Planning practices to strengthen vocational school improvement

This article explores the impact of externally initiated interventions on planning practices among school leaders within vocational education and training (VET). Based on empirical data from a longitudinal research and development project involving seven school–university partnerships in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, we argue that interventions in which researchers and school leadership teams collaborate during the planning process can improve this process. The article describes the content, form, and results of the planning interventions that are grounded in evaluation theories and approaches to action research in school-university partnerships. The article builds on interviews with the school leaders and recorded online evaluation meetings. We argue that conducting a ‘plan for quality improvement’ enhance the quality of school improvement processes, by highlighting the improvement perspective, developing leaders’ planning competencies, and encourage the leaders to involve teachers in school improvement processes. We explore factors that can hinder successful planning interventions by examining cases in which interventions did not produce the expected results. The study provides new insights into how school leaders planning processes can be improved. Former research point to the importance of planning in relation to school improvement. Few investigates how the planning processes can be supported. In this article we present a strategy for improving school leaders planning processes at VET schools.