Conference Program

School development depends on professional actors in schools in order to be effective, especially well professionalized teachers. Conversely, school development processes explicitly require teachers to become more professional, as they demand flexibility and a willingness to embrace complexity and uncertainty (Paseka et al., 2018). Links between school development and the professionalization of teachers are therefore discussed and problematized (Piccioli, 2022; Pomponi, 2020) but have not yet been extensively researched.

Starting from here, we assume that school development processes are shaped by institutionalized knowledge, however, individual processes of professional development are embedded in school cultures, shaped by knowledge-based discourses. This means that teachers are not just mirroring implicit knowledge but filling it with specific meanings which means that quality school development processes depend on ongoing interpretation and learning across heterogeneous actors.

Building on these premises, the paper reflects findings of an ongoing research project (Researching School Development: pathways to inclusive and quality education 2030/ GOODWILL; 2023–2026). The study focuses on 22 schools in the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, all of which participate in a quality development programme driven by the school administration.

The project adopts a mixed-methods design with a qualitative approach: ethnographic observations in primary and secondary schools (Knoblauch & Vollmer, 2022), document analysis (Seitz, Consalvo, & Dell’Anna, 2025), group discussions with teachers and with students, and iterative feedback and dialogue sessions with school leadership and teaching staff, complemented by pre–post questionnaires.

In the qualitative part of the study, we draw on Grounded Theory strategies (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Charmaz, 2006). This theoretical-analytical approach is informed by a praxeological perspective that conceives practices as social configurations shaped by implicit norms and embodied criteria of appropriateness (Reckwitz, 2003). Attention is directed to ordinary mechanisms through which routines produce differentiation—for instance, tacit criteria of “good participation”, uneven distributions of speaking opportunities, and feedback practices that stabilize differential expectations—thus sustaining subtle forms of exclusion that remain compatible with an official lexicon of inclusion.

In the presentation, we discuss and reflect on the orientations of teachers reconstructed on the basis of group discussions to surface shared orientations, implicit criteria, and collegial negotiations around school development and inclusion. We identify recurring tensions (e.g., belonging vs. otherness, and compensation vs. exclusion) and show how they shape professional action (Consalvo et al., 2025).

We focus in particular on how professional acting is (re)configured in everyday practice through dilemmas, ambivalences, and differential expectations (Clarke & Hollingsworth, 2002), thereby showing that processes of professionalization are produced within—rather than outside—school cultures. In this sense, we suggest understanding “impact” less as linear, measurable change (Desimone, 2009) and more as shifts in interpretive repertoires and in the conditions of possibility for professional action.