are expected to “provoke” in their classroom, and then reflect on based on different effects they saw. The more teachers who participate, the more likely it is that research leaders will be able to discern patterns in the structures and mechanisms found in many teachers’ reflections. The more people who participate in a social experiment, the less the risk that the research leaders’ own hopes for a positive result will unduly influence the analysis and conclusions. Instead, let the collected data speak for itself. Students can also contribute with reflections, see example 4 below.

If the social experimentation methodology of designed action sampling proves successful on a broad scale, we may even see a period of many new research advances in educational science. We can learn from the many breakthroughs in the history of science that we should not underestimate the potential of experimental methodology. Perhaps social experiments work better than traditional experiments in the field of education? If so, many teachers will have to take a more prominent role in educational science in the future. This is because working with social experiments in the classroom requires the active participation of students’ own teachers in science. The British researcher Pring (2010, p. 122) states:

“tentative beliefs or conclusions drawn by the teacher become hypotheses’ to be put to the test in the classrooms. Only the teachers can do that.”

Example 4: School-work interaction in secondary schools

Students can also benefit from participating in science. In one municipality, 150 8th graders from three different primary schools were involved in an impact study of a career fair organised by the municipality’s study and career counsellor. One of the secondary school teachers also worked differently with two different classes to identify differences in the new approach. One class was given the task of reflecting individually on various action-oriented assignments before and after the fair, while another class worked in a more traditional way.

Students were asked to write down their future thoughts on education and careers, to read up on different interesting careers, to write down their expectations before the fair and to write down their thoughts afterwards. Tags captured common effects such as “Know more about different professions”, “Made a choice”, “Increased interest in working life” and “More motivated to study”.

The teacher who compared two classes felt that the scientific method gave a much better insight into the students’ learning and that the students approached the fair in a different way. Both the students’ and the teacher’s learning was deepened. The dialogue with the students, where everyone could speak and then receive feedback from the teacher, influenced the teaching in connection with the fair. The teacher saw what needed to be followed up and was able to better adapt the teaching to the students’ interests and conditions. Afterwards, the teacher regretted not having used the new method with both her classes.

The method provided a depth of understanding of each student’s learning and individual development that cannot be achieved with, for example, exit tickets – student reflection after a lesson. Designed action sampling with students as participants allows teachers to drill down into the most intricate parts of teaching. When all students are able to verbalise their thoughts about concrete actions, the teacher can see hidden structures and group cultures in new ways.

The effects of different interventions in study and career guidance are a relatively unexplored area. Surveys can measure how satisfied a student is with an intervention, but not how learning takes place and why. Here, designed action sampling can be a promising method. Both teachers and career counsellors can gain access to new insights and more effective ways of working.

Design principles – the start and end of the whole research journey

Design principles is a concept derived from design science, a new and rapidly growing research tradition founded by scientist and Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon.[10] The starting point for design science was the book The sciences of the artificial (Simon, 1969). Its main argument is that a different kind of science is needed for teachers, engineers, architects, lawyers, doctors and others who create artificial phenomena and situations in their profession. Anyone who acts to move from an existing situation to a more desirable situation is essentially working with design.[11] Simon noted that the traditional sciences, natural and social[12] , aim to analyse, describe and explain existing and naturally occurring phenomena, hence the name sciences of the natural. However, this is not enough when the aim is to recommend, prescribe, solve problems or create completely new phenomena. Therefore, a different scientific basis for such creation processes and a partly different scientific methodology are needed. With its focus on new phenomena and solutions that work in practice, design science is philosophically grounded in pragmatism[13] and abduction.[14] Table 6.2 compares traditional research with design science in more detail.

Design science does not replace traditional research, but is a complement that can strengthen the practical relevance of research by better bridging the gap between theory and practice. Such bridging is done through something called design principles. A design principle consists of four elements that help practitioners design a specific solution for their particular situation.

A well formulated design principle often comes in the form[15] : In situation A, if you want to achieve B, do C, because D. Four questions should be answered by a design principle[16] : 1) What to do? 2) In which situation? 3) To achieve what effects? 4) Why does it work? The fourth question is not always possible to answer, especially in early phases when there is not yet a deep understanding of why something works.

As organisations are complex and integrated by nature, design principles are often difficult to apply in isolation.[17] They are therefore usually described and applied in groups, as a coherent set of design principles for a particular overall purpose.

Table 6.2 Differences between traditional research and design science (the table is based on an article by Romme, 2003).

	Traditional research	Design science
Object of study	Naturally occurring phenomena	Artificial phenomena created by human beings
Objectives	Analyse, describe and explain what exists today.	Creatively change, design and create things that don’t yet exist but should.
Result	Patterns, laws, relationships between different forces and variables	Recommendations, design principles, solutions, useful actionable knowledge
Form	“In a situation A, if B happens, then C often follows”	“In a situation A, if you want to achieve B, do C”
Research ideals	Objective, observational, analytical, unemotional	Pragmatic, action-oriented, situational, committed.
Challenges	How to be practically relevant?	How to conduct rigorous research?
Method for experiments	Controlled experiments	Pragmatic experiments
How the two can be combined	Design principles provide a starting point for dialogue and collaboration between traditional research and design science. The principles are tested in a series of pragmatic experiments and are also related to existing traditional descriptive research.

The process of developing design principles can start either with traditional research or from practice. Over time, the design principles are further developed and tested in various pragmatic experiments and become a mixture of perspectives and ideas from both research and practice. Well-developed design principles become a kind of written, codified and clarified knowledge around actions that have proven to work well in practice in certain specific situations. A set of design principles thus does not answer the more classic research question “What is true?”, but rather the more pragmatic question “What works in a particular situation?”.[18]

In designed action sampling, the concept of design principles corresponds to the action-oriented value-creating tasks with associated tags. Each task is a response to what is to be done, and the tags are responses to desired effects. Several tasks and tags can also be combined into a content package, see an example in Figure 6.3, taken from Example 1 in chapter 4. In practical terms, the content package is an understandable and useful form for disseminating, discussing, analysing, further developing and testing a set of design principles beyond one’s own educational institution.

Figure 6.3 Example of a content package for co-operative learning consisting of three tasks and eighteen tags. This package is a shortened version of a content package originally created by Niclas Fohlin and Jennie Wilson, and has been trialled in a number of schools around Sweden. Read more in example 1 in chapter 4.

Design principles play a central role in designed action sampling. This is illustrated in Figure 6.4, which builds upon the circular and abductive approach in Figure 5.4. Whether it is researchers or practitioners who start the circular work, writing down design principles in the form of a set of tasks and tags is one of the first steps.[19] Then you go round Figure 6.4, lap by lap, developing the design principles further. Each time you then want to report and disseminate insights, it is primarily the design principles, in the form of a content package, that you disseminate to outsiders and then hopefully receive feedback on. Thus, the work process begins and ends with the design principles.

The design principles also facilitate dialogue between educational researchers and practitioners.[20] The tasks and tags can be easily compared with what is written in traditional educational research literature. They can also be trialled in many different places, so that different outcomes can be compared. This is called a replication study, i.e., a different research team repeats a research study using the same methodology, but in a different location, to see if they get similar results.

Figure 6.4 How design principles bridge the gap between ideal and reality.

Fine-grainedness – theory and practice intertwined in everyday life

The idea of fine-grainedness is basically about time perspectives. With frequent alternations over time between teachers’ own learning of new ideas (theory) and everyday value creation for students (practice), we get a good work-learn balance, see Chapter 3. If no consideration is given to fine-grainedness, teachers’ own learning will instead be spontaneously separated from value creation for students, see Figure 6.5. Then we get collegial discussions, in-service training days and professional development efforts that risk not significantly affecting everyday teaching.[21] We get a poor work-learn balance. As we have previously stated, theory and practice are like oil and water. They separate spontaneously. They must be constantly mixed so as not to be separated from each other, just like oil and water in a vinaigrette.

Figure 6.5 An illustration of poor work-learn balance and the need for a fine-grained mix of theory and practice for teachers.

With some inspiration from geology, fine grain size can be categorised into four basic mixtures – here called boulders, rocks, gravel and sand, see Figure 6.6. For teachers working in a school without effective in-service training, the boulder model applies. The teacher training programme they attended is the only source of theory available to them in their practical work with pupils. Fortunately, there are probably few such schools today. Most schools are probably at the grassroots level, where study days are relatively evenly distributed throughout the year, every month or two.

Figure 6.6 Four different models of fine-grainedness of work-learn balance in working life.

Designed action sampling helps educators to reach the fine-grained sand level in a relatively simple way and thus achieve a better work-learn balance in everyday life. The theories and development ideas that the organisation believes in and wants to try out are broken down into many small parts by having a content package with a few different tasks (say 3-8) worked through by all relevant staff over a few months. Every week or two, teachers spend some time familiarising themselves with the background, carrying out a task and finally reflecting in depth on the outcome. A task form is thus completed every week or fortnight by each teacher and submitted to the peer learning leaders, who then provide feedback. After a few months, all the work is summarised and discussed and analysed in an analysis meeting.

Let’s illustrate this with an analogy from the world of chemistry. A surfactant is a surface-active chemical substance that allows liquids to mix that would otherwise not mix spontaneously. The surfactant lowers the surface tension between the two liquids. Surfactants are found, for example, in detergents and dissolve oil-based dirt in the wash water. The designed action sampling form (see Figure 4.2) can be compared to a surfactant, but for the two ‘liquids’ of theory and practice. A single A4 page on the teacher’s desk helps reduce the surface tension between theory and practice. The form links the teacher’s own learning (theory) with the creation of value for students (practice).

If the teachers had not received a form on their desks, many of them would probably have been so immersed in a hectic daily routine that they would not have thought about the development ideas that were on the agenda at last development meeting, until the next professional development day. In fact, in the educational development projects we have run on designed action sampling, many teachers have asked for a simple way to be reminded every two weeks of the small development steps they can – and really want – to take in their everyday lives. The form is such a reminder. A little nudge that makes it a little easier for teachers to actively choose to mix theory and practice in their daily lives. Nudging is about gently changing people’s behaviours and habits so that they are more in line with the attitudes they already have. The idea comes from behavioural economics[22] and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2017.

Based on the idea of nudging, development work needs to be simplified and linked to concrete actions. Important information needs to be presented in a simple way, and too much information should be avoided. Finesse in development work therefore requires an exercise we can call elephant carpaccio[23] . A large elephant, such as a whole area of research or a whole book the teachers wants to work with, is sliced into many thin slices that can then be savoured one by one, every week or every two weeks. Educational managers may continue to distribute well-chosen literature to all teachers, but each book needs to be accompanied by content packages with task forms to help teachers balance the theoretical material on a practical level.

The idea of fine-grainedness is also applicable to students, see Figure 6.7. With a more fine-grained mix of theory and practice, they also get a better work-learn balance. An example of the boulder model is the degree project that many students have to do during the last four months of their programme. While thesis projects are often very instructive for students, they also illustrate how difficult it is for students to mix theory and practice in their daily lives. An example of the rock model is the two-week compulsory internship at a workplace organised for 15-year-old students in Sweden. Again, it is of course good that students get to be at a real workplace, but it is a pity that the experience is so rarely integrated in a fine-grained way into their regular education. The gravel model is exemplified by thematic days, insofar as students can then apply their knowledge in the real world utside the school area or campus. There are few good examples of the sand model beyond the rare examples of value creation pedagogy discussed in Part 1.

Designed action sampling can provide students with a more fine-grained experience by giving them action-oriented tasks where they are expected to apply different theoretical ideas in practice to create value for others. The same task form can then be used, in much the same way as for teachers. A good example of elephant carpaccio for students is vocational education, see example 9. Students’ practical activities at the workplace are broken down to a very fine level of detail. A question often used to slice the elephant is: [24]

“What do students need to do in order to learn what they need to know?“

Figure 6.7 Four different models of fine-grainedness giving an increasingly better work-learn balance for students.

Protocol – follow up on what is done and by whom

Collegial learning is an important and mandatory part of teachers’ responsibilities and professional ethics.[25] But teachers’ own learning is no less difficult than other people’s learning. For most people, personal development at work is a steep and emotional uphill struggle. Confronting your own preconceptions and beliefs can be a challenge.[26] Risking being criticised for your own practice can be uncomfortable.[27] Having to apply someone else’s pedagogical ideas can be upsetting and may even feel like an undue infringement of teachers’ pedagogical and professional freedom.[28] Many times, therefore, teachers simply choose to do nothing with the various development ideas that are served up to them based on decisions made in more or less democratic processes. Perhaps in spite of an inner awareness that it is probably against what’s deemed “good” or “right” to be unable or unwilling to develop oneself. Perhaps because there is a lack of confidence in the particular idea being tested.

That we humans are imperfect and do not always choose the ‘good’ path is widely recognised. Ask any priest and you’ll get an account of the history of original sin and modern interpretations of things like ambivalence, weakness of will, laziness and selfishness.[29] Teachers are probably no more or less imperfect than people in other professions. After all, we are all human. But for educational development, it is not only a pity that some choose not to take collective responsibility and participate fully in development work, it also has practical consequences that need to be managed. Educational developer Anders Härdevik (2008, p. 121) writes somewhat pointedly:

“Teachers’ view of democracy is actually synonymous with anarchy; I do as I please! […] This condition means that no significant decisions are implemented in practice. We change the label but keep the content.”

Therefore, methods to ensure teacher accountability are an important part of any educational development programme.[30] One way to deal with the desire for freedom and imperfection that probably exists in most organisations is assessment for teacher learning. Indeed, teacher learning also needs a focus on both formative and summative assessment. Teachers, like their students, need formative feedback on their own learning in order to develop further. Teachers, like their students, also need a friendly but firm summative assessment pressure to get things done, specifically the activities required for educational development to be effective. Otherwise, the hectic pressure of everyday life, and perhaps even laziness or selfishness, will too often win out over the fundamentally morally “good” and collective development issues. Then again, everyday routine work is also to be regarded as “good”. Everyday routine work and development work are two good things that always compete with each other in terms of resources, not only in education.[31]

One difference between teachers’ and students’ learning is that the uncertainty of what learning is likely to take place is usually greater for teachers. Therefore, a slightly different assessment strategy is needed. In designed action sampling, the main focus is whether or not teachers have carried out the agreed developmental action-oriented tasks. The question that the research leader asks a colleague is therefore not “Have you learnt the theory?” or “Have you achieved the intended effects?”, but instead “Have you tried the theory/idea in practice in your own teaching?” and “Have you reflected in writing on your experiences and lessons learnt afterwards?”. Thus, only two simple yes/no questions are required in the summative assessment.[32]

Thus, as a research leader, you can expect all participating teachers to try out the value-creating tasks in their classroom, but you cannot expect it to go well. You can also expect all teachers to reflect after completing the assignment, but you cannot expect all reflections to be “good”. There is no formula for what constitutes a good reflection. However, it is often easy to see what is a bad reflection. There are also many good tips on in-depth reflection. However, research leaders should not judge, evaluate or rate the quality of teachers’ reflections, even if such judgements are often made towards students. The purpose of testing hypotheses and reflecting is to be able to work scientifically together and to collect data that can be analysed in a structured way afterwards. The aim is not to examine teachers in the field of educational development. Rather, the summative assessment is about ensuring that everyone participates in the work in a responsible way and being able to support, and by all means forgive, those who are not really able or willing to participate. However, research leaders can ask questions in their feedback that encourage deeper reflection.

Different types of protocols are a common method of ensuring accountability in educational development.[33] A simple protocol for the summative assessment of designed action sampling is shown in Figure 6.8. Each time the research leader receives a completed form from one of the participants, the two yes/no questions on testing and reflection are considered to have been answered. A small check mark is then placed in the appropriate box in the protocol. Each teacher either has or has not yet completed and reflected upon each task that is part of a content package. Based on the protocol, the research manager can easily follow up with those who have fallen behind and may need extra support or adjustments in their work. The formative assessment takes place separately, via the form in Figure 4.2, and also orally if there is time.

Figure 6.8 Protocol for follow-up in designed action sampling.

The protocol for designed action sampling is an important part of the pedagogical leadership of educational managers and other peer learning leaders in development issues. What should actually happen if teachers for various reasons choose not to participate in the organisation’s collegial learning and educational development? There may be perfectly legitimate reasons, such as the teacher being overloaded, having personal challenges in terms of development work, or having a difficult personal life. Just like for students’ learning. Sometimes a little forgiveness may also be needed for those who are not always able to choose the “good” path, just as priests need to be able to meet us fellow human beings in our imperfection and offer forgiveness.

The method of working with protocols, yes/no questions and written reflections also leaves an opportunity for sceptical teachers to submit dissenting opinions in the development work. If you do not believe in a particular development idea, it is quite possible to write a reflection on how badly the idea worked in your own classroom and why you think it turned out that way. When all the participating teachers’ reflections have been received and compiled by the research leaders, it becomes clear whether a sceptic is in good company or not. The structured methodology of designed action sampling is the sceptical teachers’ main guarantee that bad ideas do not become long-lasting in their own organisation. A kind of democracy of ideas with teachers as “voters”. Few ideas will work for everyone, but some ideas can certainly work for many.

What is not acceptable in designed action sampling, however, is to dismiss a pedagogical idea without giving the idea a practical chance in one’s own classroom or lecture hall at least once. That all ideas are given the chance to make a difference for students in all participants’ teaching is ensured through the protocol and through the leadership of the peer learning leader and educational manager.

The need for protocols to monitor and ensure teachers’ participation became evident in the very first school development project where designed action sampling was applied, see example 5 below.

Example 5: Value creation pedagogy in a whole municipality

In 2013, the local government of one of Sweden’s larger municipalities launched an initiative to bring schools closer to the wider community. In this way, students’ motivation to study, creativity and self-confidence would be strengthened. More students would be encouraged to succeed at school and become involved in the development of society.

A dedicated project group was set up in 2014 and given the task of building on the recent inclusion of entrepreneurship in the curriculum. Collaboration was to take place between the school and the outside world, especially other municipal organisations. Municipal employees were also supposed to become more entrepreneurial. The initiative was based on the municipality’s work on study and career guidance and on a conviction that something new needed to be tried in order to boost the school.

Value creation pedagogy became an important starting point in the work, as a broader view of entrepreneurship than just starting a business was requested in schools. It was also a concrete way for schools to interact with the rest of society.

A pilot programme on value creation pedagogy was carried out in the 2015-2016 academic year with sixty volunteer teachers from the municipality’s primary and secondary schools. The participants met three times during the academic year and were given action-oriented tasks to complete in between meet-ups. The assignments involved familiarising themselves with theory and literature, planning for value-creating elements in teaching and testing the approach in practice with their students. Tags captured effects such as “Read literature”, “Discussed with colleague” and “Worked actively with students”.

The final session was emotionally powerful with both tears and laughter. The teachers’ students had been invited and spoke passionately about their experiences of learning from interacting with the outside world. Subsequently, the project was extended by three years and extended to cover an entire school district, involving around 100 teachers and school leaders from three primary schools, who made around 1,000 reflections on completed assignments. Here, too, the assignments involved familiarising themselves with theory and literature, discussing with colleagues and carrying out practical tests with students. The practical tasks had been refined and made more concrete. Teachers would talk about value creation in the classroom, ask students to think about the question “For whom can this knowledge be valuable today?”. and have students seek out concrete recipients of value outside the classroom or school.

The work resulted in many good examples of students interacting with the surrounding community. Teachers reported strong positive effects on students’ knowledge, skills, motivation to study and values. Teachers’ reflections revealed that some had difficulties in understanding and applying the ideas.

The project ended in 2019 without being extended or entering the management phase. This was mainly due to changing political priorities regarding entrepreneurship in schools, nationally and regionally. Key people involved in the project had also left the municipality. However, many schools around Sweden have been inspired through stories shared on social media and through teachers’ inspirational lectures, and have built on the experience. The work has also been documented in research articles. One of the participating schools in the municipality has continued the work on its own initiative.

For the very first time, the project tested designed action sampling as a method. However, this was not a conscious choice. The 29 elements of the method emerged as one led to another. Only in retrospect did the project team and researchers realise the power of such a science approach. Impacts and challenges became more visible and could be analysed in more depth when the collected data was interpreted together with all participating teachers. The project team, school leaders and researchers could see in real time what was and was not done. They were able to analyse patterns, provide support to participants and make decisions about project actions. The analysis showed that value creation pedagogy needs to be tested practically with students for teachers to realise the power of the approach. The challenges were about changing teachers’ ways of working; the opportunities were about better utilising students’ potential.

Many participants did not see the point of written individual reflection or the value of a scientific approach. The project team did not initially recognise this value either. Several assignments were too theoretical and did not involve students in the classroom. Neither the project team nor the researchers knew at this stage how best to design tasks. It was also common that teachers did not carry out the practical tasks. Some did not believe in the idea, but most commonly, teachers in their busy lives forgot about the tasks or felt that it was scary to involve students. Overall, the project was only partially successful, but it built the foundation for everything that followed.

Written – collegial learning takes place mainly in text form

Designed action sampling is very much about written communication. Action-oriented tasks are formulated and explained in text form. They are then disseminated to all participants via a written form. Reflection after the tested task is collected in text form. Subsequent analyses also focus mainly on text. All in all, this means a much greater focus on text-based communication than for other scientific learning approaches in education.

Collegial learning has traditionally been conducted with a strong emphasis on oral communication. Teachers sit in many long discussion meetings where they discuss pedagogical and didactic issues. This enables deep understanding but makes it more difficult to analyse and disseminate insights.

Another approach to science in education is systematic quality work. It is mainly focused on numbers. These numbers are usually collected through surveys and from databases of grades and other statistics. The results are easy to disseminate, but the challenge is that the depth of understanding is often almost completely lacking. Numbers rarely tell us why things are the way they are. [34]

Only those scientific methods that allow quick and easy analysis of data have any prospect of working on a wider scale in a constantly time-pressured educational organisation. Therefore, numerical methods have dominated so far, even though they can rarely contribute to deeper understanding. The fact that designed action sampling is mainly based on written language is therefore a deliberate choice. Low time consumption in data analysis can be combined with good opportunities for in-depth understanding.

Another advantage is that insights can be easily and immediately shared and disseminated if they have already been written down when they were expressed. While oral communication allows for deeper understanding and is a good complement, converting speech to text reliably is time-consuming. This requires so-called transcription, listening to recorded oral communication and writing down what was said, word for word. One hour of oral dialogue usually takes 4-5 hours to transcribe and additional time to codify and analyse. This is necessary work if you want to call what you do scientific.

Compared with the options of oral and numerical communication, written language thus has the best combination of depth of understanding, time taken to analyse and disseminability, see Table 6.3. The least time taken to analyse is when written language is combined with numbers. For this reason, the designed action sampling form in Figure 4.2 contains both written text and various estimates that can be converted into numbers in the analysis phase to facilitate analysis.

Table 6.3 Comparison between oral, written and numerical communication.

	Oral communication	Written communication	Communication through numbers
Depth of understanding	Very large	Large	Small
Time spent to produce data	Small	Small	Small
Time taken for analysis	Very large	Medium	Medium to small
Spreadability	Small	Medium to large	Large

Different people have different levels of verbal, written and numerical communication skills. Some people find it easy to express themselves orally, they often speak up and are often heard in meetings. Others find it easier to express themselves in writing and prefer to sit on their own and work out formulations that are then shared with others. Still others like to do the maths and have a great fondness and aptitude for calculating various insights.

The experience so far of designed action sampling in practice is that a stronger focus on written communication improves analytical capacity and gives more participants the opportunity to be heard. It feels more like dialogue and analysis on equal terms. One challenge, however, is that not everyone finds it equally easy to express themselves in writing. Around 5 per cent of all people have dyslexia, a fact that is important to bear in mind in the primarily written-oriented designed action sampling. At the same time, experience to date suggests that written peer learning is still suitable for far more teachers than the oral equivalent, see example 6 below. It also saves time, mainly in the documentation and analysis phase, but also when you no longer need to generate all insights through oral group discussions.

Although designed action sampling is mainly based on written communication, both oral and numerical communication play important roles. Both when formulating action-oriented tasks and when analysing collected data, oral communication is a good way to let everyone speak and contribute with insights and experiences. Also, when collecting written reflections, it is always mandatory for the participants to also estimate the emotional state and effects. This allows in the subsequent analysis to quickly produce numbers on teachers’ emotional experiences and on teachers’ perceived effects. This then allows for a powerful combined numerical and textual analysis.

Example 6: Behaviour at the adult education centre

In 2019, a unit for municipal adult education applied designed action sampling in a competence development programme for all 39 employees in the unit. The aim was to strengthen the staff’s ability to provide good service and good treatment to each other and to the course participants. An expert met the staff on four occasions for lectures and workshops. In between, staff were given different tasks, such as giving positive feedback to a colleague, treating a colleague with respect, improving any aspect of their communication and reflecting on different attitudes in the workplace. An initial assignment also captured staff expectations for the first session. Tags captured outcomes such as ‘More people taking more responsibility’, ‘Being listened to’, ‘We help each other succeed’ and ‘Improved communication’. The tags were designed by the school leaders themselves by discussing what effects they wanted to achieve with the intervention.

School leaders felt that they could monitor staff learning and development in a way that had not been possible with previous interventions. The action-oriented tasks resulted in a collective behavioural change in the workplace. This change could be monitored during the intervention and at the individual level through staff members’ confidential reflections to the school leaders. Employees who were otherwise often silent gradually dared to speak up more than usual at the meetings, as they had been confirmed by the school leaders through written feedback on the reflections.

Overall, the intervention had a more profound impact on employees than a lecture series usually does. Everyone was given a voice, not just those who talk a lot. This gave school leaders a more complete picture of the situation in the workplace, which was felt to lead to better decisions, more efficient use of resources and a clearer picture of each employee’s development. It was also easier for school leaders to assess the impact of the intervention on the workplace.

Designed action sampling has become a regular feature of the unit. However, the main responsibility for designing tasks, following employees in their learning and giving them feedback has been taken over by the team leaders.

Confidential – only a few read everyone’s reflections

In designed action sampling, we should avoid sharing all teachers’ reflections openly with everyone, even within a single team. This can lead to many teachers writing what they think is expected by the organisational or group culture rather than how they feel deep down, which leads to poorer data and a lower reliability of the research work. The reason for this is that group dynamics greatly influence what ideas are shared and how they are presented.

Various group dynamic phenomena are a central theme in the work of researchers Argyris and Schön on organisational learning. These include phenomena such as defensive colleagues, concealment of differences and failures, competitive mentality, reluctance to change, rivalry, political games, territorial thinking, groupthink and protection of each other.[35] Argyris and Schön (1978) have proposed a vision for a learning organisation called model two, see Figure 6.9. They compare this vision with a model one organisation, a limited learning organisation. The possibility of achieving the vision of a model two organisation depends to a large extent on how well one succeeds in suppressing and neutralising various naturally occurring harmful group dynamic phenomena. Argyris and Schön succinctly state that virtually all the organisations they studied operate primarily in line with model one.

Figure 6.9 Model Two is a vision for a learning organisation proposed by researchers Chris Argyris and Donald Schön in the 1970s (Argyris, 2002; Argyris & Schön, 1978). When people in an organisation behave according to model two, it becomes possible to take a big step towards becoming a learning organisation.

Confidential sharing of teachers’ reflections in small groups has been shown to help move towards the vision of a model two organisation. If the group that gets to read teachers’ reflections is around one to three people instead of around ten to thirty, it can be expected that many problematic group dynamic phenomena are mitigated or completely absent. Over time, a culture more in line with model two organisations is established.

It is not surprising that intimate dialogues in small groups can provide a breeding ground for a model two learning organisation. The vast majority of people find it easier to share their inner feelings, admit their mistakes and risk revealing their supposed incompetence to one to three people, rather than ten to thirty. Being fully honest, showing vulnerability and trust is simply easier in small intimate groups than in large crowds.

The fact that reflection and confidential dialogue takes place in small groups of around three people does not prevent really interesting reflections from being disseminated more widely in the organisation. The important thing is that everyone can trust that such dissemination takes place while maintaining anonymity. Sure, some staff members may try to figure out who wrote something that has been shared with everyone, but the feeling is different when no one can be sure who wrote a particularly revealing, emotional or critical reflection. Putting sensitive issues on paper under confidentiality becomes a way of bridging the gap between confidential small group discussions, which would otherwise be mainly oral, and the need for a whole organisation to be well informed. Only then can everyone participate and learn from each other’s various failures, dilemmas and shortcomings. And, of course, from all successful attempts to create value for students. Many teachers also feel that they have greater access to their managers when they can discuss sensitive issues in written confidentiality, provided there is confidence that trust will not be abused.

In addition to group dynamics, there are also time benefits to not having everyone read everything. It is simply more time efficient for a small group of peer learning leaders to read all the reflections, engage in a confidential dialogue and provide feedback to all, and then compile the most interesting insights in a condensed form for all to see. As all reflections are also available word-by-word in written form, particularly interesting quotes can be extracted, anonymised and shown to everyone in the final analysis phase. This reduces the risk of important insights being filtered and distorted orally. Numerical statistics from emotion ratings and tags also give all participants an overall sense of the big picture, even if they have not read everyone’s reflections.

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[1] For some different Swedish definitions of action research, see Rönnerman (2000, s. 14), Tallvid (2010, s. 66) and Huisman (2006). For some international definitions, see Altrichter et al. (2002) and Coghlan and Shani (2014).

[2] In the Nordic region, the Nordic Network for Action Research (NNAF) has existed since 2004 and since 2010 an annual well-attended network conference, Noralf.

[3] A Swedish summary of the criticism has been made by Huisman (2006). An international review of challenges has been made by Pring (2010). Several challenges are also listed by Coghlan and Shani (2014) and by Wedekind (1997).

[4] For an illustrative example of the challenges of co-operation, see Waters-Adams (1994).

[5] For a fascinating description of the history of the experiment, see Shadish et al. (2001).

[6] For a Swedish discussion of this issue, see the thesis by Levinsson (2013).

[7] See for example Slavin (2002).

[8] See for example Biesta (2007) and Olson (2004).

[9] For a discussion on the difficulty of studying meaning-making subjects, see Sayer (2010, s. 196).

[10] The roots of design science are traced by Dresch et al. (2015) all the way back to Leonardo Da Vinci’s engineering in the 15th century, but Simon’s book is still considered the starting point.

[11] This is described in a well-quoted phrase by Simon (1969, s. 111): “Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.”

[12] Although social science also often deals with artificially created phenomena, social science research methods are usually derived from the natural sciences, which is a problem in itself. See for example Mirowski (1991).

[13] For a review of pragmatism and design science, see Romme (2003).

[14] For a review of abduction in design science, see Dresch et al. (2015, s. 61-62).

[15] This is described in more detail by Dresch et al. (2015, s. 111) and by Romme and Endenburg (2006, s. 288-289).

[16] The steps are described in more detail in a paper by van Burg (2010, s. 15).

[17] This is discussed by Romme and Endenburg (2006, s. 288-289).

[18] A book by Dresch et al. (2015) describes in detail traditional and design-based research.

[19] The methodological literature in design science contains many detailed process descriptions. For an overview, see Dresch et al. (2015, s. 67-102). Van Aken and Romme (2009) also describe a five-step model consisting of (1) select a practical problem, (2) search literature, (3) synthesise, (4) create design principles and (5) test and develop them further.

[20] Romme (2003, s. 567-568) describes in more detail how design principles facilitate dialogue and collaboration between researchers and practitioners.

[21] See for example Härdevik (2008, s. 87-88, 121) and Åstrand (2018, s. 171).

[22] Read more in Thaler and Sunstein (2009). A classic example of nudging is to paint a fly in the urinal to get men to spot the right one.

[23] The idea of the elephant carpaccio originally came from consultant Alistair Cockburn and was originally about slicing up a user story into small, small parts that then become the functionality of an IT system.

[24] This question is taken from the constructive alignment assessment theory by Biggs and Tang. (2011), read more in Lackéus and Sävetun (2019b, p. 15).

[25] The Teachers’ Association and the National Union of Teachers (2006, s. 8) write in a publication on teachers’ professional ethics: “Teachers undertake to take responsibility for developing their skills in their professional practice.”

[26] Read more about this in Katz and Ain Dack (2017).

[27] Read more about this in Härdevik (2008).

[28] Jarl et al. (2017, s. 119) writes about unsuccessful schools, where a “self is best, alone is strong” structure is common.

[29] For a modern review of original sin, see Grantén (2013). See also de Botton (2013, s. 92, 117, 142).

[30] See Sjöblom and Jensinger (2020, s. 163-164) for a review of internal and external accountability based on the Fullan and Quinn (2015) coherence model. (2015).

[31] This requires us to have an ability called ambidexterity; to be able to balance between everyday routines and development work see Lackeus, Lundqvist, Williams Middleton and Inden (2020, s. 14).

[32] This assessment method has been shown to work well for action-based learning, read more about this in Lackéus and Williams-Middleton. (2018).

[33] Read more about this in Katz and Ain Dack (2017, s. 100-104).

[34] For some challenges with surveys, see Phellas et al. (2011) and Kelley et al. (2003).

[35] Argyris and Schön (1978, s. 119-127) write about these and many other group dynamic phenomena and how they affect organisational learning.

The first six parts of this review take us on a journey through the wonderful and confusing world of philosophy. More specifically, the world of philosophy of science. It addresses questions such as what can be considered real, knowable and scientific. Philosophy never provides clear-cut answers, but instead offers different ways of thinking and perspectives that then influence everything you do in practice.

From clinical research we bring the idea of learning by helping others. Pragmatism contributes with its focus on what works in different specific situations, rather than trying to look for universal truths. Critical realism helps us with different ways of thinking to explore weak patterns at a detailed level in social contexts, especially when it comes to trying to find connections between causes and effects. Literature on action learning provides us with models and ideas on how to learn by combining theory and practice. Abduction is a complicated word for something that may seem natural to many, namely to try to move back and forth between theory and practice in our exploration. We conclude our review of the six theoretical parts by taking an emotional perspective on everything we do.

Clinical research – learning by creating value for others

Clinical research is about combining research with helping others. A clinical situation is basically a situation where there is a client who is receiving professional and personalised help from a practitioner.[1] The concept of clinical research originally comes from the medical field, where around 80 percent of all research is clinical.[2] However, clinical situations can be found in all areas of society. Some examples of clinical professionals include counsellors, social workers, consultants, lawyers, managers, customer service operators, tourist guides and, of course, teachers.[3]

A clinical study differs from traditional research in that it consciously abandons the ambition to simply observe, to not interfere with the process being studied. Instead, the researcher’s attempt to change a situation for the better is the main research strategy. Schein (1993, p. 703) refers to the famous sociologist Kurt Lewin (1947) when he writes:

One cannot understand a human system without trying to change it. It is in the attempt to change the system that some of the most important characteristics of the system reveal themselves, phenomena that even the most talented ethnographer would not discover unless he or she happened to be present when someone else was trying to produce some change.

Clinical research is different from both ethnographic research (observational studies in the field) and action research (researchers participating in the social contexts they study). The clinical researcher enters the situation not primarily to collect data, but to help another human being. This means that clinical researchers, unlike most other researchers, are paid for the help they provide, not for the research they conduct. The process of helping is therefore always prioritised over the process of research.

A very special relationship is then established between the clinician and the client. The client opens up and offers their innermost thoughts in a completely different way than in other types of research. The clinical researcher has the opportunity to ask more personal questions and also receives more honest and sincere answers. This is good news for teachers doing research. We can expect that when teachers and peer learning leaders themselves act as clinical researchers, they will have a very different, and probably more accurate, picture of what works for teachers and their students, and why. If an outside researcher from a university were to ask the same questions or test the same ideas about what can help teachers and students, the answers would probably be different, more superficial and less honest.

Despite the benefits of clinical research, only about one thousandth[4] of today’s educational research is clinical. Researcher Ingrid Carlgren (2010, p. 304) describes this as the missing link in education and calls for change:

It is important that educational sciences develop their own ‘clinical’ research approaches, which are sensitive to the specific nature of educational activities.

Designed action sampling is precisely a clinical research approach adapted to the unique conditions of education. The helping tasks are designed or selected and implemented by the teachers themselves. Teachers test new ideas on their own students, with whom they have a unique and intimate relationship. The research process is also led by teachers, educational managers and principlals in the educational institutions, who in turn collaborate with colleagues in the development of teaching.

Pragmatism – What works for whom, when and how?

Pragmatism[5] is a philosophical orientation that emerged in the United States at the end of the 19th century. Key figures were William James, Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey. Being pragmatic means being down-to-earth, realistic and functional, and has some affinity with philosophical pragmatism.

Translated into educational research, pragmatism is about abandoning the question “What works?”. and instead asking “What works for whom, when, how and why?”. Pragmatism does away with the idea that there is a universal truth and that we should now try to find it. Instead, pragmatism balances somewhere in the middle between objectivism and subjectivism, see Figure 1.1 in Chapter 1. Even if there are no universal truths, pragmatism suggests that there are more or less intelligent ways of dealing with an ever-changing and often problematic reality. It is also possible to create a shared world between individuals, but only if we act together. So simply talking to each other and exchanging ideas, as collegial learning often manifests itself in educational institutions, is not enough.

Pragmatism emerged as a response to a perceived crisis of rationality in society, an over-reliance on cognitive, theoretical, mathematical and mechanistic truths and a corresponding devaluation of practical actions, human values, perceived emotions and humanism. Pragmatism instead advocated seeing knowledge and action (or theory and practice) as united, that one must always take action through experimentation to produce knowledge. Therefore, according to pragmatism, engaging in educational research without a strong link to educational practice is not very meaningful.

Taking pragmatism seriously will force us to re-evaluate what educational research really is. The search for universal recipes and rules then becomes a futile attempt to separate theory from practice and is unlikely to lead to better education. Instead, what pragmatism requires is that teachers take an active role in making thoughtful choices between different possible actions and then trying out actions they believe in in their own teaching to see what works for them. Instead of an isolated group of researchers conducting experiments, according to pragmatism all teachers must participate in conducting experiments, and experimentation must become an integral part of their daily lives, as life in general is experimental and changeable according to pragmatism. Experimentation is required to gain knowledge, but will never lead to the discovery of the Truth with a capital T.

The research focus in education thus needs to shift from outsiders objectively trying to describe a reality they observe, to teachers themselves studying the relationships between their own actions and the effects on their own students.[6] In other words, research in education rather than research about education. According to Biesta and Burbules (2003, p. 97), what is needed are “instruments for our everyday action”, tools that enable and facilitate teachers to act in such ways. Designed action sampling is intended to be just such a tool, a method for how teachers themselves can link theoretical knowledge, practical action and reflection in their own everyday lives.

Pragmatism also gives a sense of what designed action sampling will not be able to deliver. What we call tasks in this book will probably not be able to develop over time into general “rules” or “recipes” for how teachers should do in order to succeed in their teaching. What we can hope for, however, is that teachers themselves will be able to exchange tasks among themselves. This will enable them to build up their own locally produced evidence of what works for them, in which situations and why, more quickly and in a more co-ordinated way. We can also hope that designed action sampling makes pragmatic learning processes for teachers more accessible, manageable and meaningful. Or, in short, easier.

Critical realism – looking for cause-and-effect patterns at a detailed level.

The philosophy of science approach of critical realism emerged in the 1970s as a counter-reaction to various attempts to either confound or excessively separate natural science and social science research.[7] Applying natural science methods in social science research is common[8] , but it is also associated with a high risk of false conclusions and seriously misleading reasoning.

The regularities often seen in the natural sciences are rarer in the social sciences. This is partly due to the unpredictability of humans as objects of study. They go their own way, both as individuals and collectively. Unlike atoms and elements, humans have a consciousness and thus their own free will. They often decide not to act regularly or rationally[9] , which makes it difficult for researchers looking for patterns. Moreover, social systems are open and indeterminate, in the sense that one can rarely isolate single events experimentally. What happens depends on situations, relationships, history, circumstances and many other factors. In social contexts, everything is interconnected and affects events in unpredictable ways. As such, researchers can rarely find universal rules that predict what will work. Educational science is a particularly difficult case of this type of scientific methodological challenge.

Critical realism as a philosophy of science was founded by British philosopher Roy Bhaskar as an attempt to overcome this methodological challenge by building a more appropriate philosophy of science platform for researchers. Bhaskar’s ideas have been most widely disseminated in social science research. This is also where the challenges of the traditional scientific toolbox have been greatest.

As is customary in philosophy, Bhaskar’s discussions revolve around eternal questions such as “What is real?” (ontology) and “What is knowledge?” (epistemology). However, we will not delve into such philosophical questions here, although they are important and interesting. Instead, we go directly to the aspect of critical realism that is most relevant here.

Many proponents of critical realism recommend that researchers look for causal mechanisms on a micro-level. Three difficult terms in a row, so let’s go through them one by one. Causality is a fancy word for discussing how cause and effect are actually related. Mechanism refers to a phenomenon, occurrence or relationship that is responsible for producing effects of interest.[10] Micro-level research means studying at the detailed level of everyday life. The focus is on the behaviours of individuals or groups, the causes of these behaviours and the subsequent consequences at a more general level, also known as the macro-level.

The idea of studying causal mechanisms at a micro-level is applicable in both natural and social sciences. A mechanism can be physical, chemical, biological, psychological or social.[11] The search for micro-level mechanisms has given critical realism its name. Unlike, for example, postmodernism, it does not deny the existence of a reality out there. Instead, we are encouraged to be critical of the first impressions we may have when studying social phenomena at the overall macro level. Instead, we need to ‘critically’ drill down to the micro-level in search of ‘real’ causal mechanisms – hence the name ‘critical realism’.

We will now try to illustrate critical realism in education. A traditional scientific approach to studying causality in education is to consider the classroom as a black box that is impossible or uninteresting to look into. Researchers then do not try to understand what happens inside the black box, but instead measure before and after a particular educational intervention.[12] Often they do not even bother to measure before, but only after. One example is the OECD’s PISA study, which attempts to measure how different countries’ school systems work by measuring “ready-made” 15-year-olds.[13] Using advanced statistical calculation methods and comparisons of various kinds, mainly various correlation calculations, they then try to say something about whether what happened in the black box (primary school) has had the intended effect.

However, according to critical realism, correlation studies in social contexts are rarely a particularly meaningful scientific method. Fundamental differences between correlation and causality are also often ignored. See an example of this difference in Figure 5.1. Another example of misunderstood causality is to assume that the rooster causes the sunrise because it always crows just before the sun rises.

Figure 5.1 The difference between causality and correlation. When the sun makes ice cream melt and people get sunburned, we have causality. For the summer period, a researcher can measure a statistical correlation between the number of melted ice creams and the number of sunburned people. But despite such mathematical correlation, it is not the ice cream that makes people sunburnt, or vice versa. Instead, it is a case of correlation without causality.

According to critical realism, what is needed instead is to open the black box and study the causal mechanisms that affect people at the micro level, such as what happens in the classroom. It is precisely this kind of black box science that designed action sampling is all about. Instead of studying the final result of education in isolation via tests or grades, we study how a certain task performed by a teacher (a certain cause) affects the individuals in the classroom (different effects). Then we can also go further in our causal understanding of when, how and why different effects occur. This can be compared to a macro-level correlation study, which cannot say anything about why different effects occur, only that they occur with some regularity. Methodological researchers Hedström and Ylikoski (2010, p. 51) explain:

[The] mechanism has a structure.When a mechanism-based explanation opens the black box, it discloses this structure. It turns the black box into a transparent box and makes visible how the participating entities and their properties, activities, and relations produce the effect of interest.

Figure 5.2 illustrates how designed action sampling is about using tasks to teachers (causes), and tags that teachers then select (effects), to explore what happens at the micro level in the classroom. The number of tags selected on a given task then tells us something about causality, based on how teachers perceived it. Researchers can then explore further by analysing teachers’ written reflections after each completed assignment. The aim is to look for weak patterns, causal mechanisms at the micro level, which could never have been observed in a study at a macro level. With many teachers’ deep reflections, the peer learning leaders can hopefully also say something about the mechanisms behind the observed micro-level effects – when, how and why they occur, or do not occur. Students can also be involved and participate with their written reflections and tags in the research.

Figure 5.2 Designed action sampling is about trying to explore cause and effect patterns in detail in the classroom or lecture hall. This is in line with the philosophy of science perspective of critical realism. The rectangle is meant to represent the classroom / lecture hall or, in critical realism terms, the ‘black box’. The figure is inspired by an illustration by Ylikoski (2019).

Action-based collective learning – many people probing at the same time

Research is fundamentally about learning new things and thus trying to expand the boundaries of human knowledge – creating new knowledge. This means that you cannot rely solely on traditional learning by reading a book or listening to a lecture. What you want to learn is not yet written down or packaged by someone else. Something more is required, namely learning-by-doing.

Action-based learning is a strong educational tradition, with roots going back many hundreds of years. Important contributions have been made by people like Comenius (1592-1670), Rousseau (1712-1778), Pestalozzi (1746-1827), Dewey (1859-1952), Montessori (1870-1952), Freinet (1896-1966) and Kolb (1939-). Although there is no precise definition of action-based learning that everyone agrees on[14] , many agree that it involves active and practical learning inside or outside the classroom or lecture hall. Like the philosophical discipline of pragmatism, many action learning researchers reject the idea that theory and practice can be separated from each other.[15] Thus, it is not a question of moving from theory-focused learning to practice-focused learning. Instead, the two perspectives need to be brought together.

A model for combining theory and practice was proposed by David Kolb (1984). It is known as Kolb’s learning cycle and has through its simplicity been widely disseminated and applied around the world. Figure 5.3 shows how Kolb’s learning cycle can be used for designed action sampling. In the figure, Kolb’s rather complex concepts (abstract generalisation, active experimentation, concrete experience, reflective observation) are replaced by more concise terms (plan, act, feel, reflect).

Figure 5.3 Kolb’s learning cycle for action-based learning applied to designed action sampling.

With the help of Kolb’s learning cycle, we ensure that a value-creating mission for teachers goes all the way round the learning cycle, so that we get both theory and practice in an integrated way. Reflection is also based on concrete action, which should preferably cause emotion. This deepens learning and new insights become clearer.

Designed action sampling also goes one step further. When many teachers go all the way through the Kolb learning cycle, simultaneously and in similar ways, and then share insights with each other in a structured way, action-based learning becomes even more powerful. After everyone has taken action and reflected individually, they come back together for a collective analysis. Such a meeting begins with an anonymised presentation of the main features of everyone’s reflections. The subsequent collegial discussion then becomes on a higher and more interesting level than if no one had worked through the entire learning cycle with their students in the classroom beforehand. This approach is referred to in this book as action-based collective learning, and is practically illustrated in Example 2.

Example 2: Leadership in the primary school classroom

A primary school wanted to develop the classroom leadership of its forty teachers through designed action sampling. Based on leadership actions designed by an expert in the field, each teacher in the school carried out a new action-oriented task in the classroom every week for two months. The tasks involved greeting and addressing students in new ways, trying new movements and gestures in their body language, preparing lessons a little differently, and starting and ending lessons extra clearly.

At a workplace meeting, it was initially discussed what effects they wanted to achieve from the initiative. This resulted in tags for intended student effects, such as “More students care about their results”, “More students help each other” and “More students have greater focus”. Tags for teacher effects were also designed, such as “I become more confident in my leadership” and “My student relationships improve”.

Teachers tested each task practically in their classrooms and then documented the outcome in writing. The head teacher led the work and had set aside a time each week to provide written feedback on the teachers’ reflections. The expert also provided written feedback.

In meetings with staff, the progress was discussed on an ongoing basis. Different opportunities and challenges were raised based on the teachers’ reflections after tried and tested actions. Statistics showed common effects based on the tags and the average emotional state for each task. Staff participated in dialogue forums about challenges in the work, such as why some assignments did not go so well or how student assistants could participate in the work.

The intervention had the greatest impact among teachers who needed to strengthen their leadership in the classroom, giving them new tools. Principals were able to celebrate successes with individual teachers who shared wise thoughts and magical moments. Teachers felt more recognised by their manager. The principal’s eyes were also opened and the respect for employees who were otherwise less visible was strengthened. The analysis provided an overview that was easy to share with others, which was also done with other school units by the principal.

Abduction – continuous movement between theory and practice

Designed action sampling is about repeatedly moving back and forth between a theoretical ideal and a practical reality, thus allowing understanding to emerge. In scientific language, this is called working with abduction. This is illustrated by an iterative, or circular, movement in Figure 5.4. The idea of abduction comes from one of the founders of pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce, and involves the creative and intuitive formulation of new explanations.[16] In 1903, Peirce explained abduction as follows in a lecture at Harvard University (1998, pp. 216-217):

Abduction is  the process of forming an explanatory hypothesis. It is  the only logical  operation which  introduces  any  new  idea;  for  induction  does nothing but determine a value and deduction merely evolves the necessary consequences of a pure hypothesis. […] if we are ever to learn anything or to understand phenomena at all, it must be by abduction that this is to be brought about. […] every single item of scientific theory which stands established today has been due to abduction.

Figure 5.4 Abductive approach.

Despite Peirce’s powerful words over a century ago, abduction is today far from being the most established scientific approach. Instead, the most common approach is deduction, which means moving from left to right in Figure 5.4. Based on a theory, a hypothesis is formulated, which is then tested in reality through an experiment. The research work is then completed and the results of the experiment are written up in a research article published in a scientific journal. A longer term for this way of working is the hypothetico-deductive method.

Another common research strategy is induction, which involves moving from right to left in Figure 5.4. Based on an observation of reality, a theory is established. A classic example is to observe many swans, and when all the swans you see are white, after some time you theorise that swans are white. However, there are actually black swans, so induction has its limitations as a research strategy.[17]

To summarise, abduction is an approach that involves repeatedly moving between theory and practice and creatively considering what might be the case. This is compared to induction, which states what is, and deduction, which attempts to prove what must be. As there are few universal truths in education, abduction is therefore likely to be better suited to educational institutions than both induction and deduction.

The work process of designed action sampling thus has no end. The circular movement between theory and practice needs to be ongoing, because we will unfortunately never arrive at a final answer to what works in education. However, teachers can reach ever greater heights of insight and learning about which theoretical ideas that work practically for them in different teaching situations. In this way, they also develop and clarify their own personal theory base.[18]

Emotions in focus – doing and measuring things that are emotional

Being emotional. What do you think about it? Good or bad? In our rational, theory-loving, masculine and technocratic society, emotionality is something we often see as negative and try to eliminate from various situations, especially in science. Scientific methods are often designed to disconnect us from our underlying emotions, as these risk leading us astray when we think too quickly through various kinds of ‘bias’ – emotional fallacies.[19] Thus, science often helps us to think a little slower by suppressing emotions.

But emotions are deeply embedded in all forms of learning, including scientific learning.[20] Where there are strong emotions, we often find powerful learning, and where there are no emotions, there is often little deep learning. Therefore, it would be a serious mistake to try to eliminate emotions from our learning, not only in science but in all forms of learning.

One researcher who has explored the role of emotions in learning is John Heron (1992). He has created a model of learning that shows emotion as the basis for all learning, see Figure 5.5. Heron’s model is well in line with one of the most basic psychological postulates – that human existence consists of three parts: action, thought and emotion.[21] The three parts are called the three basic faculties of mind and serve as a constant reminder that if we focus on just one of them, the absence of the other two will eventually cause us growing problems. In education we often focus excessively on students’ cognitive thoughts and conceptual learning and fail to focus sufficiently on students’ actions and emotions. This common mistake is serious enough in itself but should not be repeated when it comes to teacher learning.

Figure 5.5 Heron’s multimodal model of four forms of learning shows how practical, conceptual and imaginary/intuitive learning are all based on emotion. The figure also links Heron’s model to the three basic elements of human existence – actions, thoughts and feelings. The figure is based on a version of Heron’s model published by Postle (1993).

In order to maintain a good balance between emotion, thought and action, designed action sampling should be largely based not only on value-creating actions, as mentioned above. The role of emotions in learning should also be explicitly recognised. When designing value-creating tasks for teachers, great care should therefore be taken to create tasks that lead to strong emotional experiences for the teachers, and preferably also for their students. This maximises the potential for teacher (and student) learning and deep insights.

When it comes to the risks of emotionality in science, such as thinking too fast, a structured approach to written reflection can be seen as a way of slowing down the pace of participants’ thinking. Mandatory written reflection forces people to stop, think more deeply and document their innermost thoughts and emotions. It can thus be seen as a different way of getting participants to think more slowly than by eliminating or suppressing emotions.

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[1] According to Schein (1993).

[2] According to Carlgren (2010).

[3] These examples are taken from an exciting book on helping as a social phenomenon, written by Schein (2010). This entire section is drawn primarily from Schein’s work on clinical action research. See also Coghlan (2009).

[4] According to Carlgren (2010).

[5] Much of this section on pragmatism and educational research draws on insights from a book by Biesta and Burbules (2003). (2003).

[6] See Biesta and Burbules (2003, s. 110).

[7] For a well-articulated description of critical realism in Swedish, see Hylmö (2007). See also the thesis by Seldén (2005) and a book by Danermark et al. (1997).

[8] One example is the neoclassical economic theory, which is based on physical principles and mathematical models, see Mirowski et al. (1991).

[9] The scientist Herbert Simon was awarded the Nobel Prize for his research on human bounded rationality, see e.g. Simon (1955, 2000).

[10] For a more detailed description of what a mechanism is, see Elster (1989).

[11] For an overview in Swedish of mechanisms at different levels, see Brandén (2016).

[12] Randomised control trials are a common way of doing research like this in schools, read more about the limitations of such a research methodology in schools in Reeves (2011).

[13] For a methodological critique of the PISA study, see Berliner (2018).

[14] For a detailed review of action-based learning, see Roberts (2012).

[15] A good review of this perspective has been done by Hägg and Kurczewska (2016).

[16] Read more about creative abduction in Danermark et al. (1997).

[17] An alternative research strategy proposed by Karl Popper was to try to falsify a hypothesis. Instead of looking for more and more white swans, falsification is about trying to find a single black swan. Then you have falsified the theory that swans are white. Read more about falsification in a book by Persson (2014).

[18] An important part of being a reflective practitioner is to clarify for oneself and thereby reduce the difference between the theories one says one builds one’s practice on (espoused theories) and the theories one actually applies in one’s practice (theories-in-use). Researchers Chris Argyris and Donald Schön have written extensively about this. See e.g. Argyris and Schön (1974).

[19] A well-known review of the various risks of bias is written by Kahneman (2012).

[20] Much has been written about the role of emotions in learning. See for example Boekaerts (2010), Postle (1993) and Dirkx (2001). Of particular interest is Jarvis (2006) theory of learning that takes the role of emotions fully into account.

[21] Read more about this fundamental psychological basis in Hilgard (1980).

This chapter is about a simple but powerful theory, a theory of balance, and its various implications for education. It is not about budget balance, but rather about what happens when people achieve a good balance between their own learning and creating value for others – work-learn balance. One way to achieve education with such a balance is to work with designed action sampling. There are other ways, as will be shown later in this chapter.

For the practically orientated, a theory may not sound very interesting. But few things are as useful as a good theory of what you are doing.[1] With a good theory, we understand more deeply what we are doing practically when we do science and can therefore make wiser decisions and better achieve our goals.

The theory of work-learn balance is not only an attempt to interpret reality, it is also a goal, a kind of vision for education. We who developed designed action sampling did so based on an emerging vision of a school in better balance. A school where everyone has a good balance between their own learning and creating value for others. Mainly teachers and students, but also other professional roles in educational institutions.

The theory of work-learn balance did not appear out of nowhere. It grew out of many years of action research. Its theoretical roots lie in a broad interpretation of entrepreneurship, being ‘entrepreneurial’ in all aspects of life – whatever that word might mean. But we won’t get into that now. The interested reader is welcome to read more about it in other sources.[2]

Balance between own learning and creating value for others

The theory of work-learn balance is based on a special case of the balance between own happiness and meaningfulness with others that was illustrated in Figure 2.2. This is about the moments when we humans experience a good balance in everyday life between our own learning and value creation for others, see Figure 3.1. We chose to call this work-learn balance – a bit of a lesser-known cousin of work-life balance. Indeed, it does not seem to be widely recognised how important this type of balance is for us humans. On the contrary, we usually try to avoid such a balance, by organising human activity into different units that specialise in either our own learning (education/development/innovation units) or in creating value for others (working life/production units). Production units and other routine activities are often streamlined and separated from research, development and education units, which is a pity. The idea is probably that it will be more efficient that way. Learning gained in education is some day in a distant future intended to be transformed into value creation for others. But this is not always easy to appreciate in the moment for those who year after year are isolated in their own learning and rarely get to experience the meaningfulness of doing something valuable for someone else. Paradoxically, in our individualistic society, we humans rather seem to become more motivated by creating value for someone else in ten minutes than for ourselves in ten years.[3]

All people in society could probably do better with more work-learn balance in their daily lives.[4] When people have a good balance between their own learning and creating value for others on a weekly basis, they often feel a greater sense of meaning and purpose in life. This makes them more motivated, committed and diligent. Society then benefits from higher quality, efficiency, deeper learning and better solutions that fulfil their function better for citizens. This is illustrated in Figure 3.1 by some of the effects that can be achieved for students, teachers, employees, countries, products, services, politicians and people.

Figure 3.1 Work-learn balance in everyday life.

The imbalance is most obvious if we zoom out and look at the whole journey of life. Pupils and students spend 15-20 years of their own learning, with no opportunity to create value for others apart from in exceptional cases. These exceptions are carefully separated out into short and isolated one-off experiences per year, such as internships, work experience weeks, degree projects and thematic days. For many students, this imbalance leads to a daily life filled with boredom and a feeling among some students that school is a meaningless pastime[5] , a kind of ‘meaningless school’ from the perspective of some students.[6] Researcher Martin Hugo (2012, p. 31) writes:

One of the fundamental problems in today’s schools is that too many students perceive their encounter with education as meaningless. These students’ intrinsic motivation for schoolwork decreases the more they are in a school where they do not feel involved or do not feel that the content is real.

Then when students enter the labour market and become employees, the imbalance shifts the other way. As employees in the private or public sector, they are expected to devote their full attention to creating value for others. Only exceptionally, and if they have created a lot of value for others, are they allowed to attend one course or lecture per year focussing on their own learning. Even this tends to be an isolated phenomenon that is rarely integrated into their everyday value creation.

The paradox is that in education two imbalances are often represented in the same classroom or lecture hall, day in and day out. Teachers who rarely have time to work on their own learning share space every day with students who rarely get to create anything of value for others. A sad irony.

We believe that such an imbalance is one of the most important challenges facing schools in the next 120 years. Hopefully, this book can become an important piece of the puzzle in the work to achieve an education system with a good work-learn balance. Perhaps our great-grandchildren will be able to laugh a little at those of us who lived in the 21st century when, in 2140, they read the following fictitious quote from Swedish Education Minister Jan Björklund back in 2007:

All the pedagogical ideas that can be invented have been invented, so it is just as well to close down the Agency for School Development.

However, there is an undertone of seriousness in the joke. As Minister for Education, Björklund has successfully pushed Swedish schools towards a relatively unbalanced position in the stultifying pseudo-battle between traditional chalk-and-talk education and progressive fuzzy pedagogy[7] . An education system with a better balance between theoretical knowledge (own learning) and practical application (creating value for others) may seem a more reasonable way forward for the long-term development of education.[8]

Some challenges with teachers’ own learning

Teachers are a professional category with a comparatively strong focus on their own learning. According to union agreements, thirteen working days per year should be used for continuing education in Sweden. However, this time is rarely used systematically or integrated into everyday life. After a professional development day, it is common for teachers to return to the classroom without changing anything. School developer Anders Härdevik (2008, pp. 87-88) writes that this is because change is extremely difficult for the individual teacher and because teachers very rarely receive critical feedback on their teaching in everyday life. The investigator Björn Åstrand (2018, p. 171) writes in a public inquiry about the challenges of teachers’ own learning:

Episodic and fragmented interventions in the form of single lectures or seminars have not, as mentioned above, been shown to have a positive impact on students’ learning […] The main point is that for in-service training to have an impact on teaching and students’ learning, it should take place in the context of the organisation.

Causes of imbalance – specialisation and narrow measurement focus

But how did schools become so unbalanced? One important reason is the industrialisation of society in the 20th century. It was not only factories that increased their efficiency through Taylorism – centralisation, specialisation and efficiency measurements. Taylorism also had a strong foothold in education.[9] One goal of Taylorism is to eliminate the dependence on professionalism and on-the-job learning at the grassroots level, so that anyone can be put to work in production while maintaining efficiency and equal quality. Production line principles and standardising policy documents became the common way of organising both production and education. Value creation for others increased, at least to some extent, but teachers’ own learning and ideas were marginalised. Perhaps the biggest side effect of such an imbalance is a lack of morale and motivation and a sense of powerlessness and meaninglessness.[10] Educational developer Christer Westlund (2020, pp. 12-13) compares educational institutions to an old-fashioned car factory:

All students should produce knowledge and learning in the same subject, at the same time, for the same length of time and in the same way. Should a student be absent, production continues in the same way. Should a teacher be absent, it should be relatively easy to instruct a substitute to temporarily lead the group of students. All students should then need an equally long break and should then be able to switch to another subject, work on it at the same time and for the same length of time as the other students. Then this procedure continues throughout the week. It is then repeated for 38 to 40 weeks over a year and is expected to produce the same results in all educational institutions across the country.

One of the most important Taylorist tools is measurement. Throughout the 20th century, the measurement of education has made great strides. After Taylorism’s time study men with clocks in their hands, neoliberalism and new public management followed, which meant a further strengthening of the focus on measurement. Responsibility for achieving learning goals was delegated down the hierarchy and was accompanied by an increased focus on measurement, control and standardisation.[11] All in line with the market-liberal idea of separating clients from providers so that measurement of outcomes enables comparisons and competition between different producers, thereby driving increased efficiency.[12] Bornemark (2018, pp. 64-65) describes the school’s situation as follows:

Concepts from the industry’s quality control system, such as inspection, quality control, documentation, goal fulfilment/results, market reputation, transparency, customer choice systems, legal certainty and efficiency have become central concepts to capture and define the quality of the school […] The core activities are being displaced by a growing control activity around the core activities.

The reliance on social metrics is based on the illusion that success can always be counted.[13] This illusion has many negative side effects for educational institutions. The focus is on what is easy to measure, such as factual knowledge, literacy and numeracy. These are certainly very important issues, but far from being the sole task of educators. The side effect is that oversimplified measurement crowds out more difficult to measure but equally important effects of education, such as democracy, creativity, commitment, respect for others, initiative, values, etc.[14] Some measurement side effects are what is often called teaching to the test[15] and narrowing of the curriculum.[16] Various tests of students’ knowledge go from being a means to an end, to instead becoming the main goal of the educational institution. As teachers prioritise those learning outcomes that can be easily measured by tests, the curriculum is also increasingly selective and narrow. The more sophisticated and complex dimensions of learning and individual development are de-prioritised. We end up with education that has lost its balance.

Some ways to improve educational balance

In this book, when we move from an unbalanced position to a position of good balance, we call it balancing the education. Just like a car tyre that for some reason has become unbalanced and causes the steering wheel to shake or vibrate unpleasantly while driving needs to be balanced. Fortunately, there are many ways to balance education towards a better work-learn balance. One way is to change the measurement methods used in educational institutions. Researcher Gert Biesta (2009) points to the importance of not only valuing what is easy to measure, but also trying to measure what we value. A more balanced education is therefore not about stopping the measuring. It is both unrealistic and undesirable for humanity to stop trying to measure success.[17] After all, data collection and analysis are at the heart of scientific methodology.

If we want to develop education, we should instead try to develop our measurement methods. This book is written in that spirit. The research methodology described here represents a new and effective way of measuring things that are more difficult to capture in education. It also makes it easier for us to see phenomena and events that were previously too hidden.

Another way to balance education is to compensate with more of what is missing based on the idea of work-learn balance. What needs to be added then differs depending on whether you are a teacher or a student. We will now briefly introduce two different perspectives on balancing – teachers who learn more and students who create value for others.

Both these perspectives are central to achieving better education. Achieving a better balance between learning for oneself and creating value for others is an urgent task, both for those who spend a lot of time in education and for society as a whole. Education with a good balance between learning and value creation fulfils its societal role better.[18] It also makes everyday life more interesting, meaningful and engaging for those who work there. Teachers can develop on a more personal level, and students learn what it means to take responsibility for others.

Balancing for students – value creation pedagogy

The first balancing act concerns students. As their everyday life consists almost exclusively of their own learning, a balancing act for them involves working more on creating value for others. Their learning is perceived as more meaningful when they can apply their knowledge and skills in real life situations and try to create something of value for a real recipient. This could be for someone in the educational institution but outside their own classroom or lecture hall, or, even better, for someone in the community outside the school or campus. This has previously been called pedagogy of work[19] or entrepreneurial pedagogy[20] , but in this book it is called value-creation pedagogy.[21] Although the goal for students is still learning, students’ value creation activities become a means to deepen their learning.

What is meant by this is that the students’ learning is balanced with a little value creation for others, for example that the students can create some enjoyment value, social value, harmony value, influence value or economic value for another person. This is illustrated in Figure 3.2. Learners can then apply their knowledge and skills in practical value creation for and preferably together with others. This leads to increased engagement, higher study motivation and ultimately better study results and grades.[22] This is especially true for students who otherwise feel that education is not really for them.

Figure 3.2 Students’ everyday life is balanced with a dash of value creation pedagogy.

Good examples of value-creation pedagogy can be found at all levels of education.[23] Pre-school children have helped architects design a new building, taught other children how to speak and exhibited their work in the town square. Primary school pupils have read fairy tales in kindergarten, interviewed and told the life stories of vulnerable people, taught environmental awareness to restaurateurs and written opinion pieces in the local press. High school students have made podcasts about fiction, acted as tour guides for newly arrived students, performed children’s theatre and set younger students’ texts to music. University students have trained professionals in biomaterials, organised percussion workshops for children, helped car manufacturers develop electric vehicles and built software for companies.

Vocational education and training usually already has a good balance between learning and value creation, since work-based learning is woven into the programme. Students learn a profession by spending time with colleagues in a workplace, creating value for customers or users. Apprenticeships are perhaps the most balanced form of education. This is because apprentices have about the same amount of time devoted to theoretical knowledge as to its practical application in the workplace. Perhaps this is even a desirable ideal for all education?

Value creation pedagogy has been shown in research studies to have a wide range of positive effects.[24] When students work with others in the classroom to apply their knowledge and skills to create value for real beneficiaries, and then receive feedback and support from these beneficiaries through personalised interaction, they undergo profound personal development. Such value creation activities lead them to develop a passion for creating value for others. This passion plays a key role in making them study harder, want to learn more, take more responsibility, be kinder to each other and develop on a deep personal level. This, in turn, leads to deeper learning of curricular knowledge and skills, more independent learning and less conflict in the classroom. The effects are summarised in Figure 3.3 below.

Figure 3.3 A model of how value creation pedagogy impacts occur in more detail. The model shows how passion for creating value for others plays a key role in generating strong positive effects on learners. Emotional learning events lead to attitudinal changes, which in turn produce desirable outcomes. The figure is from a published and peer-reviewed scientific article by Lackéus (2020b).

Balancing for teachers – value-creating research

The second balancing act concerns teachers. As their everyday life consists almost exclusively of creating value for students, balancing means that they work more on their own learning. The creation of value for students is perceived as more meaningful when teachers try to learn new things that they can try and hopefully benefit from in their work with students. Such learning has many names, such as in-service training, competence development, collegial learning, action research, action learning or professional development. In this book, it is referred to as value-creating research, since teachers’ learning is, at best, a scientifically structured learning process with the aim of creating value for students. Thus, even though teachers’ goal in school is still to create value for students, teachers learning in scientific ways becomes a means of developing their value-creating ability. Teachers’ everyday life thus also becomes more balanced and meaningful from a work-learn perspective. This is illustrated in Figure 3.4.

Figure 3.4 Teachers’ everyday life is balanced with a bit of value-creating research through a structured learning process empowered by designed action sampling.

With thirteen full days dedicated to in-service training each year, teachers’ imbalance is not as severe as students’. Recently, teacher learning has also come under increasing scrutiny, both in Sweden and internationally. Through decades of research, internationally leading scholars such as Helen Timperley, Michael Fullan, Peter Senge, Donald Schön and Anthony Bryk have demonstrated positive effects on organisational goal achievement, and thus put professional collegial learning on the agenda among teachers.

In Sweden, the major breakthrough came in 2011 when the Swedish National Agency for Education recommended that the government should base the largest ever investment in teachers’ professional development on the idea of professional collegial learning.[25] Three billion Swedish crowns was invested[26] in Matematics “lift” and Reading “lift”, both based on the professional collegial learning model. Although there is no shortage of criticism, the initiatives are regarded as successful, not least because of the focus on professional collegial learning.[27]

Despite this focus and well-funded initiatives, professional collegial learning is still a vaguely defined concept. Something that is missing in the Swedish National Agency for Education’s activities, and also in their definition, is, for example, a strong focus on student effects.[28] In order to also include student effects, professional collegial learning is therefore defined here on the basis of three different elements[29] , see Figure 3.5. Teachers working together to learn new things is a necessary but not sufficient requirement to achieve effects on student learning outcomes. There must also be a change in classroom or lecture hall practices. This change must also take place in ways that lead to improved student outcomes.

Figure 3.5 Definition of professional collegial learning in relation to the three phases of the cyclical work process and various associated challenges.

Emphasising the importance of value-creating research in this book is an attempt to clarify how important it is that we achieve effects on student learning, not just on teacher learning. Scientific dialogue between teachers should revolve around practical activities in the classroom or lecture hall that have the potential to create value for students. Otherwise, there is a risk that we will only have pleasant smalltalk between teachers, a kind of didactic “reassurance club”[30] or “duck pond”.[31] Researcher Veronica Sülau (2019) has studied what happened when the Swedish Mathematics “lift” initiative met a local school practice. She uses the anonymised teacher Bengt to illustrate how Swedish National Agency for Education’s overly narrow definition of professional collegial learning can lead to the phenomenon being reduced and becoming ineffective (p. 181):

Collegial learning is, from Bengt’s perspective, more important than the content, and is about talking to each other among mathematics teachers. About what is less important, so to speak. However, in none of the collegial discussions that form the basis for this study, or in the written reflections, do the teachers talk about how collegial learning should function as a means for them to develop as mathematics teachers. Nor is this something that is explicitly stated by the supervisors in the collegial dialogue. Collegial learning is thus reduced to a mere goal, with an emphasis on collegiality rather than learning. Simply put, when teachers sit together and talk about maths or general education issues, the goal is achieved.

It thus seems important not to let own learning and creation of value for others drift too far apart. We should all endeavour to maintain this balance in our daily lives, whether we are teachers or students. Or, for that matter, entrepreneurs, or employees in any other sector of society. Nor is it enough to have a pious hope that our own learning now will lead to the creation of more value for others later. It needs to be organised for this to happen.

The theory of work-learn balance – a coin with two sides

The two balances now discussed can be said to be two sides of the same coin. The coin itself we call the work-learn balance theory – that any given social environment can have a higher perceived sense of meaning, higher quality and a more clearly stated purpose, if people are encouraged to strive for a good balance between:

1. structured, collective and reflective learning processes around new phenomena.
2. emotionally powerful experiences where you try to create value for others.

Such balance promotes interest, motivation, commitment, quality and thus performance, effectiveness and achievement. The application of the work-learn balance theory in schools is illustrated in Figure 3.6.

Figure 3.6 The theory of work-learn balance as it can be applied in education for students and teachers. Students’ learning without creating value for others, and teachers’ creating value for others without their own learning, basically illustrate two different sides of the same coin. The coin is about work-learn balance for all people.

In education, the work-learn balance theory can be seen as an interdisciplinary bridge between students’ education and teachers’ working life. By studying two such different phenomena together, we can probably gain a deeper insight and understanding of both than if we had studied them in isolation. Although this book is primarily about balancing the lives of teachers, the ideas in the book are equally applicable to students. Students can also work in a more scientific and structured way when they combine their own learning with creating value for others. Value-creating science can thus be applied to students’ learning as well.

Learning and value creation are like oil and water

Unfortunately, in today’s specialised society, the balance between one’s own learning and the creation of value for others does not arise automatically. On the contrary, they are like oil and water – they separate spontaneously if nothing is done actively, see Figure 3.7. Balance must therefore be created and constantly maintained through conscious leadership and organisation. This is true both in education and in working life. If successful, teachers and students will feel a greater sense of meaning and purpose in their daily lives. They will be energised, achieve more in their work and go further in the search for new knowledge and new ways of working. Ultimately, this brings joy to themselves and to others. The people in education will be better off, and society will have a better education.

Figure 3.7 Value creation for others and own learning are like oil and water. In education, we have isolated oil bubbles of students creating value for others, surrounded by a sea of traditional learning. In working life, we have isolated oil bubbles of employee learning, surrounded by a sea of traditional everyday work.

One challenge in achieving a balanced education is how finely we blend learning and value creation. It is not enough that both perspectives are represented for a year but isolated in time from each other. Since they cross-fertilise each other, we achieve the strongest effects if we get them to mix in everyday life, every day, or at least every one or two weeks. A bit like a good Bearnaise sauce, or a vinaigrette, which contains both oil and water in a fine-grained mixture.

The idea of fine-grained blending of learning and value creation has major organisational implications for educational institutions. Therefore, leadership and organisation around work-learn balance issues are important. Is it really appropriate to talk about separated professional development days for teachers and thematic days or separated practicums for students, if the strongest effects require a fine-grained mix of learning and value creation on a weekly basis? Shouldn’t teacher professional development instead be integrated with everyday teaching? Shouldn’t students’ value creation also be integrated with their everyday learning? Yes, there are many arguments in favour of this. What is difficult is how to do it in practice. We come to that now.

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[1] This is a well-known statement that originally comes from Lewin (1951). Read more in articles by Pawson (2003) and Lundberg (2004). What Lewin originally wanted to convey was that many researchers jump too quickly into new measurement tools and run towards some kind of result, without having a deep theoretical understanding of what they are doing.

[2] See for example Lackéus, Lundqvist, Williams Middleton and Inden (2020) as well as Lackéus, Lundqvist and Williams Middleton (2019).

[3] In our research, we have called this the altruistic paradox, see Lackéus (2015, s. 29).

[4] For perspectives on such a balance in working life, see Lackéus, Lundqvist, Williams Middleton and Inden (2020). See also the overview of sense of coherence and meaning (KASAM) by sociologist Aaron Antonovsky, in an article by Eriksson and Lindström (2005). See also the so-called progress principle in the workplace by Amabile and Kramer (2011).

[5] The researcher Martin Hugo writes about this, for example (2012).

[6] A somewhat pointed debate article on the subject can be found on DN Debatt, see Lackéus (2019).

[7] See Hultén (2019, s. 211-224) for a review of the tendency of politicians to present pseudo-problems that they can then show vigour in solving. This issue also returns in Chapter 13.

[8] See also Carlgren (2020), Aspelin (2012) and Lackéus (2019).

[9] Read more about this journey in Au (2011).

[10] For a review of workplace alienation, see Sarros et al. (2002). See also on an attempt to combine Taylorism with trust in employee learning (Adler, 1992).

[11] This is aptly described by Robinson (2011)and also by Ball (1998).

[12] For an in-depth description of new public management, see Karlsson (2017).

[13] For two classic reviews of this illusion, see Barrett (1979) and Porter (1996).

[14] Biesta (2007) has written extensively on this phenomenon.

[15] For a discussion in relation to ‘backwash’, when the assessment strategy guides learning rather than the curriculum, see Biggs and Tang. (2011, s. 197).

[16] See e.g. Darling-Hammond and Adamson (2014) and Crocco and Costigan (2007).

[17] Even the contemporary critic of the measurement society, the philosopher Jonna Bornemark (2018, s. 15)confirms the benefits of measurement but highlights the risks when numbers are always prioritised over reflection.

[18] The value of balancing for teachers is undisputed. The value of balancing for students is not as well studied, but a recent impact study shows strong positive effects, see Lackéus et al. (2020b).

[19] See Freinet (1993).

[20] See Lackéus (2015) and Falk-Lundqvist et al. (2011).

[21] See Lackéus (2016) and Wiman (2019).

[22] See impact study by Lackéus (2020b).

[23] A collection of examples can be found on the website www.vcplist.com, see book about value creation pedagogy.

[24] For a summary of six different studies, see Lackéus (2020b).

[25] According to Kirsten (2020) a key publication was an interim report from the Swedish National Agency for Education (2011) which emphasised the importance of collaborative groups of teachers over longer periods of time.

[26] According to the OECD (2017).

[27] Read more about evaluations carried out in Kirsten and Carlbaum (2020).

[28] According to Sjöblom and Jensinger (2020), Sülau (2019) and according to the evaluation of Läslyftet conducted by Andersson et al. (2019). Principal surveys conducted in 2014, which the author received anonymously and in confidence, also show that the pupil effects of the Maths Lift may be weak.

[29] The three parts are taken from Sjöblom and Jensinger (2020, s. 137) and from Katz and Ain Dack (2017, s. 48).

[30] The term ‘reassurance club’ comes from a speech by Alma Harris at the ICSEI conference in Singapore in 2018, cited in Sjöblom and Jensinger (2020, s. 147).

[31] The term ‘duck pond’ was used by a school leader in a project in which the author was involved.

What is valuable? We are all confronted with this simple question every day. Work or family? Career or friends? Travelling or saving money? Life constantly confronts us with required choices between incomparable values. Figuring out what will be a good balance between conflicting choices is not easy. One often has to rely on feelings to achieve balance in life. A term that tries to capture this is work-life balance.[1]

We like to calculate things in life to arrive at a figure of value, compare different options and then make a considered choice. This is despite the fact that no one has ever managed to figure out what the meaning of life is. Sometimes it can feel like only what can be counted counts, especially in education with grades and PISA results. But there are, of course, values in life that we cannot calculate. What is most valuable in life is probably rather things that cannot be calculated. Such as love, friendship, community, equality, forgiveness and helpfulness.

It is not only around our own lives that we have to think about value. Also at work we need to deal with this issue on a daily basis. How should I plan my lesson to make it as valuable as possible for my students? What support can be valuable for the staff I manage? What is the actual value to our organisation of a purchase we’re thinking of making or a conference we want to attend, in relation to the cost?

Value for oneself versus value for others

In the workplace, our main focus is usually on creating value for other, sometimes unknown, people. In our free time, however, we are free to engage in all kinds of activities that create value for ourselves and our loved ones. The difference is salary. In the workplace, we are paid to create value for others, while in leisure time we are not paid and can do whatever we want. This is not to say that leisure is more valuable than work. Many people feel a deep sense of purpose in life when they help others at work.

In fact, the little word ‘value’ has been the focus of researchers’ attention for hundreds of years.[2] If we want to get a more nuanced view of value, there are shelf metres of books we can read. There is even a separate field of research, valuation studies, where researchers study the question of what is valuable.[3]

Here we will try to avoid getting lost in deep dives into the almost existential question of value. However, it is important to build a common understanding of this keyword for later sections of the book. Designed action sampling is a research method that draws its power from the idea of learning by creating value for others.

Value versus values

A little word game you can play is to think about the difference between value and values. The philosopher John Dewey devoted an entire book, Theory of valuation (1939), to such wordplay. He notes that English words like dear, worth and prize/price illustrate the dual nature of the concept of value. Dear, for example, can mean either expensive or highly esteemed, depending on the situation. Worth can mean either a certain price value or a sense of dignity, depending on the situation. Such ambiguous words show, according to Dewey, that intellectual calculations of value (e.g. ‘expensive’ or ‘pricey’) and emotional estimates of value (e.g. ‘esteemed’ or ‘worthy’) interact intricately in everyday life. Value should therefore not be separated from values.

For famed sociologist Talcott Parsons, however, it wasn’t a game – it was deadly serious. To deal with problems of internal politics at Harvard University, he made a pact with his fellow economists in the 1930s:[4]

You, economists, study value; we, sociologists, study values.

This pact runs counter to Dewey’s recommendation and also illustrates the tendency of some economists to want to reduce different values to a single numerical value expressed in economic terms, a market price that can then be calculated mathematically.[5] Many economists even go so far as to see the market price of a phenomenon as its true value. But anyone who works in a value-driven organisation knows that such reasoning has its limitations and also risks undermining values such as justice, equality, diversity, democracy, ecology and the equal value of all people.[6]

Market price is a subjective perspective on value, as illustrated by the classic water-diamond paradox. How come water is so cheap, even though it is essential to life, when diamonds, which are scarce, are so expensive? The explanation is that prices, and therefore value, are determined by supply and demand.[7] According to many economists, the value of something depends on how many people want it and how much of it is available.

However, a market theory of value is problematic in education, where the nature and value of the service delivered should not vary with supply and demand. On the contrary, most educators strive for an equal experience for all students, regardless of how many they are, what conditions they have, where they live or how much money their parents have. This lack of equality has also become the biggest downside of the marketised education system. When education becomes a priced service among all others, it is primarily equality that is lost.[8] Educators therefore need a value model that takes into account more than just economic value.

A multi-faceted model of value

To clarify the meaning of value in this book, Figure 2.1 shows a model with five different perspectives on what value can be. These values can be created either for oneself or for others. The model is a simplification, as are all value models.[9] Nevertheless, it highlights some key questions about value creation. What values are meant? For whom does value arise? The five value perspectives in Figure 2.1 will now be briefly explained.

Figure 2.1 Model with five different perspectives on value that can be created for oneself or for others. From Lackéus (2018).

Economic value is often function-orientated and transaction-based, measured in terms of the money paid or saved when different goods and services are exchanged. Economic value for oneself is usually referred to as a wage or payment and is something one receives when one has created or delivered something of value to others. Some people also help others create economic value, such as bankers that help their customers manage money.

Social value is about making people happier or alleviating their suffering. It is a broad category – what people value in life is multifaceted and partly subjective.[10] Some examples of social value include having close relationships with other people, expressing your identity, learning new knowledge and skills, improving your personal health, and feeling safe and secure.

Enjoyment value occurs when people do things for pure joy and fun. It can be deeply engaging and creative tasks, cultural experiences, or experiences where you get to do or learn something new. Such activities are often both challenging and intrinsically inspiring and can lead to a mental state of flow, where people are fully immersed, feel competent and sometimes lose track of time.[11]

Influence value occurs when people gain influence, reputation, power or other impact on others in society, such as managers, politicians or celebrities. Influence value can also be about everyday actions that deeply affect another person, such as parents raising their children, employees helping customers and colleagues at work, or teachers helping their students develop. Central to influence value is people’s desire to perform, a deeply human drive.[12] People’s need for meaning in life can also be satisfied by gaining influence over others.[13]

Harmony value refers to the value of a harmonious whole, either culturally or in relation to justice, ecology, equality and the common good. It is an often collective and conditional type of value that is situationally dependent and based on shared values.[14] It is therefore often a more complex type of value that comes into focus in more advanced societies. An everyday example is that many cinema-goers like to have popcorn, even if they otherwise never eat popcorn.[15] A more complex example is the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals.[16] They are about trying to reduce global poverty, hunger and climate change and instead promote health, equity, ecology, security, resilience, inclusion and more.

Creating value for others gives meaning to life

In this book we will mainly discuss situations where value is created for others, rather than for oneself. Indeed, creating value for others has proven to be a useful focus for scientific teachers. Therefore, when the word value creation is used in this book, it mainly refers to value creation for others. This does not mean that value is not created for oneself. Egoism and altruism are two closely intertwined concepts[17] , which is illustrated by the yin and yang in the centre of Figure 2.1. Those who help others feel good in the moment from the sense of meaning and belonging that this gives them, and may also gain further benefits in the long term. The importance of balance between own happiness and meaningfulness with others is illustrated in Figure 2.2. Own happiness includes classic self-orientated values such as sensory experiences, satisfaction, power, wealth, independence, achievement and winning. Meaningfulness with others is often linked instead to creative acts of making a difference through engagement, job satisfaction and collaboration.[18]

Figure 2.2 Different perspectives illustrating the need for balance between value creation for oneself and for others. The figure is based on perspectives explored in more detail in a research article by Lackéus (2017).

Value creation as an entrepreneur and as an employee

Discussing different forms of value can easily become abstract and theoretical. So let’s take some concrete examples. Perhaps it will be a bit of a digression. But then again, value creation is one of the most important terms in this book, so it will have to be worth it.

One of the clearest examples of the link between value for others and value for oneself is entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur’s most important task is to create value for others, namely their customers. If this is successful, the entrepreneur will not only experience a momentary sense of meaning and belonging. The customer invoice should also be paid, providing money that can then be converted into a salary. If not enough value is created for others, it will eventually lead to bankruptcy or liquidation.

One difference between employees and entrepreneurs is the speed of the feedback loop between the value created for others and the monetary reward they can receive. Entrepreneurs are more affected by economic ups and downs than employees. In good times, it is financially favourable. In bad times, it is a source of much stress. Despite this potential economic advantage for successful entrepreneurs, a high perceived sense of meaning and personal development is a more common motivation for entrepreneurship than personal financial gain.[19] However, to outsiders, money is more visible than perceived meaning, thus contributing to the appearance of entrepreneurs as particularly financially orientated individuals.[20] Not least because some entrepreneurs have helped so many customers that the small surplus each helped customer contributes eventually makes them wealthy. A classic quote reads:[21]

If you want to make a million dollars, help a million people.

In this case, the value created by an entrepreneur who has made a million dollars in profit by helping a million people is easy to calculate, at least according to the simplified value theory of some economists. If we assume a typical profit margin of 5 percent, the value created for the customers is 20 million dollars, because according to some economists, price and value are the same thing. Each customer has then paid an average of $20, of which $1 is profit and $19 is costs necessary to create value for customers.

However, for most people, wages are the only economic value they will ever receive when helping others. This was also the philosopher Karl Marx’s main criticism of capitalism.[22] According to Marx, business owners exploit their employees when they take care of the surplus themselves after all personnel and other costs are paid. The proposed solution was for citizens to co-own the resources of production and thus share in any profits (and losses).

A consolation for employees in a market economy may be that the work they do to help others provides many other values in addition to salary, such as enjoyment value, social value, harmony value and influence value. Teachers, in particular, both give and receive many different non-economic values through good opportunities to strongly influence the future of other people in a positive way. Feeling needed and useful in this way gives many people a strong sense of purpose in life.[23]

From this little digression, we can take away that teachers are paid for creating value for their students. Teachers also receive many other forms of value in return. However, for teachers, the link between creating value for others and economic value for themselves is not nearly as strong as it is for entrepreneurs. And that’s probably a good thing. If teachers who gave their students higher grades were paid more, we would probably see grade inflation. Right now, in Sweden at least, it is mainly in private schools that we see grade inflation[24] , but that is for other reasons[25], because these teachers actually earn less than in public schools.[26]

We can also note that it is easy to assess how well the entrepreneur is doing in creating value for others. The clear link between value created for others and economic value for oneself means that the answer to how well entrepreneurs are doing can easily be read in the company’s turnover and profit statements.[27] However, it is impossible to assess in the same simple way how well the teacher is doing in creating value for students. It is clear that grades are a poor way of assessing how well a teacher is doing. It leads to an erosion of professionalism and an excessive focus on tests and assessment regimes.[28] The soul of the teaching profession dies a little.[29] But how should we then lead schools towards higher goal fulfilment? Here, a new scientific method can provide a new way forward. When it is the teachers themselves who collect data on how well they succeed in creating value for their students and are responsible for analysing and acting on the data collected, we may finally succeed in combining teacher professionalism with a focus on measuring student learning outcomes.

The intrinsic value of learning and education

The value model in Figure 2.1 looks like a flower but still has no leaf called learning value. However, the value of learning is not missing from the model. Rather, it is included in all the leaves of the model, as value-creating processes are always based on both established knowledge and action-based learning. We live in a knowledge society where knowledge and learning are a prerequisite for participating in society as value-creating citizens. [30]

In addition to the practical benefits an individual citizen or society at large may derive from knowledge and learning, there is also something called epistemic value[31] : the intrinsic value of knowledge. Phenomena commonly mentioned in discussions of epistemic value are knowledge whose practical benefits are not obvious, such as the extinct language of classical Latin, classic works of fiction and basic research. Such knowledge is often said to be the basis of the so-called Humboldtian ideal of “bildung”, and is about developing one’s own personality and soul through liberal and self-cultivating education.[32]

However, the concept of bildung must be adapted to the socially networked society we live in today.[33] Bildung today can therefore also be said to be about figuring out how we want to relate to other people, and which of all possible values we want to create for our fellow travellers on life’s journey. With increasing complexity in society comes an infinite number of choices and possible paths in life. For schools, this means a growing need to engage in opportunity didactics[34] – giving students a chance to explore what kind of citizen they want to become using the knowledge they acquire in their education. In guidance and career counselling, this is sometimes referred to as ‘choice competence’: the ability of students to choose appropriate paths in life.[35] Such skills can be strengthened by giving them the opportunity to try out different types of value creation for others, already in school.

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[1] For a detailed study of families’ quest for balance, see Schneider and Waite (2005).

[2] An in-depth and historical review can be found in Lackéus (2018).

[3] An introduction to the research field has been written by Helgesson and Muniesa (2013).

[4] The quote is a post-construction for illustrative purposes, see Stark (2011, s. 7).

[5] For a detailed review of some economists’ treatment of value, see Mirowski (1991).

[6] Read more about this in Kjellberg et al. (2013).

[7] Read more in Mazzucato (2018).

[8] Read more in an anthology by Fejes and Dahlstedt (2018).

[9] For some other value models, see Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) and Sheth et al. (1991).

[10] Read more about this in Seligman (2012) and in Costanza et al. (2007).

[11] Read more about “flow theory” in Csíkszentmihályi (1991).

[12] Read more about this in Fisheries (2008) and in McClelland (1967).

[13] See Baumeister et al. (2013).

[14] See further details in Boltanski and Thévenot (2006).

[15] Read more about contingent value in Sheth et al. (1991).

[16] They are described in United Nations (2015).

[17] For example, Batson and Shaw (1991).

[18] Perspectives on personal happiness and meaningfulness with others are described in Lackéus (2017).

[19] Read more about this in Morris et al. (2012) and in Stephan et al. (2015).

[20] See Morris et al. (2012, s. 208) who write about how unusual it is to study entrepreneurs’ intrinsic motivational factors, compared to a more common focus on the economic values they create.

[21] See for example in DeMarco (2011, s. 223).

[22] Read more in Harvey (2010) and in Marx (1867/1976) own texts.

[23] A famous book by Frankl (1985) is about people’s search for meaning in life. Helping others is also a particularly effective way to create a sense of meaning in life (Baumeister et al., 2013).

[24] See Vlachos (2018).

[25] For some reasons, see report by IVA (2020, s. 72).

[26] See report from the Teachers’ Union (2013).

[27] Of course, it is not quite that simple. Some industries are inherently more profitable than others. But turnover and profits are by far the most common way to judge entrepreneurs.

[28] See Holloway and Brass (2018) and Ball (2003, 2013).

[29] This expression was coined by Ball (2003) and also appears in a paper by Mörk (2020).

[30] Read more about the knowledge society and its implications for schools in Säljö (2007).

[31] Read more about this in an entry in the Oxford Philosophy of Education Dictionary by Carr (2009).

[32] Read more about the concept of education in relation to Swedish schools in Hultén et al. (2019, s. 142).

[33] Biesta (2002) writes that education today is also about how we relate to others.

[34] Davidsen and Robinson (2021) explore possibility didactics in a new book on change pedagogy.

[35] See Skolverket (2020b).

Now we come to the main theme of the book: designed actions sampling. What exactly is this? There are a few different ways to answer that question. The answers are slightly different in length. We will start with the shortest answer:

Designed actions sampling is a new scientific method that works well in education.

What is new is that we have combined several established scientific perspectives, methods and techniques that have probably never been used together before, in education or elsewhere. These include clinical research, action research, experience sampling and coding of qualitative data.

But is a combination of established methods really a new method? Yes, that is what we want to argue here.[1] In addition to the novelty of the combination, we have also had to come up with some new and never before used research approaches.

A scientific method proven to work well in education

So how do we know that the method works well in education? You can never be completely sure. Educational institutions are complex organisations. A method may work well in one place but not so well in another. But over a nine-year period, we have experimented in many places with new ways of working scientifically with teachers, and have made many insights and advances as a result. Educational development projects have been carried out around Sweden, and also abroad.[2] The eleven examples in the book are all taken from these projects. After a number of unsuccessful attempts, we finally ended up with a scientific method that seemed to work better and better in more and more educational institutions. In 2019, it became clear from the feedback of teachers and managers that we had developed a combination method that worked really well. Given the lack of scientific methods that work well in education, this aspect is perhaps the most interesting here: that the method works for teachers.

Some positive effects we have seen

Now this is not a scientific article, so the focus here will not be on proving or convincing you as a reader that the method works well in education. We refer that question to other arenas.[3] Instead, this book is about describing and exemplifying the method in such a detailed form that you as a reader will be able to understand how and why it works for teachers, and be able to apply it in your own organisation. In part three, we will also discuss in more detail the positive effects we have seen and give our view of why we believe that this particular scientific method produces these positive effects.

Nevertheless, it is worth briefly mentioning some of the effects we have seen. These include:

• Simplified collaboration on teachers’ scientific work – greater clarity and better support for the four key roles that need to work together, see Figure 1.3.
• Visualisation of effects of different development ideas among students – both positive effects and lack of effects.
• Strengthened development leadership for managers – now it is finally possible to exercise pedagogical leadership, they say.
• Strengthened systematic quality work – better data for better analysis.
• Improving the quality of core educational activities – development ideas are put to work more effectively when all teachers participate concretely through hypothesis testing in their own classrooms.

It is still too early to say exactly how well the method works in different educational settings. The future will tell.

Designed action sampling in three steps

Now we come to a slightly longer answer to the question of what designed action sampling is:

Designed action sampling is a three-step process.

1. First, the research leaders (teachers, peer learning leaders, managers and/or experts) formulate a number of action-oriented tasks for teachers that hopefully create value for students.
2. Then many teachers try out the tasks together practically, each teacher in their own classroom with their students, and reflect in writing afterwards and receive feedback from research leaders.
3. Finally, everyone analyses together the written reflections including feedback, in anonymised form, and revises the tasks so that they might work better next time.

Then it starts all over again.

In Step 1, the research leaders formulate or select some action-oriented tasks that they believe can create value for learners when teachers try to implement them in their teaching. The tasks can either be based on their own experience in the classroom or based on research, expertise and other experience outside their own organisation, or a combination of these. They can indeed be formulated together with the teachers who are intended to try them out.

In Step 2, all participating teachers collectively, yet individually with their students, try out how these tasks work in their particular classroom. After each trial, each teacher documents how each task went – we’ll get into how this can be done in a simple and practical way in a moment. Documentation is done both via text, through deep written reflection, and via numbers, by rating the emotional state on a scale and choosing freely among different impact indicators, here called “tags”. Tags are short phrases that summarise the desired effects and are designed in advance by the research leaders (teachers, peer learning leaders, managers, experts), preferably in collaboration with all participating teachers. Research leaders provide written, personalised, confidential and timely feedback to each teacher on each reflection.

In step 3, all the data collected is analysed. The analysis begins with the research leaders compiling and visualising all the data collected and then presenting it to all participants in a workshop-style analysis meeting. The analysis is then predominantly collective and results in the revision of the tasks. Then the work starts again from step 1.

The three steps are shown in Figure 4.1 and described in more detail below.

Figure 4.1 The three stages of the work process in designed action sampling.

A form that illustrates designed action sampling

Another way of explaining designed action sampling is to start from the form used for all data collection, see Figure 4.2. The word form may bring to mind bureaucratic exercise of authority, with the Swedish Tax Agency as perhaps the most prominent practitioner[4] , and one can certainly question the value of forms in our society. Is it really another form teachers need? Education is already quite competent with forms. Many different everyday issues are solved in education with yet another paper form – after-school care, homework, absence, action programmes, training, leave, etc.

The main benefit of forms is to structure and simplify the collection of data from many people and to guide those who need to contribute data. A well-designed form can also save time and increase the quality of the data collected. Forms are a common research tool, as the core of science is about collecting and analysing data.

More and more forms are now being digitised online or on mobile phones. This saves time for the person filling in the form, and perhaps above all for the person who has to manage all the data collected. One example of time savings is the time saved by Swedish citizens, and perhaps even more so by the Swedish Tax Agency, when filing the annual tax return form in May. Similarly, in education, a well-designed digital learning platform can save time that would otherwise be spent dealing with routine issues, especially when the teacher is the one who has to receive and manage all the data collected.

Explaining designed action sampling by showing a simple paper form is here mainly a pedagogical approach. In the vast majority of cases, scientific data collection in educational institutions will probably rather be done with different digital tools, such as survey tools or more specialised IT support. However, this is not a book about digitalisation, so all explanations in the book will be based on analogue handling of paper forms. For those who want to try designed action sampling in their organisation on a small scale, it is also possible to work with paper and pencil, even if it may not be the most time-efficient way of working in the long term.

Figure 4.2 Example of a form for designed action sampling.

Example 1: Co-operative learning in primary school

Five primary schools with one hundred teachers in three municipalities wanted to strengthen their work on cooperative learning through designed action sampling. Eleven tasks were created by two experts in the field and carried out by the teachers over five months. The tasks involved developing dialogue patterns and cooperation skills among students, introducing student cooperation in routine tasks, and testing new structures for cooperation in the classroom.

The schools had a need for skills development in this area and accepted the opportunity to try designed action sampling as a method. A needs assessment was followed by a full day of on-site skills development with the experts. Then the teachers were given a new assignment every two weeks to carry out and reflect on. Each teacher received individual and confidential feedback from peer learning leaders, school managers and experts. Half of the assignments were linked to theory and literature, and half were about practical actions in the classroom.

Tags were designed by the experts in consultation with methodological researchers. Some common effects captured by the tags were “Students are more involved”, “Students learn better”, “Students help each other more” and “Increased group cohesion”.

After completing the project, the participants were asked how they perceived the work with cooperative learning and the scientific method. The assignments were perceived as relevant, clear and developing. Many thought that reflecting after each completed assignment provided useful self-insight. A few teachers were a little uncomfortable with sharing their inner thoughts.

Receiving feedback enhanced teachers’ learning and also provided extra motivation. However, sometimes feedback was forgotten, which led to some frustration and disappointment among teachers. Analysis meetings where all teachers could discuss outcomes were perceived as very rewarding. School leaders appreciated the systematic approach and everyone’s participation. The initiative had more impact, effects and problems were made visible and the analysis was deepened when all colleagues worked in a coordinated, documenting and collaborative manner. Visible differences in the level of commitment also provided important information for further leadership.

A combination method with 29 components

Now we finally come to the longest and most detailed way to explain what designed action sampling is:

Designed action sampling is a combination method with 29 different components, see Table 4.1 below.

Table 4.1 Overview of designed action sampling as a research method.

Overarching theoretical mindset “LOGIC”	Clinical research – We learn by trying to create value for others Pragmatism – We ask what works for whom, when, how and why. Critical realism – We look for weak cause-and-effect patterns on a detailed level. Action-based collective learning – Many people simultaneously try out the same ideas in practice. Abduction – We move systematically and repeatedly between theory and practice. Emotionality – We engage in emotional behaviour, we measure emotions.
Working models more strategic “MODEL”	Hypotheses – We formulate hypotheses (tasks) about what can help others. Actions – Teacher do action research on and with each other by selecting/designing assignments. Experiments – We test in the classroom if and how something works in practice. Design Principles – The start and end of the entire research journey is based on design research. Fine-grained – We mix theory and practice fine-grained in everyday life, preferably on a weekly basis. Protocols – We decide what everyone should test, we set deadlines and we maintain a  protocol of actions taken. Written – We document all insights and feedback in writing. Confidential – Confidentiality is maintained by having only a few people read all reflections.
Practical data collection techniques “TACTICS”	Collection of experiences – Everyone documents via forms continuously in the ‘here and now’, in the same way. Linking action-reflection – When collecting data, action and reflection are linked. Longitudinal data collection – We collect data over a longer period of time and on a weekly basis. Deep reflection – We reflect in depth after each action carried out. Mixed method – We collect both reflections and numerical estimates each time. Emotional assessment – We always make an assessment of emotional state to facilitate analysis Effect coding – We pre-guess intended effects (tags), everyone then codes all the data. Feedback – All teachers receive written feedback from a peer learning leader, manager or expert.
Practical data analysis technicians “TACTICS”	Formative analysis – Key insights from the ongoing process are documented on an ongoing basis. Mixed analysis – Numbers guide the search for patterns in collected reflective text Graphical analysis – Matrices and charts are produced to give a good overview. Collegial analysis – Research leaders compile, everyone in the organisation analyses together Anonymous sharing – particularly interesting texts are shared anonymously with all colleagues. Cause-effect analysis – Seeking deep insight into when, how and why effects occur Revised design principles – Insights from the analysis become the basis for revisions.

The 29 parts are divided into four categories based on how theoretical or practical they are, based on research on how best to describe a method so that the reader is able to understand and apply it.[5] It is important not only to describe theoretical mindsets, but also to be concrete and describe working models and tactics at a very detailed practical level. Figure 4.3 shows a framework that facilitates the description of methods by indicating three levels that need to be described in detail – logic, model and tactics.

Figure 4.3 Framework with three levels at which a method needs to be described in order for the person trying to apply the method to have the conditions to succeed. Adapted from Mansoori (2018, pp. 49-53).

Logic deals with theoretical thinking at a high level of abstraction and is closely linked to philosophical issues, such as what counts as knowledge (epistemology) and what can be assumed to be real (ontology). Model refers to activities at an overall and thus more strategic level and may consist of step-by-step process or work models that link general, theoretical and abstract ways of thinking with specific, practical and concrete actions. Tactics are tools, techniques and practical methodological approaches that address specific details of the method: how to do things and what effect to try to achieve. Individually, tactics can often seem difficult to relate to each other. It is sometimes only at the level of model and logic that their interrelationship can be understood.

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[1] For the theoretically interested reader, combinatorial innovations are the main theme of economist Joseph Schumpeter’s (1934) famous definition of innovation. See also Ogbor (2000).

[2] In addition to Uddevalla, examples of participating municipalities have been Sundsvall, Varberg, Gothenburg, Kungsbacka, Hultsfred, Falkenberg, Åstorp, Skurup, Åtvidaberg, Lerum, Söderhamn, Växjö, Landskrona, Huddinge, Nacka, Skövde and Skara. A number of other organisations have also participated, mainly Skolverket, Chalmers, Me Analytics AB, Region Skåne, Ung Företagsamhet, Ungt Entreprenørskap, Framtidsfrön, Luleå University of Technology, Lund University, University of Huddersfield, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Aarhus University, VIA University College, Rakkestad ungdomsskole, the European Commission (Joint Research Centre), Esenyurt Halk Egitim Mudurlugu, Mustafa Yesil Ortaokulu, Fridaskolorna and Academedia.

[3] Some research articles that go through different aspects of the method more scientifically are Lackéus (2020a), Lackéus (2020b) and Lackéus and Sävetun (2019a).

[4] More than 500 different forms can be downloaded from the Swedish Tax Agency’s website via an A-Z overview, ranging from form 7580 “Change of address for property owners living abroad” to form 2192 “Personal assets – Profit and loss (help form)”.

[5] See Mansoori (2018). See also Anthony (1963).

Scientific teachers. Taste the words. What feelings do they evoke? Curiosity? Scepticism? Indifference? It probably varies depending on who you ask. But regardless of what you feel as a teacher, since 2010 there is a law in Sweden requiring teachers to work scientifically. Which seems reasonable, if the alternative is teachers working unscientifically. However, it may still be appropriate to start a methodology book on the subject with a little in-depth study of what science in education is actually good for.

But first a delimitation. This book is not about whether the knowledge content taught is scientifically based or not. The focus is on science as a verb. In other words, it concerns teachers who actively participate in educational science work on pedagogical and didactic issues, as consumers or as co-producers of research.

Why scientific teachers – two approaches

Science in education has two main approaches. One is about what ‘works’ in general, according to university researchers. This approach is usually referred to as the scientific basis, which means that teachers are expected to keep up with the pedagogical development of the profession and try to apply modern educational research findings in their teaching, mainly through professional development. Educational research is extensive and has made many advances in recent decades that can benefit students.[1] The more that teachers participate in various forms of science-based professional development, the better education we hope to see. Government initiatives are common, such as the Reading Lift and the Maths Lift.[2]

The second approach to scientific teachers involves teachers being involved in identifying what ‘works’ for them. This is often referred to as ‘tried and tested experience’, which means that teachers collectively and, at best, systematically, try to find ways of working that help them to improve student achievement in different situations. Some terms that capture this phenomenon are collegial learning, action research, school development and systematic quality work. Tried and tested teacher experience is supposed to lead to increasingly skilled teachers, which in turn means that students learn more, better and deeper. At least that is the hope.

Progress in other sectors of society can also serve as inspiration for educators. Scientific learning in the medical professions through clinical research has led to major advances in human health and longevity for over a hundred years. Doctors learn about what works by trying to help their patients in different ways based on various more or less well-founded hypotheses, and then carefully document their patients’ progress in medical records. It is now hoped that education via scientific basis and proven experience will be strengthened as strongly as in medicine, and that teachers will now be inspired by doctors’ clinical science.[3]

The two approaches are problematic extreme positions

Both approaches to teachers’ scholarship are problematic. There are few general truths in educational science.[4] Teachers can rarely get simple answers from external researchers on how to improve their teaching and their students’ learning. It is also methodologically difficult for teachers to exchange and trial each other’s unique personal experiences. Practices that work well for one teacher in one classroom may not necessarily work as well for another teacher in the next classroom. Unfortunately, there are few examples of successful attempts to work scientifically with teachers’ own unique experiences.[5]

These practical everyday problems for teachers have deep roots in philosophy of science. General objective truths are often sought through numbers and statistics. It can almost be described as an obsession among people to quantify their experiences.[6] PISA surveys and annual student and staff surveys are two telling examples of this numerical exercise. However, no matter how rigorously you go about it, you rarely succeed in producing figures that are practically relevant to teachers in their daily lives.

Instead, subjective truths are often sought through time-consuming methods such as interviews, logbooks and observations. This usually generates large amounts of text and thus excludes those teachers who do not have the time to devote to such data collection and analysis. Yet teachers working in this way rarely meet the minimum scientific standards of reliability and generalisability.[7] Researcher Donald Schön (1995, p. 28) summarises the dilemma for practitioners as follows:

The practitioner is confronted with a choice. Shall he remain on the high ground where he can solve relatively unimportant problems according to his standards of rigor, or shall he descend to the swamp of important problems where he cannot be rigorous in any way he knows how to describe?

The purpose of this book is to try to give teachers access to a new solution to this fundamental and almost timeless methodological problem. If the endeavour succeeds, teachers can be supported in combining rigorous science with relevant problem solving in everyday teaching. The ambition here is thus to describe a solution that is both rigorous and relevant at the same time.

A golden middle ground – critical realism

In this book, we will find a middle ground between the two problematic extreme positions. In between general and personal truths about what “works” in education, there are several promising methodological approaches that can help teachers in their daily work. These approaches will be described and explained in detail in this book. The middle ground is illustrated in Figure 1.1 below.

Figure 1.1 Critical realism is a promising middle ground between rigid general truths and vague personal experiences.

Rather than getting stuck in naïve and rigid objectivism (the search for general laws/truths) or, for that matter, vague and fuzzy subjectivism (that each individual has his or her own unique truth), this book is about how teachers can try to strike a good balance between the two, building on the strengths of both extreme positions. Philosophers of science have called this middle ground critical realism.[8] It is about being critical of the initial impressions of the things being studied, but still trying to find patterns.

Collection of teachers’ situationally dependent collective experience

In part two, we will go into more depth about what critical realism can mean for educators. But first, here is a brief practical introduction. Critical realism is about trying to see the hidden social mechanisms that govern people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours, even when they are not fully aware of them. The focus is on what happens at a detailed level in the intricate and complex interactions between individuals in everyday life. The aim is to increase our understanding of the weak but important cause-and-effect relationships that exist in society. Despite the complexity of education, there are likely to be approaches and ideas that work better than others in different situations.

Critical realism focuses on precisely those situations in teachers’ daily lives where the relationship between cause and effect is most evident to them. In practical terms, this involves collecting and analysing data and reflective text from teachers about such situations. Data collection must therefore take place continuously in everyday life, precisely at those crucial moments when teachers see how a particular idea or method worked in practice for students. Such moments are often fleeting and emotional, either positively or negatively charged or both at the same time.

The middle ground of science is not without challenges. Regularities and cause-and-effect patterns are often weak in social contexts. Therefore, scientific teachers need to collect data from many different situations and from many fellow teachers. Otherwise, even strong patterns will not show up in the analysis. Numbers help the scientific teacher to look for patterns, and reflective text provides a picture of how and why these patterns emerge in different situations.

Education’s need for a scientific methodological middle ground

Why then might education need a scientific middle ground between extreme positions? It has mainly to do with how poorly the two established approaches to scientific teachers have worked so far. Educational researchers struggle to help teachers, and teachers struggle to help themselves through science. What unites the two approaches is their relatively low reputation, especially compared to other sectors of society, such as medical and natural science research.

The basic thesis of this book is that the problem with the two established approaches is a methodological problem. Established scientific methods such as surveys, interviews and observations do not work very well for scientific teachers. These methods are difficult and time consuming to apply. They rarely lead to interesting conclusions for the teachers themselves. The results are also too often uninteresting to a wider audience of colleagues. Perhaps it is too early to call the established methods dead ends for teacher scholarship, but it is not too early to consider alternative routes.

Teachers need access to a scientific method that works well in their daily lives without interfering with their important work. A method that can help them to scientifically develop their own colleagues and the profession as a whole, based on their unique situation in their own school. A method that delivers better education for students often enough. A method that is easy to use.

Choosing a scientific method – an impossible task for teachers?

It is no easy task for scientific teachers to choose a methodological path in the jungle of scientific methodology. Most of the time you end up with surveys, interviews or observations by convenience. But research methodology is more complicated than choosing between three methods of data collection. Figure 1.2 is called the ‘research onion’ and illustrates the complexity of designing a research study. If you also have a full-time job as a teacher, scientific methodology quickly becomes an almost impossible task. The only realistic way forward is for an external methodological researcher to make the choice for teachers. That is exactly what this book tries to provide – a set of methodological choices that work well for teachers.

In part two, we will describe in more detail the main theme of the book, a scientific method we have chosen to call designed action sampling and which this book is basically about. But already here we can see that the method is based on a number of carefully tested choices. These choices are shown in Figure 1.2 in bold italics.

Figure 1.2 The research onion shows the different methodological choices that need to be made in each research study. The methodological choices made in this book are shown in bold italics. Adapted from Saunders et al (2019).

Data collection – the missing link for scientific teachers?

At the heart of the research onion are data collection and data analysis. This is the core of scientific work and cannot be avoided if you want to make any claim to be scientific. Structured data collection is about documenting insights, which takes time. With the already heavy burden of documentation, it is therefore not surprising that many teachers feel sceptical about engaging in scientific work. Do we really have time for more documentation? Yes, we probably have to, if we want to realise the benefits of scientific methodology. But this need not be such a problem if we can find ways of collecting data that are simple and time-efficient, and thus work in teachers’ daily lives. This book describes one such way.

Data is always collected in order to be analysed, and a good analysis is only possible if the data collection has also been done well. The purpose of the analysis is to gain new insights into the mechanisms behind good teaching in different situations. This allows teachers to do more of what works well in each situation and less of what works poorly. Teachers who are aware of which mechanisms work well in which situations are more successful in their job.

Despite the fact that data collection is at the very core of teachers’ scholarship, it is the activity that works most poorly today in school scholarship. In a detailed review of various initiatives around Sweden, the school developer and investigator Lena M. Olsson (2018, pp. 78, 117, 119) bluntly states:

There are no signs that, within the framework of the models [for collaboration between researchers and practitioners], there is a more systematic compilation and analysis of teachers’ documented experiences of how changes in working methods affect students’ learning […] Systematic documentation of teachers’ experiences based on evaluation methods is often lacking in education and in skills development initiatives […] Without documentation as a basis, it is difficult for individual teachers to compare their observations from different occasions and see patterns in how teaching has changed.

Internationally, data collection is also one of the key gaps in educational development. Bryk et al. (2018, pp. 124-125) of the Carnegie Foundation for School Improvement in the United States state that educators need to learn from healthcare:

You cannot improve on a large scale what you cannot measure. […] For both teachers and students, time is a very limited resource. […] Measurements that will provide a basis for improvement work must be woven into the everyday pedagogical work. […] The lack of practical measurement methods is one of the most important differences between school and health care.

It is probably unrealistic to believe that we will have better teaching if we do not also engage in structured measurement of the effects of various initiatives. In order for such measurement to be woven into everyday teaching, each measurement session must be so simple that it takes around three minutes or less.[9] Later in the book we will show how this can be done.

Teachers as scientific leaders for their colleagues

For teacher-led science in education to work well, teachers need to take a great deal of responsibility in leading different aspects of the organisation’s scientific work.[10] Although managers have the formal and ultimate responsibility for an organisation’s pedagogical development leadership, in practice it is not appropriate or even possible for a manager to take on such responsibility alone.[11] Developmental leadership needs to be distributed among teachers and others who wish to exercise informal leadership or are expected to exercise formal leadership over their colleagues in the organisation.

Science also requires the participation of many, or even better, all teachers in an organisation. It is not good enough for a small group of teachers to do science in isolation. Because then patterns and connections become difficult to see, sceptical colleagues do not participate with their critical perspectives, comparisons are difficult to make and results are difficult to transfer to other teachers. Rather, successful educational development is characterised by unpretentious and boundary-crossing developmental cooperation, involving many different professional roles in the organisation and with some teachers exercising leadership over their colleagues within the framework of clearly defined forms of cooperation.[12]

Figure 1.3 shows a common distribution of roles in teacher-led educational science. Peer learning leader is a common title for those staff members in the school who lead other teachers’ scientific pedagogical development as well as have a leadership role in their own classroom.[13] Experts can be researchers at a university or other type of authority in a relevant area of development for the organisation.

Figure 1.3 Four key roles in teacher-led educational science.

Peer learning leader – a difficult role in dire need of a simple scientific methodology

Some synonyms for peer learning leaders are supervisor, team leader, development leader, subject leader, process leader and middle-ground leader.[14] In most cases, peer learning leaders also have the role of teacher at the same time. A special needs teacher or manager can also usefully take on the role of peer learning leader[15] .

There are many demands on the shoulders of peer learning leaders. They must lead and support the development work of many or all colleagues. In practice, this means creating clear structures, getting colleagues to actively participate in teacher-led research and providing them with feedback and encouragement after completing developmental actions. At the same time, they have to do their own job as teachers, often without any reduction in teaching time.

They must also ensure that the teacher-led research is scientific, sustainable and actively supported by managers. They should often also have contact with one or more experts, or be well informed about what different experts have concluded on a particular educational development issue.

Simplicity and clarity in scientific methodology is therefore not only desirable for peer learning leaders. It is rather an absolute necessity and a prerequisite for making teacher-led science work well in an educational institution such as a school, a university or a preschool. This book was written to support all those peer learning leaders who need a proven, simple and clear science methodology to lean on. But the book is also for managers who want to gain deeper insight into the methodological issues of teacher-led science. After all, it cannot be easy to be ultimately responsible for scientific work without also having some insight into scientific methodology.

Simplicity in science also requires a fairly high degree of standardisation. It is not compatible with simplicity and clarity for each teacher or team to be able to choose freely from the research onion in Figure 1.2. The method described in this book is therefore best used by all staff in the organisation. Those teachers who want to do more research can always use other methods in parallel.

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[1] For an overview, see Håkansson and Sundberg (2012).

[2] For a recent review, see Kirsten (2020).

[3] For a paper on clinical research teachers, see Carlgren (2010).

[4] See Biesta (2007), Pring (2010) and Olson (2004).

[5] This is described in detail by Olsson (2018).

[6] Read more in Barrett (1979) and in Porter (1996). See also Bornemark (2018).

[7] Read more about challenges with research involving teachers in Carlgren (2010). For criticism of teachers’ scholarship, see Pring (2010, s. 136-140).

[8] A pioneer of critical realism is Roy Bhaskar. For an accessible overview, see Sayer (2010).

[9] According to Bryk et al. (2018, s. 130)who describe their experience in designing a practical measurement method.

[10] See e.g. Scherp (2013), Rönnerman et al. (2018) and Kroksmark (2019).

[11] Read more about this in Forssten Seiser (2019).

[12] See Jarl et al. (2017, s. 69-93).

[13] See Scherp (2013, s. 95).

[14] See Rönnerman et al. (2018, s. 23-29).

[15] Read more about their role in school development in Bengtsson and Kempe Olsson (2019, s. 183-187).

It has been said that in 1899, the head of the US Patent Office, Charles H. Duell, submitted his resignation on the grounds:[1]

Everything that can be invented has now been invented, so we might as well shut down the patent office.

Looking back, we can laugh at the idea that the world would have been fully developed over 120 years ago. We can also reflect on the staggering social developments that the next 120 years are likely to bring. The world is most likely no more finished in its development today than it was in 1899. Yet there are many people who seem to think that education is fully developed or, at least, that educational development is not so important. Perhaps because they think they have already found good enough ways to work. Or perhaps because, for various reasons, they do not feel they have the time or energy to develop more in their professional role right now.

But what if there are new ways to educate that are waiting to be discovered and that make more students, pupils and children learn more in universities, schools and pre-schools? New ways that deepen learning to the extent that whole classes of young people are thrown into a multi-year, self-regulated and meaningful learning of both factual knowledge and softer skills? And what if new ways of educating can also be more engaging for children, students and teachers alike? Without compromising on knowledge. Ways that can also make children and students less likely to start fights? So that the time many teachers currently spend on conflict management and subsequent dialogue with guardians can instead be spent on quality time with children and students?

For those of you who think such an idea is over-optimistic, even unrealistic: you can stop reading this book now. I am sorry, but the book you are holding is not written for you. Rather, it is written for those of you who believe that education in 120 years’ time may work much better than it does today, and that teachers’ ingenuity and experimentation with new ideas are important and as yet untapped sources of scientific educational development.

Science is fundamentally about looking for new phenomena, ways of thinking and methods that work better than the ones we use today. This is exactly how we humans made crucial progress in areas such as electricity, X-rays, antibiotics, sustainability, gender equality, norm criticism, design, cognitive therapy and more. In its almost exactly 400-year history[2] , science has proven to be the most powerful methodology humanity has used in its endeavour to develop our world.

It is therefore a pity that some people question why teachers should spend time working more scientifically.[3] In this book, we choose to interpret it as being due to methodological confusion. That sceptical teachers simply do not know what to do, in practical terms in everyday life, to work more scientifically. And that they therefore criticise the whole idea of scientific educational development.

What could be better than a book that describes in detail a concrete way for universities, schools and pre-schools to work scientifically? And that this particular way has proved to work extremely well, or “gôr-bra”, as we say in Gothenburg. We who have developed this method have chosen to call it designed action sampling. It is based on three simple steps:

1. Design. Teachers or other research leaders in the school/pre-school select a theme for the development work and formulate a set of action-oriented tasks they believe can create value for children/pupils.
2. Action. Many teachers try the tasks with their students/children/pupils and then reflect in-depth in writing and individually via free text and multiple choice questions on the outcomes they have seen. Teachers receive written feedback from the research leader.
3. Sampling. The research manager compiles an analysis material which is then co-analysed by all teachers. The tasks are revised and the process starts again.

We believe that this could be one of the first scientific methods that works well in practice and for all staff in universities, schools and kindergartens. Maybe we even go from zero to one method that allows all teachers to be involved in science? So that we have more research in education, not just research about education.

However, whether or not it is the first method that works for everyone is not an important issue. As with patents, the main thing is not who came up with something useful, how new it was, or when it happened, but rather that this something comes to the attention of the public and is widely used. That is why patent offices exist. And just as a patent is primarily a written record of a clever idea for others to understand and use, a potentially new and useful method needs to be written down. That is why this book was written. The aim is simply to describe and disseminate a new scientific combination method, based on both established and new pieces of the method puzzle, which we believe can contribute to better education.

Organisation of the book

The book contains three parts which will now be briefly introduced. The parts do not necessarily have to be read in the order in which they are written. Just remember that they build on each other. Both Part Two and Part Three use several words and concepts that may be difficult to understand without the explanation given in the previous sections.

The first part (Chapters 1-3) is about establishing the concepts of scholarship and value creation in relation to education. The concepts are then linked to the balance between own learning and value creation for others. What does it really mean to work scientifically in universities, schools and pre-schools? And what is meant by value-creating children, pupils, students and teachers in universities, schools and pre-schools? Who creates value for whom, now and in the future, and what kinds of value are there to choose from? How can children, pupils, students and teachers achieve a better balance between their own learning and creating value for others in universities, schools and pre-schools, and why is this important?

Some years ago, an educational researcher listened briefly to the story of our work on value creation in education and then reflected as follows:

If you think that value creation belongs in education, you have not understood anything about what education is about.

We do not agree, of course, but still see this quote as worth remembering, as it illustrates an important pedagogical challenge that this book needs to address. If a well-known and experienced professor of education in a related field initially misunderstands perhaps the most important concept in our work in this way, there may well be many more out there who do not understand what we mean by value creation, especially in the sense of creating value for others. Therefore, the first part contains a fairly detailed explanation of some different perspectives on value creation. The concept as such can also become an important piece of the puzzle in the educational institutions of the next 120 years. It describes something extremely central to the human experience, which so far has not received much attention in education:

Doing something worthwhile for another person.

The second part (Chapters 4-8) deals with the scientific method we have chosen to call designed action sampling. The method is first described briefly and concisely, then in detail. Perhaps even a little long-winded. But we believe it is important to be specific, careful and clear about what we mean. It is not easy to understand, appreciate or start applying a new scientific method unless there is a detailed description of the underlying thinking, overall work processes and practical techniques for everyday science in universities, schools and pre-schools.

The third part (Chapters 9-13) contains an almost equally detailed review of the different reasons for working with designed action sampling. If you are already involved in practical work with the method and have seen its value and impact, this part is perhaps the least interesting. If, on the other hand, you are completely new in your interest, the review can certainly provide many new thoughts and good reasons to deepen this interest. Part three can also be useful for those who want to involve colleagues in the work of designed action sampling. Sixteen arguments are given for why universities, schools and pre-schools can benefit from the method, sorted according to when different effects are likely to occur.

This book is not complete. The three parts do not contain everything that can be said about designed action sampling. As the book is a first attempt to introduce and establish a new concept, the emphasis is on describing what it is, how it works in practice and why it might be a good idea. We have also included eleven concrete examples. However, we have had to wait with critical perspectives on various problems and difficulties that the method may entail. We would like to return to this issue.

The contents of the book can be applied at all levels of the education system and by many professions. The examples illustrate this. However, to make it easier to read, the language has been slightly restricted. Therefore, when you encounter the word school, we ask you to consider that it can also mean preschool, folk high school, upper secondary school, college, vocational school, university, adult education, study centre or training company. And when you encounter the words teacher and student, we ask you to consider that it can also mean preschool teacher, mentor, child, student or participant. There are certainly differences between these different types of schools, but we have seen that there are far more similarities in scientific work.

This brings us to the starting point of the book. Let’s get started!

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[1] The quote is a factoid based on an 1899 joke and is widely used by innovation advocates to elicit a laugh, see Sass (1989). (1989).

[2] The starting point of modern science is often considered to be the Novum organum by Bacon (1620/1878).

[3] See review of teachers’ attitudes towards science by Kroksmark (2010). See also the follow-up of the Education Committee (2016, s. 72) which shows that some senior lecturers find it difficult to get a hearing for science among their colleagues.

This book contains insights generated during a nine-year learning journey, from 2012 to 2020. The work has involved thousands of people – teachers, school leaders, school developers, students and other participants in preschools and schools mainly in Uddevalla, Åstorp, Varberg, Skurup, Skara, Sundsvall, Kungsbacka, Gothenburg, Falkenberg, Vänersborg and Hultsfred. The work has been financed mainly by Uddevalla municipality through a unique research collaboration with Chalmers University of Technology and the research company Me Analytics AB. The Swedish National Agency for Education and other participating municipalities have also been involved in financing certain parts.

The author wishes to express his deepest gratitude to all of you who have been involved in this long journey of making designed action sampling visible and practicable in schools and preschools. Special thanks go to Uddevalla municipality and to Carin Sävetun, Christer Westlund, Karen Williams Middleton, Mats Lundqvist, Malin Heimer, Ragnar Åsbrink, Patrik Bäckström, Viktoria Struxsjö, John Steinberg, Helén Viebke, Hans-Lennart Schylberg, Staffan Lindroos, Marika Delvret, Leif Lundgren, Björn Wärnberg and Susanne Lundholm. Thanks also to all of you who provided feedback on a draft of this book[1] .

Although this book has only one author, formally speaking, the we form will be used throughout the book. This is because the author sees himself as the spokesperson for two other people who have been involved in the entire journey of developing the scientific method we have chosen to call designed action sampling. These two are Carin Sävetun and Christer Westlund. The journey is interesting in itself and may help you as a reader to understand more about the origins of the book. Here is therefore a brief summary.

The journey started in 2012 at Chalmers University of Technology. A researcher, Martin, wanted to collect data remotely from his own entrepreneurship students for a research study and outlined a digital survey for the fourteen participants. The resulting survey was launched later that year and had two simple questions: “How do you feel?” and “Why do you feel that way?”. The questionnaire was completed 556 times by the thirteen participants over a period of eighteen months. The data collected was later used to write a research paper.[2]

What was interesting about the methodology was that the two simple questions allowed the researcher to look ‘straight into the minds’ of the students. The students’ responses were emotionally charged and deeply reflective, and the researcher gained a unique insight into their thoughts and insights. A methodological discovery had been made by focusing on emotional learning events.

In mid-2013, researcher Martin was contacted by organisation leader Carin. She wanted to use the new method in an impact study of the organisation Framtidsfrön’s work with entrepreneurial learning in primary schools. The study was carried out during the winter. At the end of the same year, the researcher met a school developer called Christer. Martin showed reflections from studies of students’ and pupils’ emotional learning events to Christer, who then said:

We need to do this properly, this can really help a lot of teachers!

Three travellers had now found their travel companions and began a long journey together with the method. Many projects were carried out with school principals around Sweden and also abroad. Large amounts of data were collected digitally. The method was refined more and more each year and in each completed project. More and more elements were added based on identified needs. In 2014, something described in this book as ‘tags’ was added. The idea was that this would make it easier for participants to reflect on emotional experiences.

After a while, it was clear that asking participants to reflect when they experienced something emotional was not really enough. The method needed something more concrete. So in 2015, early trials were made with an task logic. The change was successful. The tasks clarified the context of participants’ reflections, guided participants’ actions in more detail and made it easier to involve all participants. The analysis was also strengthened, as the change allowed for a more powerful analysis of cause-and-effect relationships.

Today, we see that the methodological journey set us on the path of trying to fundamentally change education. The power of designed action sampling has made it possible to drive innovation in three main areas:

• Action-based education – mainly vocational education and training, work-based learning, apprenticeships, practicums and entrepreneurial pedagogy.
• School development – mainly action research, collaboration between researchers and practitioners, in-service training, systematic quality work, peer learning and scientific schools/preschools.
• Educational research – mainly entrepreneurial pedagogy, language development approaches, language didactics, programming education and pedagogical documentation.

The journey has been long and winding. There have been several unusual, even unorthodox approaches. We have sometimes been criticised. There have also been many failures. At times it has been so difficult that we have been surprised that we did not give up the journey. But what has united us and kept us together all these years has been a deep personal commitment to education and a shared desire to give children, pupils and students the best possible education. All three of us are convinced that education can be made better. This book summarises our approach to how this can be done.

Gothenburg, October 2020

Martin Lackéus

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[1] Many thanks for feedback on the book’s content go to Björn Wärnberg, Carin Sävetun, Christer Westlund, Elin Ericsson, Eva-Lotta Hultén, Hans-Lennart Schylberg, Jan Blomgren, Jennie Wilson, Jessica Eriksen, John Steinberg, Karin Hermansson, Leif Lundgren, Malin Heimer, Maria Kempe Olsson, Marie-Helene Ahnborg, Marika Andersson, Marlene Klit Welin, Mats Lundqvist, Niclas Fohlin, Pelle Holmén, Per Lundgren, Peter Westergård, Staffan Lindroos, Susanne Lundholm, Viktoria Struxsjö and Åsa Sundelin.

[2] See Lackéus (2014).