Camilla Gramstad Hagevold

About me

My background is in practical education, and from 2004 to 2023, I worked in primary schools. During that time, I held various positions, ranging from teacher to principal, in different types of schools in both small towns, cities, and rural areas. Since I started as a teacher in 2004, I’ve had a passionate commitment to education and school development. This led me, early in my teaching career, to participate in various projects and be recommended for the "Principal’s School" program. In 2018, I began a master’s degree in educational leadership and wrote my thesis on leading home-school collaboration in bullying cases.

Now, for the first time in my professional career, I am outside the school system, but with a curious perspective on it. From 2024 to 2027, I will be working on a public-sector PhD in collaboration between Stavanger Municipality and the Knowledge Centre for Education, where I will investigate how teachers and school leaders use research to inform and improve their practice.

Throughout everything I’ve done, my driving force has been to create a school for all students, on the terms of children and youth, in a way that takes their culture seriously. Even though the path from where I am now to the classroom is long, it is still this that motivates me.

My research

The main objectives of this article-based thesis will be to identify a) what quality use of research looks like, b) what factors support or hinder such use, in (Norwegian) schools, and c) how research use can be framed in a Nordic education context, drawing on different existing frameworks. 

Over the last three decades, there has been a strong will and focus for research and evidence to be used to inform and improve policy and practice both in education and in other public sectors. More than 20 years have passed since the use of research became a stated priority in the education sector, and a vast amount of research has been conducted to find out “what works” in schools. Despite these efforts, the state of many school systems is in a decline, rather than the opposite. Even though the corpus of educational research is ever growing, we have limited knowledge of how research has been used by teachers and school leaders to inform and improve their practice. This PhD aims to respond to these issues through three articles:

1. A systematic review (SR) of the international evidence on research use in schools
2. A qualitative case study that explores how research is used in a Norwegian school that has been identified as research-engaged
3. The preparation, conduction, and analysis of a survey on quality use of research in Norwegian schools.

Several frameworks to understand and theorize “use of research” have been developed over the last few years. Even though there are some similarities between them, they draw on different aspects of research use, and they are mostly adapted from, and made to fit within the school systems of the English-speaking parts of the world. These frameworks will serve as the theoretical lens throughout the project, alongside system theory and professional theory. 

This thesis will employ multiple research methods – also with both primary and secondary research, to capture the many facets of this topic, and to triangulate both qualitative and quantitative results.

Academic background

Master thesis: LEDELSE AV HJEM-SKOLESAMARBEIDET I MOBBESAKER - FRA ET FORELDREPERSPEKTIV (Leading home-school collaboration in bullying cases - from a parental perspective

Podcast episode on use of research