Roland Bernhard is a professor of "School Development, Leadership & Leadership Culture" at the University of Teacher Education Vienna/Krems and Fellow at the University of Salzburg, where he habilitated in 2019. He sees his main task as bringing empirically validated knowledge about school quality development, effective school leadership, impactful teaching and character education into practice.

For many years, he has been researching what distinguishes highly effective schools and education systems, including as a Post-Doc Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. He leads the project "School Quality and Teacher Education" (www.sqte.at), funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). His research in the field of has attracted broad media interest.

Roland Bernhard has taught at two different schools and has taught and conducted research at eight universities in Austria and England. He leads several international research and development projects, for example in the field of character education, and works with numerous cross-border teams. Together with co-authors, he has published 18 books, anthologies, or journal issues, and 94 contributions in scientific journals, anthologies, and online portals. He has given over 105 scientific lectures, including presentations at major international educational science conferences such as AERA, ECER, EARLI, and BERA in 13 different countries in Europe and the USA, as well as numerous keynotes before decision-makers in the education system (as of 2024).

In addition to his international publications and lectures, he advises schools and other institutions, such as the government of Wales, on the redesign of their teacher education system, which he has reviewed.

He is a member of the Editorial Board of the History Education Research Journal, a scientific journal published by the University College London, Institute of Education, in whose development he was actively involved.

He coordinates the Research Center for School Development & Leadership at the University of Teacher Education and is the spokesperson for the School Development Consultancy group.

Roland Bernhard is happy to supervise theses on the topics of school development, school quality management, leadership, character and personality education, parental work, evidence-based teaching development, etc.