Introduction

The essence of this season school is to strengthen the relationships between curriculum research (in general and in mathematics & science education more specifically), policy and practice.

One of the major recommendations from the literature to improve the relevance of curriculum research is to make sure that research efforts relate to policy agendas of a country and to concerns in school practice.

Curriculum research can play different roles in doing so: it can assist in signaling and interpreting curriculum issues (via monitoring and trend analysis); it can help to solve these issues (via curriculum design research/design-based research, DBR); and it can support the implementation and scaling of curriculum change efforts (via implementation and impact studies).

In this season school we address the need for capacity building activities, especially in the planning and performing of curricular design research activities.