Dr. Anna Gronostaj

Within the Education focus area, Anna is primarily responsible for the School Barometer and the German School Award’s research programme, What Makes a Good School? She also oversees external evaluation studies of school development initiatives implemented in the field of education. Anna studied psychology at Freie Universität Berlin and worked at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development during her studies. She then completed her doctorate at the University of Kassel, focusing on self-regulated learning in the classroom. As a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Potsdam in the field of empirical teaching and intervention research, she studied instructional quality in heterogeneous learning groups and the effectiveness of professional development programmes for teachers. She is particularly interested in co-creation between educational practice, educational research, and educational administration, as well as in the impact of school and instructional development initiatives. Ultimately, she is driven by the question: How can these different fields work together to create more good schools in Germany? Her interest in high-quality education is not purely academic. As a former student of Offene Schule Waldau, which later received the German School Award, she experienced first-hand the profound impact a good school can have on people’s lives.