This report draws on responses to an online survey among executives at the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Research (BMBWF), at education directorates across the nine Austrian provinces (Länder), and from school leaders of all school types from across Austria. Our utmost gratitude goes to all participants of this survey for taking the time to answer the questionnaire and for their efforts to provide valuable insights into their work practices and contexts.
The survey was input as an online survey software and administered by graduate students of the Vienna University of Economics and Business. We thank Jasmin Fischer, Alma Pekmezovic, Bernd Franz Pfeiffer, and Jennifer Schaden for their hard work and flexibility, as well as Professor Isabell Egger-Peitler for helpful reflections on the adapted questionnaire.
The OECD team is indebted to the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, Science and Research (BMBWF) as partner in developing the online survey and producing the report. Our gratitude goes to Bernhard Chabera for his invaluable contributions and support making this undertaking possible, and Matthias Hansy for his dedication and tireless effort to make this enterprise a successful one throughout all its phases. We thank Michaela Jonach, Stefan Polzer, Mark Nemet and Gertrudis Spitzbart for corrections and valuable additions to the draft.
This report was prepared as part of the Strategic Education Governance project within the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation. Claire Shewbridge leads the project and contributed chapter 4. Florian Köster developed the conceptual framework and generalised questionnaire, coordinated the work, and led the analysis and drafting of the report. Clara Krämer contributed to the analysis and drafting.
Our thanks go also to Glenn Fahey, previously a member of the OECD Strategic Education Governance project and now research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies (Australia), for his valuable support in the initial development of the generalised questionnaire, and Leonora Lynch-Stein for editorial support.
The team is further grateful to Laurenz Langer, Janice Tripney, and David Gough for their research on promoting evidence use, which contributed fundamentally to the development of the framework and generalised questionnaire that underpins the analysis carried out in this report. Special thanks go to Laurenz Langer for his valuable contributions at the advisory group meeting to refine the generalised questionnaire.