We don’t just study education; we actively shape it in partnership with schools.

Our team uses a dynamic framework—Pragmatic Adaptive Change—for research-based design, to cocreate solutions that directly cater to your school’s context and evolving needs.

This framework gives your educators the tools to build solutions themselves, which means you can sustainably carry on developing into the ever-changing future. 

We address education and societal problems that your school is grappling with.  

Some examples are: 

• Navigating artificial intelligence in Education 

• Promoting sustainability to address climate change. 

• Implementing equity and inclusion programs 

• Fostering wellbeing 

To maintain our focus on learning futures, the projects and programs of the EFA are organised using what we call the Pragmatic Adaptive Change (PAC) Framework . As the name suggests, the PAC Framework supports an approach to educational design and research that is anchored in the real world, and that adapts to what we learn as we work.

As can be seen in the figure, the PAC organises our work into six phases. Our projects will often progress around these phases cyclically, although our adaptability means the work will not always proceed so predictably.

The PAC is heavily informed by Cultural Historical Activity Theory and Engeström’s Change Laboratory, and also by the research and evaluation methodology known as Contribution Analysis. This gives our work a lot of methodological depth. The short version, however, is that we build research-informed models of change for real-world learning environments, and we test these models through designing and implementing new educational activities, resources, and even new environments. Then we adapt our models based on our findings on what occurred.

Depending on your needs, we will employ one or more phases of our Pragmatic Adaptive Intervention, to codesign new educational activities, resources, environments and policies. Do you need a short, sharp light intervention, or a longer deep intervention over the course of many months?

We recognise that learning and change is done by people within a cultural and historical context, and both the social and cognitive are necessary to finding sustainable solutions to educational needs.  

Our framework draws from both the cognitive sciences and the very real social complexities of your school to generate authentic solutions that suit you and your students. 

We prioritise real-world outcomes through building community. You will be involved in crucial phases of school change such as defining goals, observing current practices, modelling potential changes, generating ideas, prototyping new implementations, and reflecting on results. This comprehensive approach ensures that educational decisions lead to lasting, sustainable change. 

There is no one size fits all solution to educational problems. Our approach is: 

Our approach is deeply integrated in the learning sciences. 

First, ‘doing’ is our research. Your participation provides us with authentic insights into the best methods for educational design as they work in the real world, feeding back into the body of design-based research.
Secondly, we transform research into ‘doing’. We work directly with education researchers to translate their work into real world, meaningful applications through research-based design.

This feedback loop closes the gap between research and practice, ensuring our work remains relevant and effective. 

Successful and meaningful university-school partnerships are possible – We know, because we are doing it!