Improving Interprofessional Collaboration in Norwegian Primary Schools

Summary

This study includes designing, implementing and evaluating the effectiveness of process-based measures for improving interprofessional collaboration in Norwegian primary schools (5-7th grades). Focusing on leadership and organizational development, the overarching aim is to improve the use of existing interprofessional competence within schools. The interventions include meetings at municipal-level (strategic), school-level (operative) and class-level (operative), with feedback procedures to ensure communication between and within all levels. Also school internal and school external collaborators are involved at all levels of intervention.

In order to avoid contradictory roles, an implementation team is responsible for developing and implementing the intervention, while the research team conduct an independent evaluation. The model will be evaluated by a cluster-randomized design to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. The hypothesis is that schools that utilize the process-based intervention (intervention group) will improve their interprofessional team work in a way that enhances the pupil's learning- environment and teachers professional competence, self-efficacy and efficient use of working hours compared to their counterparts in the control group. We anticipate main effects to be found at pupil level, mainly through improved early assessment, intervention and efficient follow-up. The project is a collaboration between four Norwegian municipalities and includes a total of 37 Schools, half of which will be randomized to experimental condition and half to control condition.

The project is financed by The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training with a duration of three years and three months. The project is led by Professor Ira Malmberg-Heimonen. The project is a collaboration between Faculty of Social Sciences and the Work Research Institute (AFI), at Oslo and Akerhus University College of Applied Sciences. Participants in the project are Ira Malmberg-Heimonen (project leader), Anne Grete Tøge, Therese Saltkjel, Knut Fossestøl, Elin Borg and Selma Therese Lyng. Participants in the implementation team are Øyvind Pålshaugen, Hanne Christoffersen and Christian Wittrock, also from Oslo and Akerhus University College of Applied Sciences, in addition to Torbjørn Lund from the Arctic University of Norway

Conditions

• Interprofessional Team Collaboration

Interventions

OTHER

LOG-model

Besides the LOG-manual, school owners and leaders receive economic compensation and the intervention team will supervise the implementation. School-owners, school leaders and teachers will participate in dialogue-seminars at the municipal level and the school level respectively. The aim is to discuss and agree on the goal and content of the work and discuss the experiences from the implementation. The main arena for discussing and practical implementation will be in local collaborating teams or "resource teams" in each school. The resource teams at schools will consist of various interprofessional competences in addition to the school leader. The main method in the LOG-model is the interchange and feedback process between the discussion of measures and the execution of these measures.

OTHER

TAU

Ordinary practices related to interprofessional team collaboration

Sponsors & Collaborators

• The Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Oslo Metropolitan University

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

SINGLE_GROUP

Eligibility

Min Age

10 Years

Max Age

14 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2017-04-01

Primary Completion

2020-06-30

Completion

2020-06-30

Countries

• Norway

Study Locations