The European Educational Research Association has expressed serious concerns on quality and impact of educational research in Europe. The commonplace critique of educational research is that it is grounded in conventional assumptions about learning and teaching in a single setting, including the problems with fragmented and compartmentalized knowledge and lack of holistic view on learning and its lifelong character, thus, failing to provide understandable input for improving learning and teaching and scaling up new practices and methods in schools. Additionally, the evolving analytical power, which emerges with the new socio-technical regime and innovative technological solutions, has been left unfocused. The weaknesses of traditional educational randomised controlled trials, and the potential for data mining to address the complexity of learning has been identified. Furthermore, Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) implies that stakeholders (researchers, teachers, policy makers, industry, etc.) work together during the whole research and technology-driven innovation process in order to better adopt and scale up innovation, to shorten the feedback loops between research and practice in real settings, and align both the process and its outcomes with the values, needs and expectations of society. 

The Twinning project “Scaling up educational innovation in schools” (SEIS) will take educational research and innovation to the next level addressing RRI principles and current dominating limitations in the field. The project will present new perspectives on educational research by turning traditional "knowledge transfer" approaches into research- and technology-driven societal innovations (research-to-innovation-to-practice knowledge transfer), establishing an virtual Research Lab on educational innovations, facilitating the inclusion and capacity building of the new actors in the field and encouraging exchange of knowledge and experiences among stakeholders and top research groups in the field. 

The SEIS project aims at strengthening Tallinn University’s (TLU) research and innovation capacity, promoting the Centre of Excellence in Educational Innovation in Tallinn University as the competitive institution in Estonia and wider Europe, and forming a basis for integrating its research activities further into international collaboration.

The objective of the SEIS project will be achieved through a partnership of the two Member States centers: Tampere Research Centre for Information and Media, University of Tampere, Finland (TAU) and Centre for the Science of Learning & Technology, University of Bergen, Norway (UiB).

To achieve the objective, the following main themes are in focus:

- Developing Virtual Research Lab. In order to facilitate more effective cooperation and knowledge transfer between the SEIS partners and with the external research community,  to provide seamless access to research assets (data, services, tools, instruments, expertise, etc) across the boundaries of partner institutions, to collect the consortium is building a Virtual Research Lab. The web-based VRL as a connecting knowledge hub for the SEIS project comprises: