This paper focused on the actions of the School Improvement Advisor/Researcher (SIA) reports on the results of research carried out in schools over the course of a decade, and discusses and evaluates this approach to the raising of standards in educational institutes. From a methodological standpoint, this approach is the evolution of a process that lies midway between action research and design-based research, during the phases of which the SIA is able to effectively combine coaching, aimed at raising standards in both the institute and in individual teachers, with the creation/development/adaptation of tools, whose primary function is to respond to the needs expressed by these players and to the problems they experience. The approach was developed on the basis of several considerations: on the one hand, relative to the processes of change in place and, on the other, to the related research processes. Choosing to proceed in such a way is not an arbitrary act but originates in both the difficulty the research 'academic' faces in establishing himself as a type of compass for teachers in their daily practice and also from the need to conduct action research where rigour is not simply sacrificed for the immediate relevance of results.