International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement: Review, Reflection and Reframing (Springer International Handbooks of Education)

INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK OF SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT

Springer International Handbooks of Education VOLUME 17

A list of titles in this series can be found at the end of this volume.

International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement Part One

Edited by

Tony Townsend Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, U.S.A.

with Beatrice Avalos, Brian Caldwell, Yin-Cheong Cheng, Brahm Fleisch, Lejf Moos, Louise Stoll, Sam Stringfield, Kirsten Sundell, Wai-ming Tam, Nick Taylor, and Charles Teddlie

A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN-13 978-1-4020-4805-0 (HB) ISBN-13 978-1-4020-5747-2 (e-book)

Published by Springer, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. www.springer.com

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All Rights Reserved © 2007 Springer No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work.

DEDICATION

Hedley Beare

It is fitting that this book is dedicated to Hedley Beare, former President of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI), for he epitomizes all that ICSEI stands for in its mission to span the boundaries of research, policy and practice. Hedley Beare is unique among scholars in the field of education. He has had leadership experience at senior levels in three of the eight systems of public education in Australia. In the 1990s, following initial appointments in South Australia, he was awarded a Harkness Fellowship to undertake a Doctor of Education degree at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In the decade that followed, he established the two most recently created systems of public education in Australia. In the first of these, in the Northern Territory, it was leadership under the most challenging of circumstances, for he played a key role in the evacuation of Darwin following Cyclone Tracey in 1972. In 1973 he became the first Chief Executive Officer of the newly-created ACT (Australian Capital Territory) Schools Authority, based in Canberra, where he was a leader in what many regard as the most innovative time in school education in Australia, with a powerful role for the community through the creation of school boards (councils) and the establishment of senior secondary colleges. He displayed an approach to leadership and management that was the subject of study around the nation. It was with this background that he was appointed in 1981 as the first professor in the field of educational administration at the University of Melbourne. His career achievements to this point had no counterpart, and would satisfy most people for a lifetime. It was, however, just the start of another career, this time of sparkling scholarship. He co-authored Creating an Excellent School in 1989 that was a best-seller for its international publisher for more than a decade. His review of the literature on school effectiveness and school improvement in that book was a masterpiece, and provided a framework for his contributions in establishing ICSEI in Australia in the late 1980s and his international role as world president of ICSEI in the mid 1990s. v

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The scholarship of Hedley Beare in the twenty-first century opened with the publication in 2001 of Creating the Future School. It remains the definitive work on the topic as we pass the mid-point of the first decade of the millennium. It was the outcome of landmark lectures at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo. With insights solidly grounded in his own leadership in the manner described above, he had for more than a decade been looking to the future with a series of presentations and publications that were logically argued and inspirational in their impact. His writing could not be assailed because he presented likely and preferred futures in the context of developments over centuries, with consistent application of timeless values. In 2006 he wrote an important pamphlet for the London-based Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) entitled How We Envisage Schooling in the 21st Century. It was an important contribution to International Networking for Educational Transformation (iNet), the Trust’s project to link schools around the globe that are committed to significant, systematic and sustained change that leads to high levels of achievement for all students in all settings. The mission of iNet is similar to that of ICSEI. The best of Hedley Beare was on display as he effortlessly and gracefully drew from history, philosophy, spirituality, ethics, curriculum, pedagogy, technology, economics, leadership, management and politics to explain the new education imaginary. Hedley Beare has received a rare combination of awards in Australian education. He is a Fellow of the two largest professional bodies that span all sectors and levels of education, namely, the Australian College of Educators (ACE) and the Australian Council of Educational Leaders (ACEL). He is the Patron of ACEL. He was the first person to receive the highest award of each body: the College Medal (ACE) and the Gold Medal (ACEL). In 2004 he was named National Educator of the Year by The Bulletin, Australia’s leading weekly news magazine, that each year selects 100 leaders in innovation in different fields around the nation. Hedley Beare thus brings the wisdom and experience of five decades of leadership in education to this book. He reveals in Chapter 1 the same masterful grasp of reform in education and deep understanding of the contributions along the way of the effectiveness and improvement movements. It is rich in imagery, as illustrated in the opening paragraph: “What follows are the observations of an old man of the sea, weather-beaten and bronzed, but not browned off by riding for several decades the dumpers, and with the same exuberance as the dolphins do. Nothing is quite as exhilarating as when the surf is up, and I have seen a lot of it.” Brian J. Caldwell The University of Melbourne

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

xiii Part One

Section 1 A Review of the Progress 1

2

3

20 Years of ICSEI: The Impact of School Effectiveness and School Improvement on School Reform Tony Townsend

3

Four Decades of Body-Surfing the Breakers of School Reform: Just Waving, Not Drowning Hedley Beare

27

Generic and Differentiated Models of Educational Effectiveness: Implications for the Improvement of Educational Practice Leonidas Kyriakides

41

4

Improving School Effectiveness: Retrospective and Prospective John MacBeath

57

5

School Effectiveness Research in Latin America Javier Murillo

75

6

“Effective for What; Effective for Whom?” Two Questions SESI Should Not Ignore Ira Bogotch, Luis Mirón, and Gert Biesta

7

Pursuing the Contextualisation Agenda: Recent Progress and Future Prospects Martin Thrupp, Ruth Lupton, and Ceri Brown

93

111

Section 2 A World Showcase: School Effectiveness and Improvement from all Corners The Americas 8

9

A History of School Effectiveness and Improvement Research in the USA Focusing on the Past Quarter Century Charles Teddlie and Sam Stringfield

131

History of the School Effectiveness and Improvement Movement in Canada over the Past 25 Years Larry Sackney

167

vii

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Table of Contents

10

School Improvement in Latin America: Innovations over 25 Years (1980–2006) Beatrice Avalos

183

Europe 11

12

Growing Together: School Effectiveness and School Improvement in the UK Louise Stoll and Pam Sammons

207

Educational Effectiveness and Improvement: The Development of the Field in Mainland Europe Bert P. M. Creemers

223

Asia and the Pacific 13

School Effectiveness and Improvement in Asia: Three Waves, Nine Trends and Challenges Yin-Cheong Cheng and Wai-ming Tam

245

14

School Effectiveness and Improvement in Taiwan Hui-Ling Pan

269

15

School Effectiveness and Improvement in Mainland China Daming Feng

287

16

The Maturing of a Movement: Tracking Research, Policy and Practice in Australia Brian Caldwell

17

Schooling Reform: Reflections on the New Zealand Experience Howard Fancy

307 325

Africa and the Middle East 18

19

20

21

History of the School Effectiveness and Improvement Movement in Africa Brahm Fleisch

341

School Autonomy for School Effectiveness and Improvement: The Case of Israel Ami Volansky

351

Recent Initiatives in School Effectiveness and Improvement: The . Case of Turkey Ismail Güven

363

Recent Initiatives in School Effectiveness and Improvement: The Case of the Islamic Republic of Iran Azam Azimi

379

Table of Contents

ix

Section 3 Resources, School Effectiveness and Improvement 22

The Relationship Between Student Attainment and School Resources Rosalind Levaˇci´c

395

23

Accountability, Funding and School Improvement in Canada Charles Ungerleider and Ben Levin

411

24

Cost and Financing of Education and Its Impact on Coverage and Quality of Services and Efficiency and Equity in Sub-Saharan African Countries Alain Mingat

25

Resources and School Effectiveness and Improvement Jim Spinks

425 451

Part Two Section 4 Accountability and Diversity, School Effectiveness and Improvement 26

27

28

School Effectiveness and School Improvement (SESI): Links with the International Standards/Accountability Agenda David Reynolds

471

Evolution of School Performance Research in the USA: From School Effectiveness to School Accountability and Back Susan Kochan

485

Education Decentralisation and Accountability Relationships in Latin American and the Caribbean Region Emanuela Di Gropello

503

29

Equity, Efficiency and the Development of South African Schools Nick Taylor

30

Policy Perspective on School Effectiveness and Improvement at the State Level: The Case of South Australia Steve Marshall

541

Diverse Populations and School Effectiveness and Improvement in the USA Sue Lasky, Amanda Datnow, Sam Stringfield, and Kirsten Sundell

557

31

523

Section 5 Changing Schools Through Strategic Leadership 32

33

School Leadership, School Effectiveness and School Improvement: Democratic and Integrative Leadership Lejf Moos and Stephan Huber Leadership and School Reform Factors Robert J. Marzano

579 597

x

Table of Contents

34

The Emotional Side of School Improvement: A Leadership Perspective Kenneth Leithwood

615

35

Leadership and School Effectiveness and Improvement Halia Silins and Bill Mulford

635

36

Leadership Development for School Effectiveness and Improvement in East Asia Allan Walker, Philip Hallinger, and Haiyan Qian

659

Section 6 Changing Teachers and Classrooms for School Improvement 37

Teacher Leadership: Barriers and Supports Joseph Murphy

38

The Continuing Professional Development of Teachers: Issues of Coherence, Cohesion and Effectiveness Chris Day and Ruth Leitch

681

707

39

The Evolving Role of Teachers in Effective Schools Eugene Schaffer, Roberta Devlin-Scherer, and Sam Stringfield

40

Teacher Education and Professional Development for Sustainable School Effectiveness Wai-ming Tam and Yin-Cheong Cheng

751

School and Teacher Effectiveness: Implications of Findings from Evidence-Based Research on Teaching and Teacher Quality Ken Rowe

767

41

727

42

System Supports for Teacher Learning and School Improvement Janet H. Chrispeels, Carrie A. Andrews with Margarita González

787

43

Curriculum Reforms and Instructional Improvement in Asia Kerry Kennedy

807

Section 7 Models of School Improvement 44

45

46

Effective School Improvement – Ingredients for Success: The Results of an International Comparative Study of Best Practice Case Studies Bert P. M. Creemers, Louise Stoll, Gerry Reezigt, and the ESI Team Self-Directed Learning as a Key Approach to Effectiveness of Education: A Comparison among Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan Magdalena Mo-Ching Mok, Yin-Cheong Cheng, Shing-On Leung, Peter Wen-Jing Shan, Phillip Moore, and Kerry Kennedy Coming and Going: Educational Policy and Secondary School Strategy in the Context of Poverty – Latin American Case Studies Claudia Jacinto and Ada Freytes

825

839

859

Table of Contents

47

48

xi

The School Review Process: The Case of the British Schools in Latin America David Bamford

871

Inquiry-Based Science Education and Its Impact on School Improvement: The ECBI Program in Chile Rosa Devés and Patricia López

887

49

Creating New Schools Using Evidence Based Solutions – A Case Study Jenny Lewis

50

Best Practice in Secondary School Improvement: The Case of Salisbury High School Helen Paphitis

903

917

Afterword Learning from the Past to Reframe the Future 51

School Effectiveness and Improvement in the Twenty-First Century: Reframing for the Future Tony Townsend

933

About the Contributors

963

Index

973

PREFACE

This book celebrates twenty years of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement. According to Judith Chapman’s report in the first issue of the Australian Network News (1989, p. 1): The initiative for ICES was taken by Dale Mann, former Chairperson (1976–85) of the Department of Educational Administration, Teachers’ College, Columbia University, who served as the first Chairperson (1984–85) for the National Council for Effective Schools in the United States ... [who] felt it timely to bring policy-makers, researchers and planners together. By mid-1987 eight countries, the USA, England, Wales, Scotland, Australia, Sweden, Canada and South Africa had shown sufficient interest for an international congress to be conducted in late 1987 or early 1988. “The planning group at Columbia was interested in a Congress in two parts: (1) a conference on school effectiveness open to all with an interest and with papers presented in the normal fashion for such events, and (2) a decision-making meeting at which the organization would be formally constituted and decisions made.” (Chapman, 1989, p. 1) In January 1988, the first Congress was held at the University of London. Policy makers, practitioners and scholars from 14 countries, including the initial 8, together with Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands and Norway, attended the Congress and adopted the name “International Congress for School Effectiveness.” Two years later, to reflect the intimate connection between school effectiveness and school improvement, the name was changed to the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement. As Smink concluded (1991, p. 1) “both approaches need the other to successfully modernize the system.” Since that time conferences have been hosted all over the world, both in Western and Eastern Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific. Each conference has been hosted by a local group of researchers and practitioners who wanted to share xiii

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what they were doing with the rest of the world in the hope that both the visitors and the hosts would learn something new, would do something differently or look at the issues of student learning in a different light. The chapters in this book, which outline the developments, and the conditions under which those developments have taken place, from countries around the world, have clearly demonstrated how far school effectiveness research and school improvement developments have come since the early work of Weber (1971) and Edmonds (1978, 1979a, 1979b, 1981) in the United States and Reynolds (1976) and Rutter and colleagues (1979) in the United Kingdom. This book has emerged from a series of discussions conducted over more than a year by people who have guided the development of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement over the years. All have been key researchers in the field and many have been actively involved in the ICSEI Board, have hosted international congresses or have been involved in editorships of journals in the field. In short, the people who have overseen this book have overseen the development of the field for the past 20 years. The book came about because people in various parts of the world agreed to let the story of what is happening in their part of the world be told. I am extremely grateful for the work that each of the regional editors has undertaken and without them this book would never have been put together. Beatrice Avalos in Latin America, Charles Teddlie, Sam Stringfield and Kirsten Sundell in North America, Yin-Cheong Cheng and Wai-ming Tam in Asia and the Middle East, Louise Stoll and Lejf Moos in Europe, Brian Caldwell in Australia and Brahm Fleisch and Nick Taylor in Africa, have all commissioned papers that collectively document the world history of school effectiveness and school improvement. This is the state of the field midway through the first decade of the new millennium. Tony Townsend Boca Raton, Florida December 2006

References Chapman, J. (1989). “Australian network grows from international beginning” in Network News 1(1), p. 1. Edmonds, R. (1978). “A Discussion of the Literature and Issues Related to Effective Schooling.” A paper presented to National Conference on Urban Education, CEMREL, St. Louis, USA. Edmonds, R. (1979a). “Effective Schools for the Urban Poor.” Educational Leadership, 37(1), 15–27. Edmonds, R. (1979b). “Some Schools Work and More Can.” Social Policy, 9(4), 28–32. Edmonds, R. (1981). “Making Public Schools Effective.” Social Policy, 12(4), 56–60. Reynolds, D. (1976). “The Delinquent School.” In P. Woods (Ed.), The process of schooling. London: Routledge. Rutter, M., Maughan, B., Mortimore, P., & Ouston, J. (1979). Fifteen thousand hours: Secondary schools and effects on children. Boston: Harvard University Press. Smink, G. (1991). “The Cardiff Conference, ICSEI 1991”. Network News International, 1(3), 2–6. Weber, G. (1971). Inner city children can be taught to read: Four successful schools. Washington, DC: Council for Basic Education.

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Section 1 A REVIEW OF THE PROGRESS

1 20 YEARS OF ICSEI: THE IMPACT OF SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT ON SCHOOL REFORM

Tony Townsend

Introduction In January 2007, in Slovenia, the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) celebrated its twentieth year of bringing people together. Conferences have been held in many parts of the world and each year, key educational researchers, practitioners and policy makers have been brought together to consider ways of making school effective for all students who enter them. Murphy argued (1991, pp. 166–168) that there are four factors which can be considered as the legacy of school effectiveness. He suggests the most fundamental of the four is that “given appropriate conditions, all children can learn.” The second product of the school effectiveness research stems from a rejection of the historical perspective that good schools and bad schools could be identified by the socio-economic status of the area in which they were located. School effectiveness examined student outcomes, not in absolute terms, but in terms of the value added to students’ abilities by the school, rather than the outside-of-school factors. He further argued that school effectiveness researchers were the first to reject the philosophy that “poor academic performance and deviant behaviour have been defined as problems of individual children or their families” (Cuban, 1989; Murphy, 1991). School effectiveness helped to eliminate the practice of “blaming the victim for the shortcomings of the school.” Finally, the research showed that “the better schools are more tightly linked – structurally, symbolically and culturally – than the less effective ones.” There was a greater degree of consistency and co-ordination in terms of the curriculum, the teaching and the organisation within the school. The effective schools research seems to have had the underlying purpose of developing practical means for school improvement, but there are some important distinctions and relationships between school effectiveness and school improvement that can be identified. As Smink pointed out: 3 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 3–26. © 2007 Springer.

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School effectiveness is concerned with results. Researchers try to describe certain variables for school success in measurable terms. On the other hand, school improvement places the accent on the process; here one finds a broad description of all the variables that play a role in a school improvement project. Both approaches need the other to successfully modernize the system. (Smink, 1991, p. 3) Substantial progress has been made from the early 1980s, when the five factor model of school effectiveness (leadership, instructional focus, climate conducive to learning, high expectations and consistent measurement of pupil achievement; Edmonds, 1979) was paramount, to a time in the 1990s when it was widely acknowledged that the effectiveness of any school must be considered within the context in which that school operates rather than simply on the various “ingredients” that help to make up the school’s operations. A number of studies at that time suggested that the level of effectiveness of schools varied on the basis of the social environment of the school’s locality (Hallinger & Murphy, 1986), with the outcomes being measured (Mortimore, Sammons, Stoll, Lewis, & Ecob, 1988), the stage of development the school has reached (Stringfield & Teddlie, 1991), the social class mix of the students (Blakey & Heath, 1992) or even the country in which the research was conducted (Scheerens & Creemers, 1989; Wildy & Dimmock, 1992). It had also been shown that total school performance, in terms of its effectiveness, can vary over time (Nuttall, 1992); that schools that are effective are not necessarily effective in all things; some might be effective academically, but not in terms of social outcomes, or vice-versa (Mortimore et al., 1988); nor are they necessarily effective for all students, since different school effects can occur for children from different groups within the same school (Nuttall, Goldstein, Prosser, & Rasbash, 1989). Now school effectiveness and school improvement, in both research and practice, are so mainstream that they almost no longer need any explanation.

An International Perspective Country reports have always been part of the development of ICSEI. At the first Congress of 1988 they formed a major part of the offerings. As Creemers and Osinga (1995, p. 1) indicate: “The major studies (Brookover, Beady, Flood, & Schweitzer, 1979; Mortimore et al., 1988; Rutter, Maughan, Mortimore, & Ouston, with Smith, 1979) were well known but almost nobody had a full picture of the studies and the improvement projects going on in the field in all the countries participating in this first meeting.” A selection of the reports from this first meeting was published in Creemers, Peters, and Reynolds (1989). The second meeting in Rotterdam in 1989 continued the tradition of having country reports and the publication by Creemers et al. (1989) clearly demonstrated that the search for the more effective school was no longer just a tradition in North America and Europe. However, it also became clear that the time it took for research to turn into practice meant that it was not necessary to have country reports at ICSEI in every subsequent year. As it was, there was much new research and activity to report on in all parts of the world that needed to take precedence in the formative years of ICSEI.

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Consequently, the next major attempt to collate a series of country reports was made for the Leeuwarden conference in 1995 where nine countries from Europe, North America, Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific region joined to become part of the ICSEI reporting network. The major theme of this conference was to try and establish the links between school effectiveness and school improvement. David Reynolds, Jaap Scheerens and Sam Stringfield were invited to comment on some of the developments that seemed to be happening on an international level. These opinions provided a context in which worldwide development in school effectiveness and school improvement, in the areas of research, policy and practice might be judged. Some of the country reports were subsequently published in School Effectiveness and School Improvement (Vol. 7, No. 2, 1996). In 1998, with the support of the Manchester conference, with its theme of “Reaching out to all learners” ICSEI country reports were reactivated, but with the special brief of trying to increase both the number and the diversity of the countries that provided a report. With the specific intent of trying to encourage educators in some new countries to consider development that might fall within the purview of school effectiveness and improvement, whilst maintaining contact with countries that had previously reported. The result was Third Millennium Schools: A World of Difference in School Effectiveness and Improvement (Townsend, Clarke, & Ainscow, 1999) which contained a total of 20 country reports, with some countries not previously represented. New countries from Scandanavia, from the Pacific, from Asia, Africa and from South America were included. It was now possible to see what was happening to education, not only in rich, developed western countries, where the school effectiveness research and school improvement policies and practices were well developed, although not necessarily well implemented, but we were able to chart the progress of countries where the use of the school effectiveness research was comparatively new, countries that had to deal with issues such as making judgements about what effectiveness means when not every child attends school and countries that were struggling to come to grips with the aftermath of military or oppressive regimes. The International Handbook of School Effectiveness Research (Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000) and Improving Schools and Educational Systems: International Perspectives (Harris & Chrispeels, 2006) provided a further evidence of the interest in, and developing understanding of, the international perspective of school effectiveness and school improvement, a tradition that the current volume continues. However, the school effectiveness research has not been universally accepted by educational researchers. Over the years there have been many critics of school effectiveness research, none more so than Roger Slee, Gaby Weiner (see Slee & Weiner, with Tomlinson, 1998) and Martin Thrupp (see Thrupp, 1999) and so the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) was invited by the American Education Research Association to present a symposium on international developments in school effectiveness and improvement research, which brought the proponents of school effectiveness research face to face with the critics. On Wednesday April 26, 2000, the session entitled “School effectiveness comes of age: 21 years after Edmonds and Rutter, has school effectiveness had a positive or

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negative effect on school reform?” was offered to participants at the New Orleans AERA conference. Four papers were offered and a lively debate ensued. The four papers made a very neat package. Two of the papers, “Education reform and reconstruction as a challenge to research genres: Reconsidering school effectiveness research and inclusive schooling” (Slee & Weiner, 2001), and “Reflections on the critics, and beyond them” (Reynolds & Teddlie, 2001), approached the issue from a global perspective. The other set of papers, “Sociological and political concerns about school effectiveness research: Time for a new research agenda” Thrupp (2001) and “Countering the critics: Responses to recent criticisms of school effectiveness research” (Teddlie & Reynolds, 2001) made a much more specific analysis of the issues. It is almost as if with the first set of papers we see the whole forest and with the second set, we see the individual trees. Having both provided a perspective not often available to researchers. So popular was the session and so well received were the papers, that it was decided to publish them in the Journal of School Effectiveness and School Improvement (Vol. 12, No. 1, March 2001) as a means of expanding the debate.

The Current Volume The above serves as a backdrop to the current handbook, which merges the traditions that have developed with the organization itself. First it looks at the development of the linked disciplines of effectiveness and improvement, both through the eyes of proponents and the eyes of those that wish to critique it. Second, it provides an opportunity for the inclusion of country and regional reports as a mechanism to better understand what is happening in various parts of the world. Seven regions of the world are included; North America and Latin America, Europe, Asia, Australasia, Africa and the Middle East. Never before has such a comprehensive collection of papers from various regions of the world been collected together. Third, it provides a link between school effectiveness and improvement and some of the other global issues for education in the modern world; the issues of resourcing, accountability and policy development and working with diverse populations. Fourth, it looks at the people issues, with both a focus on leadership and teacher development. Finally, it provides some specific case studies where school improvement practices using school effectiveness theories have been successful.

Section 1: A Review of the Progress In the first section of the book we have tried to provide the reader with an overview of the progress in School Effectiveness and School Improvement (SESI) research, since it was first mentioned in the 1970s. To do this we have provided an overview of the factors that have affected SESI research and responses to those factors, a chapter that considers the connectedness between school effectiveness and teacher effectiveness research, a chapter that provides an example of the types of research that uses the principles and theories of school effectiveness and improvement and two chapters that seek to identify

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the limitations of SESI research and provide some possible ways forward that might encourage the authors of those chapters to accept school effectiveness research in the future. In Chapter 2, Hedley Beare, whose thoughts and practice have been so influential on education in Australia and indeed have helped to shape ICSEI itself, provides a masterful review of where ICSEI and school education finds itself today. He provides an overview of the conditions after the World War II and subsequently that have created the pathway upon which ICSEI has found itself and documents the beginnings and progress of ICSEI through this turbulent period of human history. He weaves together the issues that are facing the world at large and the implications that these bring for those in education and he leaves us with the critical challenge that all educators must face. If the world (and education) changes as much in the next 20 years as it has in the past 20 years, what must we do today that will put us at the forefront of these changes in the future. How will education change and how must ICSEI change to remain relevant to the future needs of school students? This is a challenge that we cannot ignore and hopefully, some ways to move forward will become apparent in the rest of chapters in this handbook. In Chapter 3, Leonidas Kyriakides investigates the differentiated nature of both school effectiveness and teacher effectiveness. He discusses the issues surrounding the assumptions that an effective school is effective all the time and for all the students and demonstrates that the analysis must be much more fine-grained than this. He argues that is it primarily the teacher’s adaptive behavior that enables students with different needs to be accommodated that leads to effective classrooms and eventually effective schools, but because of this the unit of investigation may need to shift from the school to the department or even the classroom. He also argues that schools are much more important to students that are disadvantaged than to those that are not, which suggests that a differentiated approach needs to be adopted to really understand how effective teachers might be for different groups of students. He also argues for more longitudinal studies as means of overcoming some of the current methodological problems associated with the case study approach. In Chapter 4, John MacBeath provides us with an overview of a single study, the Improving School Effectiveness Project (ISEP) project in Scotland. This chapter is an important contribution because it not only provides the reader with an overview of how a school effectiveness project might be developed, managed and evaluated, but it is also important because of some of the findings of the project itself and the reflections of the author. The chapter clearly shows how nothing in schools can be taken for granted. What works in one place (e.g., the critical friend) fails to work somewhere else. Some of the findings are used by some schools and school leaders as a mechanism for improvement but are rejected out of hand by others. But what is also important is the reflection of the researcher, where he identifies how much the world has changed outside of school, technologically, socially and in terms of work and family, but how little things have changed inside of school, partially because schools are being measured, with more and more surveillance, in the ways they have always been measured. It clearly shows that the disconnect between schools and the rest of the world cannot continue if success in life is the goal.

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In Chapter 5, Javier Murillo provides us with an overview of the Latin American research, which paralleled that of the research in other parts of the world, but is largely unknown because of it mostly being written in Spanish. He also argues however, that part of the reason the Latin American research is largely unknown comes from the assumption by “the big fish” that what works in the context of large developed countries, equally applies in other contexts as well. As well as providing an overview of the research that has been conducted in the past (largely production function based, because of the various countries’ concerns about results) and that which is currently being conducted, he provides us with an argument why we need to learn more about research from various country contexts if we are to develop a truly global approach to effectiveness. Chapter 6 sees our first attempt to provide the critics of the SESI research with an opportunity to review the field, express their concerns and to identify possible ways forward. Ira Bogotch, Luis Mirón, and Gert Biesta welcome the progress that ICSEI has made over the past thirty years but remain concerned on two major fronts. The first they characterize as “effective for what?” where they argue that the inputs and outputs model used by many school effectiveness researchers does not consider the critical nature of what happens between inputs and outputs, what has come to be known as the “black-box” of teaching and learning. They argue that by ignoring this, SESI researchers make an assumption that what is currently being measured is the same as what should be measured and suggest that SESI research should also consider the question of the purpose of education as well as simply the technological consideration brought about by the progress from input to output. Their second major criticism is identified as “effective for whom?” which suggests that SESI researchers have become researchers “in-demand” and in doing so have ignored an opportunity to be research activists, where research is a means to changing what is rather than simply looking at what is. In Chapter 7, Martin Thrupp, Ruth Lupton and Ceri Brown, argue that, although the SESI research has made more concessions related to school and student context, the underlying desire for generalizabilty of findings leads to a superficiality that overlooks what some schools, and people in them, are facing. They propose a contexualization agenda as a possible future development for SESI research and provide an overview of a study underway in Hampshire, England, as a means for demonstrating the types of data that a contextual approach might provide.

Section 2: A World Showcase: School Effectiveness and Improvement from all Corners In the second section of the book, we embark on a world-wide tour that provides us with an overview of the research and practice of school effectiveness and school improvement in five regions spanning the world; the Americas, Europe, Asia and the Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. It is appropriate to start this tour in the United States as much of the work involved in the school effectiveness and school improvement areas emerged from studies that occurred in the United States in the 60s and 70s.

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In Chapter 8, Charles Teddlie and Sam Stringfield provide an overview of the antecedants to the study of school effectiveness and outline the difference between school effectiveness research, which focuses on educational processes (e.g., Brookover et al., 1979; Edmonds, 1979; Weber, 1971) and school effects research, which focuses on educational products (e.g., Coleman et al., 1966; Jencks et al., 1972). They also provide us with an analysis of the overlapping efforts of school effectiveness researchers who peaked in terms of output and interest between the 1980s and the mid 1990s and the school improvement researchers which started in the early 1990s and continue to work through what has now become known as Comprehensive School Reform. The authors outline some of the key areas where the field is still untouched, or at least underresearched, and identify a number of possible future areas of study that suggest that there is still much work to be done. They end with a plea that we use strong research to guide our improvement efforts, something that seems not to be happening as much as it should at the moment. In Chapter 9, Larry Sackney explains the difference between the American and the Canadian history of school effectiveness and improvement, with the major difference being that school education is the responsibility of the provinces (as in the USA) but with no federal system of education there is no national government that intervenes in what might happen locally. This has enabled provincial governments to adopt their own version of restructuring without something like No Child Left Behind directing the traffic. As it runs out most provinces have adopted a similar strategy and series of programs as the other provinces, but it is one that focuses more on learning and building capacity at the community level than simply measuring and reporting. Nevertheless Sackney makes the case, as do others, that unless improvement strategies focus on what happens in classrooms (which is where learning happens), then little improvement will occur. In Chapter 10, Beatrice Avalos provides us with an opportunity to see just how different are the circumstances facing less developed regions of the world, where Gross Domestic Product is just a fraction of that in the developed world and where issues of getting every child into school in the first place, in a climate of safety and support, is much higher priority than the issues of measuring how well students do when they get there. Nevertheless, as well as the efforts related to improving educational opportunities for every child, Avalos provides us with an insight into what Latin American countries are doing to improve education for students in schools as well. As with the previous chapters, it becomes obvious that the teacher is the key to student improvement. It is only when reforms are accepted, owned and implemented by teachers that real change occurs. As with the Canadian examples, the need to consider whole communities becomes apparent. We then move across the Atlantic to Europe, where issues of school effectiveness and school improvement emerged almost simultaneously with those in the United States. In Chapter 11, Louise Stoll and Pam Sammons provide an overview of the separate history of school effectiveness and school improvement research in the United Kingdom from the first studies of Reynolds (1976) and Rutter and colleagues (1979) through the formative years of Mortimore and colleagues (1988) and the impact of the

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conservative governments of Thatcher and Major to a time where the quantitative and measurement based approaches associated with effectiveness met and embraced the qualitative and process based approaches of improvement. They provide us with an overview of the key studies and an insight into the need for policy-makers, researchers and practitioners to work together if real change is to be achieved. They identify some of the challenges and critiques faced by researchers in the field but are confident that the processes and structures developed during this era will continue to guide educational research into the next significant era of change and development. In Chapter 12, Bert Creemers outlines the development in the rest of Europe, where school effectiveness research started a little later than in the United Sates and the United Kingdom but has been at the forefront of much research focused on developing theoretical models for guiding effectiveness studies. He identifies the continuing tension between school effectiveness and school improvement in Europe where neither is used as well as it might be to inform and support the other, and finishes with an argument that it might be where the two meet and in the joint pursuit of both effectiveness and improvement that the next major developments may occur. The Asian-Pacific region contains some of the oldest societies known to man, but research in school effectiveness and improvement is largely unknown by the rest of the world. The work of those systems that are well known (such as Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore) reflects only a small part of the research that has emerged within the last decade. This new understanding of what has been happening in other parts of Asia is enabling school effectiveness researchers to look at school development with a new lens. In Chapter 13, Yin-Cheong Cheng and Wai-ming Tam provide an overview of the developments occurring in Asia over the past decade and a half. They identify what they call three waves of development, starting with the search for effective schools in the early 1990s followed by a search for school quality over the past few years, with the currently breaking wave of searching for what will make schools effective in this rapidly changing, increasingly diverse and technologically oriented world in the future. They identify nine trends for educators to consider and frame these within four levels of interest, the macro level, which considers national issues, the meso level, where system issues are discussed, the site level where individual schools need to address issues and the operational level where the actual processes of teaching and learning occur. Their analysis of the trends identifies a series of questions and issues that decision-makers at all levels will need to address if we are successful in our search for the effective school of the future. In Chapter 14, Wendy Hui-Ling Pan argues that many of the change processes at work in western societies simply do not fit into the Asian culture and that some of them, such as school self-management are much harder to implement because of the cultural context that exists. The current international concerns of globalization and localization are issues currently being considered in Taiwan. She outlines the reform movement accepted by the Taiwan government over the past 20 years and highlights the role of school based curriculum development, where 20% of the curriculum is determined locally. She identifies some of the issues and problems associated with having local empowerment of teachers and communities and

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highlights some possible strategies that might be used to improve the effectiveness of schools within this context. In Chapter 15, Daming Feng looks at the recent history of educational change in mainland China and in doing so further highlights the differences between a western approach and that employed by those with different cultural roots, and the difficulties implicit in just assuming a western approach can be implemented universally. He identifies the government’s move over the past decade from prioritizing key schools to the detriment of ordinary and disadvantaged schools to one where the disadvantaged schools are receiving the attention they deserve. However, his comment that “a school leader’s priority, according to the Confucian perspective of leadership, is not ‘supervision’ but tapping the natural moral source from his or her subordinates and bringing every positive factor into being” which is based on the base value of man as being essentially good (as opposed to the Christian concept of “original sin”) leads to a conflict of leadership when self-management, teacher involvement and empowerment are seen as the way forward. He identifies a series of things to consider if we are to address change in disadvantaged schools, but recognizes the inherent difficulties in trying to do this on a huge scale. In Chapter 16, Brian Caldwell outlines the history of the development of school effectiveness and school improvement research and its translation into policy and practice in Australia. He identifies five stages from early development to impending maturity in the field. Stage 1 was the development of Values – “what ought to be”; Stage 2 established Reputation – through the identification of good practice based on the early research; Stage 3 considered Modeling – which refined practice using better data and analyses; Stage 4 developed Dependability – where clarity and confidence of what can and should be done at the school level were developed; and Stage 5, which has not yet been fully realized is Alignment: where education authorities can move from what works in individual schools to whole system effectiveness. He argues for a “new enterprise logic of schools” that goes deeper than structure and function and identifies six characteristics of what should be considered if this is to be instigated. He further argues that “alignment” both between policies and practices within school systems and of resources, which now need to include intellectual capital, social capital as well as financial capital should be directed at securing high levels of achievement by all students in all settings. In Chapter 17, Howard Fancy provides an overview of the radical changes that the New Zealand government implemented in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the regional layers of education that had previously existed were removed and individual schools negotiated directly with government over education provision and accountability. He discusses the changes in governance and curriculum that were designed to keep New Zealand at the forefront of educational achievement internationally and were also tailored to ensure that the degree of variance in the performance of students from different classes of society was minimized. This development is significant in that the government has used evidence based research and development and that they came to the viewpoint that if change was to occur, it would happen through strengthening the ability and attitudes of teachers at the classroom level and the interaction of home and school at the local level. This is different to many other countries where the

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focus has been on the restructuring of schools and districts or instead have put a focus on school leaders as the locus of change. In Chapter 18, Brahm Fleisch introduces us to issues in Africa where there has been little history of school effectiveness and improvement research. He argues that there are three main reasons for this. First, there are few researchers at the university level with an interest and a background in this area, and it has been university researchers that have provided the impetus in other parts of the world. Second, in a continent where issues of access and equity have taken priority after long histories of neglect in these areas, then issues of effectiveness of provision takes a back seat to just getting people into school in the first place. As Mingat points out in a later chapter, countries with limited resources need to determine if they are to focus on access for large numbers of the population, or improving the quality for those advantaged few that have traditionally had access. To try and do both at once is a very difficult task. Finally, he argues that there has been some resistance to the “narrowness” of the school effectiveness research. He suggests for some time yet, Africa will rely both on external resources, generally through AID agencies and other external grants and on external understandings of school effectiveness and improvement as many projects are driven by academics from countries supporting education development. The current state of the school effectiveness research is thus at a very early stage of development and there still needs to be identified an independent understanding of African work in the field. In Chapter 19, Ami Volansky outlines the progress and regress of school reform in Israel, from early efforts of school autonomy in the 1970s and 1980s, through a school based management model in the 1990s to the current period where the impact of government concerns about raising achievement quickly has left many schools in an educational limbo, where the requirements of new task forces are not being implemented and the progress of the years under school based management has been stalled because of a lack of political support. This chapter clearly demonstrates that substantial and rapid changes in policy and the reform agenda may lead to no movement at all. . In Chapter 20, Ismail Güven provides us with a look at Turkey, a country that has struggled to bring about universal education to its whole population. He identifies some of the difficulties facing a country that is trying to first of all lift the level of participation in compulsory education, second to try and improve the quality of what happens in the schools and third come to grips with the difficulties associated with trying to bring about local reform with a centralized system. He identifies a number of programs that the government has implemented, mostly with educational loans by international agencies, to increase enrolments, to change curriculum to address the rapidly changing economic environment, to improve the system of educational provision and to increase the education and effectiveness of teachers. What we see is the difficulty of trying to do all of this at once in a short period of time and what we also start to understand is the necessary role and obligation of countries that are more well off to be involved in this development. In Chapter 21, Azam Azimi provides an overview of the education system in the Islamic Republic of Iran, where we get to see a different understanding of what effectiveness and progress in education might mean. As with Turkey, we see a country that

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is redefining itself in terms of ensuring that all students are able to attend school, and what that means when you have substantial variations in the level of financial support able to be provided by government and parents. Here we see goals and a strong linked curriculum being identified at the national level and the establishment of student organizations as a mechanism for maintaining focus on the learning and value systems that the country requires. We also see the influence of Islam as a mechanism for guiding the social and value aspects of education at a national and local level. The author of this chapter identifies that issues of school effectiveness are not as high on the national agenda as they are in some other countries, but leaves us with the question that is asked by some other authors as well … effectiveness for whom, effectiveness for what?

Section 3: Resources, School Effectiveness and Improvement In Section 3 of the volume, we turn our considerations to issues that affect all school systems, with perhaps the most important of these being the issue of the connection of funding to achievement, the connection of inputs to outputs. There has been much debate about the importance of additional funding to bring about further improvements in the level of student achievement, with educators claiming that there can be no further developments without additional resourcing, but there has been a general response by governments around the world that there is no evidence to suggest that additional funding will make any difference. In Chapter 22, Rosalind Levaˇci´c provides the reader with a comprehensive overview of the way in which economists make sense of the “education production function” where the level of outputs are assessed based on the level of inputs at the school and system level. She identifies that for economists, the process part of the equation, the specifics of what actually happens on a day to day basis in schools, remains a “black box” for the most part. She provides an overview of studies in the UK, Europe and the OECD countries that focus on the issue of resources and outputs and concludes that for targeted subjects and targeted groups, additional resources can make a difference, but overall, the differences are small. Whether the additional funds required to make these improvements are seen as being “worth it” is likely to remain a debate into the future. In Chapter 23, Charles Ungerleider and Ben Levin provide us with an overview of the changing nature of funding and policy making in Canada, where the early funding model of a substantial local contribution to education funding was replaced by most of the funds being delivered by the various Canadian provincial governments. They identified that the changing economic and social conditions of the provinces led to a point where controlling budget became more important to government than raising quality, although both were expected simultaneously. They identify the impact of choice and structural change on Canadian school communities, but also express hope that since the last few years have seen more of a focus on improvement strategies and teacher development, that there will be a continuation of Canada’s position near the top of the international league tables when it comes to student achievement. In Chapter 24, Alain Mingat provides an excellent coverage of the complexities and concerns related to education funding in developing regions. Three sources of funding

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are identified, government, private and donor, but the disbursement of this funding is more complex than one might first consider and the chapter outlines how much disparity there is between countries in sub-Saharan Africa, in just this first piece of the puzzle. Decisions about coverage (how many people will be served), equity, where the funding will be spent and quality, or how much money and how it is spent are all linked and the issue of student outcomes and raising the capacity of the people in the country is also linked to how funding is utilized in ways that will support learning. None of these issues is simple and it is clear that many countries have not yet been able to establish a strong link between funding levels and outcomes. Since politicians seem to be more interested in quick fixes and immediate funds, some of the decisions made are not leading to medium or longer term solutions. Mingat identifies an important role for funding agencies in ensuring that funds are targeted in ways that will make a difference. In Chapter 25, Jim Spinks outlines an argument and a model for funding that should be compulsory reading for all politicians and district or state level school administrators. His starting point is to develop a student focused funding model that will lead to both excellence and equity in achievement, where the vast majority of students who enter the system emerge with substantial value added to their learning. He identifies a series of principles that need to be considered in the development of such a funding model and provides a specific example of how this might work in practice. The sum of all individual student funding needs becomes the funding required by the school and he argues for research to look at how schools that are successful at adding value to their students utilize their funds as a means for developing a system wide process for the allocation of public money.

Section 4: Accountability and Diversity, School Effectiveness and Improvement In Section 4 we look at a series of analyses of some of the dominant issues in the school effectiveness and school improvement research areas. Perhaps the most consistent outcome of the late 1990s until the present time has been the focus on accountability issues by governments of all persuasions from around the world. There are many models of accountability and many ways of collecting, analyzing and reporting data on student achievement, but one thing is for sure, the accountability focus is something that is international and something that will not go away in the future. However, the accountability issue has also raised issues of diversity, with many arguments related to linking accountability to diversity in a way that creates a fair and equitable method of measuring progress, one that does not vilify or punish schools on accountability measures when the diversity of the school suggests other ways of dealing with the problem of under-performance. In Chapter 26, David Reynolds, who has now entered his fourth decade of research into issues of school effectiveness, provides us with an analysis of the strength and weaknesses associated with school effectiveness research. He argues that as a comparatively new discipline, the early research, with comparatively unsophisticated goals and outcomes was seized upon by politicians and education systems that, in turn, developed relatively unsophisticated policy responses to the issues facing them. He further

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argues that the more recent work where school effectiveness and school improvement research have used a range of data to identify possible ways forward in classrooms, schools and systems is in danger of being ignored because of the previous negative response to what the politicians did last time. He responds to the concerns of many of the critics of school effectiveness by outlining an approach that takes into account the contextual differences of schools, departments and classrooms and provides an overview of some policies and processes that, if implemented, might make a difference at these levels. In Chapter 27, Susan Kochan provides an historical and philosophical consideration of accountability in the United States. She discusses how the impact of the Coleman Report in 1966 led to two different but linked research activities, one being the school effectiveness research, where mixed methods approaches helped to identify not only outcomes but some of the factors that led to those outcomes, and the school indicator research, where large scale quantitative approaches provided an overview of whole schools or whole systems, but lacked the more fine grained analysis that would enable a better understanding of the data collected. Kochan provides us with an understanding of how the school effectiveness research became less popular, perhaps because it had achieved what it set out to do, and this allowed the school indicator research to lead to the school accountability movement characterized by such terms as No Child Left Behind and Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). She suggests that while only the large scale data collection exists then we may make judgments about individual schools that are not supportive of student learning. She suggests that a return to mixed methods approaches of the school effectiveness studies may provide as with a better understanding of the processes within the school that might make a difference to all students in the longer term. In Chapter 28, Emanuela di Gropello provides an analysis of the various models of decentralization that have occurred in Latin American Countries as a means for increasing performance and accountability. She identifies a series of relationships that are established in various ways which creates three basic models of change. The first relationship is called the “compact” which can be defined as the relationship connecting policymakers (governments) to organizational providers (systems); the second is called “voice” which connects citizens and politicians; the third is “client power” connecting clients to the frontline service providers (schools), and the fourth is “management” which connects organizational providers and frontline professionals (principals, teachers). Using her analysis di Gropello identifies a series of lessons for those seeking to decentralize education systems in ways that are both effective and efficient and a series of challenges for those who are trying to do so at various levels of the education enterprise. She identifies the importance of giving genuine voice and power to local communities but with continued emphases on the other relationships if positive change is to occur. In Chapter 29, Nick Taylor provides an overview of the strategies used by the South African government since Aparthied to try and overcome the lack of skills and high levels of social inequity in the country. He reports on a series of projects that first focused on the poorest performing schools and later focused on those that were performing moderately as a means of improving the economic proficiency of the country.

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He identifies a major reason for there only being moderate improvements as being the inability of the middle level management, such as provinces and districts to perform the necessary pressure and support mechanisms required for large scale improvement. He concludes that sooner, rather than later, the majority of schools, in the poorest performing category, will need to be once again targeted if the country is to make its next move forward in the international economic scene. In Chapter 30, Steve Marshall provides the perspective of the Chief Executive (CE) in the improvement process. As CE of the South Australian education system, he outlines the theory and strategies used to promote improved learning outcomes at all levels. He argues for a systems theory approach where all levels of the organization are involved in learning, in leadership and in professional conversations as a means to focus everyone’s attention on students and their achievement. He provides an overview of the principles for change utilized as a basis for improvement, strategies that can be used at different levels of the system and mechanisms for measuring not only student achievement, but organizational health. This chapter is a must read for any leader that heads an organization that focuses on whole system change and improvement. In Chapter 31, Sue Lasky, Amanda Datnow, Sam Stringfield and Kirsten Sundell consider some of the structural and relationship issues that affect education reform, especially in diverse communities. They argue that educational reform involves formal structures, such as district offices, state policies, but also involves formal and informal linkages among the various structures that make up the education system. They provide an overview of the literature, and in some cases the paucity of the literature for each of Structural linkages (linkages from state and federal policy domains that affect education), Formal linkages (official communications sent between policy domains), Informal linkages (communications that are not official, but are reform specific), Relational linkages (the ties that may help implement or block reform), Ideological linkages (conceptual bridges that make it possible to change an individual’s attitude) and Temporal linkages (continuity over time). They argue there is a complexity brought about by these linkages that demands additional research in these areas if school reform in diverse communities is to succeed.

Section 5: Changing Schools Through Strategic Leadership It is clear from the majority of the research in most parts of the world that the impact of the school leader (or school leaders) on the level of effectiveness and improvement is high enough to be considered critical to the result. Yet, many parts of the world have different structures, different mechanisms for preparing school leaders and different ways of identifying how much responsibility the leader will take in decisions and implementation. We turn now to review how school leaders impact on school effectiveness and improvement in various ways. In Chapter 32, Lejf Moos and Stephan Huber introduce a discussion of what democratic leadership might look like. They provide an overview of the well-known models of leadership, transactional, transformational, integral, instructional and distributed, but argue that the pressures of globalization and the expectations of systems have

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indicated the need for a much more comprehensive leadership approach, where the management and people development components of leadership combine through high levels of communication to create communities of learners, held together by shared identity and commonly held goals and values. In this way the current deficit approach which seems to pervade many education systems can be replaced by an approach that allows democratic principles to be upheld and used. In Chapter 33, Robert Marzano outlines a blueprint for school leaders to use to bring about increased levels of student achievement. The principal who, to Marzano, is the most important actor in the process of improvement first needs to help school communities identify the “right” work to focus on, and he provides 11 factors at school, classroom and student levels and 25 strategies for promoting these factors for our consideration. The second component of the process is to manage the change and Marzano identifies both first- and second-order change as issues to be considered. First-order change, which may be considered straight forward and following already identified rules and processes, may be followed by second-order change, which considers changes to the organization and the people in it, is much more complex and difficult to manage. He argues that perhaps much of the reason why many of the educational reforms that provided much promise to improving student achievement have not worked, is that the second-order changes required to embed these reforms in practice were handled as if they were first order changes. In Chapter 34, Kenneth Leithwood considers leader practices that impact on developing and emotional climate that leads to school improvement. He identifies a series of emotions at play within schools, including teachers’ individual and collective efficacy, their job satisfaction, organizational commitment, morale and engagement as well as the emotions of stress and burnout that emerge if the ones previously mentioned are not fostered. He discusses five broad categories of organizational conditions, those associated with the classroom, school, district, government and broader society, that impact on the emotions of teachers at any given time and he categorizes a series of principal practices that influence teacher emotions. These are aimed at direction-setting, developing people, redesigning the organization, and managing the instructional program and contain a series of sub-categories that can identify specific principal practices that support the development of positive teacher emotions. He also reports on two leadership traits that can’t be characterized, that of being friendly on the one hand and acting as a buffer between the impacts occurring outside of the school and the teachers on the other. He argues that unless we consider the emotional concerns of teachers, issues such as retention of quality staff will always be a problem. In Chapter 35, Halia Silins and Bill Mulford report on the findings of the Leadership for Organizational Learning and Student Outcomes project where they researched three aspects of high school functioning in the context of school reform: leadership, the school results of Organizational Learning, and student outcomes. They argue that leadership characteristics of a school are important factors in promoting systems and structures that enable the school to operate as a learning organization. They argue Learning is transformational in nature and can be defined by six dimensions: Vision and Goals; Culture; Structure; Intellectual Stimulation; Individual Support; and Performance Expectations. They identify and consider four dimensions that characterise high

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schools as learning organizations: Trusting and Collaborative Climate; Taking Initiatives and Risks; Shared and Monitored Mission; and, Professional Development and argue that school level factors such as leadership, Organizational Learning and teachers’ work have a significant impact on non-academic student outcomes such as participation in schools, academic self-concept, and engagement with school which in turn influence retention and academic achievement. In this way both distributed leadership and organizational leadership impacts specifically on student learning outcomes. In Chapter 36, Allan Walker, Philip Hallinger and Haiyan Qian provide an overview of leadership development in East Asia, with a particular focus on Singapore, Mainland China and Hong Kong. They discuss the importance, context and progress of leadership development in the region and argue that leaders make a difference in terms of both school effectiveness and school improvement, but that their influence is often played out through indirect effects. They argue that leadership is socially constructed within the particular context in which they work, including education reforms which impact the work of principals which are common across the region. They suggest that principals now need to respond to conflicting demands of promoting participation and collaboration at the local level, but also respond to increased accountability measures. They argue there is a need for more meaningful approaches to principal learning and development across the region to ensure that leadership development structures not only account for the knowledge required for leading school improvement, but also how it is implanted and contested in line with specific contexts.

Section 6: Changing Teachers and Classrooms for School Improvement It is clear from both the past research and the chapters in this volume that the impact of teachers on student learning is critical and thus any attempt to improve student learning must focus attention on what happens in the classroom. It has been argued that classroom management, the curriculum and student–teacher relations are the three most critical aspects of variation in student performance, outside of family and social background, so if we are to change what happens to students, it will ultimately be through what teachers do in their classrooms. We now turn to the issues of improving teachers and classrooms as the mechanism for improving student outcomes. In Chapter 37, Joseph Murphy considers the impact and constraints associated with teacher leadership, where new accountability requirements has led to the need for a more distributed model of leadership. He suggests that two key domains, organizational structure and organizational and professional culture, hinder the inculcation of teacher leadership. These factors lead to the acceptance of a series of understandings about how the school should operate and these are described as a series of norms, on the one hand about teaching and learning, which include legitimacy, separation of teaching and administration, and managerial prerogative which can associated with teachers being followers, not leaders, and as such should be compliant to the wishes of the school leader. A second set of norms relate to the the nature of work of teaching, and include autonomy, privacy and egalitarianism which lead to a culture of civility and conservatism. These norms, when taken together, suggest that in many cases, neither teachers

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nor administrators really want to have teachers as leaders and even where they do, the support structures and incentives are not sufficient to enable this to occur without extra work and stress on those involved. He then discusses a number of support systems that might help to promote teacher leadership, including establishing values and expectations for the activity, providing support structures, training, and resources, (most importantly, time) as well as offering incentives and recognition, and ensuring role clarity. In Chapter 38, Chris Day and Ruth Leitch discuss the role and importance of Continuous Professional Development (CPD) in strategies designed to improve school effectiveness. They argue that there are competing discourses of professionalism which lead to different understandings of the purposes and practices of CPD in terms of whether teachers are autonomous professionals or agents of some systemic change. In this sense who defines effectiveness dictates not only the kinds of CPD developed but also which kinds of CPD will be resourced and assessed. They argue that there are different interpretations of effectiveness because CPD serves three interrelated purposes; the development of the system, the development of the individual teacher and, ultimately, it is hoped, the student, and so assessing the impact of CPD is not always a simple matter, and this might support why there is little research done in this area. They describe Guskey’s (2000) five level model, which considers the differences in impact of CPD from measuring participant response (at the lowest level) through to student outcomes (at the highest level). They indicate that across Europe, whilst there is agreement on the need to improve the quality of education, there exists a wide range of diverse and sometimes contradictory agendas running, with regard to the purposes and requirements of CPD, leading to an absence of national or trans-national strategies with common purposes, processes or standards. In Chapter 39, Eugene Schaffer, Roberta Devlin-Scherer and Sam Stringfield provide an examination of teacher effects within schools in the USA. They start with the major focus of recent reform, namely, the increasing demands for measurable effects in student achievement then look at the school effects research focusing on those that consider teacher behavior within school effects research. A number of school change projects that focus on teaching and teacher involvement in school improvement and some general trends in teacher effects/development are discussed, and they give consideration to the types of training that might occur at the preservice level and the effective induction of new teachers into the profession, followed by ongoing professional development. They conclude that teacher involvement is essential to successful reform efforts, and that support of teacher development is the pathway to achieving desired changes and provide a series of practical suggestions for teacher involvement in school improvement and some indications of future possible research in the field. In Chapter 40, Wai-ming Tam and Yin-Cheong Cheng outline the impact of education reform on teacher training in the Asia-Pacific region, one that has experienced rapid economic growth and occasional instability in the last 20 years when they were enticed to compete in the world market. Given this, large-scale reforms to both the education system and teacher education followed. Mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and India provide case studies of the efforts to transform the

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education system quickly, in order to prepare the country to compete in the global knowledge economy as well as the need to utilize education as a means of solving social issues, such as equality, cultural identity, and the impact of globalization. Two trends are outlined, decentralizing decision-making power to schools and the shift from a bureaucratic to a market-driven accountability system. They identify a series of directions for reform in the Asia-Pacific region, related to questions of standards and competence in teaching and learning, issues of accountability, and cost-effectiveness, how to promote long-term development and sustainability of the teacher education system, including attracting, developing and retaining competent teachers, and how to improve school effectiveness. They report on two broad strategies, the consolidation of teacher education and the consolidation of knowledge and competence within the system, designed to upgrade teacher qualifications, provide an incentive structure to attract teachers, and the development of the teacher as a reflective practitioner through building a professional learning community. In Chapter 41, Ken Rowe provides a strong argument that much of the previous research into school effectiveness has been looking for change in the wrong place. He suggests that most of the knowledge base is derived from small-scale case studies, there are relatively few large-scale studies capable of providing valid generalizations, and the methods used to analyze the data have not allowed for the modeling of complex interrelationships between inputs, processes and outcomes. Finally the criterion measures used in school effectiveness studies have typically been limited to un-calibrated raw scores on standardized tests of students’ cognitive achievements with little attention being paid to other valued outcomes of schooling. He argues that more recent research, focused on quality teaching indicates the proportion of variation in students’ achievement progress due to differences in background is considerably less important than that associated with class/teacher membership and that it is not so much what students bring with them that matters, but what they experience in classrooms. He argues that most reforms in education are directed at the preconditions for learning rather than at influencing teaching and learning behaviors and that there is a future need for a reframing of the “school effectiveness” research agenda to one that focuses on quality teaching and learning if we are to see improved student outcomes. In Chapter 42, Janet Chrispeels and Carrie Andrews with Margarita Gonzalez argue that teachers work with their assigned students, but are isolated from one another and have limited opportunities for learning with and from colleagues. They discuss how the use of grade level teams of teachers might improve student achievement. They consider data collected from a case study in California and identify the major issues that emerged from the research. Key factors included the importance of goal focus, including the nature of the goal, the development of group norms and establishing a clear agenda as necessary conditions for team learning. They found that when teams were discussing student work, creating objects, or observing each other teach, the principles of high-quality professional development were being enacted and teacher learning was taking place. Key issues were the opportunity to reflect on their practice and the provision of social-emotional support by both other teachers and the principal. They indicated the importance of enabling district or school goals to be translated into meaningful work by grade, department, or interdisciplinary teams as well as by

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individual teachers and the need for both the district and the school principal to find the time required for team discussion (including providing substitutes to enable this where necessary), training for teacher leaders, and communicating its instructional goals to enable teachers to work effectively as grade level or department teams. In Chapter 43, Kerry Kennedy argues that Asia is characterized more by diversity than uniformity, in political structures, culturally, economically and with different stages of development. A common feature of all these countries is recent education and curriculum reform, which is shaped by both economic and social agendas. “High development” countries seek to maintain their competitive advantage through education. “Medium development” countries aspire to move upwards through education. However, they do this in vastly different economic, cultural, political and values contexts. On the other hand, “Low development” countries are more interested in getting all of their students into school in the first place, or training teachers or providing other infrastructure requirements. While the need for curriculum reform is acknowledged, infrastructure and access issues represent pre-conditions for successful curriculum reform. From an economic perspective, the main characteristic has been the “liberalization” of curriculum. The state has co-opted progressivist principles to support an economic instrumentalism as the basis of the school curriculum, where curriculum and instructional reform is driven by an economic need to provide workers for the new economy. He argues that even in the well developed countries policies for a liberalized curriculum are easier to devise to put into practice. When there are many reforms occurring at the same time, implementation faces significant hurdles. He suggests that policy makers need to think carefully about the sequencing and pacing of curriculum and instructional reform and consider their relationship with other reforms, community values and community needs to be involved in the activity of change, if the reform is to be successful.

Section 7: Models of School Improvement It is now accepted that any study of school effectiveness that does not focus some attention on issues of school improvement will not have the value of one that does. Section 7 of the book considers issues of school improvement as a mechanism for creating change and fostering improved student outcomes. It is important then that we consider some examples of school change that have used the principles of school effectiveness as a means of improving the lives of students. First we consider the macro-level with cross-country studies, from Europe, from Asia and from Latin America, that help us to establish a framework that might assist school systems, schools and school leaders in changing what they do and then we consider some specific examples where these changes have made a difference. In Chapter 44, Bert Creemers, Louise Stoll, Gerry Reezigt and the ESI team report on the Effective Schools Improvement project where they develop a comprehensive framework that can be used by practitioners, researchers and policy-makers alike, although they make the point that the framework “can never be used as a recipe for effective school improvement or as a ready-made toolbox for the implementation of improvement in schools.” The framework was developed by investigating the relationship

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between effectiveness and improvement in eight European countries with strongly varying educational histories and policies. The purpose was to bring together ideas from different theories, build on findings from school improvement studies and integrate them in a coherent way. The research identified three factors relating to context pressure to improve, resources and alignment of the educational goals with those set by the authority involved. It also established that there needed to be active intervention at the school level, as individual teacher initiatives were not enough if there was to be a sustained and lasting impact on the school as an organization. To do this, schools needed to foster an improvement culture, consider the five stages of the improvement processes as a part of everyday life and focus on improvement outcomes, either stated in terms of student outcomes (the effectiveness criteria) or change outcomes which ultimately influence student outcomes (the improvement criteria). They argue that while effective improvement requires school level processes, the framework does not dictate what those processes might be for any individual school and while the importance of teachers is acknowledged, individual teachers are not considered to be the main lever of change for effective whole school improvement. In Chapter 45, Magdalena Mo-Ching Mok and Yin-Cheong Cheng, Shing-On Leung, Peter Wen-jing Shan, Phillip Moore, and Kerry Kennedy report on a study that seeks to investigate the nature of self-directed learning in secondary students in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, to identify contributing factors to their self-directed learning and draw implications for teaching and learning from the results. They used a model with three components, the prior cognitive, motivational, and volitional conditions of the learner, the learning actions; and the outcomes of the learning and four linking processes, planning, monitoring, and feedback leading to first- and secondorder learning. They found that on average, secondary students were motivated, had adaptive attributions for their academic outcomes, were able to set learning goals, and self-monitor and self-regulate their own learning. However, the academic selfconfidence was low and there was a reluctance to seek help. These results provide the opportunity for educators to consider how to establish the conditions that will lead to self-directed learning in their students. In Chapter 46, Claudia Jacinto and Ada Freytes illustrate and discuss how policies on student retention and learning outcomes in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile are shaped by how schools “re-create” or redefine the external proposals as the participants (school authorities, administrators, supervisors, parents and students) are “re-creating” the policy through their beliefs, values and strategies. They discuss three possible strategies used by schools: appropriation, when proposals are adapted to the school’s culture and circumstances and are connected to other school activities; resistance, where there are contradictions between the change proposals and the ideas and behavior of the teachers and school heads and where school actors do not commit themselves to their implementation, often incorporating the new elements into their discourse but rarely into their practice; and passivity, where schools receive projects uncritically, where there appears little capacity to learn from experience, where there is lax coordination between principal and teachers and where it appears to depend on individual teachers’ initiatives rather than on the institution as a whole. They suggest social harmony builds agreements between the young people’s behavior and those of the school culture.

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Schools were slowly incorporating principles and practices that moved away from a punishment-based system of regulations and towards a vision of school order that is built collectively. They argue that it is a challenge for teacher education and professional development to strengthen capabilities to promote harmonious school environments and improve learning outcomes, especially for the poor. In Chapter 47, David Bamford provides a case study of a review process developed and modified by the Latin American Heads Conference as a means to support school self-evaluation and improvement. He describes the review process that occurred in the British Schools of Montevideo, Uruguay, together with the impact that it had on the schools and the school staff and governors and the subsequent changes to the review process brought about by the review activity. He articulates the initial reticence by some staff and the processes of self-evaluation and data collection used prior to the visit. He focuses on the importance of the review being for the purposes of selfimprovement rather than as an assessment of the worth of the school. He then describes some of the changes in the school that can be attributed to the review process and the developing understanding of the value of such a process expressed by teachers and administrators alike. The chapter provides encouragement of the types of “continuous improvement” models of school self-evaluation that are being adopted in many parts of the world. In Chapter 48, Rosa Deves and Patricia López describe how the Inquiry Based Science Education (ECBI) Program, initially co-sponsored by the Ministry of Education and the Fundación Andes, a private foundation in Chile, became a model for strengthening the bonds between policy making, teacher capacity building, school practice and student outcomes. The program was piloted with around 5,000 children attending poor schools in Santiago and was then expanded to approximately 30,000 students in partnership with Chilean universities. Children became engaged in many of the activities and thinking processes that scientists use to produce new knowledge and they were able to develop the ability to monitor their own learning. Five different components of the program are described: curriculum, professional development, material resources, community support and evaluation and it is clear that the partnership approach between all the stakeholders is a key to the program’s success. The Program also benefited from international cooperation, from people and institutions undertaking similar projects in Latin America and other parts of the world. This help included training, rights to high quality materials, sharing of translated materials, collaboration with workshops and participation in international conferences. In turn, the Chilean program is now being used as a model to begin similar programs in other Latin American countries. In Chapter 49, Jenny Lewis discusses the improvement processes undertaken by a primary school in Australia that led to it move from being a “school at significant risk” to a multiply award winning school. The school community built an evidence-based environment that promoted sustainability through innovative and informed Evidence Based Leadership in Action through the use of authentic evidence and by reconnecting all parts of the school so that staff could share their knowledge, perspectives and experiences about students and programs. Strategies such as these moved the school’s use of evidence from a reactive to a proactive perspective. The sharing of leadership,

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focused professional development, mentoring and sharing at weekly team meetings were viewed as important strategies to build a culture of professionalism in which mutual trust, shared knowledge and responsibility, where all teachers were viewed as leaders and undertook leadership roles. Evidence-based improvement became a way of life. Traditional testing was viewed as too abstracted from what was being taught in classrooms and, with parent permission, these approaches were removed in favor of daily teacher judgments of evidence about student progress. The school developed a networked-based knowledge management system that combined the relevant data into an integrated information system and tutorials were developed to help teachers manage information, analyze and act on data. These activities helped the school to substantially improve what it was doing in a way that encouraged all stakeholders to be involved. In Chapter 50, Helen Paphitis documents the journey of an Australian secondary school, and herself as teacher, then school leader, then principal in the school, over the last 20 years of growth and development. In the mid-1990s, the school faced negative community perceptions, high welfare dependency, and low attendance, retention and achievement rates. She documents the changes including the introduction of Care groups, less than 15 students, who remained in the same care group, with the same teacher, for their 5 years at the school, the development of Enterprise Education and a school aim to place every student in employment, further education or training. Sustainable whole school improvement was brought about by three factors: setting directions, developing staff and enriching teaching and learning, and building infrastructure for continuous improvement and the development and progress has been sustained by a structure that divides the work of the organization into eight manageable and clearly defined functions: Operations, Human Resources, Curriculum (Teaching and Learning), Care, Finances, Facilities, Marketing and Strategic Alliances, each managed by a different school leader. This chapter provides us with an opportunity to see what can happen when commitment, focus and time are aligned to support organizational change.

Afterword: Learning from the Past to Reframe the Future In Chapter 51, Tony Townsend brings together the various pieces of data that are contained in the book and looks at the key things that have been learned from the research around the world. He identifies a series of issues that are woven throughout the handbook, such as the impact of change and globalization, issues related to how we might define school effectiveness, issues related to the political nature of school effectiveness, issues that focus on improving our understanding of learning and professional development and issues that focus on furthering international understandings and cooperation. He discusses a number of future research possibilities that look at reframing and redefining the field of school effectiveness and improvement, including redefining the way in which we look at effectiveness, redefining how we measure effectiveness, redefining the structures of schooling to more closely reflect the complexity of the activity of education, redefining the experience of students within schools, and redefining teacher education so that it matches with the other changes that are

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happening, both in education and in the wider society. He argues that these areas will help to redefine research in the field into the next decade. There is much to read and analyze in the book and it may be daunting for the reader to start at the beginning and progress all the way through. Perhaps the best way of approaching this book is either by country or by theme. It may be helpful to read chapters from your own country, or one that is like your country first, to reflect on what others perceive is happening where you work and then to consider chapters on a similar theme from other countries and regions of the world. Alternatively, you may wish to start by looking at a country that you know nothing about, and you are sure to find at least one, to consider some of the cultural, economic, political and social conditions that help to shape educational experiences in those countries and then reflect on how they differ from the conditions in which you find your own experiences. In the end, you will find that we are more alike than we are different, but our different situations create different experiences for people as they move through the education system. That, in turn, creates researchers with different starting points, different goals and different methodologies. It is the richness of this mix that makes this book worth reading, from cover to cover.

References Blakey, L., & Heath, A. F. (1992). Differences between comprehensive schools: Some preliminary findings. In P. Cuttance, & D. Reynolds (Eds.), Schools effectiveness: Research, policy and pratice (pp. 96–121). London: Cassell. Brookover, W. B., Beady, C., Flood, P. K., & Schweitzer, J. H. (1979). School social systems and student achievement: Schools can make a difference. New York: Praeger. Coleman, J. S., Campbell, E., Hobson, C., Mc Partland, J., Mood, A., Weinfield, F., et al. (1966). Equality of educational opportunity. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt. Printing Office. Creemers, B., & Osinga, N. (1995). ICSEI country reports. Leeuwarden, the Netherlands: GCO. Creemers, B., Peters, T., & Reynolds, D. (Eds.). (1989). School effectiveness and school improvement. Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger. Cuban, L. (1989). The “at-risk” label and the problem of school reform. Phi Delta Kappan, 71(8), 780–801. Edmonds, R. (1979). Effective schools for the urban poor. Educational Leadership, 37(1), 15–27. Hallinger, P., & Murphy, J. (1986). The social context of effective schools. American Journal of Education, 94, 328–355. Harris, A., & Chrispeels, J. H. (Eds.). (2006). Improving schools and educational systems: International perspectives. London: Routledge. Jencks, C., Smith, M., Ackland, H., Bane, M., Cohen, D., Gintis, H., et al. (1972). Inequality: A reassessment of the effect of family and schooling in America. New York: Basic Books. Mortimore, P., Sammons, P., Stoll, L., Lewis, D., & Ecob, R. (1988). School matters: The junior years. Somerset: Open Books. Murphy, J. (1991). Restructuring schools: Capturing and assessing the phenomena. New York: Teachers College Press. Nuttall, D., Goldstein, H., Prosser, R., & Rasbash, J. (1989). Differential school effectiveness, International Journal of Educational Research, special issue Developments in School Effectiveness Research, 13, 763–776. Nuttall, D. (1992). Letter to The Independent, 21 November. Reynolds, D. (1976) The delinquent school. In P. Woods (Ed.), The process of schooling (pp. 217–229). London: Routledge. Reynolds, D., & Teddlie, C. (2001). Reflections on the critics, and beyond them. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12, 99–113.

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Rutter, M., Maughan, B., Mortimore, P., & Ouston, J. with Smith, A. (1979). Fifteen thousand hours: Secondary schools and their effects on children. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Scheerens, J., & Creemers, B. P. M. (1989). (Eds.). School effectiveness and improvement: Proceedings of the First International Congress. Groningen: Rion. Slee, R., & Weiner, G. (2001). Education reform and reconstruction as a challenge to research genres: Reconsidering school effectiveness research and inclusive schooling. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12, 83–98. Slee, R., & Weiner, G. with Tomlinson, S. (1998). School effectiveness for whom? London: Falmer Press. Smink, G. (1991). The Cardiff conference, ICSEI 1991. Network News International, 1(3), 2–6. Stringfield, S., & Teddlie, C. (1991). Schools as affectors of teacher effects. In H. Waxman, & H. Walberg (Eds.), Effective teaching: Current research (pp. 161–179). Berkeley: McCutchan. Teddlie, C., & Reynolds, D. (Eds.). (2000). International handbook of school effectiveness research. London & New York: Falmer Press. Teddlie, C., & Reynolds, D. (2001). Countering the critics: Responses to recent criticisms of school effectiveness research. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12, 41–82. Thrupp, M. (1999). Schools making a difference: Let’s be realistic! School mix, school effectiveness and the social limits of reform. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press. Thrupp, M. (2001). Sociological and political concerns about school effectiveness research: Time for a new research agenda. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12, 7–40. Townsend, T., Clarke, P., & Ainscow, M. (1999). Third millennium schools: A world of difference in effectiveness and improvement. Lisse, the Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger. Weber, G. (1971). Inner city children can be taught to read: Four successful school. Washington, D.C.: Council for Basic Education. Wildy, H., & Dimmock, C. (1992). Instructional leadership in Western Australian primary and secondary school. Nedlands: University of Western Australia.

2 FOUR DECADES OF BODY-SURFING THE BREAKERS OF SCHOOL REFORM: JUST WAVING, NOT DROWNING

Hedley Beare

The waves of reform, they are called. What follows are the observations of an old man of the sea, weather-beaten and bronzed, but not browned off by riding for several decades the dumpers, and with the same exuberance as the dolphins do. Nothing is quite as exhilarating as when the surf is up, and I have seen a lot of it. Swimming skills, I have discovered, are not the whole story. I have also learnt the value of assiduously studying the tide charts and reading carefully and constantly the short and long-range weather forecasts. And I have always stayed close to the water. All these things matter. Just now, though, I am surveying the long capes and bays of the coastline, the great sweep of the sky and the erosions made by storms, and speculating on how the geography of the seascape has altered. Waves of change have done it all.

The Two Major Cradles of Reform There were two, notable, decade-long episodes which pushed the school reform movements into the shapes they took. The first was the period of post-war reconstruction after the chaotic mess of 1939–1945. The end of the Second World War produced the need for the rehabilitation, re-settlement, and employment of returning service personnel, and the so-called baby boom. A decade and a half later, this nest of demands had produced the educational upheavals of the 1970s – curriculum reform, school reform, system reform, massive new building activity, indeed an almost total re-jigging of educational provisions. The second period of widespread social and economic reconstruction occurred in the 1980s, coinciding with the terms in office of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in Great Britain and of Ronald Reagan as the President of the United States. Their political stance was similar, namely to introduce policies based on the market economy, allowing the built-in incentives of competition to introduce the discipline of getting value for the dollar and of achieving outcomes through private enterprise. 27 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 27–40. © 2007 Springer.

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The waves of school reform over the second half of the twentieth century were fashioned in these two cradles and their aftermath. There is a tendency to overlook the educational upheavals of the 1970s and the 1990s, as though schools have always been the way they are now. It is prudent to consider just how far and how quickly the education enterprise has come, and for educators to be given some praise for the miracles they have achieved.

The First Major Reform Period There are few people around now who remember what schooling was like prior to the post-war period of upheaval. Schooling then was staid, stereotyped, almost one-track in its orientation. Of the secondary school cohort which began at around Year Seven, only about 5%, or 1 in 20, survived to Year Twelve. It was a process designed to produce drop-outs, and where one dropped off the conveyor belt determined the employment options and life chances available to that person. It was a process almost designed to confirm class structures. So post-war reconstruction delivered an upheaval that imposed enormous pressures for change on a one-best-way system.

Expanding the Post-School Area Governments were forced to cater for the education and retraining of returning service personnel. It also gave those ex-servicemen and women a second chance to change their station in life and it produced a challenge to entrenched class consciousness. For example, men and women born into the working class could now go to university. There was inordinate pressure on tertiary, post-school, and technical training places, and all the post-school areas expanded, a movement which left universities starved for funds and requiring national bale-out money. The technical institutes and colleges and ultimately the whole Technical and Further Education (TAFE) sector were produced by this period.

The Post-War Baby Boom and Enrolment Pressures At secondary school level, there was huge enrolment pressure resulting from the baby-boom. A system which had existed to weed out the non-academic students and to produce an elitist tertiary sector was challenged to expand to cater for a wave of new enrolments and the wide spectrum of students which showed how inadequate had been the curricula in use in those schools. In physical terms there were too few schools and huge building programs were undertaken, many of them in new housing estates. There certainly were not enough teachers, and teacher education expanded. The independent schools were also claiming that they could not keep going because of the insurmountable demands for places, plant, and programs. From the mid-1960s, then, the universal cry was for more resources, for tax dollars. There were insufficient funding and personnel to sustain the educational enterprise the country needed.

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The Funding Crisis When I returned from overseas study in 1970, I found that the South Australian DirectorGeneral of Education John Walker was heading an interstate panel set up by the Australian Education Council (AEC, the body consisting of the State Ministers of Education and their bureau chiefs) to draw up a rescue document for schools, which emerged as “A statement of needs in Australian schools.” It was an appeal to the Commonwealth Government, documenting the extent of the crisis in school funding, and the imminent danger of system collapse. It was a precursor to the famous Karmel Report.

The Curriculum Revolution There was a wave of students feeding into secondary schools on the back of the arguments made in books like H.C. Dent’s Secondary education for all, published in 1944. The title became a political catchcry of the period. To build the post-war society we wanted, every child must now have some secondary education. It brought in its train the awareness that the stereotypical one-size-fits-all curriculum had to go. So there grew up alternative courses and new approaches to exams, to streaming, and so on. With psychology now influencing the make-up of learning programs, “catering for individual differences” became policy, affecting fundamentally the way primary school curricula were written. Books with titles like Every kid a winner and Schools without failures appeared, arguing that the curriculum now needed to be remodeled and individualized to suit the range and scope of children now turning up to be educated. It caused huge reform in the curriculum area and a movement towards school-based curriculum-making.

New School Designs But more than that, it forced a radical redesign in the physical structure of schools. Open-plan schools, for example, started to crop up everywhere, with some magnificently innovative designs. They were architectured to enhance the curriculum delivery and not inhibit it, egg-crate classrooms were scorned, and teachers had to learn the techniques of team teaching. National Governments began by allocating extra funding to upgrade the most expensive parts of the school plant, in particular science laboratories and library facilities. In the 1960s and 1970s many schools were built with the library as a resource centre placed physically at the heart of the school, and with most classrooms literally opening into it.

National Intervention By the early 1970s, then, the question was whether national governments could or would respond appropriately, especially in jurisdictions like USA and Australia where schooling was a constitutional responsibility of the States, and in the UK where local education authorities anchored a national system locally administered. The response in the USA

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came through the bills like the ESEA legislation, funding under the rubric of veterans education. In Australia, the Whitlam (Labor) Government acted immediately on being elected in 1972 to institute a series of commissions to dispense federal dollars – a Schools Commission, a Tertiary Education Commission, TAFE Commission, and even a shortlived Children’s Commission. Professor Peter Karmel, one of the country’s most respected economists, chaired an Interim Schools Commission to put a dollar-and-cents value on the needed reform effort. His totals far exceeded those of the Walker (AEC) document.

A National Baseline for School Resourcing The Karmel committee worked on the basic principle that it is unacceptable for any school in the nation, no matter in what jurisdiction, to be operating below an acceptable standard of resourcing. It was called “equality of educational opportunity,” meaning that no child should be disadvantaged by being forced to attend an under-resourced school. Governments (and the public which elects them) need to be reassured that every school meets that acceptable level of operation. Resource equalization caused all sorts of problems. A dollar spent in San Francisco will purchase three times as much as a dollar spent up in the Rocky Mountains. To build a school at remote Millingimbi or Yuendumu in Australia’s far north was hugely more expensive than to build a look-alike school in the Sydney metropolitan area. Ensuring that urban-trained teachers would be prepared to go out and work in those contexts posed problems too. Equality of educational opportunity really meant moving resources to where the children were so that no child was overtly disadvantaged by where they lived or by the school they attended. To achieve the result in Australia required that State Governments receive grant money through the Commonwealth Government to top up State funds. In addition, many of the independent schools were poor, Catholic, parochial schools needing great amounts of federal money to bring them up to the national resource threshold. By the 1990s an anomalous situation had eventuated in which the Federal Government was spending most of its educational tax dollars to hold up the non-government sector, giving the appearance that the sector was in fact federally supported at the expense of the State Government schools.

The Examination System There were other significant moves. Federal money was made available for schoolbased innovations, for national in-service education, for curriculum development. The federal authorities recruited the Australian-born Professor Malcolm Skilbeck from Belfast to create a national Curriculum Development Corporation in Australia. He was subsequently appointed to head the reform-driven Schools Council in the UK. External examinations were under fire also. The State of Victoria invented several alternatives, including a technical certificate. In the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) a new kind of Year Twelve certificate did away with external examinations and gave authenticity to what the schools were teaching through an accreditation process which included academic and public experts, and a moderation of school-based assessments using a nationally normed scholastic aptitude test.

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New Systems Emerge The two Australian territorial school systems emerged as free-standing entities in their own right in the middle of this reform decade, the first new public school systems to be created in Australia for over a 100 years. Seen now in retrospect, they were unique manifestations which could never have happened except in a context of reform like that of the 1970s. How were they different? The Australian Government did not have a Ministry of Education until 1967, for primary and secondary schooling were by constitution a States matter. But from that point on there was no resisting the surge to resource the schools properly; and the Territories were after all a federal responsibility. The creation of the ACT schools system enabled state-of-the-art ideas which had been seething for several years to be implemented in a new system. It was clear that the Commonwealth Government and Canberra residents wanted to do something different from merely repeating the patterns of a normal state-type department of education. Senior secondary education was reformed through the creation of Secondary Colleges providing non-custodial learning programs which were not in thrall to an external examination certificate system or the stranglehold that university entry has over it. There was a new mode of accrediting courses thrown up by the colleges themselves, with academics serving on every one of the review panels. From the outset, every school had a board on which parents had a representative voice. The system itself placed a representative on each school board also, with every person in the administration’s head office invited to serve on a school board. At any one time, then, there was someone at head office who knew intimately the life of any particular school. The old inspectorial system was dispensed with since it represented supervision from the top. Instead a collegial system was used where people could talk to each other and use each other’s advice. Any review of a school used professional colleagues rather an imposed supervision system. The system put great stress on the professionalism of teachers. At Harvard I had had the privilege of hearing the experts on what the new mode of management for schools would be. I might have been brash to think school administration could be done like that but we tried it, even in simple things. When people started calling the office in which I worked “The Authority,” we changed its name to the Schools Office to convey the impression that it was there to support the work of schools. Its officers labored hard to get across the orientation in the public mind that the school system existed to service the learning needs of children. Seen now in context, the decade of the 1970s was a humid crib which nurtured innovation, and which over time produced multiple offspring, multiple concatenations and trendlines.

The Second Major Reform Period The seeds of the second major reform movement were beginning to sprout while the first movement was in full flower.

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The Impact of Home Background and SES In the late 1960s, the Coleman Report in USA (published in 1966) had resulted from the largest single survey of school attainment ever conducted. Its principal finding was that if you know the socioeconomic status (SES) of the parents you can predict accurately what the schooling history of their children will be. Whatever inputs the school receives, the same people will come out on top, and you can grade the attainment of students on the single factor of their SES. Christopher Jencks’ studies and his book on equality of educational opportunity (1972) reached the same conclusion. Similar studies done elsewhere confirmed the view. An impressive study concluded in 1974 by Dr. Bill Moore, head of the Centre for Research in Measurement and Evaluation in the New South Wales Education Department, and titled In Loco Parentis, collected longitudinal data on a generation of students, tracking them right through primary and secondary schooling. His conclusion was that if you know the level of the parents’ satisfaction with their child’s schooling, their socioeconomic level and their occupation and feed these data into the computer, you can predict accurately what in fact does happen to the child – what year she will drop out of schooling, what achievement patterns she will have had to that point, what occupation she is likely to pursue. “When home-based educational objectives clash with school-based objectives,” he observed, “the student normally resolves the conflicts by rejecting school. The key figures in the whole dynamic social complex are the parents.” This nest of reports concluded that schools have a far smaller impact than we are inclined to think they have; or – to put it in blunt language – schools don’t make much difference. It is the learning capital a student brings to school with her, largely derived from home background, that most determines her performance. Financial allocations, spending tax dollars on schools, hardly affect the outcome measures at all. These findings were bound to cause a reaction, not least a political one, and especially from those whom the former system had favored. The opposition began to emerge strongly in the middle 1980s. It is clear, the critics were saying, that parents know some schools do better with their children than do others, some schools confer a very significant advantage, and parents are willing to spend a lot of money to capitalize on the difference. They became known as outlier schools, those doing better than their colleagues, even when they are of the same social class and in similar neighborhoods. The Rutter study of schools in London (Fifteen Thousand Hours, published in 1979) used some rather strange indicators of success (the number of school days lost through absenteeism, the amount of bullying in the yard, for example), but it showed that some schools do indeed make a significant difference. By studying the qualities of outlier schools, then, we may discover what they were doing right, whether there were common characteristics which led to their success, and whether there were better ways to ensure value for the resources invested. This educational soul-searching then ran into a remarkable synchronicity. Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1979, retiring from the position in 1990. Ronald Reagan was elected US President in 1981 and held office until 1989. Throughout the entire 1980s, then, the conservatives’ brakes were applied to government expenditures on both sides of the Atlantic, on the premise that you cannot keep

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throwing money wilfully at public problems and assume that they will be solved. The approach aimed to free people from regulation, to sponsor private enterprise and to outlay on the basis of whether the contracted-out functions or services were satisfactorily discharged. The contract price is paid if an appropriate end-product is delivered. That sort of funding mode began to invade schools. It was not enough that schools had adequate funding; they must also show evidence that they were adding value to a child’s learning. The better they did it, the more likely it was that government would reward them. This “movement to the right” (as commentators called it) was a very powerful counterbalance to the school reform whirlpool of the 1970s and 1980s, based on resource levels and inputs. When the economics of the free market/competition became dominant under Reagan and Thatcher, education was ripe for the pickings. Indeed some economists, like Eric Hanushek and the Chicago School, suggested that schools might be made efficient if funds were taken away from them, forcing them into economies and an attention to outputs. The purchasing power of the consumers, parents, and open competition were useful disciplines to exploit over schooling. The free market approach also demanded that if parents were so important and not least as customers, they ought to have the power to select the school their child should attend, and not be zoned into a school because it happened to be in the neighborhood. Parental choice thus became a political issue, and the public discussion swung towards the quality of educational outcomes rather than the quantity of inputs, to whether the educational dollar was being spent wisely.

What Makes a School Effective? Two terms entered the vernacular during this period, namely efficiency and effectiveness. Effectiveness simply means “that which produces an effect” – I aimed to achieve this outcome and I did. Efficiency superimposes another criterion on the top of that, by asking whether those outcomes were achieved with the best, most parsimonious usage of the resources. Using the dollars to achieve a specified or planned outcome (effectiveness) and to do so without waste (efficiency) became the operative criteria in policy. The two words soon became associated with a third, namely excellence, pushed by the internationalism which was now affecting the patterns of world trade. The Berlin Wall went down during Reagan’s watch, Japan, South Korea and the Asian “tiger” economies like that of Singapore were becoming major players, Russia and China were entering world markets on the markets’ own terms, and trade barriers were falling. It was no longer enough to be effective or efficient, therefore. On any economic dimension (including education) the quality had to be good enough to ensure competitiveness in international terms. The hallmark of “world’s best practice” became the means to show how closely the local product approached international standards. So the three E’s were used as universal criteria – effectiveness, efficiency, excellence. Ronald Edmonds was one of the pioneers of the school effectiveness movement. A school practitioner and scholar from Harvard, he identified from inner city schools five characteristics which made a school effective. The first was the leadership of the principal and his attention not merely to management but to what was going on in

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classrooms (instructional leadership). The effective school also had a broadly based and pervasive instructional focus; it concentrated on its educational program first and foremost (focus on learning). As a third quality, the school provided an orderly and safe climate conducive to teaching and learning; it was a safe environment in which students could learn, experiment, and make mistakes (a safe climate for learning). Fourthly, the school had high expectations of every student; every child was expected to succeed (high expectations). And finally, measures of pupil achievement were the basis for evaluating the school (planned achievement levels). It was admittedly a fairly simple fivepoint scheme, but it was seized upon by schools and school systems and started to find its way into practice, policy, and research all around the world. Other studies, especially in the United States, began to build on the Edmonds initiative, developing much more sophistication by the early 1980s. There was keen interest across the Atlantic too, in particular in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia. The awareness that the experts, including school officials and researchers, should get together regularly on this issue of school effectiveness and compare notes produced the decision to create the International Congress on School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI). From the outset it had an active membership of teachers, principals, school leaders, policy makers, and academics. One wit said that ICSEI consisted simply of an annual conference and a journal, but its influence grew rapidly and had a demonstrable impact on school practices around the world. A difference of approach was also becoming apparent among member countries. The Americans had tended to use qualitative research, based on case studies. They identified schools which seemed to be doing particularly well and tried to extract from observation what made them work, expanding well beyond Edmonds’ five-point scheme. On the other side of the Atlantic, the university community was using test evidence, quantitative research, to isolate what worked better, holding certain variables steady while introducing interventions with other variables. Educators at the school level, however, wherever they were, were impatient to put good ideas into operation without waiting for the research findings to come out. So the tension between research and practice emerged early, and explains why “school improvement” was introduced into ICSEI’s title. It produced nevertheless a healthy research/practice interface.

The School Effectiveness Movement The qualitative vs. quantitative methodologies interface, the case study vs. empirical study approaches, and the practice vs. research orientations caused concerns on both sides of the Atlantic for those associated with ICSEI were anxious to meet the criticisms from hard-nosed scientific rationalist approaches and to assemble research evidence which had the persuasive bite that was needed. The research community jumped in early and arranged the first ICSEI conference in London; it was 8 years before the venue moved to the North American mainland. Even so, educators crowded to the ICSEI conferences. They included people with an investment in running schools, school system chiefs, and university-based researchers, a coalition of people interested in sponsoring school transformations which were based on reliable and tested theory. It is what gave ICSEI its great strength.

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In the light of this approach, those who have been involved in that reform movement from the outset need to ask where the ideas came from, why they did what they did, how they were able to accomplish some things and not others, and why the movement was so influential. It needs a retrospective analysis done with the perspective of distance.

What Did We Learn From The Outcomes Policy Era? It is provocative to ask how the productive mix of research, scholarship, theorizing, planning and actual practice came together, for the effectiveness/outcomes movement dramatically influenced education policies and in-school practices.

What Drives Research that is Policy-Rich and Practice-Oriented? Research, especially when it is policy-related, started to be seen in a different way in these decades. A research unit located inside a bureaucracy will always feel somewhat pressured to do what the bureaucracy wants, and to come up with findings the bureaucracy wants to own. They will be asked for validating evidence, not research that shows up a waste of time or money or intellectual shallowness. The Director General might embargo a piece of research, say that he does not want it done, or when it is done not want the results to be made public. For face validity, research needs to be conducted from an independent base which ensures that the findings are not skewed. In the 1970s the ACT system developed an effective model. The Canberra College of Advanced Education (CCAE) was new, and was developing higher degree courses in Education as well as an enviable research capacity. The Education Dean, Phillip Hughes, an educator of national renown, also happened to be (the lay) foundation chairman of the ACT Schools Authority through its early stages. The new school system was able to say to its individual teachers, many of them in senior school positions, that the system needed research on several specified topics, which could contribute to an M.Ed. thesis. The representative case was that of Doug Morgan who had charge of the agency for the accreditation of the new Year Twelve school certificate. He did his Masters thesis researching a problem on school measurement for which the system needed answers, but he was supervised independently by an academic from the CCAE. When research like this is done by leading-edge professional people in schools, and is supervised from an academic base that has no direct allegiance to the school system you get some very heady advice. The ACT Schools Authority was able to recruit as Head of the system’s research unit Dr. Bill Donovan from the academic staff of the University of Tasmania. His function was to review research which the system needed to have done, firm up proposals, fund them where necessary, negotiate with contractors or students to undertake the pieces of research, and then interpret the policy implications for the system once the findings were in. He was an in-house academic, situated in the Schools Office but brokering the research which the school system needed. This approach to research not only frustrated the imperialism that comes from having the locus of research inside the system and

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under its control, but also enabled the system to harness the volunteer enthusiastic effort of the educators themselves, their payoff being that they gained a degree out of it. Such a melding of research and policy development manifested in the 1990s in states like Victoria during the effectiveness movement, especially during Minister Don Hayward’s introduction of the substantial innovation called Schools of the Future. It is not always possible to say which piece of research influenced which policy maker, and it blurred the boundaries between who was the researcher and who was the policy maker.

Teacher Professionalism From the late 1970s through to the mid-1980s there was another substantial and parallel change going on in the minds of the people who were running schools and school systems. They needed to be abreast of the latest ideas in education, and wanted for a means to access them. With the burgeoning of programs of higher degrees and graduate diplomas in education, they sponsored the understanding among teachers that in-service education is not merely upgrading but rather equips them to be the theoreticians where practice is occurring. They created in the profession a generation of practitioner/ theoreticians; and an upgrading of the whole teaching profession occurred. The introduction of steep fees for higher degree study is now tending to reverse the trend.

A Graduate Profession A parallel change was that all new teachers were now graduates, their pre-service education resulting not merely in a certificate but in a degree. In order to function intelligently in a theory-driven and evidence-based education system, the educator needs to be thoroughly professional from the outset. The pressure was on universities to provide courses which were relevant, and were taught by staff members who were actively engaged with the day-by-day practice of schools.

School Use of Outcomes Data And this change produced a major transformation, for schools became adept at collecting data on a range of dimensions, allowing them to give an account of themselves in areas like parent satisfaction, staff morale, achievement in comparison with “like” schools, issues of world’s best practice, on top of an impressive bank of consistent, school-wide data on individual student achievement, much of it longitudinal, suitably normed and dove-tailed into state-wide and national curriculum frameworks.

Computerization of Schools Such an important transformation would have been impossible without using the new techniques of information technology. Put simply, schools computerized. Though they may not recognize themselves as such, the teaching profession is one of the most

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sophisticated users of front-edge computer technology in society. Their capacity has revolutionized the internal management of schools and has been crucial to the success of implementing the policies which have come out of the school effectiveness and improvement movement. Schools would have been incapable of keep tracking of or systematically analyzing student outcomes data without it.

The Transformations Encouraged The effective schools movement has found itself in harmony with several other major initiatives of the time. One has been the international networking of schools, a kind of down-line exchange of knowledge and expertise. The Specialist Schools and Academies Trust in the United Kingdom was an invitation for schools to break their boundaries and to interact with other schools in the areas of their known expertise. Not surprisingly, the movement went international, iNet becoming the arm which allowed schools across the developed world – Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Japan, Chile, China – to join the UK network. In the USA, the Charter Schools were a compatible spin-off. A school which could define its uniqueness, put up a program to give body to that speciality, win parent backing, and which could survive because it delivered on its promises, was given not only legitimacy but a legal basis on which to become a stand-alone school. In the UK in much the same way, the policy of “opting out” allowed schools to become disengaged from the jurisdiction of the local authorities. It allowed the New American Schools to emerge, with models for schooling which clearly broke the old patterns, but were considered safe because they were always under the discipline of accountability, of specifying objectives in a manner which could be tested and where their outcomes could be validated.

Is a Third Major Reform Period Developing? Is there a third wave of school reform about to break? The answer is an unequivocal, “Yes,” for the change factors are already clearly visible. We now live in a borderless world in which trade, interaction patterns, a huge number of enterprises, and social contacts are being internationalized. Patterns of schooling, curricula, assessment methods, learning programs, student achievement data are in the process of becoming international and interchangeable too, at least in the developed world. The world’s population centre of gravity is also moving inexorably to China and India, and to Central Africa. The twenty-first century will see the development of a nonEuropean cultural orientation, dominated by black and predominantly non-Christian countries. This generation of school children, wherever they live, will be forced to succeed in a multi-cultural, multi-faith, and multi-lingual world. And as many commentators have pointed out, unless there is urgent action among the present generation on earth, we may be in the end-time of the planet, or of human

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civilization. The factors have been well documented – global warming and the melting of the polar ice-caps, climate change and extreme weather, the shortage of clean water, pollution of the oceans, species extinctions, population displacement from rising sea level and, perhaps most basic of all, the escalation of the world’s population. Any natural disaster now – earthquake, hurricane, forest fires, mudslides and flooding, tsunamis – cause a human disaster on unprecedented scales because there are now so many more people who have settled, perhaps unwisely, in areas likely to be affected. This generation has to learn quickly how to be responsible citizens of the globe. A powerful indicator of the new wave of change is the hand-held mobile telephone. It is now an all-purpose device with multiple functions, and it is revolutionizing the thinking and interaction patterns across the world. It is soon to become a powerful teaching and educational device which will outdo in its significance what the computer has been for the previous generation. So the new wave is upon us. The major difference, if present evidence is to be noted, is the rapidity with which the new rollers will hit us as a species on earth. In terms of education and schooling, there are some developments which emerge.

A New Career Mode for Professionalized Educators One of the most obvious changes will be new patterns of employment and deployment among educators, who are already acting and thinking like professionals. There will be a mixing and matching of skills in much better ways than we have known in the past. For example, a proposal was put to me in the ACT Schools Authority that the Australian National University was having difficulty placing in suitable employment a person recently graduated with a Ph.D. in chemistry. Why not therefore appoint her to teach part-time Year Eleven and Twelve classes in a secondary college and also to undertake part time research on the academic staff at the university? A hybrid appointment like this benefits both the university and the secondary college, and makes use of special expertise to illuminate the work in each place. No two people are alike, least of all those professionally trained, and each is likely to seek out a highly satisfying career by taking on a set projects or assignments, in what has been called a portfolio career. Teachers most of all are entrepreneurial enough to explore these possibilities, and will inevitably do so.

The Theory/Practice Conundrum As a consequence, it is likely that teacher education itself will metamorphose from what it is now. It is already possible for a leading school or two with the right mix of academic and teaching staff to work in a symbiotic relationship with a tertiary institution. The research and development done from such a partnership not only extends the theory base of the profession but also extends the qualifications and expertise of the staff members, wiping out the artificial divide between who has the theory and who knows how to put it into practice. What emerges, then, is a clinical model for research, training and practice similar to what is now current in medical and engineering schools. The tradition in medical

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schools has always been to have adjunct and full Professors working as surgeons in teaching hospitals and generating from that base data which extends the theory of the profession’s science.

Superseding the Idea of Classes and Classrooms The days of the one-best-way solution, the one-best-way method, are gone. Diversity is with us. In the city of the future with the communications technology now available within it, the best educators will have portfolio careers, not salaries; many will not want to be tied necessarily to one school, to functions which they think other people could perform better than they could, or which do not make direct use of their developed expertise. So “classrooms” in 10 or 15 years’ time will have gone through a pretty substantial transformation. The assumption that there are certain learnings associated with certain ages, that it is appropriate to cluster students by age and teach them a lot of predetermined, content-rich, age-related material, that the curriculum and knowledge are stable are notions which will have been superseded. Knowledge refuses to be put into boxes like that, the old subject divisions are breaking down, and the curricula are becoming hybridized. Schools, then, will set up groups of learners – a house system, if you will – with whom a mixed group of teachers will be associated, acting as a team. They will do some individual instruction, some group instruction and some project supervision. They will direct learners to where they will find the information, and often the students will bring back a heap of data for the learning group to unscramble. Group learning as well as individual learning will be valued, and assessed as such.

Rethinking Examination, Assessments, and Certificates Certificates certify that this student has attained a defined level of skill or competence in particular areas. At any level in the schooling system it is possible to make out a certificate stating that Jane Smith has reached a level of competence in analytical skills, giving a profile of her scaffolding knowledge, the basic knowledge she has acquired which holds the learning program together, and detailing the evidence which confirms her learning profile. The old end-of-year exams belong with the industrial revolution and do not fit anymore. It’s a silly way of doing assessment. If parents are such an integral part of the success of their children at school, they have to be brought along with what the school is doing. One of the jobs of educators is to keep them informed. Using the “gold standard” or going back to “league tables” is a reversion to the 1960s, to inappropriate conformities and stereotypes.

Size of Systems There has been a debate over many years over how big a school system should be. In terms of stereotypes a nationally controlled system may seem logically defensible but it can also be personally a disaster. How could a decision-maker in the national capital

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decide what is in the best interests of two or three Aboriginal children in the remote north of Western Australia? Certainly some kind of coordinating or modifying mechanism is needed to ensure that no pockets get lost. There will always be machinery either nationally or provincially, but the key policy thrusts need to be taken by a unit close enough to families. The key policy-creating mechanism needs to be small enough to ensure that every single child is given an education which is the most appropriate for him or her. It has something to do with social size rather than geographical size, with how well people can communicate and interact. I have sympathy with the UK local education authority or the US district school system, which are of a size where parents know they can talk to the decision makers, and where learners are treated as individuals with idiosyncratic needs.

What is Best for the Learning Child? It often happens that last year’s innovation becomes this year’s rigidity. ICSEI may well be at the point where it has to consider the next giant step it should take. A generation of educators and policy-makers has gone through ICSEI in 20 years, and one has to ask how the next generation will use the organization. The fundamental question is whether it continues to be useful. Put more directly, in the final analysis the question will be whether it is improving the education on offer to the world’s children. So will school effectiveness, school efficiency, educational excellence, and school improvement survive as focal factors in policy? On past evidence, it is unlikely, at least in their present form, although the weather forecasts and the tide tables on which to make such reliable predictions are not yet to hand. But one thing is very clear. The sea levels across the earth are rising, literally as well as metaphorically. Be ready. You will soon see surf like we have never seen before!

3 GENERIC AND DIFFERENTIATED MODELS OF EDUCATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE Leonidas Kyriakides

Introduction Students’ individual differences present a pervasive and profound problem to teachers and schools. At the outset of instruction in any topic, students of any age and in any culture will differ from one another in various intellectual and psychomotor skills, generalized and specialized prior knowledge, interests and motives, socio-economic background, and personal styles of thoughts and work during learning (Tomlinson, 1999). This argument has a strong history in Educational Effectiveness Research (EER). The first effectiveness studies undertaken in Europe during the 1970s (e.g., Rutter, Maughan, Mortimore, Ouston, & Smith, 1979) were concerned with examining evidence and making an argument about the potential power of schooling to make a difference to students’ life chances. During the last three decades, publication of these studies was followed by numerous studies in different countries into school effectiveness and school improvement efforts, aimed at putting the results of research into practice (Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000; Townsend, Clarke, & Ainscow, 1999). A major aim of effectiveness studies was to support teachers and schools attempting to provide equal opportunities to their students with different learning needs arising from their background and personal characteristics. Coming from the history of research in inequality in education, it was evident that EER would look at the educational outcomes of disadvantaged children in particular and search for equity in schools. This meant looking at the amount in which schools were able to compensate for initial differences in defined outcomes. However, most effectiveness studies, while examining the magnitude of teacher and school effects, have paid very little attention to the extent to which teachers and schools perform consistently across differing school groupings (Kyriakides, 2004). As a consequence, the concepts of teacher and school effectiveness have been developed in a generic way, drawing up a “one size fits all” model, in which the assumption is that effective teachers and schools are effective with all students, in all contexts, in all aspects of their subjects and so on (Campbell, Kyriakides, Muijs, & Robinson, 2004). 41 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 41–56. © 2007 Springer.

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Such conceptualisation of effectiveness has led to a simplistic dichotomy between effective and ineffective teachers, eschewing the possibility that teachers may have strengths and weaknesses in their professional practice. This makes it difficult to use findings of teacher effectiveness/ school effectiveness research for measuring such strengths and weaknesses and, therefore, as a source for formative teacher evaluation/school evaluation (Kyriakides & Campbell, 2003; Reezigt, Creemers, & de Jong, 2003). Furthermore, despite evidence supporting differentiated educational effectiveness, researchers have tended to develop generic models of educational effectiveness. In this context, in the next section, I present a review of studies investigating differentiated teacher and school effectiveness conducted in different countries. I then make a case for the importance of developing differentiated models of educational effectiveness, and propose strategies for using differentiated models of educational effectiveness to improve practice in terms of both quality and equity. While this is a review of research in Europe, in some cases prior work in the United States has influenced and provided a base for this research. Therefore, pertinent American research will also be cited.

Differentiated Teacher and School Effectiveness Research During the last four decades, EER has shown that effective teaching demands orchestration of a wide array of skills that must be adapted to specific contexts (Brophy & Good, 1986). Although causal relations between teacher behaviour and student achievement have been demonstrated, resulting in a description of effective teaching practice, many characteristics of effective teaching vary according to student background (e.g., socio-economic status (SES), prior achievement, gender) and personal characteristics (e.g., students’ thinking style and personality), teachers’ objectives and subject area. In the first three parts of this section, I examine whether or not there is strong evidence for differentiated teacher effectiveness along three key dimensions: differentiated effectiveness in promoting progress of different groups of students according to their background characteristics; differentiated effectiveness in promoting progress of different groups of students according to their personal characteristics; and differentiated effectiveness in relation to the type of objectives that can be pursued within or across subjects. While these dimensions do not encompass the total range of possible dimensions of differentiation (see Campbell et al., 2004), they cover a number of issues at the forefront of current concerns in the field and have implications for developing strategies for improving teaching practice. The main findings of studies investigating differentiated school effectiveness are presented in the last part of this section.

Differentiated Teacher Effectiveness in Promoting Progress of Different Groups of Students According to their Background Characteristics Most studies investigating differentiated teacher effectiveness have been concerned with the extent to which different teacher behaviours are necessary for students of different SES and ability levels. Some evidence demonstrates that low and high ability

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students and low and high SES students respond to different teacher behaviours and styles (e.g., Brophy, 1992; Maden, 2001; Mortimore, 1999; Snow, 1986). Specifically, research into teacher effectiveness has revealed that low-SES students need more structure, more positive teacher reinforcement and need to receive the curriculum in smaller packages followed by rapid feedback (Brophy, 1986). Moreover, instructionalmethod differences can moderate the correlation between general intelligence measures and student achievement gains (den Brok, 2001). Less able learners do less well in conventional instruction or in environments in which independent learner activity is required to fill in gaps left by incomplete or less structured teaching. In the latter situation more able learners excel, whereas they do not benefit as much from tightly structured teaching (Snow & Lohman, 1984). Furthermore, middle and high ability students do not benefit from praise unrelated to the task. On the other hand, low achievers benefit from non-contingent feedback, due to many of these students’ low self-esteem. These findings seem to reveal that teachers who are effective with students of different background characteristics are able to differentiate their teaching practice, being aware that generic teaching skills do not have the same effect on low and high SES students’ progress (Creemers & Kyriakides, 2006). For example, effective teachers provide non-contingent feedback to low rather than middle and high SES students. Furthermore, students from lower SES backgrounds have been found to benefit from a more integrated curriculum across grades and subjects (Connell, 1996). Connecting learning to real-life experience and stressing practical applications have been found particularly important to low-SES students, as has making the curriculum relevant to their daily lives. This approach may diminish disaffection as well as promote learning (Hopkins & Reynolds, 2002; Montgomery et al., 1993). According to Mortimore (1999) effective teaching of low SES students should be teacher-led and practically focused, but not low-level or undemanding. There are no clear data, however, on racial and ethnic influences on relationships between teacher behaviour and student achievement. Although indirect influences mediated through SES have been identified, patterns of teacher behaviour unique to particular racial or ethnic groups have not. In general, differentiated teacher effectiveness research yields more powerful main effects than interactions, and the interactions that do appear tend to be ordinal since it appears that certain groups of students need more instruction than others but not a different form of instruction. Nevertheless, it is important to acknowledge that teacher effectiveness studies provide some empirical support for the effectiveness of using adaptive teaching in culturally diverse classrooms (e.g., Cole, 1985; Snow, 1986). The use of discourse styles already familiar to children in their cultural community outside of school to bridge to school reading activities is one example. Another one is establishing classroom participation rules that are sensitive to difference between participation rules common in some cultural groups and those typical of conventional schools. A third example involves choosing activities in biology that allow different students to capitalise on their own specialised prior knowledge and interests. These demonstrate how an effective teacher can use an observed student aptitude to circumvent, and eventually remove, potential student learning difficulties.

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Early research into teacher effectiveness has also demonstrated that teachers’ classroom behaviour depends on the students’ grade level. Generally speaking, effective teaching in the early grades involves a great deal of instruction in desired routines and procedures (Good & Grouws, 1979). Less of this is needed in later grades, but it becomes more important for students to identify the reasons for which they are dealing with a teaching task and to follow up on accountability demands (Brophy, 1986). In the early grades, lessons involve basic skills instruction, often in small groups, and it is important that each student participates overtly and often (Slavin, 1987). In the later grades, lessons involve applications of basic skills and instruction in more abstract content. In addition, overt participation is less important than teachers’ structuring, clarity and enthusiasm (Clark et al., 1979). Finally, although effective teachers of the later grades are expected to treat students’ contributions with interest and respect, the praise and symbolic rewards common in the early grades give way to a more impersonal and academically centred instruction in later grades.

Differentiated Teacher Effectiveness in Relation to Student Personal Characteristics Typically, aspects such as student learning styles and personality traits are put forward as key to student learning, and teachers are urged to take these factors into account in the classroom. However, the relationship between psychological characteristics of learners and teacher behaviour has not been systematically examined (Muijs, Campbell, Kyriakides, & Robinson, 2005). On the other hand, psychologists have demonstrated strong relations between student achievement and student personal characteristics such as personality and thinking styles. It is important to note that personality traits may be taken as different modes of relating with the environment. There have been several models of these traits. In this chapter, I refer only on the so-called Big Five model because it seems to dominate and underpin current European research and theory, and accounts for a large amount of variability in personality (Blickle, 1996). According to this model, the factors of personality are as follows: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. Most of the Big Five personality traits have been found to be associated with academic performance. For example, openness to experience is related to academic success in school (Shuerger & Kuma, 1987). Extraversion and neuroticism have also been associated with academic performance after nearly 40 years of investigation. Recent studies reveal that extraverts under-perform in academic settings because of their distractibility, sociability and impulsiveness (Demetriou et al., 2003). The negative relation between academic achievement and neuroticism is usually explained in terms of anxiety and stress under test conditions (Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2003). But the factor more consistently associated with academic performance is conscientiousness (Blickle, 1996; Chamorro-Premuzic & Furnham, 2003). Both intelligence and personality comprise salient individual differences which influence performance: intelligence, through specific abilities which facilitate understanding and learning; personality, through certain traits which enhance and/or handicap the use of these abilities (Ackerman, 1996).

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In searching variables that contribute to school achievement, psychologists have also devoted considerable attention to the so-called stylistic aspects of cognition. The idea of a style reflecting a person’s typical or habitual mode of problem solving, thinking, perceiving and remembering was initially introduced by Allport (1937). In the past few decades, the style construct has attracted considerable research interest and many theoretical models have been postulated. Grigorenko and Sternberg (1995) classified various theories of styles into three approaches: cognition-centred, personality-centred and activity-centred. These three approaches differ not only in the focus of their interest, but also in how they address the functional aspects of styles. The cognition- and personality-centred approaches typically imply that styles are either-or constructs and consistent across various tasks and situations. For example, a person could be either field-independent or field-dependent. In this chapter, I examine theories of thinking style in the activity-centred framework since this framework allows for change and is, thereby, the closest to EER. Moreover, psychologists have generated evidence that activity-centred styles explain individual performance differences not explained by abilities (Zhang, 2001). Finally, an educational effectiveness study has shown that activity-centred styles associated with the theory of mental self-government (Sternberg, 1988) can be treated as student level factors explaining variation on student achievement gains (Kyriakides, 2005a). The argument for the importance of investigating teacher differentiated effectiveness in relation to student personality and thinking styles not only arises because these two factors were found to be associated with student achievement, but also because of the main findings of research on differentiated instruction. Research on differentiated instruction is partly concerned with teachers’ attempt to teach according to individual learning styles. For example, the American Dunn and Dunn learning style model suggests at least five different instructional methods for teaching identical content. Each of the methods responds to the learning styles of specific students. Researchers have modified this model to examine numerous instructional practices as they affect students at various levels, with diverse learning-style characteristics (Farkas, 2003). A meta-analysis of 42 experimental studies based on Dunn and Dunn’s model was conducted to determine the value of teaching students through their learning-style preferences (Dunn, Griggs, Olsen, Beasley, & Gorman, 1995). It was found that students whose learning styles are accommodated would be expected to achieve 75% of a standard deviation higher than students who have not had their learning styles accommodated. Because each of the experimental studies provided responsive and non-responsive instructional strategies to students’ learning-style preferences, the data suggested that matching students’ learning-style preferences with educational interventions compatible with those preferences was beneficial to their academic achievement. Similar arguments can be made in relation to Kolb’s experiential learning theory which presents a way of structuring a session or a whole course using a learning cycle (Kolb, 1984). Different stages of the cycle are associated with distinct learning styles. In the literature, there is also an attempt to identify the effect of different teaching methods on students with different personality types (Boekaerts, 1996; de Raad & Schouwenburg, 1996; Nussbaum, 2002). For example, Shadbolt (1978) found that students high on a neuroticism scale performed better with structured, rather than

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unstructured, teaching methods. However, one study conducted in Cyprus has investigated teacher differentiated effectiveness in relation to student personal characteristics (Kyriakides, 2005a). An element in this study was investigating whether generic teaching skills found to be consistently correlated with student achievement may have a general effect across all students but also effect students of different thinking styles and personality traits to a different degree. In this study, stratified sampling was used to select 32 out of 147 Cypriot primary schools. All the year six students (N
1721) from each class (N
81) of the school sample were chosen. Different criteria for measuring teacher and school effectiveness were used. Data on students’ cognitive achievement in mathematics and Greek language were collected using external and internal forms of assessment. Affective outcomes were also measured through a questionnaire exploring students’ attitudes towards peers, teachers, school and learning. These outcome assessments were administered to the student sample at the beginning and end of school year 2001–2002. Questionnaires to students, teachers, and headteachers were also administered to collect data about explanatory variables. In addition, observations were carried out to measure teachers’ classroom behaviour. “The Personality Inventory” including 50 items, ten for each of the Big Five factors of personality (Costa & McCrae, 1997), was also administered to the students. Structural equation modelling analysis affirmed the theory on which the inventory was developed. Finally, students’ thinking style was measured by a short version of the “Thinking Styles Inventory.” Based on results of five exploratory factor analyses of students’ responses to items in each of the five dimensions of mental self-government, it was possible to identify factors representing each thinking style other than the “oligarchic” style. Multi-level analysis for each outcome measure was carried out to investigate teacher differentiated effectiveness in relation to student personal characteristics. The main findings of this study follow. First, one type of personality (conscientiousness) and two thinking styles (executive and liberal) were found to be related to achievement in both cognitive outcomes and affective outcomes of schooling. Second, in the case of mathematics, a statistically significant cross-level interaction was identified between executive thinking style and teachers’ ability to provide practical and application opportunities. Specifically, the effect of the executive style on mathematics achievement was higher when teachers provided more practical and application opportunities for students. Third, the multi-level analysis of student progress in language revealed a statistically significant cross-level interaction between liberal style and teachers’ ability to give information. In this case, the effect of the liberal style on student achievement gains in Greek language was higher when teachers spent less time in giving their students information. Finally, teacher differentiated effectiveness was identified in relation to students’ personality. The teacher effect in cognitive outcomes was found to be more significant for students with lower scores in openness to experiences. Similarly, the teacher effect in affective outcomes was found to be more significant for students with lower scores in conscientiousness. This study not only reveals that both personality and thinking style should be treated as factors explaining variation of student achievement gains, but evidence also supports the importance of investigating teacher differentiated effectiveness in relation to

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student personal characteristics. However, it is important not to overestimate the differentiated nature of teacher effectiveness. This study has shown that most variables measuring teaching skills (e.g., practical application opportunities, giving information, providing feedback) have a general effect across the three outcome categories but also operate differentially in relation to types of student personality and thinking style. This suggests that the concept of differentiated teacher effectiveness in relation to student personal characteristics ought not to be polarized against a generic concept. Rather the former should be incorporated as a refinement into the latter.

Differentiated Teacher Effectiveness in Relation to the Different Objectives that can be Pursued Although differentiation in effective teaching has mainly been examined in relation to student background characteristics, effective teaching seems also to vary according to teachers’ objectives and content of the subject taught (Campbell et al., 2004). First, evidence for differentiation between subjects can be identified from two parallel projects looking at teacher effectiveness in numeracy and literacy conducted in England. While there were clear similarities between the characteristics of effective teachers in the two studies, effective teachers of numeracy were more likely to differentiate tasks by ability than were effective teachers of literacy (Askew, Rhodes, Brown, William, & Johnson, 1997; Medwell, Poulson, & Wray, 1999). It can be expected that there are more differences between subjects, which may be related to such factors as the more or less hierarchical nature of the subject, whether it is science, arts, or humanities based and the extent to which the subject is loosely or tightly coupled (Muijs et al., 2005). Moreover, classroom environment and educational effectiveness studies including interpersonal teacher behaviour revealed that teacher influence was associated with student achievement in mathematics whereas proximity was associated with achievement in language (den Brok, Brekelmans, & Wubbels, 2004; Kyriakides, 2005b). Second, it has been shown that there is a relation between objectives and the way students master objectives (Kyriakides & Creemers, 2006). Therefore, teachers should take into account both their students’ characteristics and their objectives in organizing their teaching practice. Specifically, early American teacher effectiveness research demonstrated that if students need new information, they are likely to need group lessons featuring teacher information presentation followed by recitation or discussion opportunities (Brophy, 1986). Follow-up application or practice needs also depend on the objectives. When students are expected to reproduce knowledge on cue, routine seatwork assignments and tests might suffice. On the other hand, if students are expected to integrate broad patterns of learning or apply them in everyday life situations, students should be given the opportunities to solve problems, make decisions, or construct projects. In recent decades, there has been an increasing emphasis on higher order thinking skills and some evidence supports that different teaching methods may be needed to address higher order thinking skills (Muijs et al., 2005). In particular, direct instruction methods found to be highly effective in teaching basic skills may be insufficient for addressing higher order thinking skills (Costa, 1984; Muijs & Reynolds, 2001). These views have led to the development of models of teaching seeking explicitly to address

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higher order thinking. A number of approaches have been developed aimed at improving students’ higher order thinking skills, often focussing on the development of metacognition, the use of strategies for solving problems and teaching modelling approaches (Adey & Shayer, 1994; de Jager, 2002). Finally, research into differentiation in assessment reveals that effective teachers use assessment techniques in line with lesson objectives and students’ background and personal characteristics. This is because different assessment strategies are seen as more effective and relatively bias free for specific groups of students and for measuring specific skills. In this context, many psychometric studies have been conducted investigating differential item functioning of national tests in European countries by taking into account differences in student background and in objectives and subject content (e.g., Glas, 1997; Linn, 1993). In general, it has been found that the nature and cognitive level of the information given and questions asked during an activity depend on the activity’s objectives and its place within the anticipated progression through the curriculum (Hayes & Deyhle, 2001).

Research into Differentiated School Effectiveness Research into school effectiveness has provided strong evidence of the existence of differences between schools in their overall effectiveness in promoting students’ academic attainments. However, early beliefs that school influence might be as large as family or community influences were misplaced (Scheerens & Bosker, 1997). Nevertheless, it cannot be claimed that school effects are of little consequence. For example, it has been shown that an average difference between an effective and non-effective school of twothirds of a standard deviation implies a lead of or falling behind an entire school year for the average student (Scheerens, 1992). But although the magnitude of school effect has been identified, there may be considerable variations in these effects within schools, across subject domains, cohorts, grades and teachers. Thus, the consistency and stability of school effects comprise two of the most fundamental issues in EER. Consistency refers to different criterion variables whereas stability has to do with different time points. Studies on school effectiveness investigating the stability (e.g., Gray, Jesson, Goldstein, Hedger, & Rasbash, 1995; Luyten, 1994) and consistency (e.g., Kyriakides, 2005a; Opdenakker & Van Damme, 2000; Thomas & Mortimore, 1996) of school effects have revealed that school effects are stable to a certain degree but that there appears to be a lack of consistency across subject domains. Thus, variations exist between schools in their effectiveness in promoting different kinds of academic outcomes (Kyriakides, 2005a; Mortimore, Sammons, Stoll, Lewis, & Ecob, 1988; Opdenakker & Van Damme, 2000; Smith & Tomlinson, 1989; Tizard, Blatchford, Burke, Farquhar, & Plewis, 1988). Indeed, Fitz-Gibbon, Tymms, and Hazlewood (1990) and Sammons, Thomas, and Mortimore (1997) show substantial variation between the effectiveness of different schools’ subject departments. Based on these findings, the unidimensionality of school effects in secondary schools is questionable. Departmental differences in effectiveness may be a more relevant concept than overall school differences in effectiveness. Another important aspect of the unidimensionality of the concept of a school effect is whether general effectiveness should or should not be separated from differentiated

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effectiveness. Studies concerning the stability and consistency of school effectiveness have been based on the assumption that the effectiveness of a school is its effectiveness for the average student, with respect to aptitude, SES etc. Little attention has been paid to the extent to which schools perform consistently across differing school groupings. Studies investigating differentiated school effectiveness have mainly been concerned with the schools’ capacity to be effective with different groups of students according to their background characteristics. In England Sammons, Nuttall, and Cuttance (1993) showed that for primary schools differential effects could only be demonstrated for the prior attainment position of students and not with respect to their gender, SES or ethnicity status. Moreover, the evidence about differentiated school effectiveness related to pupil gender and for ethnic differences shows little overall consensus (Nuttall, Goldstein, Prosser, & Rasbach, 1989). Similar findings have emerged from two studies investigating differentiated school effectiveness in relation to student background characteristics conducted in Cyprus (Campbell et al., 2004; Kyriakides, 2004). No evidence of significant differentiated school effectiveness in relation to sex and social class was identified. However, it was found that although Cypriot schools that are considered effective for the lower attaining pupils are also effective for the higher attaining pupils, school effects are more significant for lower than for higher attaining pupils.

Towards the Development of Both Generic and Differentiated Models of Educational Effectiveness Four main conclusions emerge from studies investigating teacher and school differentiated effectiveness. First, studies investigating differentiated teacher and school effectiveness reveal that although educational practice remains basically fixed and non-adaptive in most countries, it is primarily the teacher’s adaptive instructional behaviour which makes teachers and schools able to provide equal opportunities to students with different background characteristics. Relying on the development and use of differentiated textbooks and curriculum may be necessary, but is insufficient, for promoting equity at the school level. The most critical factor is the teacher’s ability to respond to students’ different learning and affective needs. Effective teachers are able to provide different learning support systems to different groups of students in order to help them achieve different types of objectives. Second, there has been criticism that EER does little to address the problems of social justice and inclusion (e.g., Slee, Weiner, with Tomlinson, 1998; Thrupp, 2001). However, research into differentiated effectiveness seems to provide not only answers to the critics of educational effectiveness research but also a new perspective in the discussion about educational equality. For example, as already noted, studies in Cyprus on differentiated teacher and school effectiveness revealed that specific groups of pupils are systematically being disadvantaged in their rate of learning by comparison with other groups (e.g., Kyriakides, 2004, 2005a). In addition, Cypriot teachers were found to matter most for children who are being disadvantaged. These findings are probably not restricted to Cyprus since studies on differentiated school effectiveness

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conducted in USA support the conclusion that schools matter most for underprivileged and/or initially low-achieving students (e.g., Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992; Teddlie & Stringfield, 1993). Therefore, research into differentiated effectiveness may have important implications for policy-makers and teachers attempting to design and implement policies on equal opportunities. Third, it has been shown that teachers and schools may be more effective with some groups of students and less with others. This implies that research on differentiated effectiveness is needed to raise issues concerning the extent to which specific factors connected with teachers’ classroom behaviour are associated with teacher and school effectiveness in promoting specific groups of pupils’ progress. Identifying these factors may be useful for policy makers attempting to design and implement policies on equal opportunities. The question of what exactly makes teachers effective in different areas, and whether there are teachers who are effective in all, or more or less effective in different factors, is one that needs exploring both from a research and professional development point of view. Finally, methodological issues can be raised about the nature of the studies on differentiated effectiveness. In general, research on differentiated effectiveness seems to suffer from many of the weaknesses characterising much educational research. Most qualitative studies rely on case study methodology and interviews, which risks confounding rhetoric with reality due to their self-report methodology. True longitudinal studies, involving ethnographic immersion within the school, would help overcome these issues. Likewise, most quantitative studies are one-off cross-sectional survey designs, making it hard to distinguish correlation and causality. Use of more experimental and longitudinal designs would help clarify these issues (Kyriakides & Creemers, 2006). Overall, however, this review highlights an urgent need for research going beyond one size fits all teacher behaviour studies to look at teaching as a multidimensional role. Such studies will not only help us develop differentiated models of educational effectiveness but may also contribute in establishing strong links between research on effectiveness and improvement of educational practice (Stoll & Fink, 1996; Wikeley, Stoll, Murillo, & de Jong, 2005). In the final section, therefore, I provide suggestions on how teachers and schools might make use of differentiated models of educational effectiveness to improve the quality and equity of their teaching practice.

Suggestions for Possible Uses of Differentiated Models of Effectiveness for Improving Educational Practice During the last two decades, effectiveness studies conducted in different countries have supported the argument that models of EER should be multi-level in nature (Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000). The relationship between factors at different levels might also be more complex than assumed in the integrated models (Creemers & Kyriakides, 2006). This is especially true for interaction effects among factors operating at classroom and student level which reveal the importance of investigating differentiated effectiveness (Campbell et al., 2004). Therefore, researchers should establish models

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of EER which are not only multi-level in nature but also demonstrate the complexity of improving educational effectiveness by taking into account the major findings of research into differentiated effectiveness. A differentiated model of EER may also help us establish stronger links between EER and improvement of educational practice. At least three possible ways exist of establishing links between the results and theoretical models of research into differentiated effectiveness and improvement of educational practice. First, based on the various dimensions used to examine differentiated teacher effectiveness, different teaching profiles can be produced, including those relating to achievement of different groups of students. Teachers could then identify the extent to which their classroom behaviour is similar to any of these profiles and whether specific changes to their practice are needed. Differentiated models of effectiveness are, therefore, useful tools for teacher and school self-evaluation of quality and equity in effectiveness. Since school and teacher self-evaluation is considered as a key to improvement (MacBeath, 1999; MacBeath, Schratz, Meuret, & Jakobsen, 2000), teachers and schools may attempt to improve their practice by providing differentiated support to various groups of students based on their background and personal characteristics. Moreover, teachers and headteachers could be encouraged to draw their own meanings of what makes schools and teachers effective in terms of efficiency and equity by considering the knowledge base of effective teaching practice provided by research on differentiated effectiveness. Second, the findings of differentiated effectiveness research reveal that differentiation of teaching practice should be seen as a significant dimension of measuring the function of each effectiveness factor. The current models of EER do not explicitly refer to measurement of each factor. On the contrary, it is often assumed that these factors represent unidimensional constructs. For example, the comprehensive model of educational effectiveness states that there should be control at school level, meaning that goal attainment and the school climate should be evaluated (Creemers, 1994). In line with this assumption, studies investigating the model’s validity have revealed that schools with an assessment policy focused on formative purposes of assessment are more effective (de Jong, Westerhof, & Kruiter, 2004; Kyriakides, 2005a; Kyriakides, Campbell, & Gagatsis, 2000). However, school level assessment policy can also be examined in terms of many other aspects of the functioning of assessment such as procedures used to design assessment instruments, forms of record keeping, and policy on reporting results to parents and pupils. This implies that EER models should not only refer to various effectiveness factors but also explain the dimensions upon which each factor can be measured. Considering effectiveness factors as multidimensional constructs not only provides a better picture of what makes teachers and schools effective but also helps develop more specific strategies for improving educational practice (Creemers & Kyriakides, 2006). Research into differentiated effectiveness seems to reveal that researchers should examine the extent to which activities associated with a factor are implemented in the same way for all the subjects involved with it (e.g., all the students, teachers, schools). Adaptation to specific needs of each subject or group of subjects is likely to increase successful implementation of a factor and ultimately maximise its effect on student learning outcomes. Therefore, models taking into account findings of research into differentiated effectiveness provide support for the

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argument that people of all ages, learn, think and process information differently. This means that effective teachers need to acknowledge, honour, and cultivate individuality, using differentiated instruction and building on the premise that learners differ in important ways (Tomlinson, 1999). One way for teachers to differentiate instruction is by teaching according to individual student learning needs as defined by their background and personal characteristics such as gender, SES, ability, thinking style and personality type. For example, effective teachers would provide more active instruction and feedback, and break instruction into smaller steps for low-SES or low-achieving students. On the other hand, being aware that high SES students thrive in an academically stimulating and demanding atmosphere, they would create such a learning environment for them. In addition to good instruction, warmth and support would be provided to low SES students who need to be more frequently encouraged for their efforts. Similarly, policy makers should adapt their general policy to the specific needs of groups of schools and encourage teachers to differentiate their instruction. Focusing on differentiation does not imply that different subjects should not be expected to achieve the same purposes. On the contrary, adapting the policy to the special needs of each group of schools, teachers and students is likely to ensure that all of them will become able to achieve the same purposes. Support for this argument comes from European research into adaptive teaching and evaluation projects of innovations concerned with the use of adaptive teaching in classrooms (Houtveen, van der Grift, & Creemers, 2004; Reusser, 2000). Finally, using a differentiated model of EER, policy makers could evaluate national and school policy on equality of opportunities in education. The success and failure of school change is affected by the influence that the inputs, processes and context of the school and of education in general have on student outcomes (Hopkins, 1996; Reezigt, 2001; Reynolds, Hopkins, & Stoll, 1993; Stoll, Creemers, & Reezigt, 2006). Even when the effectiveness of different components is improved, the question remains as to whether or not that change induces higher pupil outcomes. Therefore, the evaluation of any policy promoting equality of opportunities can be based on investigating its impact on promoting educational progress of socially disadvantaged pupils. Moreover, the effectiveness of micro-level policies on equality of opportunities in education can be evaluated by examining whether there is any association between the effectiveness of the school and the implementation of such policy. Research is, however, needed to investigate the impact that the use of the differentiated models may have on improving teaching practice at teacher-level through building self-evaluation mechanisms and at national level through establishing an “evidence-based” approach on introducing educational policy promoting the provision of equal opportunities. Generally, it can be claimed that since research into differentiated effectiveness illustrates ample opportunities for promoting differentiation in practice, policy-makers and teachers can use the main findings of research into differentiated effectiveness to define their roles and professional activities and improve their practice. However, further research is needed to identify whether using results and models of differentiated EER results in more effectiveness in terms of both quality and equity.

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Teddlie, C., & Reynolds, D. (2000). The international handbook of school effectiveness research. London: Falmer Press. Teddlie, C., & Stringfield, S. (1993). Schools make a difference: Lessons learned from a ten year study of school effects. New York: Teachers College Press. Thomas, S., & Mortimore, P. (1996). Comparison of value-added models for secondary school effectiveness. Research Papers in Education, 11(1), 5–33. Thrupp, M. (2001). Sociological and political concerns about school effectiveness research: Time for a new research agenda. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12(1), 7–40. Tizard, B., Blatchford, P., Burke, J., Farquhar, C., & Plewis, I. (1988). Young children at school in the inner city. Hove: Lawrence Erlbaum. Tomlinson, C. (1999). The differentiated classroom: Responding to the needs of all learners. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Townsend, T., Clarke, P., & Ainscow, M. (Eds.) (1999). Third millennium schools: A world of difference in effectiveness and improvement. Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger. Wikeley, F., Stoll, L., Murillo, J., & de Jong, R. (2005). Evaluating effective school improvement: Case studies of programs in eight European countries and their contribution to the effective school improvement model. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 16(4): 387–405. Zhang, L. F. (2001). Do thinking styles contribute to academic achievement beyond self-rated abilities? The Journal of Psychology, 135, 621–638.

4 IMPROVING SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS: RETROSPECTIVE AND PROSPECTIVE

John MacBeath

Between 1995 and 1999 a team from the University of Strathclyde and the Institute of Education in London conducted an effectiveness and improvement study of 80 Scottish primary and secondary schools. This chapter outlines the purpose, process and outcomes of that study, setting these in the context of the prior studies and exploring what we have learned that confirms or challenges existing knowledge. The chapter goes on to consider what we now have to learn and apply in a social, economic and policy context which is undergoing complex change and to give consideration to the very different canvas on which effectiveness and improvement will have to be drawn in the future.

School Effectiveness: The Scottish Context Scotland is a country which likes to maintain an identity distinct from its immediate neighbor to the south, and prides itself on a fully comprehensive system which encompasses 97% of all children and young people. The remaining 3% attend independent schools. Within the state sector there is no selection by ability, in comparison with England where post-primary school selection by ability still exists in a quarter of all local authorities. Selection at secondary school level is also still characteristic of many European countries, so making comparative data more problematic than policy makers would have us believe. Since 1970, when the Scottish system moved at a stroke from a selective two tier system to one fully comprehensive, it provided an attractive and even playing field for effectiveness researchers. The greater homogeneity of Scottish schools is shown in the 1992 OECD statistics on Mathematics achievement. The variance among schools in England was 63% while in Scotland it was 16%. This was ascribed (Raab, 1993) to the “vertical partnership” of national government, local authorities and comprehensive schools in which respect, historically, Scottish authorities have followed a more coordinating, even interventionist path, than many other countries with regard to 57 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 57–74. © 2007 Springer.

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school staffing, resourcing, professional development and school leadership. In recent years local school management has, however, somewhat breached that tradition.

A Legacy of Studies Through the 1980s and 1990s the Centre for Educational Sociology (CES) in Edinburgh produced a substantial and influential body of work (Cuttance, McPherson, Raffe, & Willms, 1988; Gray, McPherson, & Raffe, 1983; McPherson, 1992; Paterson, 1992). Much of this work drew on a Scottish Office database of “Scottish School Leavers,” its purpose, to ascertain why so many young people left school prematurely and without adequate qualifications. The CES data confirmed the powerful effects of factors beyond the control of schools but also demonstrated that individual schools could make a significant difference at the margins. Drawing on the Scottish School Leavers’ database, John Gray and his colleagues (1983) showed that when background factors were applied to examination performance tables, a significant re-ordering of the ranking among schools took place. This led the research team to the conclusion that if parents chose schools on the basis of examination results alone they would very often choose the wrong school. Drawing further on the school leavers’ data, it was found that if you were a pupil of average ability your chances of exam success were better in schools where your peers were of high ability than in schools where they were of low ability. This has since come to be known as the “contextual” or “compositional” effect, suggesting that the social milieu of school may have an additional impact over and above the influence of an individual’s personal and family characteristics. As well as attainment data from these cohorts of young people, researchers also gathered an impressive body of testament from former students, a collection of powerful statements abut the nature of schooling. Published in 1980 as Tell them from Me (Gow & McPherson, 1980) it told the story of “flung aside forgotten children.” Gow and McPherson’s study brought home more vividly than performance data the differing impact of schools on individual pupils. Other qualitative work, although not in the school effectiveness mainstream, added much to help in the interpretation and contextualization of school effects findings which were to follow. The work of Noel Entwistle and his colleagues in Edinburgh, Wynne Harlen and colleagues at the Scottish Council for Educational Research and John Nisbet and colleagues at Aberdeen, for example, made a significant contribution to our understanding of classroom processes while Brown, Riddell’s and Duffield’s in-depth study of four schools (1996) married a school effectiveness approach to an ethnographic case study work. The challenge to the school effectiveness movement was for it to integrate the increasingly-sophisticated data modeling with more qualitative, ethnographic approaches. In his 1989 lecture to the Scottish Educational Research Association David Hargreaves commented: Remember that one of the characteristics of the effective school is the belief by pupils that they are valued by staff. Asking for their views is a practical way in which teachers can value pupils.

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At policy level the Scottish Education Department held a close watching brief on emerging studies, setting up a Management of Resources Unit to drive forward effectiveness work. At local authority level councils began to put into place quality assurance teams and local authorities such as Fife and Grampian (Croxford, 1996; Cuttance et al., 1988) commissioned school effectiveness studies of their schools. In 1998 level the Scottish Education Department published its own intelligence gathering document Effective Secondary Schools followed a year later by Effective Primary Schools (SED, 1989). These two documents were designed to put into the hands of schools issues that had previously been the province of researchers and to serve as a reference for school development planning, seen by policy-makers as the mechanism through which greater effectiveness would be delivered (SED, 1991). The publication of the school self-evaluation guidelines (SED, 1992) signaled a sea change in thinking about how schools improve. Criteria for evaluating school quality and effectiveness were moved from the guarded domain of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate into the public arena, a paradigmatic shift in philosophy that, nearly a decade later, many other countries in the world are emulating. Presaging this development, David Hargreaves described it as an important step in helping teachers “take ownership of their diagnosis of the school and develop a commitment to implementing the solutions they themselves formulate” (1989, p. 12). A 1991 collection of papers under the title School Effectiveness Research: Its messages for improvement (Riddell and Brown) laid the groundwork for a major Scottish-based research project. Although Scotland had moved further and faster than its UK counterparts in school self-evaluation, there was no Scottish equivalent to the Rutter or Mortimore studies in England, nor to Reynolds’ work in Wales or the many American studies which were often used to apply, or possibly misapply, to the Scottish context. In 1995 the renamed Scottish Office Education Department put out to tender a study to which provide empirical data on a national basis and answer some of the key policy issues of the day. It was also seen as further strengthening the rigor of school self-evaluation.

The Improving School Effectiveness Project (ISEP) The tender for the research was won by a collaborative team from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and the Institute of Education in London.1 The remit for the research team was to shed light on the relationship between school processes and outcomes with particular emphasis on school ethos, development planning, and learning and teaching. It was also asked contribute to the development of a framework for assessing “value-added” and to assess the impact of recent policy initiatives. The team was asked to explore the processes by which school effectiveness is improved, in particular to identify actions (in the context of national initiatives) that would “move” a relatively ineffective school forward; and to establish more clearly how such actions affect classroom learning and teaching and pupils’ attainments. The research team was also asked to take account of insights gained over the last two decades of school effectiveness research elsewhere in the world and to set findings within that wider international context.

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A Question of Design The research design was to sample 80 primary and secondary schools on a representative basis across Scotland and track these schools over a 2 year period. Any school joining the project would be required to make a substantial commitment to data gathering at the outset of the project and again 2 years down the line. Schools were asked to work with the research team to gather the following data: ● ● ● ● ●

14 background measures for each pupil in the primary 4 and secondary 2 cohort three attainment tests – one in Mathematics and two in English a pupil attitude questionnaire for all P4 and S2 pupils teacher questionnaires for all staff questionnaires to a random sample of parents.

In 1997, the exercise was repeated for teachers and parents who had been sampled in 1995 and for the P4 cohort, by now in P6. The same applied to secondary schools, but instead of using the ISEP tests for the cohort, whose students were by now in S4, results on Scottish Standard Grade examinations (the equivalent of the English GCSE) were collected. In addition to the data collection across all 80 schools, in depth work took place in 24 case study schools, a sub sample of the 80 designed to reflect the broad characteristics of the larger sample, In these schools 11 qualitative instruments were used to gather information on ethos, development planning, the management of change and teaching and learning. These case study schools had the benefit of two members of the research team to assist with the collection, interpretation and feedback of data. One of the pair assumed the role of critical friend, working alongside teachers and senior leaders to plan and implement change while the researcher had the task of documenting the response to the data and other broader change processes (MacBeath & Mortimore, 2001). The role and influence of the critical friend was a central aspect of the case studies as we wanted to explore the extent to which outside support and challenge could play a part in school improvement. An external researcher was commissioned in the final stages of the project to evaluate the impact of the critical friend (Doherty, Jardine, Smith, & McCall, 2001).

Enlisting Schools in a Time of Crisis The launch of the project took place in the middle of a teachers’ boycott of all additional work with strong discouragement by the unions to engage in any initiatives such as ISEP. At the height of this industrial action members of the research team visited each local authority and invited headteachers to a meeting to put the project before them and essentially to “sell” them the idea of being involved in something which would be of benefit to their schools, especially in respect of self-evaluation. It was a hard sell as many of the heads, however interested, could not, in that embattled climate, commit their schools to such an undertaking. In all cases heads were asked not to make an instant decision but only to do so with the full support of their staff. They, therefore, had to try and convince their staff that this would be a worthwhile undertaking. Some

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heads, keen to be involved, fell at this second hurdle. The selection of the final 80 schools, drawn from over 300 involved in discussions and from a sub set of 100 who volunteered, was a time consuming task but one that achieved its end – a well drawn representative sample including the highest and lowest achieving schools in the country with a distribution that was a close reflection of the national picture.

Multi-Level Modeling One of the important strands of the project was measurement of pupil attainment and progress taking account of the impact of pupils’ background factors and prior attainment. Multi-level modeling was used to examine the relationship between 14 measures of pupil background and previous educational experiences; in relation to attainment. This was done at two points for both the primary and secondary samples – at P4 and P6; and at S2 and S4. We were interested in exploring patterns of attainment at two points in time with a specific focus on Reading and Mathematics. The choice of this restricted focus on the “core” subjects was only taken after long debate within the team, many its members wanting to look more widely and creatively at other less traditional learning domains. It was both a pragmatic and political decision to stay with these two key areas, and to concentrate our analysis on how attainment and progress in English and Mathematics played out in relation to factors such as gender, age, socio-economic circumstances and provision of learning support. Multi-level models were used to examine the extent to which, after controlling for prior attainment and background influences, there was evidence of differences among schools in their effectiveness (Thomas, 1998). Meeting one aspect of its remit the project developed a value-added framework for primary and secondary schools of immediate use to schools in identifying pupils’ differing rates of progress.

The Findings We were not surprised to find that, in common with every other robust effectiveness study, pupil background was strongly related to attainment. Socio-economic disadvantage showed a particularly powerful impact in Reading/English measures for younger age groups at P4, a confirmation of the summer and winter born phenomenon which affects the age, and readiness, of starting school (Mortimore, Sammons, Stoll, Lewis, & Ecob, 1988). As children progress, prior attainment, again unsurprisingly, shows a strong relationship with later attainment. There was, however, evidence that certain groups made more progress than others. For example, girls were ahead in reading by P6, but boys were ahead in Mathematics. At secondary level boys and pupils eligible for free school meals made less progress in English and overall in their Standard Grade results at 15/16. These differences in progress were both within and between schools. After controlling for prior attainment and background, value-added results revealed statistically significant differences in school effectiveness. Up to one third of the variance in primary schools was attributable to the school effect while at secondary level it was between 6 and 7%. These whole school effects did, however, mask internal

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variations. In nearly a quarter of the secondary schools, there were both positive and negative value-added scores, for example, positive for English and negative for Mathematics. Similarly, nearly a third of primaries showed a mixture of negative and positive residuals. In other words, it is clear that schools are not uniformly effective or ineffective, reflecting findings by Smith and Tomlinson’s (1989) and Sammons, Thomas, and Mortimore (1997). Among the 36 secondary schools only three (8%) significantly added value across all three academic measures – Standard Grade mathematics, Standard Grade English and overall score for best seven Standard Grades. A similar picture emerged among the primaries. In only a few schools was there significant value-added across the curriculum. Much more typical was a variable pattern of achievement, in some cases children performing very differently in Mathematics and in reading. As found in other studies, value-added is stronger in Mathematics than in language due to Mathematical skill being less affected by home and community factors than spoken and written language. In Mathematics about one quarter of ISEP secondary schools were significantly adding value to pupil achievement. For Mathematics in primary schools, the figure was similar. In the minority of schools which performed consistently and significantly above expectation, there was no socio-economic bias. In other words, although showing very different levels of measured outcomes, value-added scores covered the whole socioeconomic spectrum. One of the three secondary schools performing significantly well in all value-added outcomes had relatively high free school meal entitlement while the secondary school with the highest free school meal entitlement performed above expectation in two out of three of the attainment outcomes. As for gender differences, in primary schools there were no significant differences between boys and girls in reading or Mathematics at P4 but by P6, however, boys were ahead in Mathematics and girls were ahead in reading. This trend continued into secondary. We found, once more in common with other studies (e.g., Paterson, 1992), evidence of a “compositional” or “contextual” effect. That is, the overall composition of the school population in terms of the proportion of pupils with free school meal entitlement has an effect on the achievement of individual pupils over and above the influence of individual pupil background characteristics. This was particularly pronounced for socio-economic measures of attainment and for progress among the secondary cohort from S2 to S4. Martin Thrupp’s work on the social mix (1999) reveals the extent to which this can profoundly affect attitudes and performance, telling a more textured story than the statistical measures which effectiveness research applies. His thesis receives overwhelming support from Judith Harris (1998). In her controversial book The Nurture Assumption she argues, with reference to a substantial body of research, that a child’s identity as a person, her capacity as a learner and motivation as a student, come from the way in which she defines herself within the immediate peer reference group. The categories we use in our analysis – sex, race, ability, class may or may not be salient characteristics of children’s identity but assume greater significance when school structures and the nature of the school’s social mix push these features into social prominence.

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A Question of Attitudes As the Gow and Macpherson studies showed, and as Thrupp’s critique revealed, attitudes to school are not only important drivers of attainment but are also highly infectious. Our ability to measure and aggregate attitudes in the same way as we gauge attainment is problematic (1) because attitudes do not behave in a similar fashion to attainment and (2) because attitudes can only be inferred on any large scale through self report as, for example, through questionnaires. Attitudes do not grow incrementally as children progress through school. Indeed, as the data show, a liking for school, motivation and self-esteem tend to stabilize or even decrease with age and experience. Furthermore, socio-economic status does not, as far as we know, work in the same way for attitudes as it does for attainment. Nor, however commonsensical that it might appear, can we assume that in more effective schools pupils will be happier, more positive and more self-confident. So we found less variance in attitude and attitude change attributable to the individual school than we did for attainment and progress. Indeed, attitudes proved to be virtually stable over time, although there were variations among schools in relation to specific items and cluster of times items (Robertson, 1998; Thomas, 1998). We found little overall correlation between attainment with attitudes at school level, at first sight, a puzzling finding given what we know about ways in which attitudes impact on other factors such as school attendance, bullying and motivation to learn, for example. This may reflect a weakness in the attitudinal measuring instrument, or perhaps in the attainment instrument. It may imply that pupils who do not achieve well have, nonetheless, other sources of satisfaction in school. Or it may mean that both attainment and attitudinal measures tell us little unless complemented by more in-depth approaches. Nonetheless, a factor analysis did show that there were individual questionnaire items and clusters of items that produced a significant correlation between attainment and attitudes. One of the most significant of these was a factor which we labeled as teacher support. It included three key inter-related items: ● ● ●

teachers help me to understand my work teachers tell me how I am getting on with my work teachers praise me when I work hard.

Exploring what issues such as these meant and how factors such as these played out in schools and classrooms was made possible by the deeper inquiry in the 24 case study schools.

24 Schools Research in the 24 case study schools gave us a more fine-grained picture of school and classroom life. In these schools, in addition to classroom observation (generally invitational and ad hoc than systemic and structured), we conducted individual and group interviews with teachers and pupils, a development analysis process (Reeves & MacGilchrist, 1997) and a change profiling activity (MacBeath & Mortimore, 1997) in which teachers evaluated their schools on ten key indicators. These sources helped

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to complement and draw out meaning from the quantitative data and gave us insights into the three areas of policy interest to the Scottish Office – teaching and learning, school ethos and development planning. As data from the questionnaires in the whole sample left us with more questions than answers, the case study schools were invaluable in enabling us to probe more deeply into ambiguities in the data. There were, for example large and significant differences not only between schools in teachers’ responses to questionnaire data but also widely differing attitudes within schools by individual, by age group and by subject department. In order to make sense of these variations it was important to go back to staff with the results and enlist their help in teasing out the meaning of the various items. This exploration of the data by teachers and senior management (and in some schools, involving pupils and parents too) was fruitful and always challenging. It was the ambiguities and apparent contradictions within the attitudinal data that led to vigorous discussion as, in the process of feedback and discussion, teachers became more alive to others’ ways of seeing things and reflected on their own responses. Some of these ambiguities could be explained as contextual – feelings on the day the questionnaire had been administered, perhaps colored by recent events or events in prospect. Working systematically in groups through the data, problematising and digging beneath the statistical surface, staff added a qualitative value to the raw figures. It helped staff to find common ground of agreement and disagreement, and to become more understanding of value differences, often subject related. Data, however uncomfortable at times, could be used to move the school on, to address key issues, in particular those where there was marked dissonance between the views of the staff and those of senior, or middle, management. This process of collaborative questioning of beliefs and practices contributed to professional development. Being confronted with compelling evidence could help, in many instances, to move a school forward. This did, however, rely on astute critical friendship and a high level of skill in dealing with the defense mechanisms of heads and senior management for whom the data often came as a shock. Data were received by some headteachers, with denial (I just don’t believe this), with projection (Well they would say that wouldn’t they), sometimes introjection (Should I resign now?), by rationalization (Well it was done on a wet Friday in December, what would you expect?). What also became clear, sometimes painfully, was that in schools without the support of the critical friend, data tended to be taken at face value and either ignored or used to move directly to planning for change. One headteacher famously phoned the research team to tell them the data was “all wrong.” She had personally gone round every member of staff and asked them if they had made these negative judgments. To a man and woman they had all denied any such subversive comment.

Data as Tin Opener Addressing the issues with regard for evidence and reasoned argument illustrated the power of “soft” data as a tin opener, cutting into some deeply entrenched belief systems operating in a school. “Learning disabilities are tragic in children but fatal in

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organizations,” argues Peter Senge (1992). The ISE Project shed new light on some of the learning disabilities of schools but also showed how schools can learn through a process of feedback with appropriate support and challenge. Helping teachers to question their beliefs and assumptions, to deal sensitively and critically with evidence, to engage in dialogue on effects and improvement and proved to be a vital element in professional development and capacity-building. Feedback of attainment data on the Language and Mathematics tests was also an important part of the process, returned as quickly as possible while still fresh in the minds of teachers and useful to them for both diagnostic and formative purposes. In case study schools critical friends played a part in helping staff to mine the data and to become more aware of how “raw” attainment data and value-added data could be used for different purposes. The “raw” data were useful at whole-school level in giving a picture of attainment across the school in a form that could be disaggregated, for example, by gender, by age, by ethnicity or by department. At classroom level, wholeclass attainment levels provide a useful overview for the teacher, but even more useful was disaggregation by gender and by individual pupil scores. Test results further broken down item-by-item helped in pinpointing in finer detail where strengths and weaknesses lay. Teacher interviews were another source of qualitative data which revealed the hidden complexities of school life and classroom culture. Interview transcripts were analyzed painstakingly, identifying fragments of teachers’ comment and value-judgment and then classifying clusters of such fragments against sub themes (ethos, or learning and teaching, or development planning for example). Each cluster was then given a score on a positive and negative scale. These scores were then correlated with pupil attainment, identifying positive correlations between a positive ethos score and a value-added score (Robertson, 1998). Across the 12 primary schools ethos scores ranged from 23 to 32 which served as proxy indicators for internal capacity and improvement potential (Stoll, MacBeath, Smith, & Robertson, 2001, pp. 169–191). The development analysis interview (in which a headteacher and another member of staff are taken systematically, and in-depth, through a recent change in their school) also generated a substantial body of data which was correlated with other measures of effectiveness and improvement. From the development analysis evidence it was possible to rate schools in terms of how they both conceptualized and implemented change (Reeves, 1998). This rating scale provided us, and schools themselves, with a powerful tool for predicting and supporting school improvement, although it could not, in the short term, demonstrate a significant correlation with value-added attainment. The change profile offered yet another lens through which to view the school. The profile contains ten “good practice” items which staff rate on a four-point scale from “very like this school” to “not at all like this school.” Staff filled it in first individually then as a group, trying to reach consensus on their rating. Completed in 1995 and again in 1997 it not only gave us an index of improvement but also generated lengthy debate and focused attention squarely on evidence. The second time round, the same staff that had filled in the earlier version were also asked to rate where the school was improving, declining or staying static with respect to each of the ten criteria. While there was, across the whole sample, evidence of significant positive change for the better, this

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differed school by school and item by item, a useful tin opener rather than a source of “hard” data. The ten items of the profile are: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10)

a learning school, high expectations, ownership of change, shared goals, effective communication, focus on pupil learning, effective leadership, home-school partnership, positive relationships, staff collaboration.

While grandiose claims cannot be made for this as a research instrument, it was a useful tool for schools themselves to use to generate dialogue and sharpen the search for evidence. For the research team it added significantly to our understanding of differing perspectives between senior leaders, long serving staff and newly qualified teachers and how these impacted on school ethos, development planning and learning and teaching.

What Have We Learned? The learning that came from ISEP fed into policy, in particular in relation to selfevaluation and inspection. It had a powerful impact in some of the participating schools and little discernable impact in others. In some cases it brought to the surface issues that were uncomfortable and challenging and led to schools commissioning follow up work with members of the team. For some individual teachers it led to new career pathways as it did for some members of the research team and at least one of the Scottish Office commissioning team. For us as researchers, we learned about the strengths and limitations of effectiveness research and the complexity of change. Among the major findings was that, with regard to pupils’ attitudes to school (both from questionnaire and interview data), teachers consistently underestimated the goodwill and enjoyment of learning that pupils brought with them to school. However there were clear differences from school to school and classroom to classroom, and the key differential was in relation to the quality of interaction between teachers and pupils in class. Some of us were able to explore this further in the projects such as the ESRC Learning How to Learn Project. (James et al., 2003) At school level, pupil response on three particular items varied significantly across the sample of secondary schools. These were – feeling safe in the playground, playing truant and getting homework. All three were at the time, and still remain, areas of high policy priority. Although the correlation between these and the quality of classroom interaction was difficult to establish across the whole sample, case study evidence

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illustrated just how significant these issues could be. In the lowest achieving school in the whole sample with high levels of absenteeism, and labeled by the press as “the worst school in Scotland,” a small group of inspirational teachers’ classrooms became arenas of hope and high expectation, offering renewed incentive for young people come to school, to engage with learning and bounce back from failure. The slogan across the wall in the Science classroom became a leitmotif for other members of staff – Stuck? Good! Now you can learn something. Find a friend. Form a theory. Try it Out. The Science corridor came to resemble a children’ exhibition of work bearing labels such as “I tried this 15 times before I got it to work.” Some schools, like the school we called St. Leopold’s (MacBeath & Stoll, 2001, pp. 152–168), were able to support pupils’ cognitive progress significantly above prediction and a small number of schools achieved better than predicted across all measures. This suggested to us that the remaining schools had an unrealized capacity to raise their performance. The finding that there were significant variations in outcomes across the curriculum within any one school adds to the belief that there may be scope for greater consistency of standards. It was a counsel of caution not to fall too easily into blanket descriptions of “good” or “bad” schools. The strongest predictor of achievement at S4 across all Standard Grade exams was achievement at S2 in Reading and Mathematics. While intervention at S2 level was likely to pay off later, the real effects were at primary level and we were able to make some valid inferences from secondary performance at S4 not only what primary school a child had attended but what teachers they had in the infant classes. The project was able to show unequivocally that schools could make a difference but, more significantly, that teachers could make a difference. However, it was equally unambiguous that school cannot make all the difference, however much Millinerian politicians such the Conservative Minster at the time (Michael Forsyth) chose to believe. Such a view did nothing for the morale of teachers struggling in what are now known euphemistically as “challenging circumstances.” The finding that socio-economic disadvantage had a stronger negative impact on language work than on Mathematics, did provide the spur to examine out of school learning such as after school homework clubs, study support, improved child care and creative approaches to home-school relationships, including parents’ workshops with a concentrated focus on language. These initiatives have since been shown to raise attainment, improve attitudes and boost attendance figures (MacBeath et al., 2001), although they can do nor more than go part way to redressing the social and economic imbalance that lies outside schools.

Beyond ISEP: Tools for Schools Members of the ISEP team made a significant contribution to the introduction and piloting of “new community schools,” referred to in the United States as full service schools and in England as extended schools. Offering extended opening hours, joinedup children and family services and early intervention, these have been shown to go part way to offering a more even playing field for children and young people.

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Prior to ISEP members of the team had worked closely with the Scottish Education Department in developing school self-evaluation. ISEP was able to build on and extend that work, offering a repertoire of strategies for gathering attainment and attitudinal data and demonstrating how researchers’ tools of inquiry could be used by schools themselves in monitoring, planning and improving practice. The change profile, reproduced in other formats (e.g., MacBeath, 2005) has proved to be an easy-to-use and powerful “tin opener.” The simple scoring device helps to bring to the surface key issues in effectiveness and improvement, clarifying aspects of school climate, challenging differing views, pressing for evidence. Rather than using it as a one-off, the instrument has proved its use in the longer term, on a more systematic basis, encouraging all stakeholders within the schools to seek hard evidence over time and to monitor improvement in specific areas. The change profile was later adapted for use in a European Commission Project involving 101 schools in 18 countries (MacBeath, Schratz, Meuret, & Jakobsen, 2000) and the methodology was widened to encompass pupils, parents and school governors as well as staff. The success of that project encouraged a number of other old and new countries to replicate the project and to use the SEP (the school evaluation profile as it had now become) as a basis for their own school improvement initiatives. Used for evaluating schools in The Bridges Across Boundaries Project (MacBeath & Brotto, 2005) the SEP now exists in 13 European languages. The teacher questionnaire, with its double-sided structure, modified by ISEP from the Halton Project in Ontario (Fink & Stoll, 1993) also proved to be an instrument with a wider currency. It was used as a data gathering and dialogic centerpiece of the ESRC Learning How to Learn Project (Pedder, James, & MacBeath, 2005) and in the Leadership for Learning seven country project (MacBeath, Frost, & Swaffield, 2004; MacBeath & Moos, 2004).

The Contribution of the Critical Friend A valued contribution of ISEP was the deployment of the critical friend. While selfevaluation tools and strategies can be used by schools themselves without external help, experience from the Project pointed strongly to the need for skilled critical friends to support the process, to smooth ruffled feathers and to challenge when challenge was needed and appropriate. The Project provided a useful testbed for examining the workings of critical friendship not only from the point of view of critical friends themselves, but from the researchers’ viewpoint and from the perspective of those at the receiving end – teachers and headteachers in the 24 case study schools. When it was found that their support and intervention was not everywhere welcome or successful, it provoked closer scrutiny of the role and context of the critical friend’s intervention. The evidence from the Project demonstrates that the critical friend role demands a high level of skill and sensitivity. Even the most experienced in the team found it difficult at times to find the balance between support and challenge and between affirmation and critique. While the Project has been able to identify a number of the requisite skills of such a role it was also found that a critical friend could be successful in one school but not in another (Doherty et al., 2001). This finding was to

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also to be reflected in the European Project mentioned above where the Icelandic critical friend worked with two schools and was rated by one as highly effective but as ineffectual by the other. This aspect of the study has far-reaching applications for the work of local authority advisers and inspectors and for consultants from universities or private agencies (Swaffield, 2002). In cases where local authority advisers have acted as critical friends some of the tensions in the role are highlighted. Experience as an adviser rather than a facilitator could prove not only unhelpful but even counter-productive. In England the government have recently introduced a School Improvement Partner, (a SIP), a “critical friend” to support and advise schools. However, as these SIPS are accountable directly to government and may pass on information which can result in school closure the tensions in their dual role are all too apparent and their role as critical “friends” is open to question.

What Have We Still to Learn? Over four decades we have learned a lot about both potential and limitations of effectiveness studies but we still have to learn how to apply that knowledge to a social world that seems far removed from the world in which Coleman and his team first embarked on their seminal study. Much has changed even since we concluded the Improving School Effectiveness study just half a decade ago. The technological world of today would have been unimaginable to an ISEP research team equipped with tools that in retrospect seem technologically primitive. The world in which young people are now growing up is vastly different from the one familiar to their parents and their teachers. A decade ago to talk of depression in children would have appeared faintly absurd. Yet, the World Health Organization (2006) estimates that 8% of all girls and 2% of all boys in the UK show symptoms of severe depression. In the 5–10 age group, 10% of boys and 6% of girls are affected, and among the 11–15 age group, 13% of boys and 10% of girls. The Mental Health Foundation (www.mentalhealth.org.uk, 2004) estimated that 15% of preschool children in the UK have mild mental health problems, and 7% have more severe mental disorders. The highest rates of mental disorders occur among children from families where no parent has ever worked. The Foundation reported a clear link between mental disorders and rates of smoking, alcohol consumption, and cannabis use, most prevalent in the most economically deprived areas. People from the poorest areas are nearly three times as likely to be admitted to hospital for depression as those who are not, and are three times more likely to commit suicide, a quarter of whom will have been in contact with mental health services in the previous year. Poorer people are also six times more likely to be admitted to hospital with schizophrenia, and ten times more likely to be admitted for alcohol-related problems. Between 10 and 20% of young people involved in criminal activity are thought to have a “psychiatric disorder.” A WHO report in February 2006 found that Scotland had areas with the worst health problems and the lowest life expectancy of all European countries.

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This is the world that Castells describes at the end of Millennium (1999), a world in which there is a growing disconnect between life as it is lived outside school and the imitation of life that is played out in the classroom. The world of schools and schooling has moved on very little and, as many critics argue, actually regressed. Despite waves of educational reform, class and race inequalities have changed little from the 1970s (Bryce & Humes, 1999). Over the 1990s in Scotland the performance gap between working-class and middle-class students, in fact grew larger between Standard Grade (at 15/16) and Higher Grade (at 17/18). While working-class students were by 2000 more likely than middle-class students to enter further education, in higher education middle-class students outnumbered working-class students by three to one. In England differential achievement at school and access to higher education has remained closely correlated to social background and income. The proportion of 16 year olds who obtained fewer than five GCSE in 2005 (12%) is the same as in 1998/1999. Three quarters of all children receiving free school meals failed to get five GCSE at grade C or above, one and a half times the rate for other children (Social Exclusion Unit, 2004). As the Institute for Fiscal Studies reports, inequality in original income in the UK (before taking account of taxes and benefits) increased steadily throughout the 1980s and has also remained relatively stable since then. The top fifth is still about four times better off then the bottom fifth of the population (National Statistics, 2004). Some of the explanations for this higher level of inequality since the start of the 1980s are described as: ●

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An increase in the gap between wages for skilled and unskilled workers in part due to skills-biased technological change and a decline in the role of trade unions Growth in self-employment income and in unemployment A decrease in the rate of male participation in the labor market, often in households where there is no other earner Increased female participation among those with working partners, leading to an increased polarization between two-earner and zero-earner households

Despite improved access to formal education for more young people, initiatives to close the gap have continued to be frustrated by factors lying largely outside schools. A January 2006 report by the Social Exclusion Unit found that the UK stood out among European countries as having the highest proportion of children living in workless households, at 17% almost twice that of France and three times that of Denmark. This was due in large part to the high number of lone parents’ households without work. The unemployment rate among lone parents has risen in the last decade from 45 to 55%. Babies born to parents from manual backgrounds are 25% more likely to have a low birthweight than children born to non-manual parents, while infant deaths are 50% more likely in manual households. If we have leaned anything from effectiveness and improvement studies it is that school education as we know it has not been able to, and will not be able to, close the gap between the highest and lowest achievers, the most and least well off, the most advantaged and disadvantaged. This is not a counsel of despair but rather a plea for a better way.

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Terry Wrigley, an outspoken critic of the effectiveness paradigm argues that it has contributed to a locking in place the school as a competitive unit of measurement, narrowing the vision and potential of schools as places of learning and places of hope. Much of the high-level government interest in school improvement has led to an intensification of teaching, accountability, league tables, teachers feeling deprofessionalised and disenchanted (or leaving), a relentless drive for more though not always better – and silence on the question of educational purpose … Have our schools been driven towards efficiency rather than genuine improvement? (Wrigley, 2003, p. 90) One of the most encouraging of current trends is for families, coalitions and syndicates of schools to work together, to share resources (including staffing and students) and to see improvement as a collaborative effort. Attribution of effect, or value-added, then is much less likely to isolate individual school performance or set one school against another competitively. In a collaborative frame of mind schools are less likely to “poach” staff, or students or parents. Such networking and mutual exchange at a local level are described by Hargreaves and Fink (2005) as one of the seven keys to sustainability, a notion which resides not simply in the individual school but in the wider ecology of neighborhoods and communities.

From School to Educational Effectiveness As educational provision moves progressively further away from the black box, nine to four, five day week, subject fragmented, egg box school, the greater the challenge there is to performance rankings of individual schools and to the effectiveness paradigm itself. New community schools, home learning and more adventurous alternatives in the “post-comprehensive” or “new comprehensive” era will require some creative rethinking from researchers because the premise of the “black box” with measured inputs at one end and outcomes at the other will become increasingly problematic. The more seamless and boundary breaking learning becomes the less easy it will be to identify, control and manipulate the school-level variables. Where is the source of learning and added value – the classroom? Study support? Homework, home study and home tutoring? Mentoring and coaching? Social and psychological services? Improved health care? In England the Every Child Matters policy rests on five key “outcomes” (enjoying and achieving, keeping safe, staying healthy, contributing to the community, social and economic well being ), objectives which schools cannot attain by themselves. As inspection moves away its focus on schools to a focus on services to children more broadly, value-added belongs where it has always implicitly been located, in the interface of school, family, community and social agencies. This has immediate and far-reaching implications for how we measure and compare educational achievement and improvement. As effectiveness and improvement researchers we will urgently need, as the Scottish anthem has it – “to think again, to think again.”

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Note 1. The Strathclyde team: John MacBeath, Judy Arrowsmith, Brian Boyd, Jim McCall, Jenny Reeves, Pam Roberston, Iain Smith. The London Team: Peter Mortimore, Pam Sammons, Jane Savage, Rebecca Smees, Louise Stoll, Sally Thomas.

References Brown, S., Riddell, S., & Duffield, J. (1996). Responding to pressures: A study of four secondary schools. In D. Woods (Ed.), Contemporary issues in teaching and learning. London and New York: Routledge. Bryce, T., & Humes, W. (Eds.). (1999). Scottish education. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Castells, M. (1999). End of millennium. Oxford: Blackwell. Croxford, L. (1996). The effectiveness of grampian secondary schools. Edinburgh: Grampian Regional Council, Centre for Educational Sociology. Cuttance, P., McPherson, A., Raffe, D., & Willms, D. (1988). Secondary school effectiveness, report to the Scottish education department. Edinburgh: Centre for Educational Sociology, University of Edinburgh. Doherty, J., Jardine, S., Smith, I., & McCall, J. (2001). Do schools need critical friends? In J. MacBeath, & P. Mortimore (Eds.), Improving school effectiveness. Buckingham: Open University Press. Fink, D., & Stoll, L. (1993). School Effectiveness and school improvement: Views from the field; Paper presented at the Sixth International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement, Norrkoping, Sweden. Gow, L., & McPherson. A. (1980). Tell them from me. Edinburgh: Centre for Educational Sociology. Gray, J., McPherson, A., & Raffe, D. (1983). Reconstructions of secondary education. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Hargreaves, D. H. (1989) Making Schools More Effective: The challenge to policy, practice and research. The 1989 SERA Lecture, St. Andrews. Hargreaves, A., & Fink, D. (2005). Sustainable leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Harris, J. R. (1998). The Nurture Assumption. London: Bloomsbury. James, M., Pedder, D., & Swaffield, S. with Conner, C., Frost, D., & MacBeath, J. (2003). A servant of two masters: Designing research to advance knowledge and practice, a paper presented at AERA 2003, Chicago USA. MacBeath, J., & Brotto, F. (2005). Bridges across boundaries. Cambridge: Report to the European Commission. MacBeath, J., Frost, D., & Swaffield, S. (2004). Leadership for Learning (The Carpe Vitam Project), Paper delivered at the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement, Sydney, January 3–6. MacBeath, J., Kirwan, T., Myers, K., Smith, I., McCall, J., & Mackay, E. with Sharp, C., Bhabra, S., Pocklington, K., & Weinding, D. (2001). The impact of study support. London: Department for Education and Skills. MacBeath, J., & Moos, L. (2004). Leadership for learning, Paper for the ICSEI 2004, Congress, Rotterdam, 6–9 January, 2004. MacBeath J., & Mortimore, P. (1997). School effectiveness: Is it improving? Paper presented at the Tenth International Conference on School Effectiveness and School Improvement, Memphis, January. MacBeath, J., & Mortimore, P. (Eds.). (2001). Improving school effectiveness. Buckingham: Open University Press. MacBeath, J., Schratz, M., Meuret, D., & Jakobsen, L. (2000). Self-evaluation in European schools: A story of change. London: Routledge. MacBeath, J. & Stoll. L. (2001). A profile of change. In J. MacBeath, & P. Mortimore (Eds.), Improving school effectiveness. Buckingham: Open University Press. McPherson, A. (1992). Measuring added value in schools. London: National Commission on Education. Mortimore, P., Sammons, P., Stoll, L., Lewis, D., & Ecob, R. (1988). School matters: The junior years. Somerset, Open Books and Berkeley, CA, University of California Press (Reprinted in 1994 by Paul Chapman, London).

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Office for National Statistics. (2004). Social Trends, 33. Paterson, L. (1992) Social class in Scottish education. In S. Brown and S. Riddell (Eds.), Class, race and gender in schools: A new agenda for policy and practice in Scottish education. Glasgow: Scottish Council for Research in Education. Pedder, D., James, M., & MacBeath, J. (2005). How teachers value and practise professional learning. Research Papers in Education, 20(3), 209–243. Raab, C. (1993). Parents and schools – what role for education authorities? In P. Munn (Ed.), Parents and schools. London: Routledge. Reeves, J. (1998). Planning for Development. Policy Paper no. 7 of the Improving School Effectiveness Project. Glasgow: unpublished. Reeves, J., & MacGilchrist, B. (1997). Gauging the impact of improvement strategies. Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of York, September 1997. Robertson, P. (1998). Improving school effectiveness: Summary paper. Paper presented to the Scottish Office Education and Industry Department, February 1998. Robertson, P., & Sammons, P. (1997). Improving school effectiveness: A project in progress. Paper presented at the Tenth International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement, Memphis, January 1997. Sammons, P., Thomas, S., & Mortimore, P. (1997). Forging links: Effective schools and effective departments. London: Paul Chapman. Scottish Education Department (SED). (1989). Effective primary schools. Edinburgh: HMSO. Scottish Office Education Department. (1991). Management of educational resources: 5, The role of school development plans in managing school effectiveness. Edinburgh: HM Inspector of Schools, Education Department. Scottish Office Education Department. (1992). Using ethos indicators in secondary school self-evaluation: Taking account of the views of pupils, parents and teachers. Edinburgh: HM Inspector of Schools, HMSO. Senge, P. (1992). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organisation. Sydney: Random House. Smith, D. J., & Tomlinson, S. (1989). The school effect: A study of mutli-radical comprehensives. London: Policy Studies Institute. Social Exclusion Unit. (2004). Tackling social exclusion taking stock and looking to the future. London: The Office of the Deputy Prime Minster. Stoll, L., MacBeath, J., Smith, I., & Robertson, P. (2001). The change equation: Capacity for improvement. In J. MacBeath, & P. Mortimore (Eds.), Improving school effectiveness (pp. 169–191). Buckingham: Open University Press. Swaffield, S. (2002). Contextualising the work of the critical friend. Paper presented at the 15th International Congress on School Effectiveness and Improvement , January, Copenhagen. Thomas, S. (1998). Policy paper 2: Creating a value-added framework for Scottish schools. London: SOEID. Thrupp, M. (1999). Schools making a difference: Let’s be realistic. Buckingham: Open University Press. World Health Organisation. (2006). Available at www.show.scot.nhs.uk/public/publicindex.htm Wrigley, T. (2003). Is “School effectiveness” anti-democratic? British Journal Of Educational Studies, 51(26), 89–112.

5 SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS RESEARCH IN LATIN AMERICA

Javier Murillo

Introduction During the last 30 years of the twentieth century a number of studies centered on school effectiveness were produced in Latin America (Murillo, 2003a). But more recently, thanks to a renewal of interest and work in the field, the best and most ambitious ones are those being developed in the early years of this century. This is largely due to the consolidation of a scientific research community focused on school effectiveness and improvement, which is gathered in a research network known as the Red Iberoamericana de Investigación sobre Cambio y Eficacia Escolar (RINACE). In spite of these developments, there is limited awareness in the centers of school effectiveness research about what is being done in the Latin American Region. Classic research reviews at the international level (Clark, Lotto, & Astuto, 1984; Mackenzie, 1983; Purkey & Smith, 1983) as well as more recent ones (Cotton, 1995; Sammons, Hillman, & Mortimore, 1995; Scheerens & Bosker, 1997) have not included work from the Region. Even the reviews that are more sensitive to what happens in different contexts do not include references about what is being carried out in Latin America (Fuller & Clarke, 1994; Harber & Davies, 1997; Levin & Lockeed, 1993; Riddell, 1997). While this may be due to the fact that Latin American research is reported in Spanish, it may derive also from a belief in the universal validity of school effectiveness results. This, of course, is questionable. The education systems of developed countries share common characteristics that are not necessarily present in other regions. For instance, to a large extent they have school autonomy, enough school resources, lack of parental involvement in the school management, and considerable freedom to choose schools, among others. Consequently, their results will be clearly directed to their own circumstances and most likely, will be valid for other contexts. However, not only is the “big fish” not aware of the “small one” but neither is the small one interested in what the big one does. This results in a dynamic of mutual ignorance. Indeed, a perusal of bibliographical references cited in diverse Latin American 75 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 75–92. © 2007 Springer.

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investigations on school effectiveness, also points to a lack of awareness of what are influential studies in the Anglo-Saxon domain. This affects the quality of such work. In this brief chapter we attempt to provide a global image of current research on school effectiveness that is being developed in Latin America by Latin American researchers. We focus our attention on its characteristics and contribution, as well as on its limitations and the challenges it must face in the near future. The text is structured in five sections. In the first, we describe some general characteristics of school effectiveness studies in Latin America. Second, we offer a general overview of such studies. The third section presents some of the results on factors of school effectiveness and the last two sections provide a reflection on the future of this type of research and some concluding ideas.

Characteristics of School Effectiveness Research in Latin America School effectiveness research in Latin America has four main characteristics: an undeniably applied character, a considerable emphasis on equity, a big influence from diverse and even contradictory theoretical positions, and a manifest dependence on the state of development of education and research in each country.

Applied Character Perhaps, given the need to improve considerably the quality and equity of Latin American educational systems, school effectiveness research in Latin America has taken an obviously applied character. The concern of Latin American researchers, highly committed to educational transformation, has focused almost entirely on obtaining results that can be immediately applied (Zorrilla, 2003). This has meant subordinating to a second position the pursuit of knowledge to build theory. As Mexican professor Carlos Muñoz Izquierdo (1984, p. 56) has masterfully expressed: Unarguably, the immediate goal of educational research is to generate knowledge that allows us better to understand phenomena occurring within the wide field of educational science. Nevertheless, many of us, in our professional activities, consider knowledge to be just a means of orienting the transformational praxis of reality. We are not interested in knowledge for itself but in its potential to modify educational reality. We undertake this profession as a mediate form of solving some of the problems related to the country’s education. The applied concern of school effectiveness work has some implications for the kind of studies that have been undertaken in Latin America. Thus, research concerned with estimating the magnitude of school effects and analyzing its scientific properties is scarce and, as we will see later, is very recent. Also, researchers endeavor mainly to impact those groups directly involved in change processes such as teachers, administrators, and policy-makers rather than communicate to a wider academic audience.

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This has resulted in there being practically no studies written or translated into English that are sent to international publications, which in turn has contributed to the lack of awareness of what is studied in Latin America.

Emphasis on Equity Latin American studies on school effectiveness have as a second characteristic a deep concern about equity in education (Muñoz Izquierdo, 1996). There are two possible reasons behind this fact. On the one hand, this is how researchers respond objectively to education development demands in Latin America where inequity is one of its major constraints; but also from their subjective side it reflects the degree to which many researchers have a strong commitment to social issues and equity. The emphasis on equity is reflected in an interest to study schools within disadvantaged contexts. A good example is Raczynski and Muñoz’s (2005) recent research focused on schools in Chile that, despite their location in poor districts, achieve outstanding results. But also there is a greater focus on factors of ineffectiveness rather than of school effectiveness. Thus, several studies center on factors such as droppingout or repetition (Filp, Cardemil, & Donoso, 1981; Loera & McGinn, 1992). Through these studies researchers expect to obtain information that could be used to assist schools operating in bad conditions.

Multiple Theoretical Influences Not only are there multiple theoretical influences underlying Latin American studies on school effectiveness, but these influences often are also contradictory. Thus along with references to classic works on school effectiveness, we find a strong influence of production – function studies (Mizala & Romaguera, 2000), and a touch of influence of European sociologists such as Bourdieu and Passeron (1970). Just as Latin American educational systems keep one eye on Europe and the other on the United States of America and suffer contradictory influences from both, many Latin American studies on school effectiveness unashamedly combine both the effectiveness and productivity perspectives. However, while both approaches share a common origin (their reaction to the Coleman Report) and while production function studies have been incorporating variables related to school cultural processes (Fuller & Clarke, 1994) and approaching school effectiveness concepts, their basic proposals are radically different. While economists seek to optimize the efficacy and efficiency of schools for policy decision-making, educational researchers are more interested in gaining in-depth knowledge that will assist in the improvement of schools. It would not be adventurous to affirm that an important part of the scarce popularity of school effectiveness studies among researchers and teachers in Latin America is due to the influence of the production function studies. Such studies give an economics aura to school effectiveness that under no circumstances it possesses. In order to escape the phobia that production function studies engender, researchers in the field tend to avoid the use of the term “school effectiveness” and to settle instead for labels such as “study of associated factors.”

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Intimately Related to the Development of Education and Educational Research Finally, there is a clear relationship among the number and quality of school effectiveness studies carried out in each country, the extent of the country’s educational development, and the country’s level of educational research. Using an accepted indicator such as the Human Development Index one can observe a statistically and positively significant correlation between this index and the number of studies produced on school effectiveness (Murillo, 2003b). From this perspective, it is not surprising that Chile, Mexico, Colombia, Argentina or Brazil are the countries where more School Effectiveness Research can be found and that research in Central America, is virtually nonexistent. However, there are also other factors related to greater production of school effectiveness research. One of these factors is the existence of solid research teams such as Cultural and Educational Research Center (CICE) in Venezuela and the Working Group on Standards and Evaluation (GTEE–GRADE) in Peru. Also in Chile, UNICEF and the government working together have supported research on school effectiveness, and in Brazil such research is aided by access to rich data sources.

General Overview of Research Production School effectiveness research in Latin America started in the mid 70s and from that period on a good number of empirical studies aimed at identifying the school factors related to student achievement have been carried out. Reports by the Institute of Socioeconomic Research of the Bolivian Catholic University based on the data collected through the Latin American Economic Integration Joint Studies Program (Comboni, 1979; Morales, 1977; Virreira, 1979), as well as work by Muñoz Izquierdo, Rodríguez, Restrepo, & Borrani (1979) in Mexico, and by Barroso, Mello, and Faria (1978) in Brazil can be considered as first exemplars of research on school effectiveness with some weight in the Region. Since then, the number of studies on school effectiveness carried out in Latin America exceeds 50. This figure can be considered as acceptable, particularly as the number and quality of the studies increases notoriously year after year. Within the above group of studies we can distinguish six clearly different lines of investigation: (1) studies whose design and data collection have been carried out ad hoc with the purpose of knowing what factors are related to school effectiveness; (2) studies that make a secondary use of data collected for other purposes, mainly data pertaining to educational system assessments; (3) studies on school effects; (4) studies that deal with the analysis and assessment of programs for school improvement; (5) studies that seek to learn about the relationship between school factors and student achievement; (6) work that is focused on the analysis of the school culture from an ethnographic perspective.

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Studies Specifically Designed to Identify School and Classroom Factors Associated with School Achievement Here we consider studies that were specifically designed and developed to identify school and classroom factors associated with student achievement and, in some cases, evaluate their contributions. They represent the most orthodox studies on school effectiveness and share some common characteristics: (1) They all possess a theoretical foundation that is based on work about school effectiveness, though, as we have mentioned, they are also influenced by other sources. (2) All of them have used specific data collection instruments, which makes the information obtained and the instruments themselves more suitable to the purpose of the research. (3) Research procedures are varied, from quantitative studies with large samples to work with prototypical schools, although the latter are more common. (4) Their results point to the relationship between school factors and student academic achievement. Among the above studies we particularly note research carried out in Venezuela by the Cultural and Educational Research Center team (CICE), which is directed by Mariano Herrera and Marielsa López (Herrera, 1993; Herrera & Diaz, 1991; Herrera & López, 1992; López, 1996). These studies were published as School Effectiveness by Herrera and López (1996) and constitute a milestone in Latin American research concerning the topic. In Mexico, the work of Schmelkes, Martínez, Noriega, and Lavin (1996) opened the door to a series of Mexican studies of remarkable quality about school effectiveness. Among them, is Guadalupe Ruiz Cuellar’s (1999) as well as Eduardo Lastra’s (2001) doctoral theses. Another country with a substantial production of “orthodox” studies on school effectiveness is Chile. There, the works of Himmel, Maltes, and Majluf (1984, 1995), Zárate (1992), Concha (1996), and Bellei, Muñoz, Pérez, and Raczynski (2003) shine with their own light. In all of them, the concern was to study successful schools in poor areas. In Brazil, the study of Barroso et al. (1978), as well as Castro et al. (1984), and the most recent one of Francisco Soares (2002) are worth mentioning. Finally, in Uruguay we note work by Ravela et al. (1999) through the Measurement of Educational Results Unit (UMRE). The authors analyzed ten public schools at elementary level located in socio-culturally disadvantaged areas, which showed an extremely high rate of effectiveness in the 1996 sixth grade assessment.

Work on School Effectiveness Using National and International Evaluations Over the past few years, there has been an overwhelming interest in the evaluation of educational systems occurring all over the world and, particularly, in Latin America. The impulse given in this respect by international organisms such as UNESCO’s Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (OREALC/UNESCO), and the Iberoamerican States Organization (OEI) has been really important. Nowadays, all the governmental ministries in the Region have established an evaluation center or a

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department for the evaluation of their educational systems. Such is the case of the Bolivian System of Measurement and Evaluation of Educational Quality (SIMECAL), the Chilean System of Measurement of Educational Quality (SIMCE), the Brazilian System of Evaluation of Basic Education (SAEB) and the Mexican Education Evaluation National Institute (INEE). This fact clearly contrasts with the virtual lack of research centers within the national ministries of education. One of the usual objectives of the national evaluation systems is to gain understanding of the factors associated with academic achievement. Therefore, diverse countries have performed special analyses to identify them. The best example of this tendency is the international evaluation carried out by UNESCO’s Latin American Laboratory for the Quality of Education Evaluation (Laboratorio Latinoamericano de Evaluación de la Calidad de la Educación [LLECE], 2001). The studies situated within this framework are usually based on a more or less elaborate concept of school effectiveness, but they share the usual limitations implied in the use of data, which was not obtained expressly for that objective. Even the UNESCO Laboratory study is based more on school production function studies than on work that deals with effectiveness (Casassus, 2003). All these studies share the advantages and limitations of this type of special usage of data: a large amount of data pertaining to the country, quantitative data collected through surveys and standardized tests, and a non-specific design for the objective, of studying school effectiveness. In addition to the LLECE’s study (2001) other interesting studies are the following: ●

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Argentina: Re-analysis of the national evaluation data by Delprato (1999) and Cervini (2002, 2003, 2004). Bolivia: Use of evaluation data performed in the early 90s by the OREAL/ UNESCO (REPLAD, 1994; Vera, 1998, 1999), data from the SIMECAL’s national evaluations (Talavera & Sánchez, 2000); and data from the teacher evaluation system (Mizala, Romaguera, & Reinaga, 1999; Querejazu & Romero, 1997; Reinaga, 1998). Brazil: Use of data from the System of Assessment of Basic Education (SAEB) by, among others, Barbosa, Beltrˇao, Fari´nas, Fernandes, and Stantos (2001), Esposito, Davis, and Nunes (2000), Fletcher (1997), Soares (2004) and Soares, Cesar, and Mambrini (2001). Chile: Use of data from the System of Measurement of Eduation Quality (SIMCE) by Mizala and Romaguera (2000), Mizala, Romaguera, and Ostoic (2004), Redondo and Descouvieres (2001), Redondo, Descouvieres, and Rojas, (2005). Colombia: with data from the National System of Evaluation of the Quality of Education (SABER) see Cano (1997), Ministerio de Educación Nacional (1993), Piñeros and Rodríguez Pinzón (1998) as well as international evaluations such as the Third Study on Mathematics and Science (TIMSS) in Colombia (Ávila, 1999), or of LLECE (Pardo, 1999). Honduras: Use of information from the Learning Evaluation undertaken by the Quality of Education Measurement External Unit (Fernández, Trevisgnani, & Silva, 2003). Mexico: where Tabaré Fernández’s doctoral thesis (2004a) stands out, using data from the Language Arts and Mathematics National Standards Program, as well as a series of studies compiled by National Center of Evaluation for Superior

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Education (CENEVAL) (2004) using the data base after 9 years of implementing the EXANI I test (from 1994 to 2002) that is both an admissions and exit test used at middle school level (Carvallo, 2005). Peru: Use of data from the two evaluations of the educational system carried out until now; the first of them by the World Bank (1999), and the second one by the Ministry of Education through its Measurement of Quality Unit (UMC) (Benavides, 2000; UMC/GRADE, 2001).

In spite of their clear methodological limitations, these studies represent the most important contributions to the knowledge of factors associated with academic achievement in Latin America.

Estimates of School Factors As we have indicated earlier in this paper, the evidently applied character of school research in Latin America has meant that only recently researchers have approached the study of school effects. This interest has been helped by the availability of data generated through the different systems of evaluation of educational quality to which we have referred. Thus, from the year 2001 on, studies that have estimated the extent of school effects in Latin America have been carried out in Brazil and Mexico using data from national evaluations. In these studies the effects of socio-cultural background have been controlled and multilevel models have been used in their estimation. Thus far, no study that proposes the analysis of the scientific properties of school effects has been published. In Brazil, different researchers utilized data generated through the SAEB system (Sistema Nacional de Avaliação da Educação Básica) to estimate the magnitude of the school effects (Barbosa & Fernandes, 2001; Ferrão, Beltrão, & Fernandes, 2003; Ferrão & Fernandes, 2003; Fletcher, 1997; Soares, Alves, & Oliveira, 2001). Results from these studies suggest a great diversity of school effects among the different Brazilian states. Thus, the variance in achievement explained by schools varies between 8 and 17%. In Mexico, the studies of Eduardo Lastra (2001) and Fernández and Blanco (2004) are noted. These researchers, using secondary analysis of national evaluation data from 1998 to 2002, and multilevel models in a very steady way within the period studied, reported that the extent of school effects was around 20%. Specifically, they found variance of 28% for Mathematics, and 26% for Spanish as a result of school effects.

Assessment and Analysis of School Improvement Programs From the very beginning of the school effectiveness movement, the relationship with school improvement has been constant and two-way oriented. This also applies to Latin America. Thus, research data about factors associated with achievement have helped to launch successful school improvement processes. But, at the same time, the opposite has occurred as many of the results on effectiveness have derived from the analysis of school improvement programs. If, in general, the quality and quantity of educational studies developed in the Region cannot be rated as satisfactory, the quality and quantity of innovations undertaken by

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teachers can be considered as being remarkable. The motivation and innovative capacity of Latin American teachers are extraordinary when compared to what happens in wealthier countries. Regarding these experiences there are good efforts to present these experiences in a systematic way in many countries as well by international organizations like the Andres Bello Convention and by the Partnership for Educational Revitalization in the Americas – PREAL – (see de Andraca, 2003), or by UNESCO/ OREALC (see Blanco & Messina, 2000). The following are some of the accounts that offer a high contribution to the knowledge of factors associated with achievement: ●

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Diverse analyses of the Quality Improvement of Basic Schools in Poor Areas Program in Chile, known as the P-900 program. Among such analyses, those of Carlson (2000), and Vaccaro and Fabiane (1994), should be mentioned. The account of an experience in quality improvement of basic education in five rural areas in Ecuador, where an innovation experience in 3,000 rural schools was validated during the course of three years (UNICEF, 1997). The analysis of educational innovations in schools of Quito Metropolitan District (Education Office – Quito Metropolitan District, 1994). The qualitative evaluation of the Program to Lower School Drop-Out (PARE) in Mexico (Ezpeleta & Weiss, 2000). The evaluation, in 1991, of the Multilevel School Project from 1984 to 1989 in Bolivia (Subirats, Nogales, & Gottret, 1991).

Studies that Seek to Find the Relationship Between Specific School Factors and Students’Achievement. Not all the knowledge about factors associated with student achievement can be obtained from complete studies on school effectiveness. Research that analyzes the relationship between one or more factors, or the achievement in its various expressions, also provides interesting data to the policy or teacher decision-making processes, and is useful in the design of future studies. Therefore, a good number of investigations situated in other lines of research or fields can be useful to our purpose; making the domain of analysis broader and more complex, and the intended exhaustiveness of previous sections an impossible mission. For this reason, the studies to which we will refer do not pretend to offer more than the taste of a more complex reality. In order to facilitate understanding, we have organized these studies according to the group of factors they analyze: teacher effectiveness, school and classroom climate, financial resources, school administration, early childhood, nutrition/malnutrition, and bilingual education. One of the first reviews of teacher effectiveness in Latin America was carried out by Magendzo, Hevia, and Calvo (1982) as part of the international study commissioned by the International Research Review and Advisory Group on the same topic (see Avalos & Haddad, 1981). Among the good studies in Latin America we note Filp, Cardemil, and Valdivieso’s (1984), analysis of teacher characteristics that are associated with educational achievement. Also, the study of Arancibia and Álvarez (1991) who analyzed teacher factors that directly or indirectly affect students’ achievement.

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A second line of research analyzes climate either in the classroom or in the school, and relates it to student achievement. Filp et al. (1981) examined the association between the classroom environment and teacher-student relationships as factors of school failure. Lopez, Neumann, and Assael (1983), studied the set of social interactions that take place inside the classroom, and an ethnographic study in four Latin American countries examined how classroom and school teaching and environment contribute or not to the construction of school failure (Avalos, 1986). Brazilian professor Francisco Soares (2003) analyzed the influence of both teacher and climate on students’ achievement and Fernández (2004b) suggested that climate represents the background for the shared feelings that support both the agreements as well as the individual and collective actions that have a direct impact on the school’s effectiveness. As previously mentioned, school production function studies have focused on the influence of financial and material resources on student results. In this context Virreira’s (1979) sought to establish a way of diminishing operational costs of the school system while maintaining a steady performance or, alternatively, increasing such performance while keeping the costs constant. Another area studied is school administration and its influence on students’ achievement. Here we note the work of Chilean Oscar Maureira (2004), who developed a causal model to analyze the effect of school leadership on student achievement; also, the more qualitative study of professor Nacarid Rodríguez (2001) on school leadership in Venezuelan schools. A widely studied factor in Latin America is early childhood. The concern for raising quality in compulsory education and for expanding schooling to higher levels has produced an interesting line of research aimed at finding out if children who attend preschool get better results in the first years of elementary education. Thus, Subirats et al. (1991) analyzed the experience of a network of countries in the Region with the purpose of finding out whether there was a relationship between preschool education and 1st grade student achievement. Their goal was to propose policy measures on aspects related to school success and improvement in learning of children belonging to disadvantaged areas. Regarding nutrition Morales (1979), in Bolivia sought to bring out the relationships between elementary children’s nutrition levels and their academic achievement, as well as their impact on late entry into the formal education system. Morales hypothesized that social class could explain chronic malnutrition but that in turn it would not be the only determinant of school performance. He found, however, that late entrance to school is strongly related to malnutrition, especially in the case of rural children for whom food is a major issue. In closing, we note the concern about intercultural bilingual education all over Latin America, since the early eighties. The studies of Doria Medina (1982), Barrera (1995), and Vera (1998) in Bolivia, Valiente and Kuper (1998) in Ecuador, and Cueto and Secada (2003) in Peru are some of the most relevant ones.

Ethnographic Studies About School Finally, ethnographic research on education is an important development in Latin America with a clear influence on school effectiveness research. It has contributed to

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a better understanding of school operations and culture. Among the most important work we highlight Leonor Pastrana in Mexico (1997), who carried out an ethnographic study on the institutional conditions of teaching, and Cuauhtémoc Guerrero (1996) who focused on the analysis of school management through the description of job administrators. A comparable work is that of Rodríguez (2001) from Venezuela, who studied five Venezuelan schools looking at their management, autonomy, and leadership. In Argentina, we recognize the study of Brandi, Filippa, Schiattino, and Martin (2000) entitled: The transposition of knowledge in specific school districts. School knowledge and institutional culture. Also of interest is the study by Edwards, Calvo, Cerdá, Gómez, and Inostroza (1994) on school management and teaching in secondary schools in Chile.

Research Results: School Effectiveness Factors The many studies on school effectiveness carried out in Latin America over the years, as well as the contribution of related work offers an intricate web of results which are not easy to untangle. All of them contribute to a better understanding of the reality of education, and particularly to the understanding of the diverse factors associated with student achievement. Table 1 offers a summary of the contributions of some of the relevant studies. As seen the factors highlighted in these studies share many features with classic reviews like that of Sammons et al. (1995). Elements such as school and classroom climate, leadership, shared goals, high expectations, methodology or teamwork appear repeatedly in studies not only in Latin America, but also in the rest of the world. Additionally, we find differences such as those that refer to resources and teacher quality, including their initial preparation and working conditions. Almost all the studies in Latin America stress the importance of management of financial and material resources as factors directly related to student achievement and, therefore, directly relevant to the quality of education. Thus, the quality and quantity of school resources really matter. There are two reasons that explain the difference in importance of this factor between developing and developed countries. One the one hand, there are extreme inequalities among schools in developing contexts and the lack of minimal conditions to operate as required in many of them. On the other hand, what continuously appears to be important is the effect of the initial and continuing preparation of teachers, their work stability and conditions. In Latin America, not all the teachers have the required qualifications, they have no opportunity or have little opportunity of continuous professional development, and their salary is much less than satisfactory. Consequently, very often teachers must work in two schools or have an extra job to cover their expenses. Without doubt, these conditions impact on student achievement; and seeking to redress them should be a governmental priority if education quality is to be attained. Levin and Lockeed (1991) are correct in their assertion that characterizing effective schools in developing contexts requires including such factors as their infrastructure, resources and equipment. In the light of this review, one would have to add the quality of teacher initial and continuing preparation, higher salaries, and full time commitment to teaching.

School Effectiveness-Latin America Table 1.

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School effectiveness factors according to selected studies carried out in Latin America

School factors School climate Infrastructure School resources School financial management School Autonomy Teamwork Planning School community involvement Shared goals Leadership Classroom factors Classroom climate Classroom quality and resources Teacher-student ratio Teacher planning (work in the classroom) Curricular resources Didactic methods Student assessment and follow-up Factors related to the school staff Teacher qualifications Professional development Stability Experience Teachers working conditions Involvement Teacher-student relationship High expectations Positive reinforcement

1

2

3

4

5

6

X X X X

X X X X

X

X X X X X

X X X X

X X X

X

X X

X X X

X X

X X

X

X X

X

X X

X

X X X X

X X

X

X X X X

X X X

X

X X

X

X

X X X

X X X

X X X X

8

9

X X X X

X

X

X X

X X

X

X X X

X X X

X X

X

X X

X

X

X

X X

X

X

X

X X

X X

X

X X

X X

X

X X

X X X X

X

7

X

X

X X X X X X

X X X

1. Himmel et al. (1984); 2. Concha (1996); 3. Herrera and López (1996); 4. Piñeros and Rodríguez Pinzón (1998); 5. Cano (1997); 6. Barbosa and Fernandes (2001); 7. LLECE (2001); 8. Bellei et al. (2003); 9. Raczynski and Muñoz (2005).

The Future of School Effectiveness Research in Latin America Running the risk of being mistaken, we could state that School Effectiveness Research in Latin America has a promising future. If we attend to interest in the topic on the part of the scientific community, the number of young researchers who are specializing in the field, and the number of studies being developed and are publishable in the near future, we can expect for the coming years an important increase in the number and quality of the studies. Let us take a look of some of the milestones that point to a promising future.

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In the first place, we must highlight the Iberoamerican School Effectiveness and Improvement Research Network (RINACE),1 which is helping to develop awareness of there being a community of researchers in the field. In addition, a greater exchange of information is increasing both interest in the domain and in the quality of the studies produced (Murillo & Hernández, 2002). RINACE was established in October 2002 as a professional network of researchers from Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, committed to increase the quality and equity of education systems by developing research on school effectiveness and improvement. The network is organized as a network of networks that operates in practically all the countries in the Region. There is also a specialized journal that serves Iberoamerica: The Iberoamerican E-Journal of Research on Quality, Effectiveness and Change in Education (REICE).2 This publication is playing an important role both in promoting and disseminating research. Finally, we note one of the most ambitious studies on school effectiveness being carried out in the area, aimed at impacting not only politicians and administrators, but teachers and researchers as well. This is the Iberoamerican School Effectiveness Study (IIEEE), sponsored by the Andres Bello Agreement (CAB), which has collected data from more than 9,000 students belonging to 90 schools in 9 different countries over a period of 4 years (2001–2005). Half of the schools are considered particularly effective while the other half are branded as ineffective. The above developments allow us to reiterate our optimism in a very promising future: more and better studies, greater awareness of the specialized literature, and a new generation of well trained young researchers who are interested in these themes. However, there are still many challenges. While there have been achievements, there is much more to be accomplished. There will be the need for more and better studies, more financial support, a better circulation of research production, better preparation of researchers, and an increasing use of the results. Also, an effort must be made to present local research studies beyond regional boundaries.

Some Concluding Ideas Latin American school effectiveness research developed by Latin American researchers in Latin America does exist. Day after day this research acquires greater importance not only because of an increasing number of studies but because of also because of the quality of their contribution. Thus if we wish to have a global vision of school effectiveness research it is absolutely necessary to know and recognize what is being produced in Latin America. Traditionally, recognition of school effectiveness research has been circumscribed to the developed world. In this sense, it has had largely an ethnocentric focus, centered almost exclusively, on the contributions of a small number of countries with very specific characteristics of education, economy, and culture. Its results, however, have been taken as valid and recommended as policy by international financial organizations to other country contexts. This, however, should change. The belief that what is done in some places can have universal validity is a fallacy. Research results can only be valid if they are obtained or referred to the context where they will be applied.

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We believe that school effectiveness research in Latin America is coming of age, that it can broaden the vision of research in the field and that the analysis of its results can provide a basis for more solid generalizations and policy decision-making. In short, we think that there are three potential contributions that Latin American school effectiveness research can offer (Murillo, 2005): ●

●

●

Provide, a panorama of school effectiveness in countries with serious problems of infrastructure, equity and quality, with traditionally centralized systems, and with very little school autonomy. Highlight sensitivity towards equity as an essential goal of any school system and one of the most important concerns of the school effectiveness movement. Finally, unveil the big importance of school financial and material resources, the quality of their teachers and of working conditions over school results.

Without doubt, school effectiveness research can contribute to increase the levels of quality and equity of school systems. But for this to happen it is critical that it be referred to the context where results will be used and developed by local researchers who are sensitive to and knowledgeable about the realities to be studied. On the other hand, knowing and valuing what is being done in other contexts is also a necessity today. It is the only way we can contribute to build a more equitable, fair, and fraternal world.

Notes 1. http://www.rinace.net 2. http://www.rinace.net/reice.htm

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Reinaga, T. (1998). Reformas y calidad de la educación en el sistema educativo Boliviano. Thesis to obtain the Master’s degree in Management and Policies, University of Chile. REPLAD. (1994). Medición de la calidad de la educación. Resultados de siete países. Volumen III. Santiago de Chile: UNESCO–OREALC. Riddell, A. R. (1997). Assessing designs for school effectiveness research and school improvement in developing countries. Comparative Education Review, 41(2), 178–204. Rodríguez, N. (2001). Estilos de dirección en escuelas venezolanas. Revista de Pedagogía, XXII(64), 189–218. Ruiz Cuellar, G. (1999). Un acercamiento a la calidad de la Educación Primaria en Aguascalientes desde la perspectiva de la efectividad escolar. Aguascalientes: University Autonomous of Aguascalientes. Sammons, P., Hillman, J., & Mortimore, P. (1995). Key characteristics of effective schools: A review of school effectiveness research. London: OFSTED. Scheerens, J., & Bosker, R. J. (1997). The foundations of educational effectiveness. Oxford: Pergamon. Schmelkes, S., Martínez, F., Noriega, M. C., & Lavin, S. (1996). The quality of primary education in Mexico: A study of five zones. Paris: International Institute for Educational Planning. Soares, J. F. (Coord). (2002). Escola Eficaz: um. estudo de caso em três escolas da rede pública de ensino do Estado de Minas Gerais. Belo Horizonte: University Federal of Minas Gerais. Soares, J. F. (2003). Influência do professor e do ambiente em sala de aula sobre a proficiência alcançada pelos alunos avaliados no SIMAVE-2002. Estudos em Avaliação Educacional, 28, 103–123. Soares, J. F. (2004). O efeito da escola no desempenho cognitivo de seus alunos. Revista Electrónica Iberoamericana sobre Calidad, Eficacia y Cambio en Educación, 2(2), 86–108. Soares, J. F., Alves, M. T. G., & Oliveira, R. M. (2001). O efeito de 248 escolas de nível médio no vestibular da UFMG nos anos de 1998, 1999 e 2000. Ensaios em Avaliação Educacional, 24, 69–123. Soares, J. F., Cesar, C. C., & Mambrini, J. (2001). Determinantes de desempenho dos alunos do ensino básico brasileiro: evidências do SAEB de 1997. In C. Franco (Org.), Promoção, ciclos e avaliação educacional (pp. 121–153). Porto Alegre: ArtMed Editora. Subirats, J., Nogales, I., & Gottret, G. (1991). Proyecto de escuelas multigrado. La Paz: Bolivian Center for Research and Educational Action. Talavera, M. L., & Sánchez, X. (2000). La escuela, factor principal en la calidad de su rendimiento escolar. La Paz: Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sports-SIMECAL. UMC/GRADE. (2001). Efecto de la escuela en el rendimiento en lógica-matemática en cuarto grado de Primaria. Boletín UMC 8. Lima: Ministerio de Educación. UNESCO–OREALC. (2001). Situación educativa de América Latina y el Caribe 1980–2000. Santiago de Chile: UNESCO/OREALC. UNICEF. (1997). Los niños han sido nuestro ejemplo. Quito: UNICEF. Vaccaro, L., & Fabiane, F. (1994). Gestión escolar y estrategias de mejoramiento de la calidad de la educación en las escuelas de nivel socio-económico bajo: el caso del programa de mejoramiento de la calidad de las escuelas pobres. Fondecyt Project no 1930323. Valiente, T., & Kuper, W. (1998). Lengua, cultura y educación en el Ecuador. Quito: Abya-Yala Editions. Vera, M. M. (1998). Bilingüismo y rendimiento escolar en Bolivia. Programa de Posgrado en Economía ILADES/Georgetown University. Monographic study to obtain de degree of Master of Arts in Economics. Santiago de Chile. Vera, M. M. (1999). Efectividad relativa de los colegios privados y fiscales en Bolivia. Revista de Investigación Económica, 17, 67–96. Virreira, R. (1979). Aproximación al análisis costo beneficio en la escuela formal boliviana. La Paz: Bolivian Catholic University. World Bank. (1999). Peru education at a crossroads. Challenges and opportunities for the 21st century. Report No.19066-PE. Washington DC: World Bank. Zárate, G. (1992). Experiencias educativas exitosas. Un análisis a base de testimonios. Santiago de Chile: Center for Public Studies, Working Document no 175. Zorrilla, M. (2003). La investigación sobre eficacia escolar en México. Estado del Arte. In F. J. Murillo, (Coord.), La investigación sobre Eficacia Escolar en Iberoamérica. Revisión internacional del estado de la cuestión (pp. 353–390). Bogota: Andres Bello Convention.

6 “EFFECTIVE FOR WHAT; EFFECTIVE FOR WHOM?” TWO QUESTIONS SESI SHOULD NOT IGNORE

Ira Bogotch, Luis Mirón, and Gert Biesta

Introduction We begin with the assumption that the School Effectiveness and School Improvement (SESI) movement represents one of the most dominant models of school improvement world-wide. The claim is consistent with state and national education policies as well as many administrator and teacher practices. The names James Coleman (1966) and Ronald Edmonds (1979) serve as abiding historical markers for both affiliated and independent researchers whose research claims purport that school matters (or not) for all children. In its narrowest iteration, SESI reflects specific tenets addressing administrative and teacher actions and their effects on both school climate and student academic performance. More broadly, the influence of SESI has become ideological, an irony given the movement’s claims that the evidence presented is objective (Luyten, Visscher, & Witziers, 2005). Instead, to many, SESI represents a normative model that establishes, monitors, and judges measurable criteria of effectiveness. Moreover, its influence extends beyond SESI studies themselves; that is, by drawing connections to SESI, however tenuous, school reforms in general attain the status of legitimacy by attribution. At the same time that we explore the roots of this dominance, we note that as educational researchers, we ourselves have conducted educational reform studies, empirical and theoretical, outside the borders of SESI. Our conceptions of effectiveness, broadly speaking, as well as our research methods are very different. All of that will be made evident in this chapter. Thus, our critique is meant to engage the paradigmatic assumptions of SESI; for, it is our belief that only by confronting the substance of this dominant research tradition is it possible to enter into pragmatic dialogue of new meanings and practical deconstruction. We will offer readers alternative ideas challenging SESI with respect to educational goals and research methodologies. We believe that SESI’s focus on the instrumental questions (e.g., how to make schools, through leadership and teaching, etc. more effective) evades the more fundamental questions: “effective for what” and “effective for whom.” 93 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 93–110. © 2007 Springer.

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Based on our own reviews and research, we view SESI today as being at a conceptual crossroads. In part, the movement has stalled in its own recycling of research designs, measures, and authors. Yet, at the same time, SESI welcomes critics into its midst, suggesting a readiness to embrace new ideas and methods. If so, then we believe there are the possibilities for building new international research alliances with those currently residing outside the borders of SESI. We start with internal critiques offered inside of SESI literature as our points of departure. Here we note a number of apparent shifts being made in SESI; that is, shifts from studying the effects of organizational dynamics to studying the effects of teaching and learning. There has also been an internal call for mixed and qualitative research designs and methods affixed to large scale and longitudinal quantitative studies. Both fall within the category we call “progress.”

Tracking the “Progress” of SESI Because the history of SESI is so well-known to our Handbook readers, we will summarize milestone reviews in a table (Table 1), with an emphasis on post-2001 reviews. For readers who wish to familiarize themselves with pre-2001 reviews, we recommend Teddlie and Reynolds (2001), Townsend (2001), as well as sociological critiques offered by Thrupp (2001). Table 1 indicates a perceptible shift from the focus on overall school and administrative variables to a closer look at the dynamics of teaching and learning. There is also a shift in tone from that of neutral observations to a tone of friendly, yet critical descriptions of the movement as a whole. We should not minimize the importance of these shifts or the promoting of internal, self-critiques. In fact, throughout most of the

Table 1.

SESI research agendas

Edmonds (1979)

Mortimer (2001)

Muijs, Harris, Chapman, Stoll, and Russ (2004)

Luyten, Visscher, and Witziers (2005)

Strong administrative leadership

Seminal studies of within-school effects on student learning Replication studies with more sophisticated methods Shift toward school improvement International comparisons

Teaching and learning

Political ideology

Effective distributed leadership

Theoretcial limitations

High expectations for students

Orderly school climate Teaching and monitoring of basic skills

Information rich Methodological environment flaws Positive school culture Learning environment Continuous professional development

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1980s and 1990s, school reforms have avoided independent critical research such that the packaged reforms as well as the inquiry models (e.g., Accelerated Schools, see below) of the New American School Movement never have advanced beyond the advocacy stages of conceptual development and implementation knowledge. They quickly became products that were bought and sold to educational authorities, local, national, and international, as solutions to any and all educational problems, regardless of context, people, or politics. Therefore, it stands as a strength of SESI that it has shown methodological transparency and has continuously asked reflexive questions pertaining to how to measure specific effects of schooling on student learning and overall school improvement. It is this transparency and reflexiveness which have contributed to the literature and supports future school reform efforts, including critiques. At the same time, we question whether SESI researchers are, in fact, identifying the relevant effects of student learning and school improvement. Within the research community, SESI has acknowledged its own methodological limitations whether in terms of sampling, designs, or statistical analyses. Such limitations, however, are less known throughout the wider policy community and to the public at large. Moreover, the extensive reviews by Mujis, Harris, Chapman, Stoll, and Russ (2004) and Luyten et al. (2005) recycle the seminal studies of the 1980s and 1990s while claiming to have discovered new evidence of progress. Granted, any reanalyses of past works may lead to a stronger consensus based on internal reliabilities of the previously cited studies. But why have the same studies and limited number of journals been recycled is the real question? Most of the new evidence does not come from post-2001 research. For example, Mujis et al. (2004) offered a reformulation of the 1979 axioms, with new emphases on teaching and learning. Yet, fewer than 10% of the studies they referenced were post-2001. The authors wrote, “[we found that] the degree of consensus concerning the key elements of improving schools in disadvantaged areas [that] are worth serious consideration” (p. 169). What new consensus did they find? Without new evidence, the review is primarily a re-analysis of past studies using current terms such as distributed leadership. Moreover, the shift in focus to teaching and learning is still presented to the research community in a list logic, rather than as a new synthesis or integration of complex dynamics among people and contexts across the variables being studied. What we read are more discrete variables with new descriptive measures. That of course allows for more correlational and cross-sectional analyses, rather than asking new and deeper questions of the variables. Similarly, Luyten et al. (2005) referred to eight studies [out of 82] that were post2001. Here we did see a maturation in terms of theory and method in documenting “good” classrooms and “good” schools which have brought more contextual variables into the school effectiveness and improvement models. At the same time, we hear from practitioners how district, state and national authorities continue to adopt multiple school reform strategies that potentially overwhelm practitioners, especially teachers (Wonycott & Bogotch, 1997). Some of the new initiatives introduced by central authorities run counter to the tenets of school effectiveness, but such contradictions are ignored by policymakers and district level administrators as well as by promoters of packaged school reforms. Any devolution of power through school effectiveness data collection and analysis (e.g., data disaggregation) has been thwarted by the systematic

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appropriation of decisions by central authorities and the mandated adoption of standardized practices in administration and instruction. As a result, there has been less emphasis worldwide on educator professionalism/quality and more emphasis on standardization and simple test measures. In general, the “public” has focused on the managerial, procedural, and formulaic, ignoring teacher judgment, quality and professionalism as well as global issues of class, race, and ideology. School effectiveness embraced organizational dynamics of leadership and instruction. Its focus on closed systems’ thinking within organizational theory was meant to advance our understanding of schools as both routine and complex organizations. That is, to the extent that school organizations themselves instituted rigid and prescribed routines and structures, manipulating variables and testing for differential effects seemed logical. The routines extended to roles and tasks. Therefore, aggregated measures of individual principals became the proxy for administrative processes; aggregated measures of teachers became the proxy for teaching and learning, that is, instruction. Within a systems’ model, these proxy variables could then be categorized as inputs, outputs, with minimal attention paid to the proverbial “black box.” The earliest research designs and methods depicted the organization through correlations of multiple independent variables leading or predicting outcomes on a single or multiple dependent variables. During the early phase of SESI research, the individual within a school organization, principal, teacher, student, etc., was not viewed as the most significant influence on teaching, learning, and leading. Single subject designs, case studies, and mixed methods were pushed to the side as data across classes, schools, states, nations, and reform models were collected, measured, and reported. As new research designs were appended to SESI, significant progress was made in addressing the actual complexities of schooling. In fact, researchers reported that the role of individual principals and individual teachers did matter to the same if not larger degree than the class or school as a whole. Yet, we have no systematic research comparing and contrasting “effects” from educational institutions designed around the ethic of professional autonomy as opposed to educational institutions that impose standardized structures and practices. Would individuals, as professional educators and students, make better educational choices than do the educational systems of today? Is collective systems’ thinking superior to individual decisions made by expert professionals working in public settings? These are important and unanswered empirical questions. The decade of the 1990s brought about a fundamental shift in how policymakers and the public thought about public schools. With a new emphasis on outcomes instead of inputs, the public was directed towards bottom line measures called student achievement and accountability. While SESI studies correlated multiple variables to student achievement, a more fundamental change in the means (processes) of schooling was also happening, but not as predicted. The intent was to improve teaching and learning through the policy levers of accountability testing [Finn (1990 cited in Finn & Walberg, 1994)]. Instead, accountability has resulted in publicly ranking schools, districts, states, and nations, narrowing subject areas taught in the curriculum, and refocusing instruction for extended periods of time on teaching students the efficiencies of test taking. Policymakers claim that these were all unintended consequences. But that

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response only begs the real questions which are what have been the effects on teaching and learning and have schools improved as a result? When we look to the measures of student achievement, we often land on data generated by large-scale achievement tests. While such tests are supposedly aligned to state and national standards, the data themselves are macro indicators of school, district, and state performance. While technology allows administrators and teachers to disaggregate data down to individual teachers, students and classrooms, this would have a significant effect on school improvement only if the data had real time applicability in terms of guidance and teaching (Heritage & Yeagley, 2005). Practitioners need timely, accurate, detailed, and comprehensive information to provide guidance for ongoing teaching and learning and to steer school improvement efforts. (p. 324) Instead, the content of the tests encapsulates the Fall months of teaching in a Spring administration, with data given at the end of the year or over the Summer for more macro planning for the following year on a different group of students. In some districts, practice exams given throughout the year serve as benchmark assessments within a school. The demands for real time applicability, however, are met by efficiency measures, as states revert back to multiple choice questions that allow easy and quick scoring. Much of the cognitive and assessment research on extended response questions, critical thinking, and alternative testing lose out to measures of efficiency while retaining the nomenclature of “effectiveness.” Even the so-called “new” conceptual frameworks that we read in the two major reviews of literature were imported from other academic fields and dated. Mujis et al. (2004) imported contingency, compensation deficit, and additivity as frameworks for assessing their findings. Luyten et al. (2005) cited Dahl and Lindblom (1953) and Thompson (1967), seminal theorists who combined political dynamics with organizational change. We see this as progress in terms of bringing contingency and politics into the analysis, but the scholarship is not strong enough yet or made relevant to move SESI into the twenty-first Century. What then should we make of this looking back and recycling? What we found was that the reviews looking backwards, recycling the same studies and authors, and importing theoretical frameworks were used to sharpen, not deepen the understandings of SESI. So, what exactly was the purpose of conducting these reviews? Has the field exhausted its own literature? Are there other research questions and methods? Where does SESI go from here? The remainder of this chapter highlights the two questions that should not be ignored: “effective for what” and “effective for whom.” In the next two sections, we explore these questions in more detail. We address the “effective for what” question by looking in more detail at what in many SESI studies has not theorized, that is, the black box of the interactions between “input” and “output” or what we prefer to call it, “teaching” and “learning.” We then address the “effective for whom” question by looking particularly at alternative research approaches that do not rely upon a technological model (i.e., producing knowledge through research and then implementing it), but

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articulates more collaborative models of working where knowledge production and application are much more closely connected and, more importantly, where there is a direct relationship between researchers and practitioners.

Effective for What: Mistaking Means for Ends and Ignoring Judgments One of the criticisms levelled at SESI is that it is under-theorized (see Coe & Fitz-Gibbon, 1998; Luyten et al., 2005; Thrupp, 2001), with a strong emphasis on cross-sectional research. Yet, SESI claims to have produced valid models mapping relationships between particular variables (see e.g., de Jong, Westerhof, & Kruiter, 2004; Silins & Mulford, 2004). What is missing is a deeper understanding – or at least an attempt to understand – how different variables interact inside the “black box.” Given the focus on school practices, one of the most crucial interactions for the SESI field is the interaction between teaching and learning. In line with much research in education, SESI conceives of the teaching–learning relationship as a relationship that ideally should be understood in causal terms, that is, where teaching is a cause, and ideally the main cause of learning. Although SESI researchers are cognizant of other factors, the teaching–learning interaction is central in much research, particularly the research focusing on effective teaching and teacher effectiveness. The question here is whether teaching–learning interactions represent a causal relationship. We ask, how realistic is it to think of teaching as the cause of learning? Such assumptions would be valid if we could compare the interaction between teaching and learning with physical interactions, that is, interactions in the material world. But the interaction between teaching and learning is precisely not a process of mechanical “push and pull.” Whether teaching will have any impact on the learning of students depends on the meaning making activities of students. Teaching will only have an effect, to put it differently, if students can make sense, interpret, and give meaning to what is being taught. Education is, therefore, not a form of physical interaction, but rather of symbolic or symbolically mediated interaction; it is a process in which everything depends on the response and interpretation of the student (see Biesta, 1994, 1995, 1998, 1999; Vanderstraeten & Biesta, 2001). This is, of course, not to suggest that in education any student response will do. The purpose of education is to communicate meaning and for that reason the key question is how and to what extent the response of the learner can be organised. Education cannot simply consist of presenting students with lessons or educational artefacts such as texts, pictures, CDs, etc. Students will undoubtedly respond to such lessons and artefacts, and, in doing so, will give meaning to them. But this response, and the ensuing meaning, will be completely idiosyncratic. The reason why simply presenting students with artefacts does not count as a case of the communication of meaning is because the meaning of artefacts is not to be found in the artefacts themselves, but in how people respond to and use these artefacts. The meaning-to-be-communicated is to be found, in other words, in the social practices in which objects and artefacts have their meaning. In order to understand and make sense of the interaction between

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teaching and learning, it is, therefore, important to see that meaning can only be communicated through participation and, more specifically, participation in social practices which embody particular meanings (see Biesta, 2006). Over the past decades, significant progress has been made in incorporating notions of communication and participation in the understanding of educational situations and, more specifically, the interaction between teaching and learning. Whereas work on communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998) and on activity systems (Engestrom, 2001) has provided important descriptions of the dynamics of teaching– learning interaction, in our view the most precise theoritizations of the communicative and participatory nature of educational interactions are still to be found in the works of John Dewey and George Herbert Mead. Recent reconstructions of their works could begin to address one of the most fundamental theoretical gaps in much of SESI research, and could open up the “black box” so as to begin to understand how particular relationships between teaching and learning are established. It is important to see that the potential of this line of thinking is not restricted to the content of teaching or to the interaction between teaching and learning per se. It could well be argued that other “factors” that influence learning, such as group size, leadership style, or even the architecture of schools, only have an effect because of the ways in which students interpret and make use of the meanings and learning opportunities afforded by them. To think of teaching as a particular opportunity for learning suggests an approach which conceives of many “factors” as learning opportunities, as long as it is not forgotten that such opportunities need to be used, and need to be used in a meaningful way by students, in order to have any effect. The foregoing does not suggest that teaching (and for that matter any aspect that potentially impacts upon learning) does not matter at all. It only suggests that teaching cannot be understood as a causal factor and that the teaching–learning interaction cannot be understood in causal terms. Education is, in other words, not a perfect technology. This raises an important question about the notion of effectiveness, because it suggests that we need to move away from the idea that the most effective teaching is the teaching in which teaching controls learning totally. It is, however, not only important to re-think and re-define the very idea of effectiveness itself; it is also important – and this is another area of weakness in SESI research – to acknowledge in a more explicit manner the fact that “effectiveness” is an instrumental value. It is a notion which says something about the value of means and instruments, of ways of achieving particular ends, but is neutral with respect to the ends themselves. The point is that when we talk about the effectiveness of certain processes or activities, there is always a further question to be asked: effective for what? This means that a phrase like “effective teaching” or even the more general ideas of “effective schooling” and “school effectiveness” do not mean anything at all as long as it is not specified what it is that the teaching or schooling aims to achieve. As we have noted, there has been a growing voice from within SESI for the broadening of the educational outcomes measured. Rutter and Maugham (2002), in a review of SESI findings from 1979 to 2002, pointed out the dearth of research into the behavioural outcomes of schooling, as opposed to the academic ones. Walford (2002) and Gray (2004) both remarked on the decline in use of non-cognitive outcomes since the

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early SER researchers as the focus on more easily measurable cognitive outcomes gained hold. They both called for the use of the SER framework to study other aims of education, such as social justice, creativity and democratic awareness, and stress that society’s aims for education extend beyond narrow academic outcomes and that different constituencies have different expectations for schools. Although the issue here is partly one about the research agenda of SESI and the question which kinds of “outcomes” should be taken into consideration, in order to get a better empirical understanding of how different aspects of educational situations and schools might matter, the deeper and more important question is not about which “outcomes” are taken into consideration in SESI, but rather which “outcomes” are considered to be important for education and should count. The fact that many discussions in policy and practice arenas talk about effectiveness without ever asking the question “effective for what?” indicates a lack of awareness that people can and do have different ideas about what the purpose of education is or should be and that research into the effectiveness of certain practices for certain outcomes cannot replace deliberation about what the desirable outcomes of education should be. This is not just a matter of parental choice or student preference. It is not, in other words, a question of accountability if we think of accountability only in terms of choice and preferences (see Biesta, 2004). The question about the purpose of education is fundamentally a political question and, at least in democratic societies, questions about the purpose of education are questions that require open debate and continuous contestation. The question of school effectiveness should always be addressed after and as a function of the always provisional outcomes of democratic deliberation. There is no way in which research on the effectiveness of processes can replace deliberation about the desirability of what such processes should lead to. This is, again, not to suggest that research about means is irrelevant for discussions about ends (and again pragmatism, and particularly John Dewey’s views about the intricate relationship between means and ends – expressed in his idea of “ends-in-view” – are extremely relevant here; see Biesta & Burbules, 2003), since it is always important to know whether certain ends can realistically be achieved and how they can be achieved. But what shouldn’t happen – and in this respect the relative silence about the aims and ends of education in the SESI field is worrying – is that the discussion about the means dictates the discussion about the aims and ends. This relates to one further point we wish to make, a point which has to do with the role of judgment in educational practices. We have already established that what school effectiveness research can indicate is how certain aims and objectives might be achieved, although it can never suggest this with absolute certainty because of the fact that educational interaction is not a technological process. This already suggests that the link between SESI research and educational practice cannot be established in a prescriptive way. What SESI research can show are possible relationships between teaching and learning, for example, or between leadership styles and educational “outcomes”; but whether such possible relationships will be actual in particular situations, is always an open question (Biesta & Burbules, 2003; Bogotch & Taylor, 1993). The idea that research findings can simply be translated into rules for action only makes sense if it can be assumed that the situation in which the research was done is identical to the situation in which the findings of research will be applied. While this may be the case for closed systems in the natural world, this assumption does not hold for open

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systems (natural and social) and definitely not for recursive open systems, systems that can learn and reflect and as a result of this can change the way they operate (i.e., social systems) (see Vanderstraeten & Biesta, 2001, 2006). In recursive open systems such as education, the findings of research only specify possibilities and it requires judgments from the social actors in the situation in order to apply such findings. Rather than rules for action, findings of previous research indicate possibilities – possible relationships between actions and consequences – which, on the one hand, can help actors in the situation to understand particular problems in new and different ways, and, on the other hand, suggest possible lines of action to address problems. This is all social research can do, and it is important, both for the producers and users of research, to be aware of such limitations. Having said this, it is also important to acknowledge that the judgments made by educational practitioners in the light of research findings are not confined to the question as to whether particular findings are relevant and applicable in this, particular unique situation (this classroom, this time of day, these students, etc.). The first point is that even if research were able to indicate the most effective way to achieve a particular end, educators may still decide not to act accordingly. There is, for example, a substantial amount of evidence which suggests that the influence of the home environment on educational achievement. This would suggest that the most effective way to achieve success in education would be to take children away from their parents – and presumably do so at an early age – so that they can grow up in an “ideal” environment (see Bettelheim, 1969). Although many educational interventions are aimed at the home environment and the early years’ experience, most societies find it undesirable to take children away from their parents in order to bring about educational success. This example shows that in educational practices the question is not simply whether a particular strategy is the most effective way to bring about a particular end. There is always also the question whether it is the most desirable way. There is a further complication in the case of education. Educators not only need to make judgments about the desirability of educational means and strategies, but they also need to make a judgment about the educational value of their activities and strategies. While certain strategies may be generally acceptable and desirable, the point in the case of education is that students not only learn from what teachers say, but also from how they say it and from what they do. The classic example here, and one used by Dewey, is that of punishment. We may well have conclusive empirical evidence that in all cases physical punishment is the most effective way of deterring or controlling disruptive behavior. Yet, as Carr (1992, p. 249) argues, the practice should nevertheless be avoided not only because punishment may be generally undesirable, but also “because it teaches children that it is appropriate or permissible in the last resort to enforce one’s will or get one’s own way by the exercise of violence.” The point is that in education means and ends are not simply linked in a technical or external way – where the means is neutral with regards to the end – but are related in an internal or constitutive way. Educational means contribute to the achievement of educational ends and outcomes. Or, to put it differently: students learn not only from what they are being taught, but also from how they are being taught. This means that educators not only need to make judgments about what is effective in a particular situation and whether the means to achieve particular ends are desirable; they also need to make a (value)

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judgment about whether means or strategies that are considered to be effective for achieving particular ends are educationally desirable. All this shows that education is a thoroughly moral practice because decisions about what education is supposed to achieve are always moral judgments, that is, judgments that ultimately are about what it means to be an educated person. They are judgments about the moral qualities of people, not simply about their cognition and behavior. All this means that SESI research needs to be seen as one factor in a wider, more complicated and ultimately moral and deeply value-laden process of educational decision-making.

Effective for Whom: The Need for Social Action Owing to the fact that SESI, with a few notable exceptions, is apparently preoccupied with questions of causality, especially between teaching and learning, a preoccupation we have criticized above, asking the question “effectiveness for whom?” makes explicit who benefits from research. In breaking away from natural sciences and technology (as applied to the study of education) and the scientific quest for evidence-based theory of learning (i.e., cognition), the issue of who produces knowledge (i.e., researchers) is central. Similarly, how scientific knowledge is rendered intellectually and socially legitimate is arguably of equal importance. For one of our central concerns here is with the people affected (or disaffected as it were) with the outcomes of SESI research and practice. Put differently, the educational solutions offered by SESI are not likely to transform populations and societies who have been left behind in today’s global economy. The so-called world-class, international standards of learning that are measured by SESI effects on student learning hold out very little promise from transforming individuals, schools, communities, or whole societies. Prescriptions for how such learning is transacted globally stem in large part from the SESI tradition and foundational knowledge. However, without a substantial voice in the production of knowledge standards from teachers and students, specifically minority teachers and students, we expect that the transformation of teaching and learning, as part of the everyday politics of education on the ground are unlikely to occur. If so, then we as educational researchers need to critique knowledge production, knowledge dissemination, and implementation in ways that will materially improve how children are educated in schools, communities, and societies. It is not so much about doing research per se as it is about doing research that matters socially, politically, and educationally – if we intend as researchers to make a difference. Essentially, the term effectiveness refers to solving a problem. Is the problem that we do not know what is happening within schools? Is the problem that we do not have enough measures for such happenings? Or, is the problem that the measures do not answer the questions that the public, including educators, are entitled to ask? Given the complex dynamics across organizational structures, roles, and tasks, it is easy to generate measures that purport to answer specific questions. However, we would ask, what do the numbers mean to students, teachers, and parents? Do the numbers measure the quality of teaching, learning, and leadership or rather the frequency or correlated frequencies of behaviors? Do the numbers measure learning or performance on a multiple choice

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examination? All of us seek to understand meanings of school quality not just have a compendium of data describing what is happening inside of schools. Therefore, do SESI measures provide such responses to questions of quality? We think not. Why? There is a problem inside of the heart of SESI research. That is, its strength has been, from inception, the ability to generate evidence of happenings inside of schools. The movement has spawned evidence-based decision making and evidence-based research inquiries. But in what sense does the evidence measure quality as opposed to frequency and data? Have the effects of the evidence made public led to quality teaching and learning as opposed to a narrowing of curricula and output measures (i.e., literacy and numeracy)? In what sense does SESI embrace the moral purposes of education? Epistemologically, the “problem” may be framed in terms of reflexivity (Usher & Edwards, 1996) on the one hand, and “objective” non-contaminated data on the other hand. At its simplest, reflexivity claims that since the activity of the knower always influences what is known, nothing can be known except through those activities. (p. 148) Not only does this perspective question what the researcher knows and produces, but also what the effects are on the others-practitioners, students, and communities. In contrast to SESI, alternative research methods tend to see this “problem” as a resource. That is, by embracing the knowledge producer/researcher as part of the process of knowing, we can then expose publicly how research always embodies power relations and politics. We previously lauded SESI as a distinctive movement that has made its variables and methods transparent (to other researchers). Here, we would urge SESI to go much further by exposing relationships of themselves as researchers to government and educational officials, funding agencies, as well as to their “subjects.” The reason is that “our methodologies, dualisms, frameworks, and categories, all the basic intellectual ‘tools’ of research are implicated with power” (Usher & Edwards, p. 151). Not to surface our roles as researchers reflexively ensures that power relations remain hidden inside of the research itself. Situating oneself inside of a positivist paradigm, however, does not exempt the researcher from this responsibility. [A]n awareness of reflexivity enables us to interrogate our own practices of research, in terms of how they can become part of the dominant and oppressive discourses through a ‘reflexive’ acceptance of the neutrality of research, and in terms of how we, as researchers, are implicated in such discourses despite our best intentions (p. 152).

A Theory of Methodology in Support of Action In the remainder of this section, we have selected one research approach among many that we ourselves have practiced as educational researchers. Michelle Fine (1994; also see Fine, 2005; Roman & Apple, 1990) puts forth three stances qualitative researchers

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may assume in relation to social action. These are the ventriloquist, voice, and activism. Fine argues, first and foremost, that all researchers, but especially those feminist scholars and scholars of color, are “agents, in the flesh … and in the collective, who choose, wittingly or not, from among a controversial and constraining set of political stances and epistemologies” (1994, p. 16). We briefly elaborate upon the most radical of these, activism. For feminist researchers especially, activism “seeks to unearth, interrupt, and open new frames for intellectual and political theory and practice (cited in Fine & Vanderslice, 1992). The radical feminist-activist researcher not only explicitly acknowledges, and embraces, research-as-politics. She or he desires to occupy the knowledge spaces and ontological position of the political domain. Fine asserts that feminist practitioners of this research method in particular openly choose politics, because women, perhaps more than men, may revolt most acutely against domination and oppression. Fine extends the feminist perspective to other marginalized researchers, such as Critical Race Theorists. Such like-minded researchers, be they women, scholars of color, or youth activists become “critical participants” in the discourses over the restless struggle for power and domination, and the particular meaning that power holds for marginalized people, be they women, racial minorities, and in one unprecedented case, poor students of color in recovering New Orleans along with their families. The narrative of oppression post Katrina represents the new African American Diaspora. This stance of activism, in turn, is informed by three distinctions: these are (1) an explicit account about the space the researcher occupies – wittingly. This knowledge space comprises both theoretical space and political ground; (2) the written research text/report itself expresses a critical appraisal of the existing social order and the under girding ideological structures; and (3) the research text presents the images of new social possibilities resulting from reconstruction and the social imaginary. The individual and collective works of the authors provide numerous examples of these activists positions. For example, in demonstrating the first researcher position, Bogotch (1997) shared with readers and participants verbatim texts of oral conversations allowing for competing interpretations that both gave hindsight and anticipation of the actions taken. Through member checking, the author engaged the participants in relationship building and in critiquing their own courses of action, including the role played by the researcher in capturing the dialogues. The second dimension was highlighted by Bogotch & Roy (1997) through the use of sociolinguistic frames and registers in conjunction with a mini-ethnography. The researchers were able to expose the existing hierarchy within the district and school from the middle position occupied by the principal. The analysis exposed how power was used morally, amorally, as well as immorally in daily interactions across the organization. From the inception of participatory action research (PAR), Fine, Tuck, & ZellerBerkman (2006) note that this method of knowledge inquiry has global roots, in Africa, Asia, Central, and South America. In this respect the long roots of PAR parallel the theory and practice of Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy, with one important distinction. Whereas Freireian methods emphasized the formation, and potential liberation of adult peasants through the formation of dialogic groups and the production of “generative themes” in Brazil, Fine’s work and those of her collaborators, specifically work with

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youth across the globe and in the US with the premise that PAR as a distinct form of … “critical inquiry (is) a tool for social change” at once a social movement, social science and a radical challenge to the tradition of science. Put differently, Fine’s use of PAR, and social activism resulting from the production of knowledge from those at the bottom of the research hierarchy, is concerned as much with new forms of knowledge and its production as it is with merely a tool to aid practitioners to reflect critically about their professional practice. The latter was evident when one of the authors (Mirón) was participating in the method of inquiry used in the implementation of Accelerated Schools in the 1990s. Here, reflection was seemingly the end, not the means, of knowledge production gleaned through more conventional forms of action research. Thus, in the struggle to fight the spread of AIDS, and the exposure of human genocide in Dafur and elsewhere, for example, as well as prisons and schools in America, Fine has extended the contexts of her scholarship and advocacy of this research method, and theory of methodology, to engage with and join youth in their collective struggles across the globe, as they collectively resist multiple forms of oppression – and domination by structures and agents of power. This move we want to conceive as political agency grounded in the inversion of the subject-object of research relation (Mirón, in press). This method of research, described below as activist research embeds dimensions of performativity as well as performance (Denzin, 2003; Mirón, 2005). It seeks a form of subject empowerment that builds humanistically upon an innate will to power. Feminist standpoint epistemology enables the research subject to potentially exercise her own will to power, thus becoming a producer of knowledge. Social inquiry is both a research act or performance (Denzin, 2003), as well as a discursive practice that materially and bodily enact the very reality that it seeks to distantly describe through objective laboratory-like methods of science, for example, the colonized other (see Fine et al., 2006). We will not elaborate on this schema here. Suffice to say that calls to reform SESI methods should extend beyond the quantitative–qualitative binary to potentially disrupt the scientific tradition of eschewing any form of advocacy or activism within the social sciences especially. This latter point was significant for our purposes in this chapter.

Conclusions At no time in this chapter have we contested the major SESI premise that what happens inside of schools matters. Moreover, we agree with the internal critics of SESI that other factors located outside of classes and schools and with participants themselves also matter. Towards the conclusion that schools do not make a (statistically significant difference) in the education of children, many urban researchers such as Ronald Edmonds (1979) and later the many researchers cited in this chapter have produced evidence challenging that structural oversight. Indeed, it is now widely recognized that a key predictor of inner city school children’s achievement in school is the quality of teaching and administering. It was towards gaining a deeper understanding of quality with respect to the purposes of effectiveness and to methods of research that capture and transform practice that we sought to provide readers here.

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While SESI has moved slowly towards new understandings of within school dynamics and alternative research methods, we have argued that more is called for in terms of defining quality teaching and learning and quality research. It is one thing to recognize limitations and delimitations in research designs and methods; it is another to develop educational theories by studying relationships that honor the capabilities of participants to determine meanings, purposes, and knowledge. The perspectives and positions we have taken here, as fellow educational researchers, confirm what all of us already know, and that is: The designs that have developed specific task and instructional practices for specific situations appear to be more readily implemented. Designs that rely more on the ‘professional’ and ‘personal’ development of the teachers to lead them to more effective task definition appear to be less readily implemented. (Bodilly, 1998, p. 113) The future of SESI calls for research that builds upon what we already know and incorporates professional, personal, and political dynamics into the research questions and designs. To cite Fullan and Miles (1992) “Educational reform is as much a political as an educational process, and it has both negative and positive aspects” (p. 746). Yet, the echoes of Frederick Taylor still resound in the hallways of schools and State Departments/Ministries of Education: The development of a science … involves the establishment of many rules, laws, and formulae which replace the judgment of individual workman and which can be effectively used only after having been systematically recorded, indexed, etc. (Taylor, 1911/1967, p. 37) Without alternative theories and methods to extend SESI research, evidence-based reforms lack meaning, and more perversely, isolate and misinform the public and participants. SESI researchers, working alone, have not exposed the barriers to professional and personal development of teachers, students, and administrators. Nor has SESI discredited the ghost of Frederick Taylor. SESI has not seriously interrupted or disrupted the traditional grammar of schooling (Tyack and Tobin, 1994). The more complex changes needed to improve schools are still locked inside of the “black box.” Our critique of effectiveness models in SERI raised two questions, “effective for what?” and “effective for whom?” In the first instance, we argued that an overemphasis on finding the correct “technology” to guide school improvement efforts as well as ignoring the genuine educational effectiveness question (“effective for what?”) has led SESI researchers to define quality (or good schools) in largely technocratic terms, ignoring broader, less metrically defined issues of quality, purpose, social values and politics. The second question “effective for whom?” disrupts the status and privilege of the movement’s researchers as well as challenge them to engage within school participants differently. The movement’s clear behavioral assertions, its understandable measures, and its presumed completeness with respect to solutions to problems has made its mission attractive to different and powerful publics (Holly, 1986). As a result, SESI

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researchers and its tenets are in demand and utilized by district, state, and national agencies. Yet, the work itself embodies powerful centralized authorities imposing its teachings on those with less power – specifically school building administrators, teachers, and students. Symbolically, SESI communicates a position of strength and action, behaviors favored by ministries, chief executive officers, and various publics. The research alternatives offered here envision new relationships coupled with new methodologies, not yet embraced by SESI. In ending we ask, how might educational researchers engage in international relationships similar to Doctors without Borders, who enter areas with the most serious health problems? Doctors without Borders set up field hospitals without the benefit of running water or electricity, and without enough beds for patients. In contrast, educational researchers establish home bases in communities and nations based on a different philanthropy, that is, securing grants and contracts which determine who, where, and when education will be researched. As a result, there are whole segments of the world that have yet to be explored by educational researchers. This is not a criticism limited to SESI; the entire educational community does not have a social justice arm of activists and advocates, that is, educational rights’ activists for whom education is viewed as a basic right to be enjoyed by all throughout the world. Our professional ethics have had borders, stopping us from reaching the most disadvantaged levels of humanity. We must try again to open the black boxes, the one between teachers/ teaching and students/learning, and the one between the interactions of researchers and researched. That work is indeed complex and with it comes a real sense of danger.

Acknowledgement We would like to thank Gillian Allan, Graduate Assistant at the University of Exeter, for her assistance with the research on which this chapter is based.

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Mirón, L. (in press). Multiple racial subjects: Transnational, national, and indigenous peoples: Beyond categorization. In N. Denzin (Ed.), Handbook of critical methodologies. Thousand Oaks, Ca: Sage. Mortimer, P. (2001). Globalization, effectiveness and improvement. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12(2), 229–250. Mujis, D., Harris, A., Chapman, C., Stoll, L., & Russ, J. (2004). Improving schools in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas – A review of research evidence. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 15(2), 149–175. Reynolds, D., & Teddlie, C. (2001). Reflections on the critics, and beyond them. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12(1), 99–114. Roman, L., & Apple, M. (1990). Is naturalism a move away from positivism? In Elliot Eisner, & Alan Peshkin (Eds.), Qualitative inquiry in education. New York: Teachers College Press. Rutter, M., & Maugham, B. (2002). School effectiveness findings 1979–2002. Journal of School Psychology, 40(6), 451–475. Silins, H., & Mulford, B. (2004). Schools as learning organisations – effects on teacher leadership and student outcomes. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 15(3–4), 443–466. Taylor, F. (1911/1967). The principles of scientific management. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Teddlie, C., & Reynolds, D. (2001). Countering the critics: Responses to recent criticisms of school effectiveness research. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12(1), 41–82. Thompson, J. D. (1967). Organizations in action: Social science bases of administrative theory. New York: McGraw-Hill. Thrupp, M. (2001). Sociological and political concerns about school effectiveness research: Time for a new research agenda. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12(1), 7–40. Townsend, T. (2001). Satan or savior? An analysis of two decades of school effectiveness research. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12(1), 115–130. Tyack, D., & Tobin, W. (1994). The “grammar” of schooling: Why has it been so hard to change? American Educational Research Journal, 31, 453–479. Usher, R., & Edwards, R. (1996). Postmodernism and education. London: Routledge. Vanderstraeten, R., & Biesta, G. J. J. (2001). How is education possible? Educational Philosophy and Theory, 33(1), 7–21. Vanderstraeten, R., & Biesta, G. J. J. (2006). How is education possible? A pragmatist account of communication and the social organisation of education. British Journal of Educational Studies, 54(2), 160–174. Walford, G. (2002). Redefining school effectiveness. Westminster Studies in Education, 25(1), 47–58. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wonycott, A., & Bogotch, I. (1997). Reculturing: Assumptions, beliefs, and values underlying the processes of restructuring. Journal of School Leadership, 7(1), 27–49.

7 PURSUING THE CONTEXTUALISATION AGENDA: RECENT PROGRESS AND FUTURE PROSPECTS

Martin Thrupp, Ruth Lupton, and Ceri Brown

Introduction The last decade of school effectiveness and school improvement (SESI) has seen considerable debate between writers with different readings of how robust SESI is and what it has to offer. Within SESI there are both those who emphasis the strength of SESI’s contribution and view its shortcomings as largely on the margins (e.g., Stoll & Sammons, in this volume; Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000) and those who are also sympathetic but seeking more fundamental changes (e.g., MacBeath, in this volume; Wrigley, 2003). Yet SESI has also attracted less sympathetic criticism from policy sociologists and other external critics for neglecting the social and political context of schooling and supporting damaging neo-liberal reforms (e.g., Angus, 1993; Morley & Rassool, 1999; Slee, Weiner with Tomlinson, 1998; Thrupp, 2001a). These trenchant external criticisms have not always been appreciated by SESI proponents but have nevertheless been useful. They have required SESI researchers to take stock of the nature and direction of their work, to think more about the context of schooling and to recognise the dangers of SESI research becoming too closely aligned with policy. For instance, criticisms from the first author (Thrupp, 1999, 2001a, b, 2002) have stimulated a number of responses from SESI researchers who have either sought to counter the criticisms (Reynolds & Teddlie, 2001; Scheerens, Bosker, & Creemers, 2001; Stringfield, 2002; Teddlie & Reynolds, 2001; Townsend, 2001) or used them as building blocks for their own critical commentaries (Goldstein & Woodhouse, 2000; Gray, 2001; Luytens, Visscher, & Witziers, 2005). We also recognize, however, that if SESI is to change then criticism needs to be followed by a way forward. We believe a key way to shift both the nature of SESI findings and the political use made of SESI would be to pursue what we call the contextualisation agenda. The contextualisation agenda seeks to assert the central importance of context in research related to schools and their performance. It would involve SESI taking as its starting point the diverse local social and political contexts of schools, including differences in pupil intake characteristics (class, ethnicity, turbulence, 111 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 111–126. © 2007 Springer.

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proportion of pupils from refugee families or with special needs) and other school and area characteristics (urban/rural location, LEA policies, market position compared to surrounding schools). We are using “local” broadly here: the social and political features of regions, areas, neighbourhoods and school catchments could all be relevant to our argument. Better contextualised SESI research could be used to underpin contextualised policy and practice and give rise to fairer evaluation of school performance and distribution of resources, the provision of more appropriate advice and support to schools in less favourable contexts and better responses to the needs of marginalised school populations. Just as importantly, such research would be difficult to misuse to support overly generic, context-less reforms of the kind which have been popular with governments in recent, managerialist, times. The rationale for the contextualisation agenda is considered further below. Raising this agenda implies there is not enough being done already and so we go on to illustrate that while there is increasing concern already to recognise and understand context in SESI, there is considerable room for further development. We then argue that school composition research would be a potentially insightful literature for SESI to tap into, although future large-scale studies in this area need to overcome a number of limitations within the existing literature. The chapter concludes by drawing on data from the authors’ research in Hampshire (UK) primary schools to illustrate some of the highly nuanced views of schools which the contextualisation agenda would start to open up.

A Rationale for the Contextualisation Agenda The New Public Management (NPM) holds that social change can be engineered through “one size fits all” organisational change and through more efficient, marketoriented public service delivery which is informed by “best practice,” driven by incentives and targets, and closely scrutinised and monitored. In education what is sought by NPM is the right prescription for “delivery,” with “underperformance” in terms of pupil outcomes being accounted for by deviance from good organisational management and practice. Yet wherever discussion of local context raises social complexity and inequality, NPM assumptions are revealed as simplistic. It is widely recognised that effective management and teaching in one local context is not the same as effective management and teaching in another. By highlighting the differences and inequalities between schools, contextualised SESI discussions will create accounts which are much less “neutral” and politically “naïve” and hence allow for contextualised policy responses that might better meet the needs of specific schools. In part these will involve a fairer distribution of resources to allow for the different organisational designs required in different school contexts, reflecting the fact that the unpredictability of the school day in some schools is, in a sense, entirely predictable given their contexts. The contextualisation agenda would also support contextualised models of practice. It is clear that deliberate adaptations are made by teachers and school leaders in order to deal with the social, political and market contexts of their schools. For instance in Lupton’s (2004) study of the differences between high poverty schools (discussed

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later in this chapter) adaptations used by schools extended to almost every aspect of organisation: lesson lengths, class sizes, ability groupings, additional learning support, behaviour and attendance management, pastoral care, extra-curricular activities and so on. Does this mean that there can be no models of practice to follow because examined in detail, each school’s context, and thus its practice, must be wholly individual? We think not. Most plausibly, common practices are probably adopted in schools with certain clusters of common contextual characteristics, giving a middle ground between wholly generic versions of “good practice” and wholly individualised ones. However, since SESI research has typically been so generic in its approach, these contextualised examples are mostly marginalized. It remains difficult to work out which practices would be most appropriate in schools in particular kinds of settings. A better understanding of local context would allow those providing policy and advice to schools to design interventions which have a better chance of fitting and therefore succeeding within the school environments they are intended for and therefore improving the life-chances of students. Another reason for the contextualisation agenda would be better recognition of marginalised school populations. We are well aware that contextualisation, misused, can be antithetical to social justice. There is a fine line between highlighting the constraints imposed by poverty, social class, immigrant or refugee status, learning difficulties, residential transience or the experience of being in care in order that schools can be equipped and enabled to deal with them better, and allowing those constraints to become the excuse for low expectations and inequitable provision based on race, class or gender stereotypes. The damning consequences of low expectations and unchallenging work within the environment of high stakes testing and the “A–C economy” have been powerfully noted elsewhere (Gillborn & Youdell, 2000). Equally, however, generic discussions that neutralise the characteristics of the students are also unhelpful. Effectively, these discussions adopt a default position that schools are populated by students who are of average prior attainment, speakers and readers of English, keen or at least compliant with the goals of their schools, ready to learn and emotionally, socially, financially and physically equipped to do so – perhaps also white and middle class. From this position, if students do not progress, we can assume a failure of school practice. However, ignoring the “messy detail” of the reality of school populations in order to concentrate on school practice, effectively screens out the needs of students who are from working class, minority or indigenous group backgrounds or who have particular learning needs of one sort or another. It makes it less likely that school funding or organisation or pedagogic practice will be geared towards their needs, and more likely that they will be treated as deficient, failing, and not worthy of support in a system geared to the needs of “typical” or “normal” students. Therefore, providing there is vigilance against taking up a deficit perspective, drawing attention to pupil differences is essential to avoid the dangers of treating schools neutrally. As well as benefiting practice, the contextualisation agenda would also benefit the politics of SESI by signficantly reducing its misuse by policymakers. A key limitation of current SESI research is that it often chimes with these “one size fits all” assumptions of NPM theory and hence can be used to support managerial reform. As Bogotch, Mirón and Biesta (in this volume) put it, “by drawing connections to SESI, however tenuous,

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school reforms in general attain the status of legitimacy by attribution.” However two further points might be made about this observation. First, in some settings the connections between research and government policy are not at all tenuous, for instance the New Labour government in England has commissioned and publicised SESI research and well-known SESI researchers have run its Standards and Effectiveness Unit (Stoll & Sammons, in this volume). Second, SESI has also gained status and influence from being seen as policy-relevant and there is, no doubt, a certain seductiveness about this situation for those researchers involved. In this sense, the advantage of pursuing the contextualisation agenda is that SESI would become too complex and nuanced to support managerial reform: there could be no more lists of effectiveness factors, nor generic solutions to the problems faced by schools. There is some risk attached to such complexity, in potential loss of support for SESI amongst practitioners and policymakers. At the school level this would be because SESI’s lack of social and political complexity is undoubtedly part of what has provided its appeal to some teachers and school leaders. Bell (1999, p. 220) argues for instance that SER “generates a level of spurious certainty amongst senior staff in schools who see the way forward through professional leadership and shared vision, and a similar feeling of false security among teachers for whom purposeful teaching is characterised solely by efficient organization, clarity of purpose, structured lessons and adaptive practices.” Similarly SESI may have less appeal to policymakers if it loses its simple message about schools making the difference. As Howard Fancy, New Zealand’s Secretary for Education argues: Hearts and minds matter. The experience of the last 15 years confirms this. If people believe a child can succeed and that as a teacher that they can make a difference then that child probably will succeed. If those beliefs are not there, then the child probably won’t. Therefore shaping expectations and beliefs has to be a key element aspect of policy and professional development. (Fancy, p. 335 in this collection) Yet it is also important to recognise that the contextualisation agenda would probably be welcomed in many quarters too. Just as some researchers seem to feel the existing SESI agenda has become stale and needs extending (e.g., Bogotch et al., in this volume; Macbeath, in this volume) we think generic SESI findings do not speak closely enough to the concerns of most practitioners and feel that they would welcome a closer focus on “their” kind of school. Moreover if SESI can improve its standing with practitioners, it could also become more influential with policymakers, even if there are increased tensions around the redistribution of resources and increased costs overall.

The Approach to Context in Existing School Effectiveness Research Caught up in insisting that “schools can make a difference,” early school effectiveness research (SER) did not have much concern with local contexts. It was not until the late 1980s that “sensitivity to context” research in the USA began to highlight the

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limitations of a comprehensive “recipe” approach to effectiveness in schools with different intake characteristics. Hallinger and Murphy (1986, p. 347) for instance, found that for the most part, schools of different SES have quite different effectiveness correlates. “High and low SES effective schools [are] characterised by different patterns of curricular breadth, time allocation, goal emphasis, instructional leadership, opportunities for student reward, expectations for student achievement and home-school relations.” Similar conclusions were reached by Teddlie, Stringfield, Wimpleberg, and Kirby (1989) and Teddlie and Stringfield (1993). Scheerens (1991, p. 385) suggested that “including contextual variables like student body composition … can be seen as a relatively new and very interesting development in school effectiveness research” while Reynolds (1992, p. 16) described “sensitivity to context” findings as “cutting edge.” Unfortunately SER has not advanced this “cutting edge” much over the last two decades. One of the difficulties is that prior attainment has often been used as a proxy for context. This approach, although perhaps driven by data difficulties, reflects a certain disregard for detail and lack of concern with explanatory theory. Low prior attainment is no doubt well correlated with social disadvantage, but its frequent use as the only contextual indicator prevents us from understanding which aspects of a disadvantaged context make a difference, and from understanding the extent to which low attainment per se makes a difference to school effectiveness and to student outcomes, as well as the extent to which other specific contextual factors make an additional contribution. Moreover, although Teddlie (Teddlie & Reynolds, 2001) pointed out that the impact of context variables on SER had been a major focus of his work for the previous 15 years, the reality is that where context was mentioned by SER proponents over the 1990s, it was usually the repeated and rather token use of Teddlie’s early work (especially Teddlie et al., 1989) and that of Hallinger and Murphy (1986). By 2000 a chapter on “context issues within SER” in the International Handbook of School Effectiveness Research (Teddlie, Stringfield, & Reynolds, 2000) was summarising and highlighting SESI research in this area, for instance it recognised that “the SES makeup of a school has a substantial effect upon student outcomes beyond the effects associated with students individual ability and social class” (Teddlie et al., 2000, p. 184). At the same time it demonstrated that SER was dealing with context in a rather constrained way. First, it sought to restrict the definition of context variables to four: those concerned with the SES of the student body, the “community type” of a school, the grade phases of schooling and the governance structure of schools. This was explained (pp. 163–164) as; an attempt to avoid further ‘Balkanisation’ of the field, which might lead to the study of a proliferation of context variables, many of which are highly intercorrelated and theoretically entangled with one another. Such a ‘Balkanization’ of SER would make it increasingly difficult to discuss the generalizability of results beyond the immediate context of the study being conducted. There was also little attempt in this chapter to properly theorise the impact of contexts. Reference was made at the end of the chapter to contingency theory which argues that

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organizational effectiveness results from a fit between situation and structure (see Creemers, Scheerens, & Reynolds, 2000, pp. 292–297). However rather than offering a genuine explanation, contingency theory is mostly an acknowledgement that a wide range of conditions or factors might influence organizational effectiveness. Moreover contextual findings in SER have actually been developed more from a mixture of correlations and common sense than contingency theory: Creemers et al. (2000, pp. 295–296) point out that “[m]aking a lot of sense as they do, the outcomes of contextual effectiveness studies are only vaguely related to contingency hypotheses from the general organizational science literature.” A wider problem is that despite the apparent interest in context represented by this chapter, it could still hardly be said that a concern with it was at the heart of SER. Most SER studies have proved unwilling to delve into variations in context so that differences in school practice have too quickly come to be seen as the most powerful explanations for differential performance. A good example is provided by a Welsh case study published in 2002 concerning a “more effective” low SES school called “Trelent” where the students achieved higher mean scores in comprehension, maths, computation and applied maths than at “Hillcrest,” a less effective high SES school (Reynolds, Creemers, Stringfield, Teddlie, & Schaffer, 2002). Stringfield (2002, p. 19) has drawn on this study to argue that schooling can overcome the effects of social inequality: In the British component of the International School Effectiveness Research Program …, students at a very high poverty school repeatedly out achieved students in middle class British schools in the same district … . Similarly well documented examples of high poverty schools producing achievements that are tested and retested and found to be above the national average abound from Weber (1971) to today. Whole schools of children in high poverty situations have repeatedly demonstrated the ability to achieve at levels above those of their more-affluent peers. Nevertheless this claim is unconvincing because the nature of the pupil intake of the schools in Reynolds and colleagues study is not clear, moreover there is insufficient concern with the likely longitudinal effects of context. First, the pupils “come from a mainly ethnic Asian background or are from low SES white families” (p. 230). The “mainly ethnic Asian background” of the students raises the distinct possibility that these are immigrant families from middle class backgrounds in their countries of origin, even if they are not well-off in UK terms. Second, we are told that the annual Free School Meals (FSM) entitlement for Trelent school is consistently at, or above, the 30% level. This is not really a “very high poverty” school as argued by Stringfield, certainly there are schools with much higher FSM levels (as well as the problem, discussed shortly, of how much FSM really measures SES anyway). A better test of what is possible would be if the students at Trelent were nearly all from clearly working class backgrounds over several generations as was the case for “Ford Junction,” a “less effective” low SES school in the study which had pupils from “an almost universally white low SES background, mainly from the surrounding state-built housing estates” and with FSM consistently above 50% (Reynolds et al., 2002, p. 231). Third,

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these are primary schools and the value-added was only measured at the end of Year 1 at age 6 or 7. Because context can be expected to have a cumulative impact throughout school careers, it is a very much different thing to argue for powerful school effects on student achievement at age seven compared to at secondary school level, by which time students have had many years experiencing more or less favourable school contexts. Despite these problems, there are signs of recent shifts in SER thinking. A review by Luyten and colleagues (2005) is sympathetic to SER but also recognises the concerns of its critics and argues for more attention to context: In addition to explaining the relationship between features of school processes and school performance, studies should place more emphasis on the influence of non-educational factors in the school context (e.g., neighbourhood, family, peer group) on schooling processes and on student achievement. More insight is needed … into why and how the school context interacts with school performance and with processes at both the classroom and the school level. (p. 259) and In our opinion, SER should also pay much closer attention to factors outside the educational system that influence learning (such as the family and peer group). Even though almost every SER study confirms the limited influence of school factors and the substantial impact of family background on learning, the latter relation is hardly ever investigated thoroughly … . In practice such insight could facilitate the exploration of a great number of complex issues, including how to determine the extent to which the demands that are placed on schools are realistic. (pp. 269–270) Here and other areas they discuss, Luyten and colleagues seem to be genuinely trying to move the SER literature on and their arguments signal the potential for a significant shift in the literature.

The Approach to Context in Existing School Improvement Research School improvement research (SIR) has also been undertaking contextual self-examination in recent years. Noting that some researchers have argued that it is more difficult for schools serving disadvantaged areas to make progress on many of the traditional indicators, Gray (2001, p. 19) concluded that “more evidence on this issue is needed.” The most widely published UK SIR to take up this contextual challenge has been that of Alma Harris and colleagues (Harris, 2002; Harris & Chapman, 2002, 2004; Harris, Clarke, James, Harris, & Gunraj, 2005; Harris, Muijs, Chapman, Stoll, & Russ, 2003) which was about how to improve what New Labour has euphemistically called “Schools Facing Challenging Circumstances.” At first this research appeared not to represent a

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significant advance. For instance it stressed the importance of a number of general findings not far removed from the kinds of “factors” approach traditionally used in school effectiveness studies: vision and values, distributed leadership, investing in staff development, relationships, and community building (Harris, 2002). The same study also suffered from the problem that the specific contexts of the ten schools involved were not adequately identified. They were all DfES categorised as SFCC but it is important to note that schools can be thus identified either on socio-economic grounds (35% or more of students receiving free school meals) or on performance grounds (school achieving 25% or less 5 A*–C GCSEs). Furthermore the selection was intended “to ensure the schools represented a wide range of contexts and were geographically spread.” Nevertheless the more recent work of Harris and colleagues has been stressing the significance of context-specificity much more. For instance Harris and Chapman (2004, p. 429) argue that: As the long term patterning of educational inequality looks set to remain, to rely on standard or standardised approaches to school improvement that combine accountability, pressure and blame to force improved performance would seem unwise. In schools in difficult contexts, this is more likely to exacerbate the problem rather than solve it. Instead the evidence would suggest that more locally owned and developed improvement strategies are needed that appreciate school context, best match prevailing conditions and build the internal capacity for development within the school. If the goal of raising performance in schools in difficulty is to be achieved, school improvement approaches that neglect to address the inherent diversity and variability across and within schools in the same broad category will be destined to fail. Harris and Chapman note other recent calls for context-specificity and it does seem to be featuring on the SIR agenda now. Yet Harris and Chapman’s own approach in their 2004 article does not actually further this agenda. Rather they provide a typology of different kinds of schools in difficulty along continuums from individualised to collaborative teacher culture and from internal to external accountability. Schools with collaborative cultures and internal accountability are seen to have high capacity for improvement, those with individualised teaching cultures and strong external accountability measures are seen to be immobile. In other words, Harris and Chapman (2004) are more concerned with the internal culture and organisation of schools in a conventional SIR sense than with exploring the extent to which schools can reasonably build internal “capacity” in the face of particular kinds and combinations of wider contextual factors. Two lessons might be drawn from this. The first is that like SER, contextualisation in terms of external factors remains largely an aspiration for SIR. It is not yet clear how and to what extent it will become a reality. The second is that the notion of context and contextualised research could be taken to mean different things to different constituencies and like many other educational terms be subject to having their depth and critical intent stripped out in less than searching analyses.

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School Composition Research If SESI researchers want to develop their concern with local contexts, a good starting point would be qualitative work which specifically explores the impact of school composition and other local contextual issues on school processes. The authors of this chapter have completed two such studies, and more qualitative research is in progress as part of HARPs, a large mixed method study into school composition, discussed in the next section of this chapter. Thrupp’s (1999) research explored the impact of the socio-economic status (SES) composition of school intakes on school processes in four New Zealand secondary schools. It illustrated how higher SES schools had less pressured guidance and discipline systems, with higher levels of student compliance and fewer very difficult guidance or discipline cases. Their senior management teams had fewer student, staff, marketing and fund-raising problems, and more time to devote to planning and to monitoring performance. Day-to-day routines were more efficient and more easily accomplished. When it came to classroom instruction, the students in the higher SES schools were taught in teaching classes that were generally more compliant and more able to cope with difficult work. They used more demanding texts and other teaching resources and their teachers were more qualified and more motivated. Higher SES schools were also able to support more academic school programs and a wider range of extracurricular activities. Thrupp (1999) concluded that SES composition impacts on school processes in numerous ways which would cumulatively boost the academic performance of schools in middle-class settings and drag it down in low socio-economic settings. Lupton (2004, 2005) has extended Thrupp’s analysis by illustrating that even amongst ostensibly similar SES schools there are other contextual differences which may cumulatively make a considerable difference to school processes and student achievement. Her study of four high poverty schools in England demonstrates the nuances of local context. It considers pupil characteristics (e.g., ethnicity, refugee status, looked after children, and special educational needs), area characteristics (e.g., urban/rural, labour market structure and history, housing market) and school characteristics (e.g., market position compared to surrounding schools, LEA admissions policies, school type and history). The analysis shows how one low SES school cannot be assumed to face the same contextual challenges as another. For example, one poor inner urban school with a rapidly growing, predominantly Pakistani population and operating within a weakly differentiated and collaborative school market, reported few behavioural challenges, high levels of parental support and pupil aspiration, and little need to divert management time into marketing activities or management of falling rolls. Another school, in a declined seaside town with a selective and highly differentiated school system, reported low pupil esteem and aspirations, difficulties in securing parental support, high levels of pupil turbulence arising from temporary housing and a large children’s home population, as well as extreme difficulties in teacher recruitment and retention because the school was regarded as being the “bottom of the pile” in the local area. Arguing that “organizational impacts on schools in different kinds of disadvantaged areas can be significantly different” (Lupton, 2004, p. 22), the study raises questions about the adequacy of socio-economic indicators used

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to describe school context, and about the suggestion that differences in student achievement between schools in similarly poor settings can be wholly ascribed to internal school characteristics. These studies together suggest that many of the factors identified by school effectiveness and improvement research as contributing to student achievement will be hard to replicate because while they may be school-based, they may nevertheless not be school-caused. This argument builds on previous quantitative and qualitative research (Anyon, 1981; Brown, Riddell, & Duffield, 1996; Gewirtz, 1998; Ho & Willms, 1996; Lauder et al., 1999; Metz, 1990; Pong, 1998; Robertson & Symons, 1996; Thomson, 2002). But while the findings of such research are plausible, they will be more influential if supported by evidence from large scale quantitative studies of compositional (school intake) and neighbourhood effects. These studies address the issue of school context directly and have the greatest potential for influence at a policy level. However quantitative studies to date offer a conflicting picture, with some indicating strong effects and others not (Thrupp, Lauder, & Robinson, 2002), and with some offering competing explanations for compositional effects (i.e., other that school effects, e.g., Nash, 2003).1 This has recently led Gorard (2006) to argue that compositional effects are so much at the limits of our detectability, likely to be small relative to the amount of “noise” in the system, and require such sophisticated statistical modelling, as to (be possibly not worth exploring. However, the problem with Gorard’s argument is that while he starts by making some well-founded points, it quickly degenerates into a quite untenable attack on statistics. In particular, Gorard blames statistics rather than the failure of social sciences in producing testable theories of importance. We believe the way forward is not to abandon the search for compositional effects but to carry out better statistical research. A review of quantitative research in this area undertaken by the first author and colleagues has illustrated important conceptual and methodological inadequacies in the way compositional effects have been previously modelled (Thrupp et al., 2002). Although there is no space to rehearse the issues here, this review strongly suggests that better large scale studies of compositional effects could provide more conclusive findings. In particular school composition research needs to: ●

● ●

● ●

●

Be multi-disciplinary in nature and incorporate qualitative study of school process as well as large scale quantitative analysis, thus enabling it to capture school organisation and curriculum effects and to shed light on the direction of causal relationships; Incorporate multiple measures of school composition; Enable analysis of group and class composition as well as composition at the school level; Take a longitudinal approach; Incorporate broader contextual variables such as neighbourhood characteristics and school market position; and Include and analyse different types of school and different models of composition, for example, schools with larger numbers of moderately poor pupils compared with schools with smaller numbers of moderately poor pupils (based on Thrupp et al., 2002, p. 488).

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The HARPS Project The authors are currently involved in a study that incorporates the above characteristics in exploring the impacts of various sorts of school composition upon the peer group, instructional and organization processes of schooling. The HARPS project,2 has been studying children passing through Years 3 and 4 (ages 7 and 8) in Hampshire primary schools. Research has been undertaken at three levels. One is quantitative analysis using pupil and school-level composition data for the children at all 306 full primary and junior schools in Hampshire (n
11,793). This analysis uses standard UK measures of school composition (% free school meals and attainment) but data also include age, gender, ethnicity, special educational and neighbourhood characteristics, and permit identification and analysis of pupils who move schools. A second element of the project moves beyond the limitations of existing social class indicators by analysing data on student backgrounds (parental education, employment, ethnicity and class-related family practices), which we painstakingly collected from the parents of 84% of children in 46 schools in the Basingstoke and Deane area of the county (n
2,014, Brown et al., 2005). A third element incorporates ethnographic research in 12 of these sub-sample schools, examining composition and processes in relation to teaching groups and classes as well as schools. Although focused only on primary schools, and located in a relatively affluent and racially homogenous (white) area of the UK, the research design of the HARPS project is intended to address the requirements of the contextualization agenda both through better quantitative research on compositional effects as listed above, and by exploring substantial qualitative evidence which has not been available up to now. Below we use some interview data from headteachers to provide a flavour of the school data we are exploring in order to build up a picture of the local advantages and disadvantages faced by schools. Issues which are inportant to particular schools but rarely discussed in SESI include: ●

Changing local economies and related housing patterns: There’s 5000 people working there now, but 20 years ago it was something like 15,000, a huge workforce and a lot of that workforce were young people because it newly being developed and established and a lot of young people came with young families and there was a high level of children, and subsequently new schools were being built or developed or we certainly had a high level of children. Now over the last, over the years several things have happened. One of those is that people are choosing not to have as many children, in this area particularly, a lot of people who bought their houses maybe 20 years ago, and these are quite big houses, instead of moving on, they’ve stayed and put extensions on them, and so you’re not getting any five year olds or ten year olds so those people who’ve had their children through the school but they’re staying put in our immediate catchment area. And … there has been new housing developments which we’ve picked up, but the majority of smaller housing is down in the south of the town so that means that generally if you could equate that if you have a small house you have a

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smaller family because they’re younger and smaller, and then they move on. So that has made some impact. (Headteacher, Hollybush School, 13% FSM) ●

students being “creamed off ” by the independent (private) sector schools: And the intention had always been to send them to [a private school], and that’s when – they went slightly early, they went in the summer of year eight because they got sports scholarships and [the private school wanted them for their cricket in the summer … I mean, that … it is annoying because although it didn’t matter number-wise and budget-wise … it tends to be the more able children, obviously the more articulate children, yeah, the role models as well, and the good role models. I mean, not always good, we’ve got a lot of good role models, you know, who remain. But these are more of the role models. And they’re the ones that take that balance that everything, you know, most things are good. And that the heavy side is the good … the good achievement, good behaviour, you know, and it’s a shame that those children go away. (Headteacher, Austin School, 1% FSM)

●

the particular social geographies of school catchments: Yes and sometimes people move [here] who’ve had a marriage break up in Basingstoke or in Reading and they move [here] for a fresh start, its far enough but its near enough. Like the Jones, Mum left the family home to pursue a relationship with another woman and that had a huge impact but they moved, Dad couldn’t bear it so he moved, he needs to be near Reading cos that’s his base but [this town] was near enough to be far enough away from it and families – [this town] does seem to be that kind of place. Susan who’s just moved to us – Mum couldn’t cope with her behaviour so Dad took her and moved here for a new start. It’s that. (Headteacher, Ivy School, 6% FSM)

●

student mobility associated with Traveller families: He joined us in September and he didn’t have a clue, no initial sounds, he didn’t know how to write letters, didn’t know how to, he could do mentally numbers in his head but he had no idea that the symbol three was whatever, so you had to put in an individual program for him that you gleaned here there and everywhere and had to differentiate right down for him. Now he left weeks ago, about a month ago, he’s gone off back to Wales, he has not been transferred to another school yet, he’s still on my class register, so when he comes back to us, probably in September or whatever, goodness only knows what sort of schooling he will have had, so he’ll come back in Year Four, he may have had a smattering where-ever he’s gone and he’ll be back … (Headteacher, Ivy School, 6% FSM)

and ●

staffing problems related to school composition and reputation: And at that time in 2003, so just before the summer of 2003, the only people we had applying for any positions that we had in the school were Newly Qualified Teachers (NQTs), no experienced staff came forward for any of

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the posts that we had available. So in the end we had to appoint NQTs, which then put us in a very difficult position because we had no real, there was only myself and the deputy … as experienced staff and 4 NQTs. So that was very difficult and actually that whole year was horrendous because as you can imagine 2 of the NQTs especially up at key stage 2 who already, bear in mind that the children were under achieving anyway, and obviously my desire is to improve the standards in the school, [the NQTs] couldn’t cope with the children’s behaviour let alone cope with the children’s learning. (headteacher of Beech School, 52% FSM) All of the schools cited here are facing pressures to raise standards and yet as these brief forays into their circumstances reveal, each faces challenges arising from particular local circumstances outside the school. Our point about these examples is not, of course, that these are the only factors, or even the main ones, which make a difference. Rather they just illustrate some of the delicate nuances which may be invisible on cursory inspection but which the contextualisation agenda requires explored. It will be apparent that concern with data at this level of detail is directly at odds with the idea of restricting the definition of context variables because of worries about generalisability (Teddlie et al., 2000). Rather we would suggest that a broader range of contextual variables is needed and that it would be fruitful for SESI researchers to engage with the increasingly sophisticated socio-demographic data that is now becoming available at small area level, at least in the UK, to develop typologies of school context that can bring a more contextualised approach whilst also allowing some generalisability. However, not all of these nuances can be captured by quantitative data, and nor should they be. Although quantitative SESI studies could try harder to capture local complexities through context variables, successful school improvement also needs an understanding of schools and their neighbourhoods that is informed by social science, in this case by the disciplines of geography, social anthropology and sociology.

Conclusion In this chapter we have argued for the contextualisation agenda as a means of improving SESI findings and the political use made of them. We have noted shifts in previous SESI research, although we have also argued that there is still a considerable way to go. Meanwhile school composition research should be capable of generating particular insights in this area because of its direct concern with context, but it will only achieve this if greater conceptual and methodological sophistication is applied. The challenge is to give up the false security of generic or too-simple models and approaches and develop a sound evidence base for a more socially just schooling system.

Notes 1. Nash (2003) poses the existence of within-SES group school selection effects as a competing explanation for compositional effects. This is an interesting hypothesis but not one which precludes compositional effects: it is presumably possible that both kinds of effects are present to a greater or lesser degree. 2. “Hampshire Research with Primary Schools.” This is the ESRC project “Primary school composition and student progress,” RES-000-23-0784. The project started in October 2004 and runs to March 2007.

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Nash, R. (2003). Is the school composition effect real? A discussion with evidence from the UK PISA data. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 14(4), 441–457. Pong, S. (1998). The school compositional effect of single parenthood on 10th grade achievement. Sociology of Education, 71, 24–43. Reynolds, D., & Teddlie, C. (2001). Reflections on the critics, and beyond them. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12(1), 99–113. Reynolds, D. (1992). School effectiveness and school improvement: An updated review of the British literature. In D. Reynolds, & P. Cuttance (Eds.), School Effectiveness: Research, Policy and Practice. London: Cassell. Reynolds, D., Creemers, B., Stringfield, S., Teddlie, C., & Schaffer, G. (2002). World class schools: International perspectives on school effectiveness. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Robertson, D., & Symons, J. (1996). Do peer groups matter? Peer group versus schooling effects on academic attainment. London: London School of Economics, Centre for Economic Performance. Scheerens, J. (1991). Process indicators of school functioning: A selection based on the research literature on school effectiveness. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 17, 371–403. Scheerens, J., Bosker, R. J., & Creemers, B. P. M. (2001). Time for self-criticism: On the viability of school effectiveness research. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12(1), 131–157. Slee, R., Weiner, G with Tomlinson, S. (Eds.). (1998). School effectiveness for whom? London: Falmer. Stringfield, S. (2002). Science making a difference: Let’s be realistic! School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 13(1), 15–29. Teddlie, C., & Reynolds, D. (2000). International handbook of school effectiveness research. London and New York: Falmer. Teddlie, C., & Reynolds, D. (2001). Countering the critics: Responses to recent criticisms of school effectiveness research. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12(1), 41–82. Teddlie, C., & Stringfield, S. (1993). Schools make a difference: Lessons learned from a ten year study of school effects. New York: Teachers College Press. Teddlie, C., Stringfield, S., & Reynolds, D. (2000). Context issues within School Effectiveness research. In C. Teddlie, & D. Reynolds (Eds.), International handbook of school effectiveness research (pp. 160–185). London and New York: Falmer. Teddlie, C., Stringfield, S., Wimpleberg, R., & Kirby, P. (1989). Contextual differences in models for effective schooling in the USA. In B. Creemers, T. Peters, & D. Reynolds (Eds.), School effectiveness and school improvement. Amsterdam: Swets and Zeittlinger. Thomson, P. (2002). Schooling the rust-belt kids: Making the difference in changing times. Stoke-on-Trent: Trentham Books. Thrupp, M. (1999). Schools making a difference: Let’s be realistic! School mix, school effectiveness and the social limits of reform. Buckingham: Open University Press. Thrupp, M. (2001a). Sociological and political concerns about school effectiveness research: Time for a new research agenda. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12(1), 7–40. Thrupp, M. (2001b). Recent school effectiveness counter-critiques: Problems and possibilities. British Educational Research Journal, 27(4), 443–457. Thrupp, M. (2002). Why “meddling” is necessary: A response to Teddlie, Reynolds, Townsend, Scheerens, Bosker and Creemers. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 13(1), 1–14. Thrupp, M., Lauder, H., & Robinson, T. (2002). School composition and peer effects. International Journal of Educational Research, 37(5), 483–504. Townsend, T. (2001). Satan or saviour? An analysis of two decades of school effectiveness research. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12(1), 115–129. Weber, G. (1971). Inner city children can be taught to read: Four successful schools (Occasional Paper no. 18). Washington, DC: Council for Basic Education. Wrigley, T. (2003). Schools of hope: A new agenda for school improvement. Stoke on Trent:Trentham Books.

Section 2 A WORLD SHOWCASE: SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT FROM ALL CORNERS

THE AMERICAS

8 A HISTORY OF SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT RESEARCH IN THE USA FOCUSING ON THE PAST QUARTER CENTURY

Charles Teddlie and Sam Stringfield

Introduction This chapter will review the School Effectiveness Research (SER) and School Improvement Research (SIR) literatures in the United States over the past 25 years. Although we are focusing primarily on this period, several significant studies were conducted in the United States before 1980. These we will briefly summarize in the first two sections of the chapter because it is impossible to understand the events of the past 25 years without some awareness of the foundations of both SER and SIR. Although SER literature reached its zenith of influence and popularity in the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s, it has continued to serve as the largest and most consistent knowledge base for the varieties of SIR literatures that have evolved over the past two decades. U.S. SIR literature has passed through a series of stages, with the last two – restructuring and Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) – achieving national impact. In this chapter, we will address five somewhat overlapping stages in the development of SER and SIR; in order, they are: ● ● ● ● ●

School Improvement Research in the United States before the 1980s School Effectiveness Research in the United States before the 1980s A Period of High Influence: School Effectiveness Research, 1980–1995 Trends in School Improvement Research in the United States since 1990 Contemporary and Future Trends in SER in the United States

This review synthesizes three earlier reviews (Datnow, Lasky, Stringfield, & Teddlie, 2006; Reynolds, Teddlie, Creemers, Scheerens, & Townsend, 2000; Teddlie & Stringfield, 2006) and cross-references other chapters in this volume. Points of commonality and differentiation between SER and SIR will be discussed throughout this chapter, including brief explorations of the similarities, variations, and intersections of U.S. and international forms of school effects and school improvement research. 131 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 131–166. © 2007 Springer.

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Researchers and reformers have engaged in significant dialogue regarding the merger of the two orientations (SER, SIR) in other countries like the United Kingdom, Canada, and the Netherlands (e.g., Creemers & Reezigt, 2005, Reynolds, Hopkins, & Stoll, 1993; Sackney, in this volume; Stoll & Sammons, in this volume). Much less discussed has been the merger of SER and SIR in the United States, where a historical division between these two fields has existed except during the 1980s and early 1990s, when SER had a large impact on SIR. These historical trends are discussed throughout the chapter. Future directions for both SER and SIR in the United States will be described in the last two sections.

School Improvement Research in the United States Before the 1980s Phases in School Improvement Research in the United States For the purposes of this chapter, we define school improvement research in the United States as the examination of the processes and outcomes associated with interventions designed to improve schools. Various international authors have characterized SIR as having gone through a number of distinct phases since the 1980s, evolving from efforts oriented toward individual school change into coordinated systemic efforts aimed at whole communities of schools (e.g., Chrispeels & Harris, 2006; Hopkins & Reynolds, 2001). A similar trend has occurred in the United States during this time period, but we have chosen to start our analysis with a brief description of two earlier phases of SIR in the United States that occurred during the 1930s and 1960s. A prefatory note is in order regarding early school improvement research. Why, one might ask, would a field engage in relatively scientific improvement research decades before determining relatively scientifically “what works?” Our answer would be that this appears to be the human condition. Thomas (1979), for example, noted that from the 1830s through the 1930s, medical researchers were aware that they did not understand the human body adequately enough to create drugs to treat various maladies, yet “miracle cures” proliferated. Armed with 20/20 hindsight, there is something rather heartwarming about the simple – and rigorously data-free – confidence that early reformers had in their proposed school improvement interventions. If nothing else, an awareness of the failures of those who came before should make us more cautious of making science-free claims in the future. The first phase of SIR consisted of a singular, noteworthy study from the 1930s: the Eight-Year Study. The second phase consisted of curriculum reform efforts conducted during the 1960s in response to the Russian Sputnik program. These two earlier phases presaged several of the important trends in SIR that have occurred in the United States since the 1980s. Their inclusion in this review highlights the recurrent nature of school reform in the United States, which Cuban (1990) has famously referred to as “reforming again, again and again.” We argue that the recurring lack of success is a function of an imbalance in the ratio of reformers’ confident zeal on the one hand to the quantity of available scientific data on the other.

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The Eight-Year Study: School Improvement Research From the 1930s The first large-scale, cross-state effort at school reform in the United States was begun in 1930 by a commission of the Progressive Education Association (Aiken, 1942). This group declared that their goal was to fundamentally reform American high schools by allowing selected schools the freedom to reconstruct their curriculum on the basis of individual need, rather than college entrance requirements. The group provided “curriculum associates” who worked with a range of schools and persuaded over 100 colleges and universities to accept graduates from these potentially quite nontraditional schools. The declared outcome of primary interest was students’ eventual success in college. A group of college professors and other progressive educators conducted a national search and settled on 30 promising schools for intervention. They located a control school for each experimental site. The 30 schools did away with much of their previously existing curricula (which used the college preparatory model) and replaced it, as much as possible, with more “relevant” topics based on democratic ideals and the needs of individual students (Giles, McCutchen, & Zechiel, 1942). DeVries (2002) summarized the curricula as follows: Classroom practices included providing students with many opportunities to deal with problems they consider significant, utilizing wide sources of information, sharing responsibility for defining the problem … and seeking meaningful, real situations in which students may engage in reflective thinking. (p. 34) Detailed qualitative and quasi-experimental quantitative data revealed, in general, that the students from the 30 pilot schools performed slightly better in college than students from the control schools. The research team then conducted a separate, followup analysis of the results from the six (of 30, or 20%) schools that in retrospect appeared to have produced higher percentages of students who were relatively successful in college. Strong implementation was defined as creating the “most marked departures from conventional college preparatory courses” (Aiken, 1942, p. 112). This analysis focused on the strong implementers’ larger long-term effects, thereby presaging similar post hoc analyses of educational reforms in the United States. The methodological problems in such a post hoc analysis were so considerable that the clearest conclusions that can be gleaned today from this very ambitious effort are that (1) school change is harder than enthusiasts initially believe, (2) both short- and long-term implementation of any whole school reform requires greater investments in human resource development than national or local educators generally anticipate, and (3) schools that have the capacity for major change may (or may not) have had that capacity prior to the change effort, making interpretation of post hoc-only data virtually impossible and pointing to the importance of a wide range of “pre” measures. However, the group’s failures to anticipate these challenges clearly presaged

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subsequent analyses of enthusiastic – if poorly prepared – educational reformers in the United States. An unintended effect of the Eight-Year Study seems to have been a dampening of interest in studies of large-scale change. It was nearly 30 years before large-scale school reform studies were attempted again in the United States, and those efforts, like most today, appear to have learned very little from the Eight-Year Study.

Curriculum Reform Studies of the 1960s The next effort at large-scale school reform in the United States was inspired by the Soviet space program of the 1950s. This so-called “Sputnik-inspired reform” was based on large-scale curriculum change, as were similar contemporary efforts in the United Kingdom. These emphasized the production, dissemination, and adoption of science curriculum materials. These materials were often exemplary, based on concepts from the leading scholars and educators of the period (e.g., Bruner, 1960). Dow (1997, p. 2) summarized the commitment of leading scholars to the process as follows: Perhaps the most distinctive feature of the Sputnik-driven reforms was the extensive participation of the university research scholars in the reform effort. For a brief period between the mid-1950s to the early 1970s some of the nation’s most distinguished academics left their libraries and laboratories to spend time in pre-college classrooms. Nobel laureates sought ways to teach the very young how scientists and mathematicians think, and men who had worked on the Manhattan Project created “kitchen physics” courses for the elementary schools. Although there were efforts to involve teachers in the reform process, curriculum reform was primarily top–down, focusing on the adoption of curriculum materials. Such reforms ultimately produced little impact on classroom teaching, however: Although the materials were often of high quality, being produced by teams of academics and psychologists, in the main they failed to have an impact on teaching. The reason in hindsight is obvious; teachers were not included in the production process and the in-service that accompanied the new curricula was often perfunctory and rudimentary. Teachers simply took what they thought was of use from the new materials and integrated it into their own teaching. The curriculum innovation, however, was consequently subverted. (Reynolds, Teddlie, Hopkins, & Stringfield, 2000, p. 208) The curriculum reform efforts of the early 1960s uncovered again a finding that was available from the Eight-Year Study and that has been regularly repeated in SIR: Local implementation of any educational reform is extremely important, perhaps more important than the reform itself. As with medical and engineering innovations, educational reforms are finally evaluated not for their theoretical elegance but for their ability to produce predictable, observable results in actual settings.

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Large-Scale School Change Studies of the 1970s and Early 1980s Several large-scale, multi-site school change studies were conducted in the 1970s and early 1980s. These examined the factors that facilitate or inhibit interventions in educational settings, including leadership roles and local contexts. The following section briefly summarizes results from three of the most influential studies of that time. These exemplary studies had long-term effects on U.S. research conducted in both SIR and SER over the next 30 years, both substantively and methodologically.

Rand Change Agent Study One well-known, large-scale study of the period was the Rand Change Agent Study (e.g., Berman & McLaughlin, 1976), which was conducted from 1973 to 1978 and focused on three stages of the change process: initiation, implementation, and incorporation. The study revealed the importance of local contexts in the implementation process. McLaughlin (1990) concluded that the study “demonstrated that the nature, amount, and pace of change at the local level was a product of local factors that were largely beyond the control of higher-level policymakers” (p. 12). Berman and McLaughlin (1976) stated that there were four implications of this general observation: (1) policy cannot mandate what matters, (2) the level of implementation dominates outcomes, (3) local variability is the rule, and (4) uniformity is the exception. Although policies may set directions and provide a framework for change, they cannot determine outcomes. Implementation tends to predict gains in student achievement. Successful implementation of projects in the Rand Change Agent Study required mutual adaptation of the reform and the local context (Berman & McLaughlin, 1976), a finding repeated in both SIR and SER over the next 30 years. Principal support was crucial. When teachers perceived that the principal liked a project and actively supported it, the project fared well. Although the role of the external change agents was important, the involvement of the principal was even more important to the project’s success.

Follow-Through Classroom Observation Evaluation (FTCOE) Stallings and Kaskowitz (1974) conducted the FTCOE, the first effort to rigorously gather detailed classroom observational data in a large number of schools attempting to implement diverse reforms. The authors made repeated observations in a range of classes and schools attempting six very diverse, federally funded reform designs. Unfortunately, funding for the development and dissemination of the designs was being cut even as the study began, and hence observations were conducted at sites that were attempting implementation even as the reforms were being designed. In most instances, the result was a far from ideal implementation of the designs. However, the study did demonstrate that classroom-level comparisons among diverse designs were possible, and that the more fully developed and structured designs tended to produce both more consistent implementation and somewhat greater

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student achievement. Additionally, variations of the Stallings’ time-on-task instruments developed for the FTCOE have been used in numerous SER studies that also include teacher-level measurements (e.g., Teddlie & Stringfield, 1993).

Dissemination Efforts Supporting School Improvement (DESSI) The DESSI study was one of the largest, most ambitious studies of educational change ever attempted in the United States (Crandall & Loucks, 1983). Data for DESSI were gathered in 146 local sites spread over 10 states. The study was so methodologically diverse and produced so many reports that it is difficult to summarize. However, two particular additions to the SIR field came from DESSI: ●

●

Local accommodations (in conjunction with design teams) of externally developed school improvement designs are more likely to result in (1) classroom-level implementation and (2) increases in achievement than are locally developed school improvement efforts. Teacher ownership of reforms is not an all-or-nothing concept in the early stages of reform. Rather, ownership of the reform develops through months and years of engagement as teachers work to implement it. Both in DESSI and the Rand study previously described, the authors concluded that belief and commitment tended to follow successful practice, rather than the other way around (for an insightful discussion of this, see Nunnery, 1998).

The educational research community interpreted the results of these large-scale intervention efforts as indicating that local conditions and actions were more important than the characteristics of specific reform designs. When stated in the extreme, this conclusion risks being an overstatement; however, it paved the way for interest in the newly emerging field of SER.

School Effectiveness Research in the United States Before the 1980s The Coleman Report and its Effect on SER in the United States The Coleman Report (Coleman et al., 1966) has been cited as providing the impetus for the development of several areas of educational research, such as school performance monitoring research (Kochan, in this volume) and teacher effectiveness research (TER) (Brophy & Good, 1986; Schaffer, Delvin-Scherer, & Stringfield, in this volume). Using a large, single-time panel of data, Coleman et al. (1966) concluded that differences in children’s achievement were more strongly associated with family socioeconomic status (SES) factors than with potentially malleable school-based resource variables. The Coleman Report generated a great deal of public and professional interest, in part because such a large study posed such a dramatic antithesis to the common wisdom of the United States, and indeed, all modern democracies. Clearly, virtually all parents believe that schools matter. After all, they not only send their children to school, but they often go to

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great lengths to get their children into “the right schools.” Politicians and policymakers believe that schooling matters – they often take the unpopular stance of increasing taxes to pay for “better schools.” Coleman et al.’s dramatic conclusion flew in the face of widely held public opinion and the self-assured thesis of U.S. educators. It was not surprising that Coleman’s highly publicized finding led educational researchers to actively engage in developing two closely linked branches of SER in the United States: ●

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Effective schools research. This research is concerned with the processes of effective schooling and, in its initial phases, involved the generation of case studies of positive outlier schools that produced high achievement scores for students living in poverty. Cumulative results from effective schools research have resulted in detailed descriptions of effective school characteristics across a variety of contexts. The bestknown findings from SER come from these studies. School effects research. This research involves the study of the scientific properties of school effects (e.g., the existence and magnitude of school effects, the consistency and stability of school effects). The initial studies involved the estimation of the impact of schooling on achievement through the regression-based input–output studies in economics and sociology. This branch of SER has always placed an emphasis on methodological issues, which has become a hallmark of the tradition (e.g., Teddlie, Reynolds, & Sammons, 2000).

Effective schools research focuses on educational processes, while school effects research focuses on educational products. The following two sections briefly discuss developments before the 1980s in these two areas.

Effective Schools Studies: A Focus on Educational Processes Effective schools research was initially conducted to dispute the results of the Coleman Report by focusing on educational processes associated with unusually positive outcomes in high-poverty contexts. Researchers conducted case studies of schools that were doing exceptional jobs of educating students from very poor SES backgrounds and described the ongoing processes in those schools. These studies also expanded the definition of the outputs of schools to include other products, such as were measured by attitudinal and behavioral indicators. Studies conducted during the 1970s in the effective schools tradition included Brookover, Beady, Flood, Schweitzer, and Wisenbaker (1979), Brookover and Lezotte (1979), Edmonds (1979), Klitgaard and Hall (1974), Venezky and Winfield (1979), and the first of the group, Weber (1971). There were numerous others. Initial studies conducted during this period were focused in urban, low-SES elementary schools because researchers believed that success stories in these environments would dispel the belief that schools made little or no difference. Weber (1971) conducted the first reasonably rigorous, extensive case studies from the period. After a rigorous, national search for sites that included re-testing of students (to verify local claims of effectiveness), Weber identified and studied four low-SES inner-city schools characterized by high achievement at the third-grade level. His research emphasized the importance of ongoing processes at schools, while Coleman et al. (1966) had focused on static, archival, and/or self-reported school resource variables.

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The research of Edmonds and Brookover was especially instrumental in developing a five-factor (or correlate) model that included the following: ● ● ● ● ●

strong instructional leadership from the principal, a pervasive and broadly understood instructional focus, a safe and orderly school learning environment (or “climate”), high expectations for achievement from all students, and the use of student achievement test data for evaluating program and school success.

School Effects Research: A Focus on Educational Products School effects research (e.g., Coleman et al., 1966; Jencks et al., 1972) involved economically driven input–output studies. These studies focused on inputs such as school resource variables (e.g., per-pupil expenditures) and student background characteristics (e.g., student SES) to predict school “products” or outcomes, which were limited to student achievement on standardized tests. The Coleman Report (1966) study concluded that “schools bring little influence to bear on a child’s achievement that is independent of his background and general social context” (p. 325). Despite this general conclusion, a small percentage of the variance in individual student achievement was uniquely accounted for by school factors. Daly (1991) concluded that “The Coleman et al. (1966) survey estimate of a figure of 9% of variance in an achievement measure attributable to American schools has been something of a bench mark” (p. 306). Although there were efforts to refute the Coleman results and methodological flaws were found in the report, the major findings are now widely accepted by the educational research community, so long as data analyses are limited to single moment-in-time analyses. In addition to the Coleman and Jencks studies, there were several other studies conducted during this time within a sociological framework known as the “statusattainment literature” (e.g., Hauser, Sewell, & Alwin, 1976). For the most part, these studies were consistent with those reported by Coleman. For careful reanalyses of the Coleman et al. (1966) data sets using modern, multi-level analyses, see Borman and Dowling (2003). The authors confirmed most of Coleman’s earlier conclusions, with the major addition being that the negative effects of concentration of poverty were more severe than Coleman had been able to detect using the statistical tools of the 1960s. Several scholars began criticizing extant SER for having methodological flaws that prevented it from actually measuring the existence and magnitude of school effects properly. Such criticisms of the Coleman Report (e.g., Mosteller & Moynihan, 1972) initiated a 40-year trend toward greater methodological sophistication as researchers have attempted to better and more accurately model and measure school effects. During this period of scrutiny and critique, three important issues and methodological advances were introduced and the emergence of a fourth and fifth were presaged. These were: (1) inclusion of more sensitive measures of classroom input (e.g., Murnane, 1975; Summers & Wolfe, 1977), (2) the development of social psychological scales to measure school processes (e.g., Brookover et al., 1979),

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(3) the utilization of more sensitive outcome measures (e.g., Madaus, Kellaghan, Rakow, & King, 1979), (4) the issue of the unit of analysis in educational research (e.g., Burstein, 1980), and (5) the ability to model multiple points of time and hence more accurately measure change in achievement (and other variables) over time (Bryk & Raudenbush, 1992; Cronbach & Furby, 1970). The inclusion of more sensitive measures of classroom input in SER involved the association of student-level data with the specific teachers who taught the students. This methodological advance was important for two reasons: (1) it emphasized input from the classroom (teacher) level in addition to the school level; and (2) it associated student-level output variables with student-level input variables, rather than school-level input variables. Results from Murnane’s (1981) research led him to conclude that: The primary resources that are consistently related to student achievement are teachers and other students. Other resources affect student achievement primarily through their impact on the attitudes and behaviors of teachers and students. (p. 33) The second methodological advance concerned the development of social psychological scales that could better measure ongoing educational processes. Several reviewers (e.g., Averch, Carroll, Donaldson, Kiesling, & Pincus, 1971; Brookover et al., 1979) concluded that these early studies of school effects did not include adequate measures of school social psychological climate and other classroom/school process variables, and that their exclusion contributed to the underestimation of school effects. In their study of elementary schools in Michigan, Brookover et al. (1979) addressed this criticism by using surveys designed to measure student, teacher, and principal perceptions of school climate. Brookover’s surveys included measures of: ●

● ●

●

student sense of academic futility or internal/external locus of control (e.g., Rotter, 1966); academic self-concept or self-esteem (e.g., Rosenberg, 1965); teacher expectations, which evolved from the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy in the classroom (e.g., Rosenthal & Jacobsen, 1968); and school or organizational climate (e.g., McDill & Rigsby, 1973).

The third methodological advance concerned the utilization of more sensitive outcome measures. Madaus et al. (1979) believed that the characteristics of standardized tests make them less sensitive than curriculum-specific tests to the detection of differences due to the quality of schools. These standardized tests “cover material that the school teaches more incidentally” (Coleman et al., 1966, p. 294). Madaus et al. (1979) believed that “Conclusions about the direct instructional effects of schools should not have to rely on evidence relating to skills taught incidentally” (p. 209). Madaus and his colleagues demonstrated that curriculum-specific tests were better measures of school and classroom effects than were standardized tests. Fourth, Burstein (1980) presaged the development of multilevel models in SER by discussing the unit of analysis issue in educational research. These methodological

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advances were later incorporated into the more sophisticated SER of both the United States and of other countries in the 1990s. Finally, and related to the fourth item, the use of multi-level modeling to incorporate the dimension of time allowed for much more accurate analysis of achievement gains. As one example of the power potentially added to studies, Bryk and Raudenbush (1992) reported a reanalysis of math achievement data from project Follow-Through. This data set included fall and spring testing on a cohort of students over three consecutive years (e.g., six longitudinal data points). The authors reported that 80% of the variance in student-level slopes was attributable to differences between schools. This contrasts dramatically with the 5–15% reported in point-in-time analyses. Under No Child Left Behind, all schools and school districts are required to test all children annually in Grades 3–8, and many districts test in additional grades. This is creating an unprecedented, largely untapped series of large-scale opportunities to more accurately estimate the effects of schools on students in various areas.

A Period of High Influence: School Effectiveness Research, 1980–1995 The Emergence of School Effectiveness Research SER emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s as a major area of research in education in the United States. Coleman and Jencks’ analyses had been widely interpreted as indicating that “schools make no difference.” This stark statement was replaced by the reassertion of a widespread American belief that schools affect children’s development and that there are observable regularities in the ways in which some schools do that more effectively than others. Much of the evidence for these conclusions came from the work of Edmonds (1979) and Brookover et al. (1979). Cawelti (2003) recently declared Edmonds’ research to be one of the 11 studies that has had the greatest impact on education over the past 50 years. The influence of Edmonds’ effective schools research was due in a large degree to its replicability: “Several investigators replicated the research by using these findings, and the study influenced thousands of educators working in schools in which students from low-income families tended to achieve less well than others” (Cawelti, 2003, p. 19). Edmonds’ writings emphasized the equity ideal (see Sackney, in this volume) in that he and his colleagues advocated for better schools for students from disadvantaged groups. Edmonds and his colleagues were no longer interested in just describing effective schools: They also wished to create effective schools, especially for the urban poor.

Merged Traditions: The Impact of Effective Schools Research on SIR SER had a large impact on SIR during the 1980s as the first school change studies based on effective schools research began to emerge.1 For the most part, these early studies were based on models that utilized the effective schools “correlates” generated from the correlational and positive outlier studies described above.

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School change agents took Edmonds’ five correlates and translated them into improvement models in large urban districts such as New York (Clark & McCarthy, 1983) and Milwaukee (McCormack-Larkin, 1985). Edmonds was instrumental in developing the New York City School Improvement Project, which had three components: school-based planning, a school liaison role, and a focus on the school effectiveness correlates. Similarly, Milwaukee’s Project RISE utilized six factors that the researchers considered to be crucial components of effective schooling. Brookover et al. (1982) developed an in-service program for school improvement based on effective schools research and other related research. His model brought in research from multiple areas, including TER and cooperative learning, including such specific strategies as: ● ● ● ● ● ●

grouping students for instruction, effective teaching, classroom management, cooperative learning, principles of reinforcement, and parental involvement.

This 11-module program (and variants thereof) became the foundation for many research-based school improvement projects throughout the United States in the 1980s and CSR programs today. Taylor (1990) presented a dozen case studies of local schools and school districts that had implemented improvement programs based on effective schools research, including projects in Maryland (Murphy & Wyant, 1990), California (Chrispeels & Beall, 1990), and New York (Sudlow, 1990). Lezotte (1990) summarized several lessons learned from these case studies, including the following: (1) planning and implementing programs of school improvement does not follow a simple, linear recipe or formula; (2) school improvement is a complex and ongoing process that requires patience and persistence; and (3) teacher improvement can work if the mission is clear and if time and other resources are available to support school-based planning and training processes. The impact of the effective schools research model for school improvement during the 1980s and early 1990s was demonstrated with the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1988. This legislation specifically mandated the use of the effective schools correlates in improvement programs funded with ESEA Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 funds (General Accounting Office, 1989). This was the highwater mark for the influence of SER in the United States.

Major Findings from SER Conducted in the United States, 1980–1995 SER in the United States enjoyed great popularity and generated substantial research (if of uneven quality) from 1980 to 1995, so it is difficult to narrow our review to a few major themes that characterize the era. For additional analysis, we refer the reader to

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other valuable reviews of this period, including Good and Brophy (1986), Levine and Lezotte (1990), and Stringfield and Herman (1996). We have selected five major themes to present in this section based on (1) their inclusion in almost every review of American SER over the past two decades, and (2) our belief that they continue to be fruitful areas for further research.

From Correlates to Characteristics to Processes The original five correlates of effective schooling were very influential in the history of SER, but as more research began to accumulate, it became apparent that some expansion and generalization of the correlates was required. For example, the original correlates did not include parental participation or refer to any of the best teaching practices that had emerged from TER. Levine and Lezotte (1990) presented an extensive review of the effective schools literature in the United States from the 1970s and 1980s; this work generated nine characteristics of effective schooling. Sammons, Hillman, and Mortimore (1995) reviewed the SER literature in the United Kingdom 5 years later and derived 11 factors that overlapped considerably with Levine and Lezotte’s list. Reynolds and Teddlie (2000b) then compared the two lists and derived nine overall processes of effective schooling that encapsulated all of the characteristics generated by the previous lists. The similarity between the Sammons et al. (1995) and Levine and Lezotte lists is striking, especially given that there was only a 4% overlap between the two in terms of source materials. The Reynolds and Teddlie (2000b) list of processes is presented in Table 1. We believe that reproducing this list – despite the fact that several similar lists have been presented over the past 15 years – serves four key purposes: (1) It graphically represents how the five original correlates have expanded into nine processes of effective schooling. (2) It shows how the nine processes are much more complex than the original correlates (e.g., refer to the column with the subcomponents of the processes). This is partially a function of expansion from 1980 to 1995 of the SER research base to include schools from different contexts with different effective school characteristics. (3) It shows how relevant research from other areas has been incorporated in updated lists of effective schooling characteristics like ongoing professional development (e.g., Pink, 1990). For example, Schaffer and his colleagues (in this volume) concluded that five of the nine processes in Table 1 directly involve processes that emerged from TER. (4) Because all of these processes of effective schools are based on SER or research in related fields, the table demonstrates the magnitude of the knowledge base associated with the field (e.g., Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000, who made use of over 1,400 references). Results from the effective schools research summarized in Table 1 have been used, both implicitly and explicitly, in the formulation of nationally and locally developed

A History of School Research in the USA Table 1.

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The processes of effective schools

Original correlate

Effective schools process

Sub-components of the process

1. Strong principal leadership

1. The processes of effective leadership

2. Pervasive and broadly understood instructional focus 3. Safe and orderly school climate

2. Developing and maintaining a pervasive focus on learning

a. Being firm and purposeful b. Involving others in the process c. Exhibiting instructional leadership d. Frequent, personal monitoring e. Selecting and replacing staff a. Focusing on academics b. Maximizing school learning time a. Creating a shared vision b. Creating an orderly environment c. Emphasizing positive reinforcement a. For students b. For staff a. At the school level b. At the classroom level c. At the student level a. Maximizing classtime b. Successful grouping and organization c. Exhibiting best teaching practices d. Adapting practice to particulars of classroom a. Buffering negative influences b. Encouraging productive interactions with parents a. Site based b. Integrated with ongoing professional development a. Responsibilities b. Rights

4. High expectations for student achievement 5. Student achievement data used for evaluating program success

3. Producing a positive school culture

4. Creating high (and appropriate) expectations for all 5. Monitoring progress at all levels 6. The processes of effective teaching

7. Involving parents in productive and appropriate ways 8. Developing staff skills at the school site 9. Emphasizing student responsibilities and rights

Note. These processes of effective schooling were adapted from Reynolds and Teddlie (2000b, p. 144). This list was developed by extracting the common elements from two other reviews: (a) Levine and Lezotte (1990), and (b) Sammons et al. (1995). The five original correlates were taken from a publication of the General Accounting Office (1989).

CSR programs. Many locally developed programs – which are mandated to be researchtested, research-based, and comprehensive, but often are not – use the well-publicized effective schools model.

Magnitude of School Effects and Other Scientific Properties Several investigators in the United States conducted studies concerning the magnitude of school effects, as well as other scientific properties of those effects, during this time

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period. Following the lead of Aitkin and Longford (1986) from the United Kingdom, statisticians and researchers in the United States began developing multilevel mathematical models and computer programs that could more accurately assess the effects of all the units of analysis associated with schooling. Scholars from the United States (e.g., Burstein, 1980) were among the first to identify the issue of levels of aggregation/analysis as critical for educational research. One of the first multilevel modeling computer programs was also developed in the United States (Bryk, Raudenbush, & Congdon, 1986) at about the same time as similar programs were developed in the United Kingdom. U.S. researchers continued to contribute to the further refinement of multilevel modeling and its application to SER (e.g., Bryk & Raudenbush, 1987, 1992; Lee & Bryk, 1989; Mandeville & Kennedy, 1991; Raudenbush, 1989; Witte & Walsh, 1990). Several reviews of the literature associated with the size of school effects were in basic agreement by the end of the 1990s on four points (e.g., Bosker & Witziers, 1996; Scheerens & Bosker, 1997; Teddlie et al., 2000): ●

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The size of school effects was estimated at between 8 and 16% of the variance in student achievement, depending on a number of factors such as grade level of schooling and the country in which the study occurred. The magnitude of school effects appears to be somewhat higher in studies conducted in the United States than in Europe (e.g., Bosker & Witziers, 1996). Importantly, the magnitude of school effects appears to be larger in longitudinal studies as opposed to cross-sectional studies (e.g., Raudenbush, 1989). The magnitude of teacher effects is larger than that of school effects when both are entered into multilevel models (e.g., Scheerens & Bosker, 1997; Teddlie et al., 2000).

An understudied but occasionally reported area concerns the subject specificity of school effects. The above-referenced Bryk and Raudenbush (1992) report showed that, given six data points, 80% of differences in student slopes on mathematics achievement was attributable to school-level differences. The teacher-effects field has made much more conscious use of the issue of subject specificity. Brophy and Good (1986), for example, observed that content areas widely discussed or informally taught at home and in the community (e.g., vocabulary, grammar) are much less likely to have strong, school-specific effects than subjects rarely discussed (e.g., foreign languages, geometric proofs). Logically, a U.S. elementary school that allocates funds to hiring a Japanese language teacher will produce at least 90–100% more gain in Japanese fluency than one that does not. This is a school-level policy issue that returns directly to issues of what is measured, how, and why. Other scientific properties or foundational issues2 were also identified, including seven listed in Table 2. US researchers made contributions to the study of all these properties of school effects throughout the 1980s and 1990s, especially in the area of context effects and the consistency and stability of school effects (e.g., Crone, Lang, Franklin, & Halbrook, 1994; Crone, Lang, Teddlie, & Franklin, 1995). Although further discussion of these scientific properties is beyond the scope of this chapter, we will address here the relevance of context effects to the effective schools research base.

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Scientific properties (foundational issues) of school effects

Scientific property of school effects Existence of school effects

Magnitude of school effects Context effects (between schools)

Consistency of school effectiveness indices at one point in time Stability of school effectiveness indices Across time (school as unit of analysis) Differential effects (within schools)

Continuity of school effects (student as unit of analysis)

Questions posed by the SER issue What are school effects (i.e., are we measuring what we intended to measure)? Did something actually occur as a result of schooling? How large are school effects? (With student or school as unit of analysis.) Are effect sizes consistent across schools that vary by SES of students, governance structures, phases of schooling, or country? Do we have consistent multiple measures of school effectiveness (e.g., across achievement, behaviors, attitudes)? 1. Are our measures reliable across time? 2. Do schools stay consistently effective (or ineffective) across time? Are schools differentially effective for groups of students within schools? Are school effects generalizable within schools? Are schools differentially effective across subject areas? Do school effects at earlier phases of schooling for students persist into later phases?

Note. SES
socioeconomic status. This table was adapted from Teddlie et al. (2000, p. 56).

The Importance of Context Effects School context effects were, in general, ignored during the first years of effective schools research in the United States, partly because school improvers and researchers like Edmonds were more driven by issues of equity. This orientation toward equity generated samples of schools that only came from low-SES areas, not from a wider, more diverse array of SES contexts. Further, the schools in these early studies were much more likely to be elementary schools located in urban areas. This sampling bias attracted much of the criticism of SER in the mid-to-late 1980s.3 As Wimpelberg, Teddlie, and Stringfield (1989) noted: Context was elevated as a critical issue because the conclusions about the nature, behavior, and internal characteristics of the effective (urban elementary) schools either did not fit the intuitive understanding that people had about other schools or were not replicated in the findings of research on secondary and higher SES schools. (p. 85) A more methodologically sophisticated era of SER began with the first context studies (e.g., Evans & Teddlie, 1995; Hallinger & Murphy, 1986; Teddlie & Stringfield, 1985, 1993; Teddlie, Virgilio, & Oescher, 1990), which explored the factors that were producing greater effectiveness in middle-class schools, suburban schools, and secondary schools. These studies explicitly explored the differences in school effects that occur across different school contexts, instead of focusing upon one particular context.

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Context factors in this SER included (1) SES of students attending the schools, (2) the community type being served by the schools (e.g., urban, rural, suburban), (3) the grade phases of schooling, and (4) the governance structure of the schools. For example, studies examined the differences in effective schooling practices at sites serving students with very different SES backgrounds (e.g., Hallinger & Murphy, 1986; Teddlie & Stringfield, 1985, 1993). They found differences between the lower SES and higher SES schools in terms of curriculum, student expectations, principal leadership style, and parental involvement. Differentiated recommendations for school improvement models based on this context-sensitive SER appeared in the literature in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Interestingly, this emphasis on local school context factors from the SER literature of this period echoed results from the school change studies conducted during the 1970s, although the researchers were asking very different questions and using very different methodologies.

The Importance of Leadership A hallmark of American SER concerns its attention to leadership issues, typically in terms of the role of the principal. There are five sub-components of the processes of effective leadership listed in Table 1: (1) being firm and purposeful, (2) involving others in the process, (3) exhibiting instructional leadership, (4) frequent, personal monitoring, and (5) selecting and replacing staff. Each of these sub-components is based on a voluminous literature that has been reviewed comprehensively elsewhere (Levine & Lezotte, 1990; Murphy, 1990; Reynolds & Teddlie, 2000b). We will briefly focus on one sub-component of the processes of effective leadership noted in Table 1: involving others in the process. This sub-component provides a good example of how the processes of effective schools continue to generate researchable topics that are continually relevant. One such area of ongoing research addresses the role of the teacher in the leadership of schools. Murphy (in this volume) identified numerous sources in the literature related to the role of teachers in school leadership, including several from the 1985 to 1995 period (e.g., Chrispeels, 1992; Darling-Hammond, 1988; Little, 1995; Smylie & BrownleeConyers, 1992). Several of these sources emerged from writings on shared decisionmaking within the school restructuring literature, which detailed barriers to teacher leadership. These barriers include several norms commonly existing in school cultures that work against teacher leadership, including the norms of autonomy, equality, cordiality, privacy, and the divide between teaching and administration. An area for further research includes the study of schools in which these barriers have been surmounted.

The Addition of Teacher Effectiveness Variables to SER Research described earlier in this chapter pointed to the importance of the teacher or classroom as a unit of analysis in properly executed studies of schooling (e.g., Murnane, 1975; Stallings & Kaskowitz, 1974; Summers &Wolfe, 1977). Starting in the 1980s,

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SER-oriented researchers in the United States began explicitly including classroom observations in their research (e.g., Stringfield, Teddlie, & Suarez, 1985; Teddlie, Kirby, & Stringfield, 1989). School effectiveness researchers borrowed these variables and the instruments to measure them from TER. For example, Teddlie, Stringfield, and their colleagues used the Stallings Observation System (Stallings & Kaskowitz, 1974) and an instrument composed of variables gleaned from the Rosenshine (1983) review of TER in their research. These studies of TER variables within the context of SER revealed consistent mean and standard deviation differences in classroom teaching between schools classified as effective or ineffective in several studies (e.g., Crone & Teddlie, 1995; Teddlie & Stringfield, 1993; Virgilio, Teddlie, & Oescher, 1991). For example, results from Teddlie et al. (1989) indicated that teachers in effective schools were more successful in keeping students on task, spent more time presenting new material, provided more independent practice, demonstrated higher expectations for students, and so forth, than did their peers in matched ineffective schools. In addition to these mean differences in teaching behaviors between effective/ ineffective schools, differences in patterns of variation were also found: The standard deviations reported for teaching behavior were smaller in more effective schools. This result indicates that there are processes occurring at more effective schools (e.g., informed selection of new teachers, effective socialization processes) that result in more homogeneous behavior among teachers and the elimination of less effective teacher behaviors. In particular, more effective schools included fewer classes that featured highly ineffective teaching. The addition of classroom observation variables from TER contributed to the growing sophistication of case study research in SER. Prior SER studies already included detailed measures of the social psychological climates of schools at multiple levels, as derived from the Brookover et al. (1979) research and other sources (e.g., Rosenholtz, 1989). By the end of the 1980s, school effectiveness researchers had a wide battery of scales and instruments that could generate increasingly complex mixed-methods studies of schools and their classrooms based on data collected during school site visits. As noted by Kochan (in this volume), these mixed-methods site visit SER protocols were later adapted for use in technical assistance programs associated with state accountability systems.

The Decline of the SER Activity in the United States SER activity has declined in the United States since the mid-1990s. One of the reasons for the decline in activity was SER’s apparent success. By the mid-1990s, the basic questions that initially drove the movement had been answered. These included: Do school effects exist? If they do, what is their magnitude? What are the characteristics of unusually effective schools? Do these characteristics of effective schools differ for different types of schools? As these fundamental questions were addressed, the area of study then evolved into subsets of those questions, several of which simply were not as engaging to many researchers.

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Scathing criticisms of effective schools research also led educational researchers to steer away from SER; fewer students chose the area for dissertation research after the mid-1980s (e.g., Cuban, 1993). It should be noted that, despite criticisms, some academic institutions have continued to generate extensive SER. Several researchers who had been interested in studying SER during the 1980s moved in the 1990s toward more applied areas such as school restructuring and school accountability. Indeed, much of the energy previously associated with the SER movement was re-channeled into the school restructuring movement. Another factor that may have contributed to the marginalization of SER in the United States was the increasing internationalization of the field. Although the field was dominated by researchers from the United States and the United Kingdom through the 1980s, numerous countries in Europe and throughout the world got more involved in the 1990s (e.g., Creemers & Scheerens, 1989; Sackney, 1991; Scheerens & Bosker, 1997; Townsend, Clarke, & Ainscow, 1999). The internationalization of SER diverted attention away from the United States toward other countries in which the field was still new and dynamic.

The Relationship between SER and SIR in the United States After the late 1980s, U.S. SER and SIR increasingly diverged, although some researchers continued to work in both areas. Out of these divergent fields, two classes of researchers eventually emerged: (1) a small number of SER researchers who were interested in the scientific merit of their work and in designing more rigorous studies within the various subfields that were emerging in SER; and (2) a much larger number of SIR researchers who were interested in actually changing schools through progressive waves of school reform. This split occurred in other countries, including the United Kingdom, where an intellectually stimulating debate among those advocating for SER or SIR or the linking of the two has been ongoing since the 1990s (e.g., Reynolds et al., 1993; Sackney, in this volume; Stoll and Sammons, in this volume). Such an intense dialog never developed in the United States, perhaps because the ideological lines between SER and SIR were never as well-delineated as they were abroad.

Trends in School Improvement Research in the United States since 1990 The school restructuring era in the United States began in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the publication of several important articles and books (e.g., Chrispeels, 1992; Elmore, 1991; Lewis, 1989; Murphy, 1991). The school restructuring era eventually gave way to CSR, which swept the United States following the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Title I amendments of the late 1990s. The era of school improvement associated with school restructuring is thus restricted primarily to the 1990s.

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The Restructuring Movement The primary messages associated with the school restructuring era were (1) that previous school improvement efforts had been too limited in nature, and (2) that true educational reform required the restructuring of the basic organization of schools. The restructuring movement also marked a change in orientation from equity to efficiency regardless of equity concerns and a focus on the importance of the nation’s economy in school improvement research. That is, reformers’ emphasis was no longer aimed at schools serving the disadvantaged, but instead was oriented toward creating schools that would generate a competent workforce for a competitive global economy (e.g., Bickel, 1998). The publication of A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983) and A Nation Prepared (Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy, 1986) provided much of the impetus for this growing economic orientation in school improvement. School restructuring refers to school improvement efforts that are based on a wide range of changes in the organizational structure of schools, including the empowering of teachers and parents. Numerous interventions have been associated with restructuring, (e.g., Chrispeels, 1992; Louis & Smith, 1991; Murphy & Beck, 1995; Newmann & Wehlage, 1995), including: ●

● ● ● ● ●

site-based management (SBM; i.e., basic changes in the organization of school systems and schools, such that control is decentralized to the local school), changes in the structure of teaching (e.g., interdisciplinary team teaching), greater parental involvement in schools, transformational leadership (e.g., Leithwood, 1992), more flexible scheduling, and more sensitive measures of accountability (e.g., portfolio assessment).

This school change movement enjoyed great popularity in the United States, especially in the early and mid-1990s, when most large school districts declared themselves to be involved in some form of restructuring (e.g., Dade County, Florida; Chicago; San Diego; New York City). The popularity of the movement and the multiple operational definitions of the interventions, however, caused difficulties in measuring the actual impact of school restructuring. Although there was some evidence of successful school restructuring in individual schools (e.g., Newmann & Wehlage, 1995), many reviewers have been disappointed with the overall research evidence for a variety of reasons: ●

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The interventions were often too scattershot in nature, making it difficult for researchers to determine which intervention (e.g., SBM) caused which effect in restructured schools (e.g., Murphy & Beck, 1995). There was evidence that the interventions implemented in restructuring projects often did not actually deliver the key components of the proposed reform (e.g., Fullan, 1993). Fullan (1993) concluded that the reforms from restructuring efforts often did not penetrate the “learning core” of the schools and classrooms (e.g., Taylor & Teddlie, 1992; Weiss, 1992).

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Although the research evidence for restructuring schools may be inconclusive, there is no doubt that the theoretical and political work associated with restructuring has had an enduring impact in the United States. For instance school improvement teams (e.g., school councils) are now nearly omnipresent throughout the United States; such teams possess the requisite teacher and parent representation and are theoretically empowered to run the schools.

Comprehensive School Reform The 1990s also witnessed the emergence of whole school reform (WSR), special strategies for school reform, and CSR, which is now the most commonly used term for improvement efforts that engage the entire school. The federally funded Title I program, which is earmarked for schools that serve the economically disadvantaged, has played a major role in the evolution of CSR as the primary vehicle for SIR in the United States today. CSR’s rise occurred as follows: ●

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The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 created the initial Title I program, which for the first time used federal funds to decrease funding disparities between schools serving affluent and economically disadvantaged communities (e.g., Borman & D’Agostino, 1996). Following several well-documented cases of local misuse of Title I funds, Congress mandated that these funds be used to supplement, not supplant, state and local funding. In efforts to keep federal monies clearly separate from local funds, districts adopted policies of removing students from class for part of the day to receive special Title I services in small groups. These “pull-out” programs, as they came to be called, were subsequently criticized for stigmatizing low-achieving students and being ineffective. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, ESEA rules were changed to allow districts to implement schoolwide programs, which permitted federal funds to be used for all the students in schools that served large percentages of economically disadvantaged students (e.g., Wong & Meyer, 1998). Several CSR designs (e.g., Accelerated Schools, Success for All, New American Schools) were developed during the late 1980s and early 1990s (e.g., Slavin, Madden, Karweit, Livermon, & Dolan, 1990; Stringfield, Ross, & Smith, 1996). The passage of the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration (CSRD) amendments to the federal Title I legislation (also known as the Obey-Porter Amendments) provided additional federal funding to districts, particularly those with Title I schools, to implement CSR models.

The 1998 Obey-Porter Amendments were an example of legislation and funding at least partly following research. Stringfield, Millsap, and Herman (1997) had recently completed a study of 10 promising programs. Their Special Strategies Studies owed much methodologically to the large-scale school change studies of the 1970s (e.g., Crandall & Loucks, 1983; Stallings & Kaskowitz, 1974), in that they followed a variety of schools attempting to implement reforms. However, two major differences represented in the Special Strategies studies were that (1) the reforms were relatively well-developed prior

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to data gathering, and (2) the sites chosen for the study were nominated as being relatively strong implementations of their respective reforms. Findings from Special Strategies replicated prior research in highlighting the importance of site-level leadership and high-quality professional development. The authors further concluded that: ●

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Whole-school change efforts were more likely to be effective than “pull-out” or otherwise targeted programs. Early elementary reforms tended to produce greater measured change than reforms focused on later grades. Externally developed designs were both more likely to obtain coherent implementation and to produce measurable positive results, thereby replicating the results from DESSI (Stringfield et al., 1997).

Building on the various studies of promising reforms of the past 20 years, Borman, Hewes, Overman, and Brown (2003) conducted a large-scale meta-analysis of the effects of specific CSR designs. The authors identified three CSRs that could be described as having reasonably solid supporting evidence of effects on student outcomes. We believe that further studies will make similarly strong cases for other, research-based reform designs.

Major Themes Regarding SIR in the United States Several themes run through the cumulative history of school improvement research in the United States. These may be summarized as follows: (1) Although stability in both processes and outcomes tend to be the rule, meaningful improvement is possible. Long-term National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) analyses clearly demonstrate the national-level stability of educational outcomes in the United States (e.g., Campbell, Hombo, & Mazzeo, 2000), yet every major study of educational change that we have examined in this chapter found positive – if often limited – examples of improvement. Clearly, individual schools can and do improve measurably. Equally clearly, however, the national norm has tended to preserve the status quo, and a reasonable assumption would be that roughly as many schools have been declining as improving. (2) The importance of a clearly defined intervention or set of interventions. Consistently, researchers have found that vague philosophical goals, however laudable in the abstract, tend to vanish in the crucible of the classroom. One advantage of some externally developed reform designs is that the developers often have had decades of experience honing the particulars of their intervention. (3) The importance of the local context. Teachers, schools, school districts, and states in the United States vary tremendously. Just as there is no one “right” engine for all trucks, buses, cars, and motorcycles, there is no single “right” reform for all schools. Material resources, human capacities, prior experiences with change, and belief systems all vary across schools, and within schools, over time. In study after study, context matters. (This theme is similar to the importance of context in SER.)

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(4) The co-constructed nature of the reality of the interventions (by school staff and school improvement teams). Datnow, Hubbard, and Mehan (2002) examined a range of school improvement efforts and found that the most successful involved local teachers and administrators in adapting external research and development efforts so that they would work well in the local context. (5) The importance of strong, focused leadership at the school site. Whether the studies have been of school effects, promising programs, or school restructuring, a nearly universal finding in change efforts in the United States has been the need for strong, academically focused principal leadership. (This theme is similar to the SER process named the Processes of Effective Leadership.) (6) The importance of ongoing teacher support. Students don’t learn at the knee of the principal or the reform designer but in classrooms under the direct tutelage of teachers. If teachers are provided with ongoing professional development on topics relevant to the intersection of the reform’s goals and teachers’ areas of needed growth, teachers are likely to grow. (7) The need to focus on processes as well as outcomes when assessing the success of the program.

Future Directions for SIR in the United States There are a number of interesting directions in SIR in the United States at this time, including: ●

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CSRs continue to be popular mechanisms for school reform in the United States. The research literatures and databases associated with some of these reforms (e.g., Success for All, Slavin & Madden, 2006) are extensive. New research-based strategies continue to develop, including the High Reliability Schools project (Reynolds, Stringfield, & Schaffer, 2006), which was developed in the United States and implemented in the United Kingdom. Standards-based reform (e.g., Fuhrman, 2001; McLaughlin & Shepard, 1995) will continue to be a major force in school improvement in the United States in the foreseeable future. Reforms generated to meet the dictates of state or district accountability systems have been around for some time, but many of these programs are now aligned with what Kochan (in this volume) has described as the United States’ over-arching accountability program: No Child Left Behind (NCLB). NCLB’s impact on local school improvers to meet adequate yearly progress (AYP) goals will likely intensify over the next several years. As noted in two chapters in this volume, there is an increasing emphasis on systemic change in SIR in the United States. Chrispeels, Andrews, and Gonzalez focused on case study research conducted in California that examined systemic supports (including university and district) for teacher learning and school improvement. Lasky, Datnow, Stringfield, and Sundell analyzed the research base on school reform and diverse populations within a framework that emphasizes key linkages across several domains of the educational system. This emphasis on school reform across multiple levels of schooling reflects recent theoretical work

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(e.g., Chrispeels & Gonzales, 2006; Senge et al., 2000) as well as the pressures of NCLB at the federal level and standards-based reform at the state and district levels. Beyond this volume, Stringfield and Yakimowski-Srebnick (2005) provided clear evidence of the ability of a large, high-poverty urban system to make five- to seven-year gains on such important measures as student achievement and high school graduation rates. Interest is ongoing in the appropriate balance between standardized school improvement practices on the one hand and local diversity or context on the other. This issue emerged from the educational change studies of the 1970s (e.g., the Rand School Change Study, DESSI) and has continued through the most recent literature (e.g., Chrispeels & Harris, 2006). For example, Gallucci, Knapp, Markholt, and Ort (2006) recently examined the interplay of two reform theories (one associated with standards-based reform and the other with small schools of choice) in three New York City schools and found that the two theories coexisted well in that setting. Murphy’s (in this volume) presentation of the teacher leadership research in the United States indicated that this should continue to be a promising area of SIR, especially with regard to examining the conditions that lead to the breakdown of barriers to shared leadership. Lasky et al. (in this volume) presented a strong case for more research into the impact of school reform efforts in racially and linguistically diverse settings. This type of reform is complex, requiring a coordinated effort across multiple levels of levels of the system. (There is a corollary line of research in SER known as “differential effects.”) A growing body of contemporary SIR is explicitly based on the processes of effective schools from SER, thereby demonstrating the continued relevance of that literature. Many locally developed CSR programs utilize the effective schools model. Additionally, Marzano (2003, and in this volume) developed an 11-component program for school improvement based to a large degree on the SER (and TER) that has been presented throughout this chapter. Similarly, Chrispeels and Gonzales (2006) recently developed an Effective Schools district reform model based on the processes of school effectiveness presented in Table 1. It appears that the effective schools literature will have an ongoing effect on SIR for the foreseeable future.

Contemporary and Future Trends in SER in the United States Several authors have speculated recently about the future of SER as an international field of study (e.g., Mortimore, 2001; Reynolds & Teddlie, 2000a; Rutter & Maughan, 2002). The last section of this chapter looks at contemporary and future trends in SER in the United States. A few contextual differences make SER in the United States somewhat different from international SER, but the overall similarity between the two is quite high. This is in part due to the numerous interactions and joint projects among researchers from many countries over the past 15–20 years, and in part due to

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the internationalization of the SE/SI conversation through the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement and the journal School Effectiveness and School Improvement. On the one hand, SER is a very successful area of research both in the United States and internationally. In fact, the processes or correlates of effective schooling have become so widely accepted that school reformers rarely cite the studies whose findings shape many of their projects’ components. SER has become part of the furniture of school reform. The major legacy of this field of study in the United States has been the generation of a “knowledge base derived from a long and very substantial literature in school effectiveness research” (Wetherill & Applefield, 2005, p. 198). The uniqueness of this knowledge base was described by Bickel (1998) in the third edition of the Handbook of School Psychology, in which he commented on the continued relevance of effective schools research to school restructuring and school reform in general: As observed, the effective schools work rests on an explicit empirical base … . The school restructuring reformers have little evidence and few working models of what the future portends. Perhaps the answer lies in the words of Tyack and Cuban (1995): “Rather than starting from scratch in reinventing schools, it makes most sense to graft thoughtful reforms onto what is healthy in the present system” (p. 133). If this is so, one of the healthy elements in the current system is the knowledge base provided by the research on effective schools. (Bickel, 1998, pp. 980–981) On the other hand, SER activity has declined in the United States4 over the past decade for a variety of reasons. Although some researchers may have left SER due to their attraction to school reform efforts or the continued criticism of the field,5 others have persevered by following up on lines of research associated with sub-fields within the area. In order for the field to become revitalized in the United States, school effectiveness researchers need to generate more activity in three general areas associated with the two branches of SER described earlier in this chapter: ●

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Using longitudinal modeling of increasingly rich databases to better estimate the sizes of teacher and school effects in diverse contexts. Continued exploration of the processes associated with effectiveness in schooling (effective schools research). Continued exploration of the scientific or foundational properties of school effects (school effects research).

The remainder of this section examines recent research and future trends in these general areas and their various sub-areas. (1) Using longitudinal modeling of increasingly rich databases to better estimate the sizes of teacher and school effects in diverse contexts. As noted earlier in this chapter, one positive effect of the federal NCLB legislation has been the requirement of near-universal testing of students in Grades 3–8, with many

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districts testing in earlier and later grades. Combined with progress in multi-level modeling and the continued decline in the cost of computing, this is resulting in significantly underused opportunities to estimate teacher-, school-, and districtlevel effects in as many wide-ranging topic areas as diverse states choose to measure. (2) Continued exploration of the processes associated with effectiveness in schooling (effective schools research). There are nine processes and 25 subcomponents of effective schooling listed in Table 1, each of which has a research base that could be further described and delineated. In order to more fully understand the direction for further research into these processes, the traditional distinction between effective schools research and school improvement research in the United States should be more fully examined: ●

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Effective schools research is concerned with identifying the ongoing processes of effective schooling at sites located in the natural environment, whose outcomes are exemplary compared to similar schools. School improvement research is concerned with the processes and outcomes associated with deliberate efforts to improve one or more processes and outcomes in specific schools.

This distinction was sharper 30 years ago. Various school reforms in the United States since then have resulted in a situation in which almost all schools in the country serving at-risk students are undergoing some kind of school improvement program; over time, these schools typically undertake multiple reforms. Effective schools research as it was conducted in the United States 25–30 years ago would be very hard to conduct now because a similar sample of schools (low-SES schools with exemplary performance in a “natural” environment with no external reform) simply may not exist. There are, however, at least three ways to continue research into the processes of effective schooling in the United States. First, we could consider the distinction between effective schools and school improvement research to be outdated and search for evidence of “effective and improving” schools, regardless of the existence of school improvement programs. This type of research could be renamed effective and improving school processes. Rich (2004) recently performed this type of research in a case study of a school that was improving after being labeled the lowest performing school in a region. Rich’s research involved looking for evidence of Edmonds’ correlates of effective schooling plus Glickman, Gordon, and Ross-Gordon’s (2001) characteristics of improving schools. Rich found evidence for several of the effective and improving practices at the school, and his research provided evidence for positive school practices that can evolve out of a “shame and blame” process. The Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR) regularly publishes similar studies. A second way to continue research into effective schools practices is to look for academically high-performing outliers among schools serving middle-SES students, which are less likely to have mandated school improvement programs

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(SIPs). There are differences in effective schools processes ongoing at these more effective and less effective middle-SES schools, as demonstrated in previous research (e.g., Teddlie & Stringfield, 1985, 1993). Less effective middle-SES schools are less likely to be labeled “ineffective” by state-mandated highstakes testing, because the performance of the students at these schools is above the state minimum requirements. For instance, we studied a less effective middleSES school over three points in time (1984–1985, 1989–1990, 1995–1996) and observed no serious effort to improve the school (Stringfield, Kemper, & Teddlie, 2000). We need more research on how to identify these underperforming middleSES schools and how to make them more effective, a process that is probably distinct from that found in lower SES schools. A third way to continue research into effective schools processes is to introduce reform based on those processes into some schools and then compare those schools with similar schools without such programs. Of course, studies of this nature would need to control for other ongoing school improvement programs in the two sets of schools. Lasky et al. (2005) recently introduced such a research program through a foundation-funded randomized field trial of effective schools principles.6 (3) Continued exploration of the scientific properties or foundational properties of school effects (school effects research). Table 2 lists seven scientific properties of school effects and presents the questions that they address. Although the question of the size of the school effect launched SER in the United States, the number of research studies concerned with that issue has declined over the past decade. One such study was conducted by D’Agostino (2000) and used a multilevel analysis of a longitudinal national database. D’Agostino (2000) concluded that “findings may indicate that schooling began to equalize the educational opportunities available to students across various SES strata. The schools that served lower-SES students may have provided these students the proper learning experiences necessary to keep pace academically with higher-SES students” (p. 229). Although American researchers conducted numerous studies into the stability and consistency of school effects through the mid-1990s (for a review, see Teddlie et al., 2000), there has been little new research in the United States in these areas since then. The potential impact of high-stakes testing on the stability of school effects over time has made these areas of research particularly timely and compelling. (4) The effect of principal behavior on school effectiveness and student achievement. An area of utmost importance in U.S. SER is the impact of principal behavior on school effectiveness. Principal behavior has been studied both as a process of school effectiveness and as a scientific property under the magnitude of the school effect. Hallinger and Heck (1996) made significant contributions to SER literature by examining the conceptual and methodological issues related to this issue. Hallinger and Heck presented a conceptual scheme for classifying nonexperimental studies of principal effects by presenting three competing

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models: Model A (direct effects with or without antecedents), Model B (mediated effects with or without antecedents), and Model C (reciprocal effects). The researchers then reviewed a group of studies that had examined the effect of educational leadership on student achievement and concluded that the relationship might best be modeled by examining the mediated or indirect effect of principal behavior through other individual and organizational factors (e.g., teacher behaviors, school climate) and then onto student achievement. This is an under-researched area of study within SER in which the conceptual and methodological (e.g., structural equation modeling, multilevel modeling) underpinnings are apparently in place. It would be logical to hypothesize that there must be a match between specific principal behaviors and specific types of schools. For example, principals in secondary schools have very different jobs than principals in elementary schools, and although it would seem sensible that some more effective behaviors would be held in common across school levels, others would likely differ. Similarly, one would expect both similarities and differences in more- vs. less-effective principal behaviors in schools serving high-poverty vs. highly affluent communities or from principals attempting to “turn around” low-performing schools vs. attempting to fine tune high-performing schools. (5) The interface between the school and classroom. The addition of teacher effectiveness variables to SER revealed consistent mean and standard deviation differences in classroom teaching between schools classified as differentially effective in several studies summarized by Teddlie and Meza (1999). These quantitative findings led to some qualitatively oriented questions regarding the classroom/school interface, including: ● ●

●

●

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How are decisions made at the school level to select specific teachers to hire? Similarly, how do schools differentially evaluate teachers? Twenty years ago, Bridges (1986) conducted ground-breaking research on managing incompetent teachers, and the field has been seriously understudied since. What mechanisms does the school leadership use to ensure homogeneity of the teachers’ goal orientation? How do more- vs. less-effective principals and others at the school level monitor teachers’ performance at the classroom level? How is performance data used to detect unusual or outlier teacher performance, and when/how are steps taken to increase positive outlier performance?

Exploration of these qualitatively oriented questions regarding the interface between the school and the classroom is a promising area for future research. (6) What are the relationship patterns among teachers at more effective as opposed to less effective schools? A new area for development in contemporary SER is the study of relationship patterns in schools through Social Network Analysis. This third dimension of schooling (joining the organizational and cultural dimensions) can be explored among faculty members within a school, among students within a class, and across the school and class levels with multiple actors.

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(7)

(8)

(9)

(10)

For example, Durland and Teddlie (1996) explored the relationships among teachers in both more effective and less effective schools. They concluded that the sociograms of more effective schools were “well-webbed” (many reciprocal relationships centering on the principal and teacher leaders in the school), while sociograms of less effective schools were “stringy” (not many reciprocal relationships and several isolates). Kochan and Teddlie (2005) recently presented sociograms of the interpersonal relationships among the members of a highly ineffective high school that also exhibited a “stringy” relationship pattern among those faculty members. A related series of studies in secondary schools are needed in the United States examining the behaviors and relationships among teachers in more- vs. less-effective departments within schools. Further research into context effects in SER. The importance of context effects in SER was described in a previous section of this chapter. More empirical work is needed in this area in the future, especially in areas such as the SES of students attending schools and the grade phases of schooling. The social psychological study of long-term ineffectiveness of schooling. We need to better understand why some schools appear to be stuck in a long-term cycle of ineffectiveness that has not been broken, often after multiple reform efforts. Reynolds and Teddlie (2000a) discussed these schools in terms of their “dysfunctionality” and suggested conducting intensive longitudinal case studies of samples of these low-performing schools. Similarly, Griffin (2004) examined ineffective schools as organizational reactions to stress in a large-scale survey study. The study of barriers to teacher leadership and how to overcome them. The study of the processes of school leadership could be enhanced through a more focused examination of how the barriers to teacher leadership have been or can be surmounted (Murphy, in this volume). Both naturalistic and quasi-experimental approaches could be used in this SER, either through identifying sites with diminished barriers or creating such sites using currently popular reforms such as learning communities (e.g., Dufour & Eaker, 1998; Sackney, in this volume). The uses of data for improved educational effectiveness. We have repeatedly noted that federal NCLB legislation has mandated greatly expanded gathering and reporting of standardized test data in American education. Organizations ranging from individual scholars, university-based research centers, and venture capital-funded for-profit corporations have spent the last several years developing data warehousing and presentation software intended to direct information back to parents, teachers, principals, central administrators, and state departments of education. Research on how to get the greatest impact from such efforts is just beginning. Jeffrey C. Wayman recently edited special issues of the Journal of Education for Students Placed At Risk (Wayman, 2005) and the American Journal of Education (Wayman & Stringfield, 2006) that have made very early efforts to examine uses of these new, potentially powerful tools. Given that greater use of achievement data was one of Edmonds’

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(1979) original five factors of more effective schooling, it is possible that the next decade will be known as a period in which efficient data use drove school reform. (11) Finally, there is very limited research in the United States that links school effects with system effects. Much of the pressure for increased school performance from NCLB is placed by the federal government on state departments of education. State departments then put pressure on local education authorities, which pressure (presumably with varying methods and effects) individual schools. In a longitudinal study of schools’ efforts to reform, Datnow et al. (2006) found clear examples of district- and state-level actions that enhanced or gutted various school reform efforts. This area is greatly understudied. In this chapter, we have attempted to summarize major historic trends in school effectiveness and school improvement research in the United States. We have discussed common and divergent themes between the two, suggested multiple potentially fruitful directions for future research, and noted many under-researched areas in which well-meaning practitioners are attempting reforms as if they already knew “what works.” We have noted that such optimism-based efforts have failed in the past. We choose to end by calling on our colleagues to focus at least part of their improvement efforts on gathering rigorous evidence on what does and does not work, and disseminating their findings as widely as possible.

Notes 1. There has been little intellectual overlap between phases of SIR in the United States. For example, the school reformers who used the effective schools correlates in their research in the 1980s seldom referenced research from the earlier phases of SIR in the United States. This trend persists to the present day as scholars associated with CSR seldom reference the effective schools literature. 2. Scholars in Europe call these “foundational issues” and have also reported research from these areas (e.g., Scheerens & Bosker, 1997; Scheerens, Bosker, & Creemers, 2000). 3. The equity orientation of Edmonds and others, with its emphasis on school improvement and sampling biases, led to predictable responses from the educational research community throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. The hailstorm of criticism (e.g., Cuban, 1983; Good & Brophy, 1986; Purkey & Smith, 1983; Rowan, 1984) aimed at those pursuing the equity ideal in SER had the effect of paving the way for more sophisticated SER that used more defensible sampling and analysis strategies. 4. For example, there has been a drop in the percentage of articles written by U.S. authors during the past seven years published in the premier journal in the field, School Effectiveness and School Improvement (SESI). There were 159 articles (not including editorials and book reviews) published in the years 1990 (Volume 1) through 1998 (Volume 9), of which 49 were written by authors from the United States. Thus, 31% of the articles in SESI from 1990–1998 were written by American authors. That percentage dropped to 17% in the 1999–2005 period (Volumes 10–16), in which only 23 out of 135 articles were written by American authors. 5. Thrupp (2001), Slee, Weiner, and Tomlinson (1998), and others have presented criticisms of contemporary SER based on what they perceive to be its political ideology, theoretical limitations, and other issues. These criticisms have been rebutted by several authors (e.g., Reynolds & Teddlie, 2001). Luyten, Visscher, and Witziers (2005) recently presented a more balanced and constructive criticism of the contemporary field including suggestions for how to improve it.

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6. The publication of a new American journal, the Journal for Effective Schools (now in its sixth volume), is a positive sign that interest continues in research into the processes associated with effectiveness and improvement in schooling. The journal lists seven processes of effective schooling (very similar to those listed in Table 1) in the front of each issue and indicates that it publishes original contributions related to the “Effective School Process.”

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Stringfield, S., Ross, S., & Smith, A. (1996). Bold plans for school restructuring. New York: Lawrence Erlbaum. Stringfield, S., Teddlie, C., & Suarez, S. (1985). Classroom interaction in effective and ineffective schools: Preliminary results from phase III of the Louisiana School Effectiveness Study. Journal of Classroom Interaction, 20(2), 31–37. Stringfield, S. C., & Yakimowski-Srebnick, M. E. (2005). Promise, progress, problems, and paradoxes of three phases of accountability: A longitudinal case study of the Baltimore City Public Schools. American Educational Research Journal, 42, 43–75. Sudlow, R. E. (1990). Implementing effective schools research in Spencerport, New York. In B. O. Taylor (Ed.), Case studies in effective schools research (pp. 155–181). Madison, WI: The National Center for Effective Schools Research and Development. Summers, A. A., & Wolfe, B. L. (1977). Do schools made a difference? American Economic Review, 67, 639–652. Taylor, B. O. (1990). Case studies in effective schools research. Madison, WI: The National Center for Effective Schools Research and Development. Taylor, D., & Teddlie, C. (1992, April). Restructuring and the classroom: A view from a reform district. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA. Teddlie, C., Kirby, P., & Stringfield, S. (1989). Effective versus ineffective schools: Observable differences in the classroom. American Journal of Education, 97, 221–236. Teddlie, C., & Meza, J. (1999). Using informal and formal measures to create classroom profiles. In J. Freiberg (Ed.), School climate: Measuring, improving and sustaining healthy learning environments (pp. 48–64). London: Falmer Press. Teddlie, C., & Reynolds, D. (2000). The international handbook of school effectiveness research. London: Falmer Press. Teddlie, C., Reynolds, D., & Sammons, P. (2000). The methodology and scientific properties of school effectiveness research. In C. Teddlie, & D. Reynolds (Eds.), The international handbook of school effectiveness research (pp. 55–133). London: Falmer Press. Teddlie, C., & Stringfield, S. (1985). A differential analysis of effectiveness in middle and lower socioeconomic status schools. Journal of Classroom Interaction, 20(2), 38–44. Teddlie, C., & Stringfield, S. (1993). Schools make a difference: Lessons learned from a 10-year study of school effects. New York: Teachers College Press. Teddlie, C., & Stringfield, S. (2006). A brief history of school improvement research in the United States. In A. Harris & J. Chrispeels (Eds.), Improving schools and educational systems: International perspectives (pp. 23–38). London: Routledge. Teddlie, C., Virgilio, I., & Oescher, J. (1990). Development and validation of the Virgilio Teacher Behavior Inventory. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 50, 421–430. Thomas, L. (1979). The medusa and the snail: More notes of a biology watcher. New York: Viking. Thrupp, M. (2001). Sociological and political concerns about school effectiveness research: Time for a new research agenda. School Effectiveness and School Research, 12, 7–40. Townsend, T., Clarke, P., & Ainscow, M. (Eds.). (1999). Third millennium schools: A world of difference in effectiveness and improvement. Lisse, the Netherlands: Swets and Zeitlinger. Tyack, D., & Cuban, L. (1995). Tinkering toward utopia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Venezky, R. L., & Winfield, L. F. (1979). Schools that succeed beyond expectations in teaching reading. Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware. Virgilio, I., Teddlie, C., & Oescher, J. (1991). Variance and context differences in teaching at differentially effective schools. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 2, 152–168. Wayman, J. C. (Ed.). (2005). Transforming data into knowledge: Applications of data-based decision making to improve instructional practice [Special issue]. Journal of Education for Students Placed At Risk, 10(3). Wayman, J. C., & Stringfield, S. (Eds.). (2006). Data use for school improvement [Special issue]. American Journal of Education, 112(4). Weber, G. (1971). Inner-city children can be taught to read: Four successful schools. Washington, DC: Council for Basic Education.

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Weiss, C. (1992, April). Shared decision making about what? A comparison of schools with and without teacher participation. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, CA. Wetherill, K. S., & Applefield, J. M. (2005). Using school change states to analyze comprehensive school reform projects. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 16, 197–216. Wimpelberg, R., Teddlie, C., & Stringfield, S. (1989). Sensitivity to context: The past and future of effective schools research. Educational Administration Quarterly, 25, 82–107. Witte, J. F., & Walsh, D. J. (1990). A systematic test of the effective schools model. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 12, 188–212. Wong, K. K., & Meyer, S. J. (1998). Title I schoolwide programs: A synthesis of findings from recent evaluations. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 20(2), 115–136.

9 HISTORY OF THE SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT MOVEMENT IN CANADA OVER THE PAST 25 YEARS

Larry Sackney

This chapter reviews the School Effectiveness Research (SER) and School Improvement Research (SIR) in Canada from the 1960s to today, noting their commonality and differentiation. The SER literature reached its zenith during the 1980s but continues to impact SIR literatures to date. Considerable attention is paid to the neo-SER literature, particularly the learning community research that is influencing government policy and school practices from the late 1990s to today. This chapter will also examine how provincial governments are applying the SER and SIR literature to policy. Finally, an attempt is made to assess the future directions for the movement within the Canadian context. Examining Canadian history in the areas of school effectiveness and improvement is important for a number of reasons: (1) Canada has a decentralized system of schooling that has little, if any, federal involvement; (2) the social, political, and economic contexts are different from those of the United States; (3) Canada does not have a history of extensive involvement of alternative forms of schooling – it has remained for the most part a publicly funded school system; and (4) Canada does not have legislation such as No Child Left Behind (2001) in the United States, nor has there been an extensive push for accountability as has been the case in the United States.

Conventional Views of Schooling in the 1970s In the early 1970s, the conventional view in Canada, as elsewhere, was that it was impossible to identify important school-based characteristics that were clearly beneficial to student learning outcomes. The belief was that the primary determinant of achievement outcomes was family background as measured by socioeconomic status (SES) and ethnicity. High-SES students did well in school while socioeconomically disadvantaged students, especially minorities, did poorly. The consensus was that school characteristics made little, if any, difference in student achievement outcomes (Sackney, 1991). 167 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 167–182. © 2007 Springer.

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The late 1960s and early 1970s were times of rapid social and political upheaval. In the United States, the Vietnam War had a tremendous impact on society and education. Canada was considerably less impacted by the developments in the United States. It was, however, a period of rapid change in education and society and the timing was ripe for the effective schools movement. International competition and economic decline resulted in the government looking to education to improve performance and to enhance social stability and cohesion.

The Effective Schools Research While the previous research was perhaps more “down beat,” the research on effective schools was basically hopeful. Using different research paradigms (quantitative, qualitative, and interpretive), researchers began to isolate characteristics that differentiated more effective schools from less effective schools. The conclusion from this research was that schools and school characteristics can make a difference in student achievement. Some of the initial studies tended to focus on atypically successful schools (e.g., Weber, 1971). Other studies, such as Brookover, Beady, Flood, Schweitzer, and Wisenhaber (1979) and Brookover and Lezotte (1979), found that social psychological factors affecting learning varied widely from school to school and that much of the variation was independent of SES and ethnicity. An analysis of the factors revealed that teacher expectations and evaluations were related to achievement. About the same time, Rutter, Maugham, Mortimore, and Ouston’s (1979) study of 12 inner-city London high schools appeared in the United Kingdom. Rutter et al. found that staff attitudes, behaviors, and academic focus produced an overall ethos that was conducive to achievement. Other factors included classroom management that kept students actively engaged in learning, firm discipline, use of rewards and praise, a physical environment that was conducive to learning, and effective monitoring practices that improved student learning outcomes. A second strand of research used the “outlier” approach. These studies (e.g., Austin, 1979) employed regression analyses of school mean achievement scores, controlling for socioeconomic factors. Based on the residual scores, schools that were highly effective (positive outliers) and highly ineffective (negative outliers) were identified and then assessed by survey or case studies to determine the reasons for their outcomes. Perhaps the best-known list of correlates was that suggested by Edmonds (1979), who is generally credited with being the father of the effective schools movement. Based on his own research and extensive review of other studies, Edmonds suggested five effectiveness characteristics: (1) strong instructional leadership; (2) high expectations for all students; (3) an orderly, work-oriented climate; (4) priority focus on instruction; and (5) frequent monitoring. These five characteristics became the generic set for many school improvement efforts. A third strand of school effectiveness research, exemplified by Armor et al. (1976), was program evaluation. These studies attempted to identify school and classroom policies that were successful in raising reading scores for minorities. The results from these studies concluded that effective programs were characterized by high staff

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expectations and morale, a considerable amount of control by staff over instructional decisions, strong leadership, clear school goals, and a sense of order in the school (Purkey & Smith, 1983). Wimpelberg, Teddlie, and Stringfield (1989) characterized the first era as being explicitly concerned with equity. First-generation effective schools research represented a search for achievement gains that were unusually high, mostly in urban elementary schools, and produced five main correlates: goal/mission, safe and orderly climate, strong instructional leadership, high expectations, and close monitoring of instructional programs. The second era, according to Wimpelberg et al. (1989), focused on efficiency. They contended that context became important because there were differences between urban elementary and secondary schools. Typical of this type of research was that of Hallinger and Murphy (1985), who showed that context was a determinant of school effectiveness. A third phase of effective schools research identified by Wimpelberg et al. (1989) focused attention on context factors and “a dual interest in the improvement of schooling for poor children (equity) and the improvement of everyone’s schooling, constrained by limitations on fiscal resources (efficiency)” (p. 88). Studies of the type conducted by Mortimore, Sammons, Stoll, Lewis, and Ecob (1988), Teddlie and Stringfield (1993), Rosenholtz (1989), and others contributed to an expanded understanding of school effectiveness variables. Silver (1994), in analyzing the effective schools research movement, concluded that, by the late 1980s, the movement had become relatively marginalized in Britain and North America. The exception was a Mortimore et al. (1988) study entitled School Matters, a study of junior schools in London. The study focused on pupil intakes, school environment, and educational outcomes. The conclusion was that an effective school raises the performance of all pupils. This research, like the American studies, was directed at making schools more successful with all children. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the research meshed with “both an emerging literature of ‘school improvement’ and international activity of various kinds” (Silver, 1994, p. 95). In many cases, governments under economic pressure became more interventionist, planning and implementing measures of restructuring or reform. In Britain, Canada, and the United States, the movement established links between the “pure” effective schools research and research and analysis coming from educational change and school improvement strategies (Fullan, 1982, 1991, 1992, 2003). The “ecology of schooling” and the concept of “school culture” as a way of understanding school effects also received attention (Fullan & Hargreaves, 1996). Others (e.g., Scheerens & Creemers, 1989; Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000) continued to develop more sophisticated models. Gradually, there has been a melding of research areas to include school improvement; this shift embraced curriculum development, strengthening school organization, and changes in teaching and learning process and teaching styles. In Canada, as elsewhere, the shift to school reviews became common (Sackney, 1992). An international journal, School Effectiveness and School Improvement, was launched in 1990. I recall numerous debates at various International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) conferences about the difference between school effectiveness and school improvement research; gradually there was a recognition that the two lines of inquiry overlapped.

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What are the Characteristics of Effective Schools? The school effectiveness research has been concerned with identifying factors related to greater effectiveness in terms of student progress and achievement. Sammons, Hillman, and Mortimore (1995), in summarizing British and North American research literature, provided a list of 11 key factors. They argued that the factors were neither exhaustive nor independent of each other. They contended, however, that the list was a useful synopsis of the most common factors associated with effective schools. The 11 factors were: professional leadership, shared vision and goals, a learning environment, concentration on teaching and learning, high expectations, positive reinforcement, monitoring progress, pupil rights and responsibilities, purposeful teaching, a learning organization, and home-school partnership. School effectiveness researchers’ aim was to ascertain whether differences in processes, organizational arrangement, and resources impact pupil outcomes; and, if so, in what ways. Although the initial forays were concerned with issues of equity, the more recent research was concerned with whether the school adds value (e.g., Stoll & Fink, 1996). Stoll and Fink (1996) viewed an effective school as being one that promotes progress for all of its pupils beyond what one would expect given its intake; one that ensures every pupil achieves at his/her highest standard possible; one that enhances all aspects of pupil achievement and development; and one that continues to improve from year to year (p. 28).

School Improvement Evolution School improvement has been around since the 1960s. Its ultimate aim is to “enhance pupil progress, achievement, and development” (Stoll & Fink, 1996, p. 43). More recently, improvement has also emphasized pupil outcomes and change management capacity. In this regard, the research of a number of Canadians such as Fullan (1982, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1999, 2001), Hargreaves (1994, 2003), and Hargreaves, Earl, Moore, and Manning (2001) shows the delicate relationship between change and school improvement and the importance of school culture. Another Canadian, Leithwood (1992) and his colleagues (Leithwood, Jantzi, & Steinbach, 1999), did extensive research on leadership and, in particular, on transformational leadership as the basis of school improvement. Earl (2003) has done extensive work on assessment for learning. It is beyond the capacity of this chapter to review their work, but it is important to note their great influence on the school improvement literature. An improving school increases its effectiveness over time. As such, it entails that the school must therefore change its aims, expectations, organization, way of learning, methods of teaching, and organizational culture (Hopkins, 2001, p. 12) in order to improve. Hopkins defined school improvement as “an approach to educational change that aims to enhance student outcomes as well as strengthening the school’s capacity for managing change. It is concerned with raising student achievement through focusing on the teaching-learning process and conditions that support it” (p. 13). Barth (1990), on the other hand, argued for basing school reform on improving schools from

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within. He contended that a “community of learners” approach to school improvement will lead to greater student learning. This approach has led to the more recent research and practice of building capacity for viewing schools as learning communities, which will be described in a later section. School improvement has been influenced by the recent history of research in the areas of school effectiveness and educational change (Harris, 2002; Hopkins, 2001; Reynolds, Hopkins, & Stoll, 1993; Silver, 1994; Stoll & Fink, 1996). Lack of teacher commitment to “top-down” government reforms led to shifting the paradigm to a “bottom-up” approach, such as school-based reviews. Stoll and Fink concluded that the process approach did not always lead to actual improvement. As a result, by the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a shift “towards a focus on the evaluation of processes and outcomes” (Stoll & Fink, 1996, p. 43) and the merging of the two fields. “By combining the outcomes of the two fields … we have joined an outcomes orientation with a process to achieve change in our schools” (p. 44). Similarly, Hopkins (2001) stated, “The research tradition of school effectiveness is complementary to that of school improvement and of late the two traditions have learned much from each other. As a result, the best of current practice reflects transcendence or merging of the two paradigms” (pp. 13–14). The new paradigm represents: ● ● ●

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An enhanced focus upon the importance of pupil outcomes. Teachers being increasingly targeted for attention. Creation of an infrastructure to enable the knowledge base, with both best practice and research findings to be utilized. Stressing the importance of capacity building. The importance of fidelity to program implementation. An appreciation of cultural change to school improvement. (Hopkins, 2001, p. 70)

The school improvement literature increasingly recognizes that schools at different stages of development require different strategies, not only to enhance their capacity for development, but also to provide better education for their students. The next section provides a brief background to the learning community research that is driving many current provincial policy initiatives.

Building Capacity for Learning Communities During the past decade, the impact of globalization, new technologies, and the demands for a well-educated society have put pressures on schools to improve student learning. Previous restructuring attempts were not able to transform the culture of schools to align with or attune to both internal and external demands. These demands required that learning be sustainable and continuous (Stoll, Fink, & Earl, 2003). Since the mid-1990s, considerable attention has focused on transforming schools into learning communities (Barth, 1990; DuFour & Eaker, 1998; Huffman & Hipp, 2003;

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Louis, Kruse, & Associates, 1995; Mitchell & Sackney, 2000; Stoll et al., 2003). To build a learning community is to build capacity for learning. Mitchell and Sackney (2000) defined a learning community as a “group of people who take an active, reflective, collaborative, learning-oriented and growth-promoting approach toward the mysteries, problems and perplexities of teaching and learning” (p. 5). The learning community model sees knowledge gaps as opportunities and challenges to be explored and investigated. Prior knowledge serves as the foundation upon which future learning can be grounded and around which learning goals are organized. Learning is viewed as being intellectual, social, and emotional. The basic elements of learning communities are as follows: ● ●

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Shared mission, vision, values, and goals. Collaborative teams: Staff who engage in collaborative team learning are able to learn from one another. Action orientation and experimentation: Staff know that learning occurs in the context of taking action. Action research is common in such schools. Shared and supportive leadership: A tendency toward a “community of leaders.” Data-sensitive decision making: Improvement and learning are premised upon data collection, analysis, and planning for improvement. Shared responsibility for learning outcomes: Improving student learning is a joint responsibility based upon trusting relationships and involves students, parents, and the community. Learning arises through the development of “communities of practice” and diversity of learning networks. Sustainable leadership is necessary (DuFour & Eaker, 1998; Hargreaves & Fink, 2005; Huffman & Hipp, 2003; 2005; Mitchell & Sackney, 2000; Mitchell & Sackney, 2006).

Sackney, Mitchell, and Walker (2005), in an analysis of 2,832 staff surveys from 120 schools, identified six factors as describing effective learning communities: shared understanding, reflective practice, high quality of work life, adequacy of organizational resources, learning currency, and inclusive culture. In a subsequent analysis of 15 high-capacity learning communities, four additional factors were found: use of interactive instruction, use of authentic pedagogy, high learner engagement, and development of a “community of leaders.” In summary, learning communities are places where learning is a continuous process that includes all stakeholder groups. Capacity building in such schools results in synergy for new skills and knowledge, enhanced and focused resources, and focused commitment.

Educational Policy and Provincial and District Involvement The first portion of this section briefly provides an overview of the policy context in Canada. This is followed by an analysis of effective school research policy implementation by school jurisdictions and provincial governments.

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Educational Governance Canada is a federation of ten provinces and two territories. Under the Constitution, legislative, executive, and judicial powers are shared or distributed between the federal government and the provinces. Section 93 of The Constitution Act grants to the provinces exclusive control over education; in Canada there is no ministry or office of education at the federal level. Through the Council of Ministers of Education (CMEC), however, the federal government does provide indirect support to postsecondary education and, on occasion, to K-12 education. It is also responsible for the education of First Nations children on reserves and the children of armed forces (Council of Ministers of Education [CMEC], 1996). Provincial and territorial control over education brings with it the power to delegate authority to local school boards. The power and duties of provinces and territories are, in general, consistent throughout Canada. Their responsibility for education is usually exercised through departments or region-specific ministries of education. Although the federal government does not have responsibility for education, the CMEC does provide national educational linkages. The CMEC provides a forum for education ministers to come together to discuss matters of common concern, explore ways to cooperate, share information, and represent Canadian education internationally.

Effective Schools Policy Initiatives The effective schools research had serious policy implications for school jurisdictions and provincial governments. In the early to mid-1980s, the effective schools correlates became the recipe for school improvement. As an example, in the Province of Saskatchewan, as elsewhere in Canada, the Ministry set up the Saskatchewan School Improvement Program (SSIP), that was devoted to implementing the effective schools research. Ministry personnel provided materials and professional development to schools and/or school jurisdictions. The recipe approach drew criticism from researchers such as Holmes, Leithwood, and Musella (1989), who argued that “it seems unlikely that the simple application of a recipe will make schools more effective” (p. viii). By the late 1980s, the “recipe” approach to school effectiveness had run its course. The central, practical problem facing the movement in the 1980s was one of implementation. The translation of school effectiveness correlates into school improvement meant the bringing together of two very different bodies of research. The school effectiveness research had as its primary aim student academic achievement. The improvement literature, on the other hand, was more concerned with implementation and institutionalization of change (Fullan, 1982). The task of bringing together ideas from school effectiveness, implementation of change, and school improvement was a difficult task. In many instances, the emphasis on strong leadership was badly sustained. Other shortcomings included difficulties in implementing the effectiveness factors, knowing which changes were important, and deciding whether all factors had to be implemented simultaneously. The late 1980s and early 1990s were a period of economic recession in Canada, as elsewhere. Educational outcomes were being challenged. Reform initiatives tended to

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focus on curriculum centralization, accountability, increased decentralized decision making, and an attempt at market-driven schools. The latter led to the institution of a few charter schools in the Province of Alberta. Although Canada has not placed the same emphasis on testing and accountability as the United States, it does engage in provincial and national testing at various times. The CMEC provides a periodic assessment of achievement of randomly selected 13- and 16-year-old students’ skills in mathematics, science, reading, and writing. Further, Canada has participated in international testing. Results of the 1999 Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which measured the performance of 13- and 14-year-old students in 38 countries, showed Canada placing third. In 2000, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) conducted the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) of 15-year-old students’ skills in reading, science, and mathematics. This time, Canada placed fifth out of 32 countries. Provincial differences were evident, with no country or province outperforming Alberta students. This study also showed that achievement scores were more equivalent among Canadian students with different socioeconomic backgrounds than they were in most other countries (British Columbia Ministry of Education, 2003). Needless to say, every province has started to place a greater emphasis on accountability measures. There were limits to many of the initial reforms, many of which focused on the wrong variables. Any strategy to improve student learning needs to give attention to involving students and parents and to expanding the teaching and learning repertoires of teachers and students (Elmore, 1995; Hopkins, 2001). Elmore (1995) argued that principles of practice usually fall short for two reasons: “(1) they require content knowledge and pedagogical skill few teachers presently have, and (2) they challenge certain basic patterns in the organization of schooling” (p. 366). He claimed that neither problem can be solved independently of the other. Another limitation of early reforms was that many did not adopt a systemic perspective. Hopkins (2001) contended that policies need to be both “systemwide” and “system deep.” Policy must be coherent at all levels of the system. In many Canadian provinces in the 1990s, this was not the case. As a result, this created a disconnect between the goals of the reformers and the thoughts of the practitioners expected to implement the reform. I vividly recall doing numerous workshops with teachers in many provinces of Canada, many of whom expressed the sentiment, “This too shall pass.” The gap between policy and practice “is a recurring problem that reveals a deep incapacity of schools to engage in cumulative learning over time … that produces tangible results for students” (Elmore, 1995, p. 375). Canada’s experience was no exception. Another reason that policy generally does not take hold is because it does not impact instruction. Instruction includes several related systems – teachers’ knowledge, their professional values and commitments, and the social resources of practice (Hopkins, 2001). Hopkins contended that no matter how good government policy may be, unless it is implemented, there will be little impact on outcomes. In order to drive effective reform implementation, change must be focused at the classroom and school levels “within a principled strategic and systemic policy context” (p. 7).

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More recent provincial policy initiatives appear to recognize the new paradigm of improvement. The policy initiatives reflect the need to have an impact on teaching and learning at the school and classroom levels. In the following section, I briefly describe how some of the provinces are applying the new learning.

The Practice of School Improvement In gathering information for this chapter, I found that a majority of provinces have built their school improvement strategies around the concepts associated with learning community theory. It was evident that the ministries of education are cognizant of the school effectiveness, school improvement, and change research literature; in most cases, their improvement policies attempt to reflect best practice. I will describe the Province of Alberta’s Initiative for School Improvement (AISI), since it is the most elaborate, and briefly outline developments in other provinces.

Alberta Initiative for School Improvement (AISI) In December 1999, the Alberta government, together with its partners, released the framework and administrative requirements for AISI. “The goal of AISI was to improve student learning and performance” by fostering “initiatives that reflected the unique needs and circumstances” within school districts (Alberta Learning, 1999, p. v). The first cycle ran from 2000 to 2003 and was an extension of the accountability framework that had been in place since the early 1990s. School improvement focused on improving student learning by using enhanced strategies at the school, district, and government levels. The essential school improvement elements included leadership, instructional practice, school climate, assessment and accountability, building capacity through professional development, student and parent engagement, and integration of effective practices. The following attributes/characteristics were fundamental to AISI: (1) Partnership: AISI is a partnership among teachers, superintendents, trustees, business officials, universities, parents, and government. (2) Catalyst: AISI is a catalyst for change in teaching and learning. (3) Student-focused: The focus of the program is on student learning and the accommodation of the diverse learning needs of individual students and special populations. (4) Flexibility: School authorities, in consultation with various stakeholders, choose strategies that enhance learning at the local context. (5) Collaboration: Collaboration is a key element for improving schools. (6) Culture of continuous improvement: Professional Learning Communities actively engage both teachers and students in learning. (7) Evidence-based practice: Collection, analysis, and interpretation of data are foundational to AISI.

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(8) Research-based interventions: AISI provides opportunities for testing research in the Alberta context. (9) Inquiry and reflection: Inquiry and reflection are important components, as they lead to improved understanding and thoughtful changes to instructional practices. (10) Building capacity and integrating effective practices – effective professional development is planned, systemic, and sustained (Alberta Learning, AISI, 1999, pp. 1–2). Since the inception of the AISI in 2000, 828 Cycle 1 projects were approved. All projects required baseline data and improvement targets for each measure. All projects that were approved had to identify their targets and how these targets were to be met. For example, one school indicated that its reading scores would improve by 5% over the period of the project. Approximately two-thirds of all projects met targets on the majority of measures. Almost half of the projects met targets on all qualitative measures (e.g., satisfaction, attitudes, behavior) and about 30% met their targets on all quantitative measures on student learning. From an examination of the projects, it was obvious that most schools set realistic targets but some school targets were unrealistic. Alberta Learning (AISI, 2004a, 2004b) concluded that teacher capacity had been enhanced by AISI. The Report stated, “Teachers now view themselves as learners and engage in inquiry related to the impact of their practices on student learning. They talk about gathering evidence of effective practices and use it to determine what works and what doesn’t work for students” (p. 48). AISI has been renewed for an additional 3 years at a cost of $80 million (Canadian dollars).

Developments in Other Provinces There is considerable similarity in the improvement efforts among the provinces in Canada. All provinces require the community to work together with the school. They require educational systems to collect, analyze, and interpret data for the purpose of improvement. In most provinces, considerable emphasis is placed on improving the reading and mathematics scores of students. School boards are developing a variety of programs to target these goals. In 1996, Ontario established the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) as an “arm’s-length” agency of the provincial government to assist in improving the quality and accountability of Ontario’s public education. The role of the EQAO is to design and implement a comprehensive program of student assessment, measure the quality of education in the province, report the results to various stakeholder groups, lead the province in national and international assessments, promote research on best practices in assessment and accountability, and conduct quality reviews in consultation with school boards (Education Quality and Accountability office [EQAO], 2005). The EQAO has provided a 5-step model to improvement planning: Step 1: Ownership: seeking engagement of education partners and developing a culture of continuous improvement. Step 2: Understanding and focusing on gathering, evaluating, and interpreting data.

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Step 3: Accountability: sharing results with the community. Step 4: Planning for improvement: creating and updating the improvement plan. Step 5: Ongoing impact: monitoring implementation of plan. In 1999, Saskatchewan established the Task Force on the Role of the School; this task force resulted in the creation of the SchoolPLUS framework. It calls for a new vision of schools as centers of learning, support, and community for the children, youth, and families they serve. This conceptualization stressed learning excellence for all students, active involvement with families, and support from human service providers and community members (Mitchell & Sackney, in press; Saskatchewan Education, 2002). The reform called for all schools to adopt the philosophy and practices of the learning community. In order to implement the SchoolPLUS philosophy, an Effective Practices Framework was developed to provide schools, school divisions, and communities with key practices and resources to support local initiatives. The framework identified six effective practices: caring and respectful school environment, responsive curriculum and instructions, assessment for learning, comprehensive prevention and early intervention, authentic partnerships, and adaptive leadership (Saskatchewan Education, 2002). At each school, a Needs Assessment Committee is to be formed that is composed of various stakeholder groups responsible for assessing the extent to which needs exist at each dimension on the Effective Practices Framework. After the needs have been identified, the team develops action plans to rectify the problems. The Nova Scotia improvement program asks the entire community to work together. It addresses issues such as literacy and retention rates, physical activity, and graduation success rates. In consultation with school staff and Home and School Associations, School Advisory Councils (SACs) play a central role. Once an improvement plan has been developed, an external committee made up of administrators, teachers, and a parent from another school evaluates the plan. Plans are put in place during Years 2 and 3 and the external committee monitors progress and recommends further action (Nova Scotia Department of Education, 2003). The province of Newfoundland and Labrador (2004) has recently released A Framework for School Development. The Framework’s goals are increasing student achievement and continuously improving the quality of educational experiences offered to students. The plan is focused on achievement, a planned and structured approach to school reflection and action, and the importance of data collection and interpretation. The challenge is to “build systematic school-level planning processes, to develop a school’s capacity to manage change, and to create a community of learners” (p. 3). School development incorporates the building of learning communities with the concept of planned change (p. 4). The provincial accountability framework sets an expectation that school boards will be accountable to the public through a strategic process that involves planning, monitoring, reporting, and feedback. The framework is a cyclical process that involves collective reflection, problem-solving, actions, and continual renewal and improvement (p. 9). The Department of Education of the Province of Prince Edward Island (PEI) has also recently released the Provincial School Improvement Planning Model (2004). Its goal is

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to improve student learning and increase student success while satisfying demands for public accountability. The improvement planning model includes: a standard three-year cycle for each school, a commitment to a set of provincial indicators, a school selfassessment and peer assessment process, and a formal reporting process. As part of the planning model, the Department of Education will prepare a summary school improvement planning report for each school, based on peer and self-assessment. The Department of Education will have access to all data and each school and the school board will have to prepare an annual report on the progress of its planning efforts. The British Columbia (BC) Ministry of Education released its report on Enhancing Learning in 2003. School Planning Councils are responsible for developing, monitoring, and reviewing school plans for student achievement in consultation with the school community (British Columbia [BC] Ministry of Education, 2004). The school planning council must consult with the parents’ advisory council during the preparation of the school plan. As in other provinces, the government reports to the public on the extent to which student achievement has improved. The model also makes extensive reference to the learning community literature. In summary, the school improvement models used by Canadian provinces are based on the school effectiveness, school improvement, change, and learning community literature. Accountability and the use of data constitute major components of the various frameworks. The final section of this chapter analyzes the school improvement trends in Canada and outlines some possible future directions in this area.

Trends and Future Directions Resulting from my analysis of the various provincial models and the literature on school effectiveness and school improvement, a number of Canadian trends are evident. First, research and practice are focused on student learning and the need to accommodate the diverse learning needs of individual students and those with special needs. Second, there is an emphasis on a culture of continuous improvement. More recently, the emphasis has shifted to developing capacity for learning communities. Such a shift assumes that all stakeholders are learners – students, teachers, administrators, parents, and community members. Third, inquiry and reflection are key activities that can be accommodated through planning, action research, and collaboration. Evidence-based practice has also been prioritized. Through the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data, it is assumed learning will improve. Fourth, there is a strong emphasis on building capacity throughout the system. This can be achieved through effective, practice-based professional development that is planned, systemic, and sustained (Fullan, 2005). Fifth, knowledge management through networking and other avenues of knowledge acquisition are emphasized. Many school jurisdictions are developing different varieties of learning networks with other schools and systems. Sixth, school self- and peer assessment are being utilized. The implications of these trends are that school improvement is best determined at the school level rather than at the provincial level. Hargreaves and Fink (2005), in Sustainable Leadership, advocated this approach.

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On the improvement front, Canadians are recognizing that systemic reform and a focus on sustainability are needed. Fullan is at the forefront of this shift. In his recent book, Leadership and Sustainability: System Thinkers in Action (2005), he called for a commitment to deep learning, intelligent accountability, and vertical relationships; lateral capacity-building through networks; commitment to changing contexts at all levels; public service with a moral conviction; cyclical energizing; and the promotion of leaders as systems thinkers. Fullan (2005) defined sustainability as “the capacity to engage in the complexities of continuous improvement consistent with deep values of human purpose” (p. ix). My view is somewhat similar. The problem I see with much of the school effectiveness and school improvement literature is the need for a paradigm shift in how schools work. We are living in a knowledge society where learning is paramount. This means we have to get better at learning. Knowledge management is imperative in a knowledge society. It is primarily a cultural and social process that leverages knowledge, relationships, conversations, stories, processes, and tools to enable knowledge fusion. Knowledge fusion is a cyclical process that includes knowledge acquisition phases (creation or idea generation), a knowledge transformative phase (tacit/explicit), and a knowledge-sharing phase (oral, written, or electronic) and a creative destructive phase (Newton & Sackney, 2005). Unfortunately, I have found that in most schools, knowledge management is lacking. Many staff have great difficulty with the knowledge creation and destruction phase. We need to foster a climate for improved research-based practices in classrooms and schoolwide. We also need to ensure that there is coherence throughout systems (Fullan, 2005). In essence, there is need for a systemic approach to reform. By this I mean that school improvement efforts need to focus on improving learning throughout the system – classroom, school, district, and government. In Canada, a greater emphasis on better integration and coherence of strategies at all levels of the system is increasingly likely. One of the trends I see developing at various levels of the educational system is the need for better data for improving instruction. A number of Canadian school districts are jointly working on developing data information systems that will allow teachers to have access to data on every student, schools to have a data profile that can be compared to other schools, and governments to have data that provides comparisons both provincially and beyond. We also have to improve leadership in schools. From our data on the learning community study (Sackney et al., 2005; Sackney, Mitchell, Walker, & Duncan, 2005), we found that leadership is crucial in providing a sense of vision and purpose, moral integrity, coherence, and a culture necessary for improved teaching and learning to occur. We need what Hargreaves and Fink (2005) called “sustainable leadership.” Increasingly, parents and the community are being urged to get more involved in the schooling process. This is a positive move that needs to be encouraged and fostered. We especially need to help parents from impoverished and minority environments get more involved in their children’s schooling. As the African proverb states, “It takes a whole village to educate a child.” Parental engagement in their children’s lives and schooling is essential for successful learning. Another trend we see developing in Canada is a move to pre-school, full-day kindergarten, and early intervention programs. I see this trend continuing in the future. Such

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strategies cohere with what we know about children’s growth and development. The earlier we can deal with children who come from socially disadvantaged backgrounds, the greater are their life’s chances for future success. Researchers and practitioners have taken a more holistic, ecological view of the school and how to improve it as a social organism (Capra, 1996; Mitchell & Sackney, 2000; Sergiovanni, 1994, 1996, 2005). By a holistic, ecological perspective, I mean the totality of patterns, connections, relationships, interactions, and mutual influences that emerge among people and the forces that impinge on them. A better understanding exists of the ecology of school improvement and the structure and patterns of relationships among the various components of schooling. We recognize that a holistic, ecological approach as advocated by learning community researchers leads to improved teaching and learning practices in schools. Such a paradigm shift requires that the various education agencies work together in more collaborative and integrated ways. Unless school improvement strategies and policies are driven down to the learning level, not much will change in student learning. As Hopkins (2001) stated, “unless school improvement strategies impact directly on learning and achievement then we are surely wasting our time” (p. xii). Future reforms need to focus their attention at the classroom level if we are to have any chance at reforming education. Only the future will tell whether this shift will come to fruition.

References Alberta Learning. (1999). Framework for the Alberta initiative for school improvement. Edmonton, AB: Alberta Learning. Alberta Learning. (2004a). Alberta initiative for school improvement: Improving student learning. Edmonton, AB: Alberta Learning. Alberta Learning. (2004b). Alberta initiative for school improvement: AISI administrative handbook for cycle 2. Edmonton, AB: Alberta Learning. Armor, D., Conry-Osequera, P., Cox, M., King, N., McDonnell, L., Pascal, A., et al. (1976). Analysis of the school preferred reading program in selected Los Angeles minority schools. Santa Monica, CA: Rand. Austin, G. R. (1979). Exemplary schools and the search for effectiveness. Educational Leadership, 37(1), 10–14. Barth, R. S. (1990). Improving schools from within. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. British Columbia Ministry of Education. (2003). Enhancing learning: Report of the Student Achievement Task Force. Victoria, BC: British Columbia Ministry of Education. British Columbia Ministry of Education. (2004). School planning councils: Guidelines. Victoria, BC: British Columbia Ministry of Education. Brookover, W., Beady, D., Flood, P., Schweitzer, J., & Wisenhaber, J. (1979). School social systems and student achievement: Schools can make a difference. New York: Praeger. Brookover, W., & Lezotte, L. (1979). Changes in school characteristics coincident with changes in student achievement. East Lansing: The Institute for Research on Teaching, Michigan State University. Capra, F. (1996). The web of life. New York: Anchor Books. Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC). (1996). Enhancing the role of teachers in a changing world. Available: http://www.cmec.ca/index.en.html (Accessed: 19 April 2006). DuFour, R., & Eaker, R. (1998). Professional learning communities at work. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD). Earl, L. M. (2003). Assessment as learning: Using classroom assessment to maximize student learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

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Edmonds, R. (1979). Effective schools for the urban poor. Educational Leadership, 37(1), 15–24. Education Quality and Accountability Office. (2005). EQAO guide to school and board improvement planning. Toronto: Education Quality and Accountability Office. Elmore, R. F. (1995). Teaching, learning, and school organization: Principles of practice and the regularities of schooling. Educational Administration Quarterly, 31, 355–374. Fullan, M. G. (1982). The meaning of educational change. New York: Teachers College Press. Fullan, M. G. (1991). The new meaning of educational change. London: Cassell. Fullan, M. G. (1992). Successful school improvement. Buckingham, England: Open University Press. Fullan, M. G. (1993). Change forces: Probing the depths of educational reform. London: Falmer Press. Fullan, M. G. (1999). Change forces: He sequel. London: Falmer Press. Fullan, M. G. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Fullan, M. G. (2003). The moral imperative of school leadership. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Fullan, M. G. (2005). Leadership & sustainability. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Fullan, M. G., & Hargreaves, A. (1996). What’s worth fighting for in your school? New York: Teachers College Press. Hallinger, P., & Murphy, J. (1985, April). Instructional effectiveness and school socio-economic status: Is what’s good for the goose, good for the gander. Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL. Hargreaves, A. (1994). Changing teachers, changing times. Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) Press. Hargreaves, A. (2003). Teaching in the knowledge society. New York: Teachers College Press. Hargreaves, A., Earl, L., Moore, S., & Manning, S. (2001). Learning to change: Teaching beyond subjects and standards. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Hargreaves, A., & Fink, D. (2005). Sustainable leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Harris, A. (2002). School improvement: What’s in it for schools? London: RoutledgeFalmer. Holmes, M., Leithwood, K., & Musella, D. (Eds.). (1989). Educational policy for effective schools. Toronto: OISE Press. Hopkins, D. (2001). School improvement for real. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Huffman, J. B., & Hipp, K. K. (2003). Reculturing schools as professional learning communities. Lanham, ML: Scarecrow. Leithwood, K. (1992). The move toward transformational leadership. Educational Leadership, 49(5), 8–12. Leithwood, K., Jantzi, D., & Steinbach, R. (1999). Changing leadership for changing times. Buckingham: Open University Press. Louis, K. S., Kruse, S. D., & Associates. (1995). Professionalism and community: Perspectives on reforming urban schools. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Mitchell, C., & Sackney, L. (2000). Profound improvement: Building capacity for a learning community. Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger. Mitchell, C., & Sackney, L. (2006). Building schools, building people: The school principal’s role in leading a learning community. Journal of School Leadership, 16(5), 627–640. Mitchell, C., & Sackney, L. (in press). Extending the learning community: A broader perspective. In L. Stoll, & K. S. Louis (Eds.), Professional learning communities: Divergence, detail and difficulties. Buckingham, England: Open University Press. Mortimore, P., Sammons, P., Stoll, L., Lewis, D., & Ecob, R. (1988). School matters. Berkeley: University of California Press. Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Education. (2004). A framework for school development. Saint Johns, NL: Newfoundland and Labrador Department of Education. Newton, P., & Sackney, L. (2005). Group knowledge and group knowledge processes in school board decision making. Canadian Journal of Education, 28(3), 434–457. Nova Scotia Department of Education. (2003). Learning for life: Planning for success. Halifax, NS: Nova Scotia Department of Education. Prince Edward Island Department of Education. (2004). Provincial school improvement planning model. Charlottetown, PEI: Prince Edward Island Department of Education. Purkey, S., & Smith, M. (1983). Effective schools: A review. Elementary School Journal, 83, 427–452.

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Reynolds, D., Hopkins, D., & Stoll, L. (1993). Linking school effectiveness knowledge and school improvement practice: Towards a synergy. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 4(1), 37–58. Rosenholtz, S. (1989). Teachers’ workplace: The social organization of schools. New York: Longman. Rutter, M., Maugham, B., Mortimore, P., & Ouston, J. (1979). Fifteen thousand hours: Secondary schools and their effects on children. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sackney, L. (1991). Effective schools: An international perspective. In W. Walker, R. Farquhar, & M. Hughes (Eds.), Advancing education: School leadership in action (pp. 51–63). London: Falmer Press. Sackney, L. (1992). School renewal and the school audit. In J. Bashi, & Z. Sass (Eds.), School effectiveness & improvement (pp. 236–250). Jerusalem: The Magnes Press. Sackney, L., Mitchell, C., & Walker, K. (2005, April). Building capacity for learning communities: A case study of fifteen successful schools. Paper presented at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal, Quebec. Sackney, L., Mitchell, C., Walker, K., & Duncan, R. (2005, January). Dimensions of school learning communities. Paper presented at the annual conference of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement, Barcelona, Spain. Sammons, P., Hillman, J., & Mortimore, P. (1995). Key characteristics of effective schools: A review of school effectiveness research. London: OFSTED. Saskatchewan Education (2002). Working together toward SchoolPLUS: Parent and community partnerships in education. Regina, SK: Saskatchewan Education. Scheerens, J., & Creemers, B. (1989). Towards a more comprehensive conceptualization of school effectiveness. In B. Creemers, T. Peters, & D. Reynolds (Eds.), School effectiveness and school improvement (pp. 265–279). Lisse, The Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger. Sergiovanni, T. (1994). Building community in schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Sergiovanni, T. (1996). Leadership for the schoolhouse. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Sergiovanni, T. (2005). Strengthening the heartbeat: Leading and learning together in schools. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Silver, H. (1994). Good schools, effective schools: Judgments and their histories. London: Cassell. Stoll, L., & Fink, D. (1996). Changing our schools. Buckingham: Open University Press. Stoll, L., Fink, D., & Earl, L. (2003). It’s about learning (and it’s about time). London: RoutledgeFalmer. Teddlie, C., & Reynolds, D. (Eds.). (2000). The international handbook of school effectiveness research. London: Falmer Press. Teddlie, C., & Stringfield, S. (1993). Schools do make a difference: Lessons learned from a ten-year study of school effects. New York: Teachers College Press. Weber, G. (1971). Inner-city children can be taught to read: Four successful schools. Washington, DC: Council for Basic Education. Wimpleberg, R., Teddlie, C., & Stringfield, S. (1989). Sensitivity to context: The past and future of effective school research. Educational Administration Quarterly, 25(1), 82–107.

10 SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT IN LATIN AMERICA: INNOVATIONS OVER 25 YEARS (1980–2006)

Beatrice Avalos

Introduction Schools are the scenario of the education play complete with scripts, actors, directors and choreographers; all charged with the task of inducing changes in an audience of children and young people who are also actors in the play. At the end of the day, educational policies, reform proposals, particular curricular configurations, management structures and diverse types of materials are all enacted and put to test in classrooms, school corridors, teachers’ rooms, and playgrounds. What and how all this is done will mark to an extent the success or failure of educational policies and reforms. Neither are schools independent executors of state policies nor are state policies the guarantee of success of educational purposes and decrees. In this chapter, I look at the interplay of policies and school processes in the context of Latin American reforms and school improvement efforts over some 25 years. To do so, I begin with contextual information about this big geographical region of very diverse countries and situations and about the key educational issues that have marked the period under study. I then consider the purposes and main forms taken by national educational reforms over the period and how these have reached schools. In examining reforms, I consider school improvement projects that have had importance beyond national boundaries with lessons from which other school improvement initiatives have profited. Finally, in a concluding section, I refer to what can be said about the effectiveness of reforms and school improvement in producing better learning conditions for children and young people in Latin America. I also note the unfinished tasks of educational reform, the remaining uncertainties, unresolved issues and struggles to move ahead, and suggest pointers that might guide policies and school improvement in their future efforts. In all this, consideration will be given to the different chapters on Latin America in this handbook and how the issues those authors address refer to what is said in this chapter.

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The Latin American Educational Context Use of the word Latin America suggests the exclusion of a group of countries that are geographically in the same Region but with Anglophone origins,1 or where Dutch is spoken such as Suriname. Thus, in this chapter I will focus on countries in the Americas with Spanish as a main language, Portuguese as the case of Brazil and French as in Haiti. Although these countries are generally characterised as “less developed,” they are countries with very big differences among them. For example, Brazil has one of the biggest populations in the world (187 million people) with a very diverse racial composition (African, European, Indigenous, and Japanese origins). Country income differences range from US$ 5,920 GNP per capita in Mexico to US$ 440 in Haiti. Several countries harbour diverse ethnic groups whose identity is defined by the language they speak. Thus while 42% of people in Bolivia declared in the 1992 census to speak only Spanish, 46% declared themselves as speaking both Spanish and an indigenous language and another 12% only spoke an indigenous language (Albó, 1999). A similar situation is found in Guatemala, México, Peru and Paraguay among other countries. México, in fact, in absolute numbers has the largest population of people who speak indigenous languages (11 million). While some countries have a large urban population (Uruguay, Chile and Argentina around 90%), in others more than half of the people live in rural areas (El Salvador and Guatemala with close to 60% rural population), despite the strong urbanization trend all over the Region. Income and economic development differences among countries are reflected in the operation of the education systems, in the differences between what private and public schooling2 can provide, in the qualifications of teachers and the resources and school infrastructures available. The Latin American Region generally continues to show unsatisfactory educational indicators compared to developed economies. Using UNESCO’s Educational Development Index3 we note that among 122 countries around the world 19 in Latin America and the Caribbean are ranked as “medium educational development” (EDI), and only three appear among the high EDI group with Cuba on the top position (21st, in the group), followed closely by Argentina and at some distance by Chile. The recent United Nations’ report on progress towards the Millennium Goals (CEPAL, 2005) in its chapter on education notes insufficient progress towards the goal of completion of primary education for the population aged 15–19 years old by 2015. High enrolment rates in primary schools in Latin America and the Caribbean are marred by also high rates of repetition meaning that schools are lacking in internal efficiency. Repetition has high costs as shown in the case of Brazil (US$ 8,000 million). A key problem that is faced by all Latin American countries is the unsatisfactory level of learning results despite efforts, as we shall see, to improve the education systems. All countries now have school evaluation systems (see di Gropello in this volume) and a certain number have taken part in international assessments. These provide information on achievement in at least the four major school learning areas: language, mathematics, science and social studies. The Figure 1 shows the gap between Latin American countries participating in the PISA studies (2002) and the OECD countries in reading levels (CEPAL, 2005). Thirteen Latin American countries that participated in the UNESCO regional study on achievement (UNESCO-OREALC, 1998), with the exception of Cuba, performed at less

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Figure 1. Reading ability among population aged 15 in PISA test 2000 per Level of Performance (%) Source: UNESCO/OECD.

than satisfactory levels. Countries, such as Chile, that have taken part in the TIMSS studies also perform well below the international mean (Ministerio de Educación, 2004a). While the above descriptions refer to the average situation of Latin American countries, similarly to many other parts of the world, within-country learning results and educational attainment differ among the socio-economic groups, the rural–urban divide and the indigenous populations vis-`a-vis the dominant linguistic groups. A recent report on educational progress in Latin America (PREAL, 2005) notes that while the number of poor, rural and indigenous children that attend school is increasing, they learn less and leave school earlier than children from families with higher socio-economic levels. It is in this context of variations in development levels, and persisting problems in moving towards satisfactory education and learning results, that we need to consider how both the education systems and non-government initiatives in Latin America have generated a number of school reforms and improvement projects that are helping to bridge the educational divide within countries and with the rest of the more developed world. I shall consider these in the next two sections of this chapter.

Regional and Government-Initiated Educational Reforms and Improvement Programs Over 20 years, starting with the meeting of Ministers of Education in 1979 in Mexico convened by the UNESCO Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, there has been a steady set of education policies and reforms directed towards improved coverage, better learning results, eradication of illiteracy, more efficiency in the management of the systems, better teachers and better schools. UNESCO’s analysis of what came to be known as the Major Project of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNESCO, 2001) notes the greater concentration on improvement of access in the eighties, and from the nineties onward, an emphasis on the quality of education services.

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Reform directions in the eighties were encapsulated in the goals set at the Mexico meeting in terms of combating poverty through eradication of illiteracy and achievement of universal access to education. This meant investing more in education (7 or 8% of GDP) and lengthening the compulsory primary education cycle from 5 or 6 years to 8 or 9 years of Basic School education. Policies and changes in the eighties therefore concentrated on expanding facilities for increased access of excluded populations to schooling: buildings, double-shifts and triple-shifts, incomplete schools, use of untrained teachers, all of which made it possible to bring Latin America in general to Gross Enrolment Ratios close around 90% in primary school (with the exception of Guatemala and Haiti). However, this expansion was inefficient as high repetition and dropout rates persisted. Also the economic crisis of the eighties in fact lowered spending in education per person from US$ 88 to 60 between 1980 and 1986 and delayed structural reforms to the extent that this period in Latin America is known as the “lost decade” (Rivero, 1999). Towards the end of the eighties and beginning of the nineties it seemed important to put an end to what was considered an “exhausted” style of education development: Short-term views in decision-making, isolation of education in respect to other sectors of society; a homogenized content for heterogeneous populations; education processes concentrating more on teaching than on learning; and a greater emphasis on curricular materials and designs than on the professional role of educators. (UNESCO, 2001, p. 29) The need for a real turnaround was expressed in a landmark publication (ECLACUNESCO, 1992, p. 149) that highlighted the purpose of providing all children and young people with “universal access to the codes of modern society.” This meant focussing on the conditions that make for learning relevant to the needs of development and participation in the global and knowledge society. Governments around the Region formulated policies aimed at improving the quality of education opportunities for the all the population, especially disadvantaged groups. Reforms of different magnitudes began to take place, financed with increased resources from the countries, with loans from multilateral agencies (World Bank and Interamerican Development Bank) and with bilateral aid from different organisations.

Characteristics of the Educational Reforms in the Nineties The breadth of changes occurring in education varied according to the different country situations. Some were large-scale reforms, which involved establishing or modifying legal frameworks in order to proceed with the changes envisioned (e.g., the Reform Law in Bolivia); others concentrated on specific areas such as curriculum, teacher education or management. Table 1 outlines the main change areas that were referred to improvement of schools and learning opportunities in different countries of the Region. The change areas shown in the table were all directly related to the quality of schooling. However, equity was equally central to these reforms. Governments that introduced reforms in these areas in the nineties did so with the purpose of broadening

School Improvement in Latin America Table 1.

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Change areas

Countries

Education Reform Laws Curriculum reform and improvement

Argentina, Bolivia, Panama Argentina, Aruba, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Haiti, Nicaragua, Panama, Perú, Dominican Republic, Venezuela Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Suriname, Uruguay Argentina, Bahamas, Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, Guyana, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Perú Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, México, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Perú, Uruguay Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guyana, Jamaica, México, Panama, Dominican Republic, Suriname Aruba, Brazil (Minas Geraes), Cuba. El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua Chile, Colombia, Paraguay, Uruguay

Teacher Initial Education Teacher professional development School quality for excluded populations: indigenous, poor, rural Free textbooks and teaching resources

School management: greater autonomy for schools Incentives for school improvement and innovation projects Lengthening of school day ICT in schools Evaluation of learning systems

Chile, Dominican Republic, Uruguay Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Jamaica Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Perú,Venezuela

Source: UNESCO (2002), World Bank (n/d).

opportunities for disadvantaged populations to receive better education. In order to get some feeling for what these reforms entailed, I will refer briefly to examples that have been subject to international scrutiny and research.

Education Reform (Laws and Implementation) The Education Reform Law of 1994 in Bolivia announced a major transformation of the education system that has been in process of implementation since then. Its main areas of change include restructuring the system into an eight-year compulsory Basic school and four years of secondary education4; changes in the curriculum to meet demands of the new structure and of progress in knowledge; changes in classroom teaching moving from the “dictate-copy” approach to a constructivist one; modernisation and professional strengthening of the administration of the school system; reform of initial teacher training and school-focused professional development by preparing a new cadre of teacher educators (Asesores Pedagógicos); decentralisation and new institutional forms to allow for greater citizen participation (parents especially) and

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policies addressing “intercultural bilingual education.” This last component is in fact a central and crosscutting element of the reform, especially as 37.6% of indigenous children do not complete 5 years of schooling compared to 11.1% of non-indigenous groups (CEPAL, 2005). Given the diversity of languages and cultures in Bolivia the Reform proposed to offer all children the opportunity to begin schooling with teachers who speak their language and to learn with materials in that language. Textbooks in the four main languages have been provided to schools (Guaraní, Quechua, Aymara and Spanish), and teachers who speak the native language have been also prepared to teach in this language. The implementation of this linguistic approach has been complex, not always accepted by parents of non-Spanish speaking children for fear of exclusion from the main society, and not sufficient has been done to bring the intercultural schools to the cities, and provide equal opportunities for indigenous and Spanish speakers to understand each others’ culture (Albó, 2002 in Contreras & Talavera, 2005). Nonetheless, over 2,000 schools and 115,000 indigenous children are being educated in bilingual contexts (Albó & Anaya, 2003). In their case study on the Education Reform, Contreras and Talavera (2005) cite research evidence that children in intercultural bilingual schools are better than control students in language and mathematics after second grade, and marginally better in science results.

Curriculum Reform Most of the countries in the Region to a larger or lesser extent have made curriculum changes. Among them a rather radical structural reform was carried out in Argentina in the 1990s linked to the passing of the Federal Law of Education in 1993. The administration of the system was changed from national to federal control (by the provinces). The education system was reorganised in three levels: initial education (ages 4–5), General Basic Education (9 years in cycles of 3 years each) and the three-year “polimodal”5 school (equivalent to upper secondary in other contexts). Education was made compulsory from age 5 (pre-school) to the end of General Basic Education (10 years altogether). To serve this structure the curriculum was “radically” reformed (Dussel, 2004, p. 390) from a discipline-based system to a framework of Common Basic Contents for all the country. It is expressed in curricular areas that allow for flexible interpretation and is geared to the achievement of a wide range of competencies (cognitive, procedural and attitudinal). Its organisation in “chapters, blocks and contents” is aimed at supporting greater interconnectedness amongst topics (Dussel, 2004). The curriculum for the “polimodal” school, besides the Common Basic Contents, includes specialisations that provide “concentration and contextualisation in different knowledge areas and socio-productive activities” (Decibe, 2001, p. 151). The key curriculum areas at this level are the natural sciences; economics and organisational management; humanities and social sciences; production of goods and services; and communication, arts and design. Parallel to this “polimodal” school, the technical-professional schools provide specific vocational training. Students who attend technical schools may require an extra year of study to get a technical qualification not only for industry, building or agrarian activities, but also for services such as health, environment, tourism, administration and similar areas (Decibe, 2001).

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Chile also underwent a complete curriculum renewal though not based on changes to the school structure, as these had already occurred in the late sixties (eight-year Basic Education and four-year Secondary Education). A common framework of Key Objectives and Minimal Contents was sanctioned for Basic Education in 1996 and for secondary education in 1998. Initially, for secondary education, some consideration was given to following the Argentine path, but eventually it was decided to use a more conventional approach similar to that used in other countries (e.g., England and Wales).6 Schools would be allowed to write and implement their own syllabuses, based on the framework (subject to approval).7 Like Argentina, the Chilean curriculum also adopted an “area” structure that included: Language, Sciences, Social Studies, Mathematics, Arts, Foreign Language, Physical Education and Religion. As in Argentina, it also introduced “technology” at Basic and Secondary Education levels and both frameworks include cross-curricular areas on values, citizenship and development of cognitive capacities (i.e., thinking skills). In both the Argentine and the Chilean situation the curriculum has only recently been implemented throughout the whole system so its effects are not yet noticeable as far as learning results are concerned. Within the context of an assessment of reforms in three countries (Argentina, Chile and Uruguay), Dussel (2004, p. 408) synthesises the innovation aspects of their curricular changes as follows: Generally speaking what is endorsed is the new concept of a basic curriculum to prepare for competency and citizenship, centred on managing different languages and codes (mother tongue, mathematics) technology and English, and with a somewhat still moderate degree of openness and choice. The [the curricula] tend to be organised in more comprehensive and interdisciplinary structures (areas, sectors, curricular spaces), and to include more up-to-date knowledge linked to advances in the areas to which they refer. In general, they declare their support for psychological criteria (meaningfulness for students) and social criteria (contribution to building competencies and preparing citizens). They tend to be more open and flexible curricula that embody in their design the notion of curriculum development for the different levels of the education system.8 The process of implementation of these new curricula continues, however, to be problematic in both countries, as teachers delay in taking in the new concepts (despite efforts to communicate the changes to them) and because, as in the case of Chile, the curriculum is more prescriptive in its content areas, than what is desirable. The chapter by Jacinto and Freytes Frey in this volume illustrates how teachers in school receive well-planned reforms in different ways and with different reactions to them.

Initial Teacher Education While several countries introduced improvements in their teacher education system, most of these consisted in raising it to tertiary level (in the case of secondary level Normal Schools) or to University status. At present, practically all Latin American countries, with the exception of Guatemala, prepare their teachers at Higher Normal Schools or Institutes and at universities.

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Two countries stand out for carrying out substantial teacher education changes: Chile and Uruguay. Chile supported in 1997–2002 the development of improvement projects in 17 universities that covered about 80% of the student teacher population at the time. With an investment of around US$ 25 million the universities improved the curriculum, provided opportunity for post-graduate study to a large number of teacher educators, stimulated international academic exchanges, improved libraries and ICT resources, and most important, installed a system of field experiences from the first years of training that replaced the limited practicum held at the end of a four or five-year course of study.9 Besides this fund, the government also established a scholarship for high performing secondary leavers to pursue teacher education studies at a university of their choice, subject to acceptance. These policies and reforms allowed for a gradual improvement of the quality of teacher education and especially for a substantial increase in the number of more qualified applicants to teacher education (Avalos, 2002). The reform in Uruguay was unusual in that it consisted in the setting up of new teacher education institutions to prepare secondary teachers. Up until 1997 when the first two were established, there had only been one highly prestigious secondary teacher education institution in the capital city of Montevideo. The new centres (five altogether) were established gradually, under the management of the Ministry of Education, in different geographical locations of the country. Known as the Centros Regionales de Profesores (CERP),10 these institutions accept secondary school leavers wishing to prepare as teachers in five areas of study: language and literature, natural sciences, social sciences and English. A careful period of planning preceded the opening of the first centre. This included setting the curriculum for a three-year program (it is highly intense as far as teaching activities are concerned) with field experience occurring over the 3 years of study. The teacher educators for these Centres were carefully selected from a cadre of university graduates in the different subject areas and prepared in a special pedagogy course during the summer preceding their appointment. They are contracted on a full time basis of which half is used in teaching activities and the other half in student attention, administration, professional development for in-service teachers, coordination of field experiences in schools, etc. Students also attend on a full-time basis (40 hours per week) and receive scholarships from the government. The low dropout level suggests that there will be a regular flow of wellprepared teachers willing to work in the different regions of Uruguay.

Continuous Professional Development for Teachers Besides the traditional forms of in-service teacher education, practically all countries in the Region that engaged in educational reforms or improvement projects organised activities to help teachers learn about the reforms and develop the skills needed to implement them. These took many forms: regular up-dating courses, school-based teacher groups or preparation to teach the new curricula (Avalos, 2004a). The Chilean rural microcenters (see Avalos, 2004b), linked to a project to improve rural multigrade schools, are an example of such activities. The rural microcenters are one-day monthly gatherings of teachers from multigrade schools at one of the local schools in order to review their work, learn about reforms in the system, and assist each other in the

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improvement of teaching and school management. The meetings are supported by a school supervisor who acts as a facilitator. Evaluations of learning results of these rural schools consistently show good results of their pupils in national assessments.11 Despite the level of interest and commitment that continuous professional development activities have awakened in teachers, the fact of not being linked to national systems of teacher education has caused them to fade away with government changes. This is why, the recent trend of some governments to establish coordinated systems of teacher education (initial and continuing) that include diverse types of delivery forms, is a promising step. For example, Paraguay and Peru are involved in the generation of such coordinated systems in response to policy agreements by the Ministers of Education of the Region. What is at stake in most of these efforts, however, is the extent to which the capacity of teacher educators can be improved (Vaillant, 2005).

Disadvantaged and Excluded Populations Much has been written and reported on the diverse programs of “affirmative action” to provide better schooling opportunities for the poor (Reimers, 2000). Throughout Latin America there have been a number of such programs that have as common characteristics that they target disadvantaged groups, that they offer special preparation for teachers, that they have special materials, they may have a special curriculum and provide children with extra support in relation to their learning difficulties as well as food and other material resources. Among these are those directed to rural populations such as PAREIB in México, the Accelerated Classes in Brazil, and in Chile the 900 Schools Program as well as the Liceo para Todos scheme (referred to in this volume in the chapter by Jacinto and Freites Frey). A series of programs known as PARE, PAREB and PAREIB have been in place in México since the early nineties with the purpose of improving the quality of pre-school, basic and secondary education for the rural poor. These projects encourage and fund improvement projects developed by the states with social participation. Its activities include textbooks and materials, infrastructure, teacher professional development and supervision. The program in its PAREB version has been externally evaluated and shows good results in learning improvement although with problems in the quality of implementation, especially the teacher development component (see de Andraca, 2003 & Tatto, 2004). The Acceleration Programs address one of the greatest problems of Brazilian education which are the high rates of repetition and therefore of students being overage in schools and classrooms. Most of these programs that have been in place since the mid 1990s in various states of Brazil allow students to skip grades through separating the over-aged ones in special classes. Students who are in 1–4 grades are taught in 1 year so they may continue on to fifth grade in regular classrooms; students in 5–8 grades are provided 2 years of accelerated teaching to achieve the 8th grade level. Araújo Oliveira (2004) notes among their common characteristics that they use specially designed materials for the students, teachers are directly supervised during the school year, programs are closely monitored and externally evaluated and students are promoted by their own teachers. Many of these programs have been evaluated, but as

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Araújo Oliveira (2004, p. 63) states, while the well-designed and implemented ones contribute quality, efficiency and equity gains, they do not of themselves, “redress the student flow problem.” This assessment is true for other programs directed to disadvantaged populations, as was mentioned before in the case of the “rural microcenters” in Chile. The well-known 900 Schools program in Chile (directed to urban schools with poor results) was one of the first programs to provide special attention to the 900 schools that in 1990 had the worst learning results.12 With all its merits and the fact that it has increased learning results of the poor populations on which it focuses compared to similar populations without the program the achievement of the 900 Schools’ students in national examinations is generally below national averages (Ministerio de Educación, 2002, 2003). These situations increasingly lead to conclude that while affirmative action programs are an important contribution to learning results for the most disadvantaged populations, that is equity, they are not the solution if the broader causes of differential results amongst the poor (i.e., insufficient investment in social programs) are not dealt with (Araújo e Oliveira, 2004 & Reimers, 2000).

Learning Resources and ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) and Incentives for School Improvement Besides the special programs referred to above and those actions related to the improvement of teacher education, countries have introduced teaching and learning resources at school level, including the development of ICT programs, and incentives for school improvement.

Learning Resources and ICT Learning resources in the form of classroom libraries/reading corners for basic education children have been part of reforms in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and México among other countries. In these countries the interventions have been particularly effective in improving language and mathematics scores, and in increasing the probability of promotion of pupils to the next class (Anderson, 2002). Distribution of free textbooks also have had an effect on learning and on decreasing the gap between high-ability and low-ability poor children (Anderson, 2002). In Chile one of the important innovations at secondary level was the distribution of free texts in publicly funded schools and the provision of some degree of choice to teachers in their selection. ICT in schools were first introduced in Latin America by the governments of Costa Rica and Chile (Alvarez et al., 1998) in the early nineties, and in both countries the use of computers has been extended to the whole of the education system. Cuba recently has also provided all its schools with some form of computer technology. In other countries there are specific programs to develop computer skills and its use in teaching and learning (UNESCO, 2001). The Chilean program ENLACES has been subject to wide international exposure, and an indication of this was the country’s participation in the IEA SITES M2

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International Study (Kozma, 2003) on technology, innovation and education change. Below is a quote from the results of the case studies on innovation that were part of the Chilean study and that point to the effects of technology on school processes (Hinostroza, Guzmán, & Isaacs, 2002, pp. 1–13). International collaborative project ‘My Homeland.’ This project started in 1999 and was part of the international project World Links (www.world-links.org). The aim was to share with other schools in the world some characteristics of the province in which this secondary school is located. Students participating in the project had to research about local traditions; historical events, artistic and cultural manifestations of their communities and then share the results with other schools participating in the international project. In order to produce the material, students used productivity tools (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tools and colleagues). The products were shared using email and presented in a web site specially created for the project (for results see: www.iie.ufro.cl/wlink/webs/ljfs/ milugar/index.html). The main innovative characteristics of this project: ●

●

●

It was interdisciplinary, involving subject areas such as arts, language, history and earth science (it included 11 of the 14 different subject areas considered in the curriculum). Teachers and students changed their traditional role, engaging in research type activities and working collaboratively. Students developed their activities outside the classroom, collecting relevant data from the community members and several historical places. Also, they were responsible for implementing the activities planned in the international project.

School Improvement Projects Some of the country reforms also introduced incentives towards innovation at school level. In Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, México, Paraguay and Uruguay they are known as “school improvement projects” and consist of funding or other support to implement innovations designed by the schools. In those cases where teachers have time and are well organised and managed, these projects are effective in generating motivation and interest in learning on the part of pupils. But this has not always been the case (UNESCO, 2001). Another form, but at a more structural level, are the Institutional Education Projects (PEI) which are plans for school development that schools present to their local authorities, a sort of blueprint of where they want to go and how they expect to do it. The framing and institutionalization of these school projects in Colombia involves the whole educational community (parents, teachers, students, head-teachers and alumnae), and its contents which may affect the organisation of teaching and curriculum implementation, within the scope of the ministry of education guidelines (Rivero, 1999). More recently, countries are realizing that the key to an effective school is its leadership. Chile has recently passed a law, which defines the conditions under which head teachers will be appointed to schools and the length of their tenure (formerly they were appointed until retirement). Together with this, it is

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supporting initiatives to provide specific training for head-teachers in the publicly funded system.

School-Based Management: The Case of EDUCO Another interesting change affecting management at school level in the eighties and nineties were the different forms of decentralisation that occurred in the education systems. (see chapter by di Gropello in this volume). Closer to schools were the cases of school-based management implemented in El Salvador, Nicaragua and the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. EDUCO (Community Managed Schools Program) in El Salvador is one of the most researched and well known of these innovations. On the basis of community initiatives that developed during the civil war in that country to provide schooling for rural children, the government of El Salvador with assistance from the World Bank and the Interamerican Development Bank in 1991 gave formal status to the establishment and management of rural schools by their local communities. With training and supervision assistance from the Ministry of Education parents elected for 3 years by their communities constituted managing bodies for the schools (ACEs). These bodies in turn established councils charged with hiring teachers on a renewable basis for 1 year and with supervising their performance, overseeing the use and maintenance of schools and equipment and conducting fundraising activities to supplement subsidies from the Ministry of Education. The EDUCO experience stimulated the government in 1997 to establish school governing councils in other schools. These are known as the CDEs (Consejos Educativos Escolares). These councils have a wider composition than the ACEs as they include not only parents but also the head-teacher, teachers and students. The CDEs are entrusted with identifying and prioritising school needs, managing resources, setting up and approving annual plans and the school budget. They also contract teachers and decide on requests for transfers and re-hiring of teachers as well as matters relating to teaching hours and extra-payment for teachers and other school personnel. The CDE president keeps track of each teacher’s performance portfolio. Both in the case of EDUCO schools and those with CDEs these organisations have bank accounts to which the government transfers their funding allocations. The EDUCO program has been influential in increasing access of excluded children in rural areas, diminishing absenteeism, repetition and dropouts (Cuéllar-Marchelli, 2003; de Andraca, 2003).13 Over time, new classrooms have been built and relevant materials have been provided. Parents show greater involvement with the education of their children and there are signs of improvement of the educational level or parents and of the community in general. However, these schools encounter difficulties such as frequent teacher turnover and effects on the managing councils of parents’ insufficient preparation for their role as members. Students have little real participation in the councils while parents do not always have sufficient time, or the time demanded from them is more than they can offer. Teachers also tend to feel that they are being deprived of power as they have to respond to the CDEs and could be sanctioned by them if found incompetent.

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Non-Government or Private Initiatives Directed to School Improvement While for-profit private schooling in Latin America makes up a small proportion of the educational offering, in most countries there are school systems and schools run by private organisations that are non-profit and receive public subsidies. This has meant the emergence of private school systems run by specific organisations that have produced their own schemes for improvement. Also, all over Latin America there are nongovernment projects to assist in the improvement of schools or deal with specific areas (such as prevention of violence in schools). Finally, as can be seen in the chapter on the British School system by Bamford in this volume, there are regional systems of private education that in turn are concerned with improving the quality of the education they offer. To illustrate these contributions of the non-governmental sector, I will refer to the case of Fe y Alegría, a network of schools that operates in several countries, and to some of the prevention of school violence programs that are particularly active in conflict areas such as Colombia and Brazil.

Fe y Alegría Fe y Alegría14 set up its first schools in Venezuela in 1975 with the purpose of reaching out-of-school children and since has extended to 12 countries in Latin America, of which Bolivia has the greatest number of schools. Its main targets are the establishment and running of primary schools for rural and marginal urban populations (56%). But it also covers secondary education (30%) and a smaller number of children in preschool education. For its operation, Fe y Alegría receives funding for teacher salaries from the respective governments of the countries in which it operates, while local communities assist in providing buildings and infrastructure. In each country where Fe y Alegría has schools there is a National Office that supervises the school system and provides professional development to teachers and head teachers. A study of Fe y Alegría in eight15 of the twelve countries in which it operates (Swope, 2002, p. 92) notes as characteristics of these schools the following traits. ●

● ●

●

●

Establishment of strategic alliances between national and local government as well as with international donor agencies Strong involvement of local community participation Relevant and diverse educational strategies related to the needs of populations in the different locations where the program operates Careful selection of head teachers and teachers with a good offer of professional development activities for them Public credibility on account of the quality of leadership and management of both the private and public resources that are allocated to the schools.

While all Fe y Alegría schools have a strong community participation component, there is variation from country to country in the use of other strategies. For example in Bolivia which has the greatest number of schools, the system combines the use of

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preventive strategies (health and nutrition), monetary incentives for parents to keep their children in school and preschool programs. All these seem to concur in producing good results in terms of higher retention rates and completion of schooling in the prescribed years. Also according to the study referred to above (Swope, 2002) Fe y Alegría schools in a number of countries tend to retain students within a cohort to a greater degree than their counterparts in the public system. Equally, Fe y Alegría students tend to complete their primary school within the year-span that the system determines and the schools also show a lower rate of repetition and a higher retention rate compared to public schools. Finally, dropout rates are clearly lower than those of students in the public school system.16

Prevention of Violence Programs Increasingly, children and young people that live in conflict-ridden situations (i.e., warfare, drugs, domestic violence) may have their schooling disrupted or may take violence as a way of solving problems, of dealing with frustration or simply as a natural form of behaviour. This has led a number of both governments and non-government institutions to work on prevention of violence policies and projects to help students and teachers deal with the problem. Of interest, are the number of initiatives from grassroots organisations that are focused on working with schools and communities in order to develop peaceful school environments and help young people to cope with conflict amongst themselves and in their surrounding communities. Among these projects are six that were identified and evaluated under a special grant from the Interamerican Development Bank (see Avalos, 2005b). They were located in schools of the cities of Sao Paulo (Brazil), Medellín (Colombia), a rural community in Ecuador, and the city of Santiago (Chile).17 Besides sharing a location in difficult and very poor contexts these projects have common features in their overall designs. All of them have a holistic focus in the sense of addressing teachers, students, and parents and in some cases the larger community, although they differ in the degree to which they focus more closely on one group rather than another. The projects’ activities are directed to bringing out conflict issues and providing tools for protection and management of such problems. In doing this, the projects may have as their aim directly to reduce violence, especially overt violence, or to work preferably towards the generation of a peaceful environment, or both of these aims. The projects differ in the extent to which they have greater or lesser reliance on an existing model used in previous projects. At the start of the interventions that were part of the study (Avalos, 2005b), two of the implementing institutions had developed and tried out their own model for violence prevention and for the establishment of a peaceful environment in schools. One was based on detecting risk factors and providing protective stimulus to face conflict when it occurs. Risk factors may be individual conditions such as low selfesteem or lack of affection, as well as family factors such as economic problems, conflicts, and lack of role models, insufficient or excessive care, and others. The other project used a modified form of the conflict mediation model stimulating the entire school community (as well as parents) to work towards setting up conditions in schools for peaceful resolution of conflicts and development of a harmonious environment.

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Effects on improvement of the school environment are different, but some of the projects especially one located in Sao Paulo and the other in a semi-rural location in Ecuador showed positive results in the commitment of teachers and the community to involvement in prevention of violence in schools and the development of a good environment.

Educational Reforms and School Improvement: How Much of an Effect on Educational Progress in Latin America? The preceding sketch of reforms and specific projects in the last 20 years directed to furthering a better education for all is obviously not sufficient to establish how effective or not these have been, especially for those groups previously excluded from its benefits. From a purely quantitative perspective, there is no doubt that efforts in the eighties to widen the coverage of the educational systems meant that most of the Latin American countries were able to achieve almost universal enrolment of students in primary schools with net enrolment rates today around 80% (UNESCO, 2005). At secondary level, some countries are also advancing towards net enrolment rates close to 80%. However, as presented in the first section of this paper, learning results as measured by national and international assessments remain low (with the exception of Cuba18). Each one of the countries that undertook extensive education reforms in the nineties expected that these would reach the schools and would in turn transform their teaching and learning contexts. Has this happened and to what extent? There is enough evidence from publications and meetings occurring at different times that there has been a certain amount of change in the schools affected by reforms. Thus, for example, Hunt (2004, pp. 41–42) composes two scenarios on the basis of visits to schools in 1993 and 1995 before educational reforms in Peru, and then in 1999 and 2001 to illustrate its effects; Since 1993 Peru has significantly tried to improve public primary schooling with visible results in many schools. There is a better infrastructure (walls exhibit work of students) and teacher–pupil relationships are significantly warmer and more open than before. There is a national revised curriculum for each school year and many classrooms have books, learning resources and libraries. Many teachers seem aware of the importance and benefits of encouraging active participation of children in their own learning, and are anxious to learn more. The school system has started a national evaluation system and provided the public with information about results. The initial teacher training is being reformed, and in general one can say that Peru has taken a valuable first step in the long struggle for an education of quality.19 Despite this assessment, Hunt concludes that reforms are still not sufficient. Teachers need more opportunity for professional development to improve their knowledge base and widen their teaching repertoire, schools still do not have enough autonomy, and

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there practically is no system of supervision or support for head teachers and teachers. And educational spending is still woefully inadequate. This reference to reforms in Peru is applicable to most other countries that have engaged in broad or systemic reforms: They have moved the system ahead, schools appear better, but the road to satisfactory results is still in the making. To an extent, there has been a criticism of the reforms in the nineties in the sense of not having paid sufficient attention to school factors such as support for better teaching nor recognised the nature of the constraints affecting teachers such as inadequate preparation or large classes (Reimers, 2003). Certainly, initially this was the case of Chile, where the focus was placed on improving buildings and facilities, providing textbooks and learning resources, introducing ICT into schools, reforming the curriculum, but all with insufficient attention and understanding of how teachers would and could receive these reforms (Bellei, 2001). More recent studies of the implementation of the new curriculum in primary schools illustrate how teachers teach selectively the new curriculum topics and dilute the messages and emphasis suggested in the curricular materials, especially for children who belong to lower socio-economic groups (Ministerio de Educación, 2004b). While the above considerations have to do with the effect of large-scale reform initiatives in the Latin American region, we can also ask about the effects of specific programs or projects on schools and classrooms. Seen from this angle, in almost every country of the Region it is possible to find successful experiences of change, some of which are well established. Among these are the schools of the Fe y Alegría system described in an earlier section of this paper, and the well-known experience of Escuela Nueva in Colombia.20 In this volume the paper by Deves and López illustrates an on-going experience of improving science teaching at primary level, which is a project that joins academic initiative and support of the Ministry of Education. More recently, in Latin America, and perhaps as an indication that all the answers about how schools and teaching can be improved are not provided by large-scale reforms, there has been a growing interest in learning about successful projects and about schools that work, schools that achieve results and why this is so (i.e., García-Huidobro, 2004; UNICEF, 2005; U. Cayetano Heredia, 2002).21 These publications include accounts from experiences in different countries that outline how and why it is thought that the schools considered are successful. A recent study using a framework from international literature on school effectiveness was jointly sponsored by UNICEF and the Ministry of Education in Chile (UNICEF, 2005). The purpose of the study was to identify a group of good-performing schools that catered for the lower and middle low socio-economic groups in order to examine what in the school environment and processes contributed to these results. To a certain extent the search for effective schools indicated the sense of frustration of the policy-makers regarding measurable improvement as a result of reform efforts in schools attended by the poor. The difficulty of finding a large enough sample for the study that met the criteria illustrates also to what extent this frustration is justified.22 Many of the 14 schools eventually selected had moved from a very critical situation at the beginning of the nineties (before educational reforms were started) to improvement in many of the school processes: management, climate, teaching and learning. The

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study documents how this happened and concludes that the reforms stimulus and contributions worked through certain existing characteristics of the schools’ leadership, teachers and parent involvement. The appropriate trigger points in the schools studied were described as follows (UNICEF, 2005): ●

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An adequate initial diagnosis of the problems of the school and a will to search for solutions (why are children not learning and what can the school do to improve the situation?). Decisions on priorities and clarity about what needs are greater than others, and from thereon to take few, small steps towards improvement. In situ professional development and teacher collaborative work linked to good supervision. A renewed understanding of the importance of discipline, from authoritarianism to shared understanding and decisions on how to establish rules, as well as a focus on responsibility, respect, solidarity and self control. School identity, an explicit image of the kind of school everybody wants to promote (parents, students, teachers). Judicious use of resources allocated by the reforms selecting and appropriating these in accordance with needs and goals. External recognition of the schools’ progress in learning results (by the community, the Ministry of Education or others).

The results of the study not only help to see what are the factors that make for improvement (none of which are given but require working on). These results also explain that the scarcity of effects of the reforms (as evidenced by the low number of effective schools found for the sample) may be due to the lack of appropriate encounter points between reforms and schools or perhaps, even more to the point, to the need for conditions that generate initiative within schools such as contextual (teacher morale and teacher time) as much as leadership and the will to work hard for change. These conditions require continued support and interest from educational authorities. The teachers in this study of effective schools despite their satisfaction about their schools’ progress missed a greater interest and involvement on the part of ministerial authorities. The authors’ of the study noted that in fact the achievements of these schools were fragile and might succumb if faced with unforeseen or greater difficulties than those they could manage. Maintaining effective schools in difficult environments and conditions requires constant vigilance and support until the schools are effectively able to stand strongly on their feet. To an extent these reflections are also those of Harris and Chrispeels (2006) in their analysis of schools in challenging conditions in the developed world, as they criticise the narrow focus of school improvement that is directed only to raising standards, without adequate understanding of the interplay between contexts and possibilities.

A Final Word Latin America through the educational reforms that have been in place in the last 20 or so years, and through the initiative of non-government groups and single schools, has

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many examples to offer about how and in what way teaching and learning can be improved. It also offers many lessons on the constraining factors for reform and improvement and how important it is to face them, especially, with regard to the large populations that continue to be undereducated. The chapters on Latin American experiences in this book give us pointers on how improvement may take place and what can be achieved. Knowledge derived from research on school efficacy in Latin America should be considered by policy-makers and educators (see chapter by J. Murillo), as should also the evidence from small-scale improvement. Deves and Lopez’ chapter on how a subject such as science can be taught so that children in poor environments experience the joy of scientific discovery, also illustrates how such experiences can be widened as in concentric circles beyond the sites were they originate. How reforms are received and the importance of recognising audiences, the experiences of others and voice are highlighted in the chapters on decentralisation by di Gropello and on reform effects by Jacinto and Freites Frey. These chapters also stress the complexities of structural reforms and processes at local and school level. From the other side, which is the school itself, we have the chapter by Bamford on how a school faces evaluation and how it learns and moves ahead as a consequence of the process. School evaluation is far from being a reality in most of the Latin American education systems, but there are promising experiences occurring. Many of these are linked to the framing by school communities of a school project, but also there are guidelines on how to conduct these processes emerging from policy-makers around the Region. As in other less-developed regions of the world, Latin America has still enormous challenges in being able to fulfil the Millennium Goals and provide a good education for all, especially for the poorest groups, but it is on its way and will move faster as it learns from research and experience.

Notes 1. These include the United States, Canada, Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Belize, Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago and Grenada. 2. One of the countries with the largest private school enrolment in the Region is Chile (48% of total enrolment), while most of the others fluctuate between 23% (Argentina) and 8% (Uruguay) (UNESCO, 2005). 3. A composite of the following indicators: net enrolment ratio, adult literacy rate, gender related index, and survival rate to grade 5 (see UNESCO, 2005). 4. From a 5-3-4 structure. 5. Literally means a multifaceted curriculum. 6. This scheme was also used for pre-school and the Basic Education levels. 7. This has not happened in reality, because schools and teachers do not feel competent to write their own syllabuses, and so the Ministry of Education provides their own version for these schools which are about 90%. 8. Author’s translation. 9. For a description of the project and its results see Avalos (2002) and Avalos (2005a). 10. Vaillant and Wettstein’s (1999) book on the CERP’s not only describes what they are and do but also includes chapters by other educators on the strengths and possible weaknesses of the project as they saw it through visits or through their involvement in their establishment. 11. For example, the analysis of the 2002 SIMCE results (national measurement of learning system) show an increase in language and maths scores of 6 and 5 points as compared to similar schools that do not

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13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

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take part in the program (Ministerio de Educación, 2003). Also an earlier evaluation of the program found not only learning but other effects of the program such as teacher motivation and skills (see Avalos, 2004b). The name, linked to the number of original schools participating has remained because though some schools improve and “exit” the program, new underachieving ones join in and keep the number relatively stable. While EDUCO schools still operate in the country, its major growth period was between 1991 and 1997 when the number of children benefited by the program increased from 8,416 to 193,984. Supported by the Jesuit Order though managed mostly by lay contracted staff. Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Perú and Venezuela. These results are not observed in all the countries where Fe y Alegría operates but in all of them some of these are present. The projects in Sao Paulo were run by the State Secretariat of Education and by a private NGO; those in Colombia by the Red Cross Youth (with lengthy experience in this area) and by the social department of a private organization, the project in Ecuador by DNI (International Defence of Children) and the one in Chile, by a private NGO. As measured by the UNESCO–OREALC (1998) assessment of learning results in Latin America. My translation. For a description of this longstanding program see www.ibe.unesco.org/publications/monographseries.htm See also the article of Murillo in this Handbook on research production in the field of school efficacy and improvement. The requirement that the schools selected enrol students in the low and middle-low socio-economic groups and perform in the top 25% schools (according to national assessment tests) had to be lowered as initially only eight schools out of a total of around 2,600 basic level schools met the achievement criteria. Eventually, 14 schools were selected for the study.

References Albó, X. (1999). Iguales Aunque Diferentes. La Paz, Bolivia: Ministerio de Educación, UNICEF & CIPCA. Albó, X., & Anaya, A. (2003). Niños Alegres, Libres y Expresivos. La Audacia de la Educación Bilingüe en Bolivia. La Paz, Bolivia: CIPCA. Álvarez, M. I., Roman, F., Dobles, M. C., Umaña, J., Zúñiga, M., García, J., et al. (1998). Computers in schools: A qualitative study of Chile and Costa Rica. Education and Technology Series. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Anderson, J. B. (2002). The effectiveness of special interventions in Latin American public primary schools. Working Paper No. 5. Coral Gables, Miami: The Dante B. Fascell North-South Center Working Paper Series. Araújo e Oliveira, J. B. (2004). Expansion and inequality in Brazilian education. In C. Brock, & S. Schwartzman (Eds.), The challenges of education in Brazil. Oxford: Symposium Books. Avalos, B. (2002). Profesores para Chile. Historia de un Proyecto. Santiago, Chile: Ministerio de Educación. Avalos, B. (2004a). CPD policies and practices in the Latin American region. In C. Day, & J. Sachs (Eds.), International handbook on the continuing professional development of teachers. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Avalos, B. (2004b). Desarrollo docente en el contexto de la institución escolar. Los microcentros rurales y los grupos profesionales de trabajo en Chile. In Maestros en América Latina: Nuevas Perspectivas sobre su Formación y Desempeño. Santiago: PREAL & BID. Avalos, B. (2005a). How to affect the quality of teacher education: A four-year policy-driven project implemented at university level. In P. Denicolo, & M. Kompf (Eds.), Connecting policy and practice. Challenges for teaching and learning in schools and universities. London: Routledge. Avalos, B. (2005b). Preventing school violence in six South American locations. Paper presented at the CIES Meeting, Stanford, USA, March. Bellei, C. (2001). El talon de Aquiles de la reforma: análisis sociológico de la política de los 90 hacia los docentes en Chile. In S. Martinic, & M. Pardo (Eds.), Economía Política de las Reformas Educativas en América Latina. Santiago, Chile: CIDE and PREAL.

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CEPAL. (2005). Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio: Una Mirada desde América Latina. Santiago: CEPAL. Contreras, M. E., & Talavera, M. L. (2005). Examen Parcial: La Reforma Educativa Boliviana 1992–2002. La Paz, Bolivia: PIEB. (In English. The Bolivian educational reform 1992–2005: Case studies in large educational reform, Country Studies. Education Reform and Management Publication Series, Vol II, November 2003. Washington, DC: The World Bank). Cuéllar-Marchelli. (2003). Decentralization and privatization of education in El Salvador: Assessing the experience. International Journal of Educational Development, 23(2), 145–166. de Andraca, A. M. (2003). Buenas Prácticas para Mejorar la Educación en América Latina. Santiago, Chile: PREAL. Decibe, S. (2001). Argentina: Una década sólo alcanzó para comenzar una reforma estructural de la educación. In S. Martinic, & M. Pardo (Eds.), Economía Política de las Reformas Educativas en América Latina. Santiago, Chile: CIDE & PREAL. Dussel, I. (2004). Las reformas curriculares en la Argentina, Chile y Uruguay. Informe comparativo. In Las Reformas Educativas en la Década de 1990. Un Estudio Comparado de Argentina, Chile y Uruguay. Buenos Aires, Argentina: BID, Ministerios de Educación de Argentina, Chile y Uruguay, & Grupo Asesor Stanford University. ECLAC–UNESCO. (1992). Education and knowledge: Basic pillars of changing production patterns with social equity. Santiago, Chile: United Nations. García-Huidobro, J. E. (Ed.). (2004). Escuelas de Calidad en Condiciones de Pobreza. Santiago, Chile: U. Alberto Hurtado & BID. Harris, A., & Chrispeels, J. H. (2006). Introduction. In A. Harris, & J. H. Chrispeels (Eds.), Improving schools and educational systems. International perspectives. London: Routledge. Hinostroza, J. E., Guzmán, A., & Isaacs, S. (2002). Innovative uses of ICT in Chilean schools. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 18, 1–23. Hunt, B. (2004). La educación primaria peruana: aún necesita mejorarse. In ¿Es Posible Mejorar la Educacion Peruana? Evidencia y Posibilidades. Lima, Perú: GRADE. Kozma, R. B. (Ed.). (2003). Technology, innovation and educational change. A global perspective. A report on the second information technology in education study. Module 2. Eugene, Or: International Society for Technology in Education. Ministerio de Educación. (2002). Trayectoria de una Década: El Programa de las 900 Escuelas. Santiago, Chile: Mineduc. Ministerio de Educación. (2003). Prueba SIMCE 40 Básico: 2002: Factores que inciden en el rendimiento de los alumnos. Santiago, Chile: Depto de Estudios y Estadística, Mineduc. Ministerio de Educación. (2004a). Chile y el Aprendizaje de Matemáticas y Ciencias Según TIMSS. Santiago, Chile: Unidad de Currículum y Evaluación. Ministerio de Educación. (2004b). Implementación curricular en el aula. Matemáticas y Lenguaje y Comunicación Primer Ciclo Básico. Santiago, Chile: Unidad de Currículum y Evaluación. PREAL. (2005). 2006 Cantidad sin Calidad. Un Informe del Progreso Educativo de América Latina. Santiago, Chile: PREAL. Reimers, F. (2003). La Buena enseñanza y el éxito escolar de los estudiantes en América Latina. Revista Iberoamericana de Educación, 31, 17–48. Reimers, X. F. (2000). Unequal schools, Unequal Chances. Cambridge, Mass.: David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University. Rivero, J. (1999). Educación y Exclusión en América Latina. Reformas en Tiempos de Globalización. Madrid: Miño y Dávila. Swope, J. (2002). Un sistema autónomo y eficiente de educación primaria en América Latina. In Creando Autonomía en las Escuelas. Santiago, Chile: LOM & PREAL. Tatto, M. T. (2004). La Educación Magisterial Su Alcance en la Era de la Globalización. México: Santillana, Siglo XXI. UNESCO–OREALAC. (1998). Primer Estudio Internacional Comparativo sobre Lenguaje, Matemática y Factores Asociados en Tercero y Cuarto Grado. Santiago, Chile: UNESCO. UNESCO. (2001). Overview of the 20 years of the major project of education in Latin America and the Caribbean. Santiago, Chile: UNESCO.

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UNESCO. (2005). EFA Global Monitoring Report 2006: Literacy for Life. Paris: UNESCO. UNICEF. (2005). ¿Quién Dijo Que No Se Puede? Escuelas Efectivas en Sectores de Pobreza. Santiago, Chile: UNICEF. Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. (2002). Escuelas Que Aprenden y Se Desarrollan. Lima, Peru: Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. Vaillant, D. (2005). Formación de formadores. Estado de la Práctica. PREAL Documents No 25. Santiago, Chile: PREAL. Vaillant, D., & Wettstein, G. (1999). Centros Regionales de Profesores. Una Apuesta al Uruguay del Siglo XXI. Montevideo: Editorial Fin de Siglo. World Bank (n.d), Educational Change in Latin America and the Caribbean. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

EUROPE

11 GROWING TOGETHER: SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT IN THE UK

Louise Stoll and Pam Sammons

Introduction The last 30 years have seen the emergence, development and increased maturity of school effectiveness and school improvement in the UK. Most significantly, what started as two separate fields of endeavour have merged together as researchers, policy makers and practitioners explore the questions “how, for whom and in what ways do schools make a difference to children and young people’s life chances and continue to improve over time?” In this chapter, we examine this evolution. We start by outlining the changing policy context. Next, we look at the early days of school effectiveness and school improvement (SESI) when they were still separate fields. After discussing influences that prompted their drawing together, we analyse how they have aligned and grown closer over time, examining changing methodologies and evolving areas of focus. Finally, we describe tensions and emerging areas of enquiry and focus as the SESI field moves forward in the UK.

Policy Context Major educational reforms have taken place in England during the last quarter century. The Scottish and Northern Irish systems developed separately during this period while the Welsh education system has recently adopted a somewhat different trajectory following devolution. Conservative governments from 1979 to 1997 sought to reduce the power of professional interests (teacher unions and Local Education Authorities) and increase the role of “consumers” (parents and pupils) by emphasizing market-based reforms. The intention was to increase the efficiency of educational institutions and raise educational standards via financial devolution and local management of schools and increased parental choice. Successive reforms led to the introduction of a national curriculum 207 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 207–222. © 2007 Springer.

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and assessments linked to four Key Stages of education (at ages 7, 11, 14 and examinations at age 16). These set expectations for the level of attainment in the core subjects of English, mathematics and science. Accountability was increased by publishing annual national performance tables of schools’ results from 1992. These were ranked into high profile “league tables” by the media, with low performing schools receiving adverse publicity. Parents were informed about school quality when regular inspection of all schools and publication of inspection reports by the new Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) was established in 1993. “Failing” (later termed “special measures”) schools were identified, and required to improve or, as a last resort, closed if they made insufficient progress. The inspection system has recently been amended, with a greater emphasis on validated self-evaluation. The school effectiveness and improvement research base started to influence policy directions across the UK during the 1990s, and research and improvement studies have been commissioned in all countries. An Ofsted-commissioned review of school effectiveness research (Sammons, Hillman, & Mortimore, 1995) identified “key characteristics of effective schools,” informing its published inspection framework. Ofsted also commissioned research on Assessing School Effectiveness (Sammons et al., 1994) to provide fairer “like with like” comparisons adjusted for differences in pupil intakes. From 1997, under three terms of New Labour, government education policies have continued to emphasise the prime aim of raising standards, although there has been greater recognition of the role of social disadvantage and need to combine pressure with support for schools in challenging circumstances. A range of area-based measures were adopted to try to raise standards and combat disadvantage, and a significant expansion of pre-school provision recognized the importance of the early years. Significant yearon-year increases in education spending also took place from 1998 onwards and “education, education, education” was identified as the Government’s priority. The emphasis on “improvement through inspection” was retained, and an influential Standards and Effectiveness Unit was established, drawing on SESI approaches, and headed first by Prof Michael Barber then Prof David Hopkins, both of whom took up their role from improvement research positions. Daily literacy and numeracy lessons were introduced for primary schools in 1998 and 1999, based on reviews of research evidence and inspection evidence on effective teaching of reading and mathematics. These later developed into a national primary strategy. Ambitious targets for the percentage of children achieving the expected level (level 4) in English and mathematics at the end of Key Stage 2 (age 11) were introduced. Significant improvements in primary pupils’ attainment levels have been recorded in national tests and international comparisons (e.g., Mullis, Martin, Gonzalez, & Kennedy, 2003; OECD, 2001). A Key Stage 3 strategy for the 11–14 age group was also introduced in 2001. Use of performance data to inform school self evaluation was also promoted. The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) drew explicitly on school effectiveness research when developing national value added approaches to provide indicators of pupil progress across Key Stages. Over time, these have become more sophisticated, using multilevel approaches. In addition, the social inclusion agenda has received more emphasis with greater attention paid to raising attainment levels of ethnic minority and disadvantaged groups.

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A controversial feature has been the emphasis on greater choice and diversity in the school system. Specialist and faith schools have been promoted, and the creation of City Academies, involving sponsorship by private investors, is a more recent innovation to turn around schools in disadvantaged areas that have failed to improve. In 2002, the importance of school leadership at all levels was given greater recognition when the National College of School Leadership (NCSL) was created. See Sammons, Elliot, Welcomme, Taggart, & Levacic (2004) for further analysis of policy developments.

Early Work: School Effectiveness and School Improvement as Separate Fields In the first 15 years of UK school effectiveness research, the focus was on the quality and equity of schooling trying to find out why some schools were more effective than others in promoting positive outcomes, whether schools performed consistently over time, across outcomes and areas, and the characteristics associated with better outcomes. Seminal early work demonstrated that schools, indeed, made a difference (Reynolds & Murgatroyd, 1977; Rutter, Maughan, Mortimore, & Ouston, 1979). For example, in the Fifteen Thousand Hours study of 12 secondary schools in inner London, investigating the reasons for differences between schools in terms of various measures of pupils’ behaviour and attainments (Rutter et al., 1979), the researchers concluded that differences between the schools’ outcomes were systematically related, at least in part, to their characteristics as social institutions, and that associations between school processes and outcomes reflected in part a causal process. While not denying that external social influences have a profound impact on young people’s subsequent life chances and individual school performance, it emphasized that those in schools can take vitally important actions to enhance the progress, achievement and social development of children and young people. In addition, studies began benefiting from using new methodologies to help identify progress made by pupils, after controlling for prior attainment and background factors (Mortimore, Sammons, Stoll, Lewis, & Ecob, 1988; Smith & Tomlinson, 1989; Tizard, Blatchford, Burke, Farquhar, & Plewis, 1988). Work by Desmond Nuttall and Harvey Goldstein on examination results pointed to the need for increased sophistication in studying school effects (Mortimore, Sammons, & Thomas, 1994). Meanwhile, during the 1980s, school improvement was practitioner-oriented, evidenced in the work of those involved in the “teacher as researcher” (Elliott, 1980) and school self evaluation and review movements (Clift & Nuttall, 1987; McMahon, Bolam, Abbott, & Holly, 1984). This holistic, organizational approach to change in schools was also seen in the work of English participants in the International School Improvement Project (Hopkins, 1987).

Coming Together Closer alignment of school effectiveness and school improvement has been promoted through increased collaboration between those working in the different research traditions, and by greater involvement of stakeholders other than researchers.

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Bridging Research Traditions The merger of school effectiveness and school improvement in England, whereby school improvement efforts drew on the findings of school effectiveness and school effectiveness studies took account of understandings about school improvement, took several years, entailing some difficulties (Harris & Bennett, 2001; Reynolds, Hopkins, & Stoll, 1993; Stoll, 1996). In particular, much school effectiveness research had a quantitative emphasis, with measurement of pupil outcomes involving large numbers of pupils and schools, while improvement research often focused on processes but not outcomes and involved case studies, action research and other qualitative development activity. The growing together of SESI was facilitated by a greater emphasis on mixed methods research involving quantitative studies of effectiveness and detailed qualitative case studies of more and, in some cases, of less effective schools. Also more recently, developmental work with schools in difficulty has drawn on the growing knowledge base of both fields.

Involving More Stakeholders While in the early years, most of the UK’s SESI energy came from researchers, it was notable that a number of these were affiliated to local education authorities (LEA – school districts); for example, the School Matters research (Mortimore et al., 1988) was sponsored by the country’s largest LEA, whose researchers collaborated with seconded teacher researchers to carry out the study. For more than a decade, those working in SESI in the UK have believed that the field’s further development and impact necessitates positive working relationships between researchers, policymakers and practitioners. There are many examples of LEAs sponsoring school improvement, drawing on the SESI research base (e.g., Myers, 1996), of higher education (HE) institutions working collaboratively with schools (e.g., Frost, Durrant, Head, & Holden, 2000; Hopkins, Ainscow, & West, 1994) and HE institutions and LEAs working together with schools (e.g., Halsall, 1998; Sammons & Smees, 1998; Southworth & Lincoln, 1999; Stoll & Thomson, 1996) on school improvement efforts. One example of an attempt to bridge research, policy and practice was the establishment of the International School Effectiveness and Improvement Centre (ISEIC) in 1994 at the Institute of Education, University of London, where school effectiveness and improvement researchers worked together on projects (e.g., MacBeath & Mortimore, 2001; Taggart & Sammons, 1999), as well as collaborating with practitioner associates (largely those in support roles in LEAs and educational consultants) to promote research and development projects, and dissemination strategies, including a National School Improvement Network (NSIN) and research summaries. The advisory board for this centre included practitioners, local and national policy makers and school effectiveness and improvement academics from other HE institutions. Increasingly, researchers involved in improvement-related studies have included a specific mandate to disseminate findings accessibly to increase their value to teachers and other educational professionals (e.g., Stoll & Harris, 2006). To further this,

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a number of research teams have built in roles for seconded teacher researchers. There is also an increasing effort to bring together research teams, encouraging them to share ongoing findings with each other, policy makers and practitioners through joint presentations at conferences or in specially arranged seminars. The emerging interface between policy and, initially, school effectiveness research could be seen as national policy agencies began to develop external strategies for improvement (Reynolds, Sammons, Stoll, Barber, & Hillman, 1996). For example, the literacy and numeracy strategies similarly drew on teacher and school effectiveness research in their development. Increasingly school effectiveness and improvers have been involved in the evaluation of policy developments such as the Making Belfast Work initiative in Northern Ireland (Taggart & Sammons, 1999), New Community Schools in Scotland (Sammons, Fink, & Earl, 2003) and the Key Stage 3 Strategy in England (Stoll, Fink, & Earl, 2003).

Growing and Developing Together A significant amount of SESI activity has now taken place in the UK, including a number of projects using mixed methodological approaches. Increased sophistication can also be seen in efforts to explore specific aspects of effectiveness and improvement and how effectiveness and improvement play themselves out differently in diverse situations, requiring differentiated strategies.

Developing Methodologies Major methodological advances in the school effectiveness tradition in the 1980s involved developing better statistical approaches to study effectiveness, commonly referred to as value added measures. Recognition of the hierarchical structures of education systems (pupils nested within classes, classes nested within schools, schools nested within LEAs) led to adopting multilevel approaches that better enabled the estimation of school effects. The need was recognized to take account of the statistical significance of the residual estimates of differences between the predicted and actual outcomes of schools (via the use of confidence limits) (Goldstein, 1995). Further developments drew attention to issues of the stability of effects over time, and consistency in effects across different outcomes, for example, between subject areas and between cognitive and affective or social/behavioural outcomes. Studies of differential effectiveness found that schools can vary in their effectiveness for different pupil groups. Mixed methods approaches also developed often involving quantitative analyses of effectiveness and case studies of processes in more effective or more improved schools. The Forging Links research on effective schools and departments in inner London (Sammons, Thomas, & Mortimore, 1997) and the Improving School Effectiveness Research study in Scotland (MacBeath & Mortimore, 2001) provide examples in different contexts. The Improving Schools research (Gray et al., 1999) in England focused explicitly on the nature and extent of improvement in secondary schools’ academic effectiveness and case studies of the correlates of school improvement. The longitudinal Effective Provision of Preschool Education Project (Sylva, Melhuish, Sammons, Siraj-Blatchford, & Taggart,

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2004) exemplifies how educational effectiveness approaches have been adapted to study pre-school influences, including those of pre-school type, duration and quality on young children’s progress and development.

Focusing on Different Elements While there have been a number of generic studies of effectiveness and improvement (e.g., English case studies as part of the seven-country European Improving School Effectiveness project, Wikeley, Stoll, & Lodge, 2003), much research and development activity has focused on specific aspects of improvement. Here we describe six: leadership; teaching and learning; pupil involvement; self evaluation and use of data; external involvement; and capacity building. More recent work in all of these areas shows increasing sophistication in probing differences within and between schools in their effectiveness and in considering the need for different improvement strategies in different situations (Hopkins, 2001; Stoll & Fink, 1996).

Leadership School effectiveness research has consistently drawn attention to the head teacher’s leadership in promoting and maintaining school effectiveness, and as a key characteristic of effective schools (see Sammons et al., 1995). Attention has also been drawn to the head teacher’s role in primary school improvement (Southworth & Lincoln, 1999), and the importance of instructional (Hopkins, 2003), and learning-centred leadership (Southworth, 2005; Stoll et al., 2003) while research on improving schools in challenging circumstances also emphasizes the importance of leadership as a catalyst for change, in setting the direction and goals for change, and in focusing on teaching and learning (Cutler, 1998; Fox & Ainscow, 2006; Stoll & MacBeath, 2005). The role of other leadership groups such as the senior leadership team and heads of department have received increasing recognition since the 1990s (Harris, Jamieson, & Russ, 1995; Sammons et al., 1997), while, more recently, different approaches to teacher leadership have also been explored (Durrant & Holden, 2006; Harris, 2003). Teaching and learning Muijs and Reynolds (2001) have argued that insufficient attention has been paid to teaching and learning, concluding that the wide variation in teacher behaviours, competence and consequent outcomes identified by external inspectors results from this. While the role of the classroom in school effectiveness has clearly been established (Sammons, 1999), until recently exploring teaching and learning within school effectiveness research has been limited, with notable exceptions (e.g., Mortimore et al., 1988). Sustained school improvement, however, appears more likely where there is a focus on learning rather than just employing tactical and strategic approaches (Gray et al., 1999). A recent major Teaching and Learning Research Program funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (www.tlrp.org) now aims to enhance researchbased practice in teaching and learning. Several of its projects specifically focus on learning and teaching in schools, and the program fosters partnership between practitioners and researchers in undertaking

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research and ensuring its impact. A longitudinal Associate TLRP project funded by DfES on variations in teachers’ lives and work and their effects on pupils (Vitae), explored contributions to variations in teachers’ perceived and relative effectiveness as well as how teachers become more effective over time (Day et al., 2006). The research explores the impact of training and development, conditions of service, and professional and situated (school, department) and personal factors. A follow on study will conduct observations of classroom practice in classes taught by teachers identified as relatively more effective.

Pupil involvement For more than a decade, Rudduck and colleagues have explored pupils’ responses to schooling, providing evidence that young people’s involvement in discussing and designing improvement interventions can contribute to school improvement (Rudduck, 2001; Rudduck and Flutter, 2000, 2004). A growing English evidence base reveals that pupils have much to say about their experiences of learning and their voices are generally constructive and informative (e.g., Fielding, 2001). Rudduck and Flutter (2004) propose four levels of engaging pupils in the improvement process: listening to pupils, as a data source; students as participants, where they play a role in decision-making although teachers initiate inquiry and interpret the data; students as researchers, where pupils are involved in enquiry and actively participate in decision making; and pupils as fully active researchers and co-researchers jointly initiating enquiry with teachers, planning action in the light of data and reviewing the intervention’s impact. Lodge (2005, p. 125) cautions, however, that pupil involvement can be “problematic.” Through several teacher-led enquiry projects into learning Lodge (2005) has found that young people develop better understanding of their learning through dialogue which develops a community approach to enquiries into learning between them and their teachers. From research and development experiences around re-engaging disaffected pupils in learning, Riley also concludes that teachers need to gain greater insights into pupils’ lives, involve them in their learning and create new learning opportunities inside and outside the school (Riley, Ellis, Weinstock, Tarrant, & Hallmond, 2006). Self-evaluation and use of data School improvement researchers increasingly conclude that enquiry and reflection is central to success (e.g., MacBeath, 1999; Southworth & Conner, 1999). The often differing accounts of teachers, pupils and parents provide practical school self-evaluation opportunities and can lead to strategies for school improvement (MacBeath 1999; McCall et al., 2001). A number of LEA projects have developed in collaboration with HE institutions providing feedback to schools of performance data in accessible formats assisting in the process of institutional self-evaluation and review. Most were developed before the DfES started to produce national value added indicators. The ALIS, YELLIS and PIPS projects led by FitzGibbon and Tymms from the CEM at the University of Durham provide examples of such collaboration (e.g., Tymms, 2001), while members of the ISEIC at London University’s Institute of Education were also involved in several projects. Since 1998, schools have received considerable guidance

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on using performance data and target setting by the DfES, through the Autumn Package which later evolved into a web-based program, the Pupil Achievement Tracker. The Fischer Family Trust also provides a nationwide analysis of schools’ performance data For LEAs and schools. The data revolution over the last few years means that schools in England have far more information available to assist them in target setting, self evaluation and to evaluate improvement projects. There are concerns, however, that overemphasizing measurement and outcomes particularly in literacy and numeracy may distract attention from other important curriculum areas. Furthermore, revising the Ofsted inspection schedule to emphasize school-self evaluation means that, inevitably, some selfgenerated enthusiasm for self-evaluation has dissipated. Despite this, there is still a considerable amount of voluntary research-based improvement activity (e.g., Halsall, 1998; Sharp, Handscomb, & Webster, 2006).

External involvement and critical friendship Research and experience working in and with schools suggests that most require a support infrastructure. While the LEA role has been changing, studies have shown that it can play a key role (e.g., Riley, Docking, & Rowles, 2000; Southworth & Lincoln, 1999), especially when schools are in difficult circumstances (Ainscow et al., 2006; Whatford, 1998), although LEAs, themselves, sometimes struggle to provide support for improvement (Watling, Hopkins, Harris, & Beresford, 1998). Critical friendship has also been the theme for attention, particularly in research and development projects (Doherty, MacBeath, Jardine, Smith, & McCall, 2001; Swaffield, 2004), with particular acknowledgement that when dealing with schools in difficulties, there are extra sensitivities whereby the “gift” of support is balanced by a subversive intent (MacBeath, 1998). In recent years schools have also become an increasing source of support and stimulus for development of other schools (see section on Networking). Capacity building in different schools Bringing about significant improvement requires much more than superficial tinkering with school structures and practices. To succeed in a rapidly changing and increasingly complex world, schools need to grow, develop, adapt creatively to change and take charge of change. Taking charge of externally driven change, rather than being controlled by it, has been shown to define schools that are more effective and more rapidly improving from those that are not (Gray et al., 1999; Hopkins, 2001; Stoll & Fink, 1996) and, at any one time, schools may be at a different stage of development, or “growth state” (Hopkins, Harris, & Jackson, 1997). Evaluation of the implementation of the pilot of England’s national Key Stage 3 (middle years) strategy demonstrated that capacity at the school, department and individual teacher level influenced schools’ ability to implement the Strategy. In that project, capacity was defined as: … a complex blend of motivation, skill, positive learning, organizational conditions and culture, and infrastructure of support. Put together, it gives individuals, groups and, ultimately whole school communities the power to get involved in and sustain learning. (Stoll et al., 2003, p. 22)

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Individual, school and external contextual influences affect school capacity (Stoll, 1999). Capacity building involves: creating and maintaining the necessary conditions, culture and structures; facilitating learning and skill-oriented experiences and opportunities; and ensuring interrelationships and synergy between all the component parts (Stoll & Bolam, 2005). Recent English research highlights potential for capacity building by creating and developing professional learning communities (PLCs) (Bolam et al., 2005). Effective PLCs in all school phases exhibited eight key characteristics: shared values and vision; collective responsibility for pupils’ learning; collaboration focused on learning; individual and collective professional learning; reflective professional enquiry; openness, networks and partnerships; inclusive membership; and mutual trust, respect and support. The PLCs were created and developed through four key processes: optimising resources and structures; promoting individual and collective professional learning; explicitly promoting, evaluating and sustaining an effective PLC; and leadership and management supporting PLC development. The more developed a PLC appeared to be, the more positive was the association with two other measures of effectiveness; pupil achievement and staff professional learning. Further work continues to explore how schools at different stages of the journey developed their PLCs. In writing on differentiated school improvement, Hopkins (1996) highlights the need for a “fit” between specific improvement programs and the school’s developmental needs. In this framework, school improvement strategies fall into three different types: ●

●

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Type I strategies, assisting failing schools to become moderately effective. They involve a high level of external support, and strategies involve a clear and direct focus on a limited number of basic curriculum and organizational issues to build the confidence and competence to continue. Type II strategies, assisting moderately effective schools to become effective. These strategies do not rely as heavily on external support but tend to be more school initiated. Type III strategies, assisting effective schools to remain so. In these instances external support, although often welcomed, is unnecessary as the school searches out and creates its own support networks. Exposure to new ideas and practices, collaboration through consortia, networking or “pairing” type arrangements seem to be common in these situations.

Recent English research has been carried out in areas of extreme economic and social challenge, whether urban schools (e.g., Ainscow and West, 2006; Clarke, Reynolds, & Harris, 2005) or former coalfield areas (Harris, Chapman, Muijs, Russ, & Stoll, 2006). This suggests that schools in challenging areas have to work harder and be more committed than their peers working in more favourable socioeconomic circumstances. They also have to maintain the effort to sustain improvement as success can be fragile in difficult circumstances. Cox (2000) describes aspects of their communities – including poverty – which seriously constrain what they are able to achieve, while elsewhere, schools in much more advantaged areas have been found to be equally resistant to improvement efforts (Stoll & Fink, 1998). Only in relatively recent years, for example, have researchers focused their attention upon improving “failing” or “ineffective” schools (e.g., Gray, 2000; Harris & Chapman, 2001; Reynolds & Teddlie, 2001; Stoll &

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Myers, 1998). A literature review (Muijs, Harris, Chapman, Stoll, & Russ, 2004) revealed a number of common elements to improving and effective schools in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas. Effective leadership and collaboration has also been endorsed by the findings of studies exploring improvement of urban schools (Ainscow & West, 2006), and inspection has also been found to be a catalyst for improvement of schools in special measures (Matthews & Sammons, 2005).

Networks and Community Partnerships Increasingly in England, as in several other countries, top-down approaches to improvement are giving way to more lateral forms, through learning networks and school collaboratives; recently described by Chrispeels and Harris (2006) as “a fifth phase” of improvement of schools and systems. Partly intended to help transfer good practice, in many cases teachers become more involved where there is a commitment to reciprocity and practice creation (Fielding et al., 2005). The Network Learning Communities (NLC) program, established by the NCSL, has been a large-scale “development and enquiry” initiative involving 137 networks (1,500 schools) in England between 2002 and 2006. Specifically designed to provide national policy and system learning (as well as practice evidence), it was charged with generating evidence about how and under what conditions networks can make a contribution to raising pupil achievement, about the leadership practices that prove to hold most potential for school-to-school learning and about the new relationships emerging between networks as a “unit of engagement” and their local authority partners. In contrast to the national strategies, NLC schools were given much autonomy to adopt flexible forms of engagement with each other in networks. Evaluation evidence indicates that the extent of engagement by participating schools varies much both within and between individual NLCs. Earl et al. (2006) draw attention to the importance of network attachment, which is correlated with an intermediate outcome of changes in thinking and practice in schools. While the evaluators describe the associations as “fairly erratic,” they believe there may be connections between network participation and improvements in pupil attainment. However, as yet evidence of significant improvements in pupils’ attainment outcomes across NLC is weak, improvements being in line with national trends. Improvement in attainment outcomes also varies considerably at the school level, though there is some evidence that where staff perceive greater impact and engagement of their school in networking, improvement in pupils’ attainment levels is more likely (Earl et al., 2006; Sammons & Mujtaba, 2006). The evidence on NLC’s contribution to raising standards of attainment appears much weaker than that concerning the impact of specific curriculum-based initiatives such as the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies, and this is in line with findings on the impact of other “loose” improvement strategies giving participants freedom to develop their own strategies such as New Community schools in Scotland (Sammons et al., 2003). Lawton (1997, pp. 17–18) cautions that research evidence that schools make a difference: “should not … be used as an excuse for societies being complacent about such

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social problems as gross poverty and inadequate levels of housing,” and Mortimore and Whitty (1997) also emphasize the role of social disadvantage as well as of schools. Increasingly, schools are working more closely with their local communities and other agencies, through initiatives such as Extended Schools (in England) and New Community Schools (in Scotland). Evaluations of early efforts show a willingness to engage, but difficulties with developing partnerships.

Critiques and Tensions Even in its early days school effectiveness research was criticized on a range of grounds methodological, theoretical and political and there was a vitriolic reaction to the Fifteen Thousand Hours study when first published in 1979. Tensions and critiques of SESI research have been particularly evident in the UK academic community during the last decade. In some instances this reflects a lack of knowledge of the research studies and approaches and an aversion to the use of quantitative approaches and focus on pupil outcomes. In other instances, there is concern that an emphasis on the role of schools may lead to a neglect of the importance of social disadvantage. Elliot (1996, p. 200) accused the field of a “mechanistic methodology and an instrumentalist view of educational processes.” Responses to such criticisms (Sammons & Reynolds, 1997; Sammons, Mortimore, & Hillman, 1996) have emphasized the roots of the effectiveness field in a concern with the promotion of equity and strong links with practitioners in the improvement tradition. Thrupp (2001) concluded that SESI researchers do not share the epistemological commitments of their critics and drew attention to under-theorization of the field, while Slee and Weiner (2001) have focused on supposed tensions between an emphasis on effectiveness and one on inclusive education. Teddlie and Reynolds (2001) have responded to the various criticisms, emphasizing that the field has indeed reported the influence of social class and role of context, but has also drawn attention to the importance of the school’s contribution and ways of improving practice to benefit the outcomes of disadvantaged groups. As we moved forward, there are also a number of tensions (Stoll & Harris, 2006). The burgeoning of research and development activity described in this chapter and elsewhere – space allows only a brief discussion of illustrative examples – highlights the range and diversity of the field which does not attempt a unified approach or focus. Also, with frequent policy changes, the difficulties of embedding and sustaining improvement may be a challenge, especially for schools in difficult circumstances. Furthermore, the informed professionalism that has been suggested is necessary for continuing improvement (Barber, 2001) may be threatened by a dependency culture in at least some schools (Earl et al., 2003; Stoll et al., 2003).

Conclusion In many ways, SESI could be described as “thriving” in the UK. The enormous amount of research, development and policy activity could not have been imagined 25 years ago, and

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there is increased collaboration between members of the different stakeholder groups, but the policy environment moves fast, and the pace of global change also means that what is required to improve schools may not be what was needed even 5 years ago. The potential of technology and a growing knowledge base, with a policy drive towards personalization of learning means that the role of schools will continue to change through developments such as school federations, consultant leaders and the role of other organizations and networks of schools. While schools and teaching will continue to evolve it seems likely that the methodological and theoretical insights of SESI approaches to enquiry will continue to develop and the need for research and development work to support the improvement of teaching and learning will remain urgent.

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12 EDUCATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT: THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FIELD IN MAINLAND EUROPE

Bert P. M. Creemers

Introduction Stringfield (1994) defines educational effectiveness research (EER) as the process of differentiating existing ideas and methods along dimensions deemed to be of value. EER does not attempt to invent new ideas or programs but to concentrate on understanding the lessons to be drawn from existing practices. In this way, EER attempts to establish and test theories which explain why and how some schools and teachers are more effective than others. The origins of educational effectiveness stem from reactions to the work on equality of opportunity undertaken by James Coleman and his collaborators (Coleman et al., 1966) and Christopher Jencks (Jencks et al., 1972). These two studies coming from two different disciplinary backgrounds (i.e., sociological and psychological) came almost to a similar conclusion in relation to the amount of variance that can be explained by educational factors. After taking into consideration student background characteristics, such as ability and family background not much variance in student achievement was left. This pessimistic feeling was also fed by the failure of large-scale educational compensatory programs such as the “Headstart” in the U.S.A. and comparable programs in other countries (MacDonald, 1991; Schon, 1971). In addition to methodological critiques of the Coleman report, studies were published that tried to prove that some schools did much better than could be expected on student achievement tests than others did (using a research design of positive versus negative outliers). At almost the same point in time research was published in both the United States and the United Kingdom that got much attention in both the scholarly and popular press. Edmonds (1979), a school-board superintendent, particularly addressed educational practitioners and Brookover, Beady, Flood, and Schweitzer (1979) the educational community. These studies led to a movement in school effectiveness research and in school improvement projects based on the findings of school effectiveness 223 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 223–242. © 2007 Springer.

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research in the United States. Quite a lot of research took place into the correlates of school effectiveness, involving correlational studies focussing on the relationships between the effects of education, that is, the outcomes of schooling, and the characteristics of schools and classrooms. School change projects were based on these correlates discovered in the effective school research. The most famous set of correlates formed the so-called five factor model propagated by Edmonds. Most of the correlational studies and outlier studies were heavily criticised (Ralph & Fennessey, 1983) and this led to a reorientation in research and theory development after 1985. In the United Kingdom school effectiveness research started with the Rutter study. This study found that certain factors were not associated with overall effectiveness, among them class size, school size, the age and the size of school buildings. The important within-school factors determining high levels of effectiveness were the balance of the intellectually able and less able children in school, the reward system, the school environment, the opportunities for children to take responsibility, the use of homework, the possession of academic goals, the teacher as a positive role model, good management of the classroom and strong leadership combined with democratic decision-making. In British school effectiveness research, in addition to academic outcomes other measures like levels of rates of attendance, rates of delinquency, and levels of behaviour problems were incorporated. The suggestion was that effective schools were consistently effective across a wide range of types of student outcomes (Reynolds, 1976; Rutter, Maughan, Mortimore, & Ouston, 1979). The Reynolds studies that were ongoing in the 1970s and 1980s utilised detailed observations of schools in the collection of a large range of material upon pupil attitudes to school, teachers’ perceptions of pupils, within-school organisational factors and school resource levels, and revealed a number of factors within the school that were associated with more effective regimes. These included a high proportion of pupils in authority positions, low levels of institutional control, positive academic expectations, low levels of coercive management, high levels of pupil involvement, small overall size, more favourable teacher/pupil ratios and more tolerant attitudes to the enforcing of certain rules regarding “dress, manners and morals.” The publications by Brookover et al. (1979) and Rutter et al. (1979) were followed by numerous studies in different countries into school effectiveness and school improvement efforts, which were aimed at putting the results of research into practice (see for an overview: Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000; Townsend, Clarke, & Ainscow, 1999).

The Early Stages of SESI in Europe The start of the school effectiveness research and school improvement took place initially in the United States and the United Kingdom. In other countries by the early eighties preliminary studies and summaries of research were being carried out. In the Netherlands for example the research was summarised in relation to an outline for the structure of the secondary education (Creemers, 1983; Creemers & Schaveling, 1985). In fact in these countries school effectiveness research was rooted in research on teacher effectiveness, teacher behaviour, and other classroom studies (Veenman et al.,

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1992). These studies too were strongly influenced by American studies (e.g., Brophy & Good, 1986; Doyle, 1986; Emmer, 1987; Evertson & Green, 1986; Flanders, 1970; Gage, 1972; Rosenshine, 1971) and replicated and expanded in other countries like the United Kingdom (Bennett, 1988), Sweden (Lundgren, 1972), Germany (Bromme, 1981) and Australia (Biddle, 1967; Fraser, 1986). The country report submitted to the First International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement provided an overview of school improvement work done previously in the Netherlands which could be connected, afterwards, to the tradition of school effectiveness and school improvement. The projects took as the effectiveness criterion student results in different school subjects and were especially addressing conditions at class- and school-level to improve educational outcomes. From 1980 onwards there has been a growing number of studies in which the relation between school characteristics and the results at student level has been explored. The research deals in a cross-sectional research or a longitudinal research with the relationship between individual and educational characteristics on the one hand and educational outcomes or individual school careers of students on the other. A first attempt to replicate the American research into effective schools is the study by Vermeulen (1987). Vermeulen investigated the relation between five school characteristics and the effectiveness of schools among school leaders and teachers of 22 educational priorities schools in Rotterdam. By means of translating instruments used in American research that measured school characteristics (Schweizer, 1984) and the CITO primary school final achievement test he tried to verify the five effective school characteristics model for the Dutch situation. Of the five, only the characteristic of an orderly atmosphere aimed at the stimulation of learning could by reliably measured and proved to have a relation with the average learning achievement. Because of the unreliable measurements the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the questionnaires are not suited for the Dutch situation. The country report also refers to the first studies of Van de Grift (1987) into the relationship of educational leadership of primary school leaders and average pupil achievement. The instrument developed for measuring self-perceptions of educational leadership proved to contain reasonably reliable scales for various aspects of this educational leadership. The relations between these various aspects of educational leadership and average pupil achievement were on the whole negative, non-existent or at any rate non-linear. Van de Grift interprets these outcomes as an indication that school leaders react to pupil achievements instead of being able to influence these achievements. However, the lack of control for aptitude and socio-economic status of pupils renders these conclusions debatable. Further the first studies using new statistical programs like VAR-CL and HLM (Brandsma & Knuver, 1988) might be seen as an indication of the interest in the Netherlands for quantitative research using multilevel modelling. The first country report concludes: Most important in our view, however, is the research on what causes effectiveness. In previous and current research we obtained many factors and variables which could be important for explaining school effectiveness. But the results until now

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have been very ambiguous, not stable, and sometimes even conflicting with those from other programs. The use of the statistical techniques mentioned above in one method to get more decisive conclusions might be one way to improve the research. The other, more necessary, way is to improve theories and operationalisations of variables. The five factor model and the variables used in the research programs lack a firm basis. Specifically, we cannot explain why variables at school level cause the differences in achievement which are the result of the teachinglearning situation. In this respect, a distinction should be made between instructional effectiveness and school effectiveness. (In fact, some factors of school effectiveness are more related to instruction than others, for example, evaluation, feedback and time distribution). This makes it possible to bring about a relationship between school effectiveness research and educational research in teacher and curriculum effectiveness and even to link with learning models developed by Caroll, Bloom, Harnisfeger, Wiley and others. (Creemers & Lugthart, 1989, p. 98) The report pointed at two important issues which guided research and improvement in The Netherlands after 1990: the methodological and theoretical interest. The growing interest in research and the improvement of educational effectiveness was demonstrated by the large number of Dutch participants in the second Congress of ICSEI, one year later. About 20 academics working in school effectiveness and research improvement presented their work at this conference. Germany was presented by Aurin (1989) who came to the conclusion that: … in Germany, “effective school” research does not exist as a distinct field, although education research groups, administrations and governments of the eleven Länder are of course interested in knowing the causes of good school effectiveness and the possibilities of improving the effectiveness of poorer schools. Thus, “effective schools” research is indeed an important aspect of our work and of course also an important political goal. Consideration must however also be given to other problems in the field of education which are currently in the focus of public attention, for example unemployment among young people and the corresponding lack of motivation in schools; further the questions of instruction in ethics and religion, the tasks of social learning and of multi-cultural education and – last but not least – the problem of the contents and standards of general education. This is then the reality of German schools. On the other hand, the solution to these problems depends to a large extent on the pedagogical effectiveness of schools and on the necessary research in this area. (Aurin, 1989) The proceedings published after the second international congress (Creemers, Peters, & Reynolds, 1989) confirm the growing interest in the Netherlands for research on educational effectiveness. The section on school effectiveness research reports contained 15 studies. Eleven of them are written by Dutch researchers. However, in the section on school improvement there is no Dutch study at all. In the country report on the Netherlands Creemers & Knuver (1989, pp. 79–82) mention that there are some

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indications that educational policy and practice make use of the results of EER such as the design for the evaluation of Educational Priorities Program makes use of the available knowledge base on educational effectiveness and interest in educational journals for practitioners which pay attention to educational effectiveness issues. However, the majority of progress can be found in the research area. In the study of Brandsma and Knuver (1988) 8% of the variance in language and more than 12% of the variance in arithmetic could be connected to differences between schools, part of which could be explained by school and classroom organisational factors. Van der Hoeven – van Doornum, Voeten and Jungbluth (1989) studied in 53 schools the effect of aspiration levels set by teachers for their pupils learning achievement. The effects of school and teaching factors on learning achievement appeared to be small. Higher aspiration levels, however, tended to lead to higher test scores for children. Some 7% of the variance in test scores could be explained by the aspiration level of the teacher as a “direct or interaction effect.” It is interesting to see that from early days on there is an interest in Dutch research for methodological issues and the development of theoretical models for educational effectiveness. With respect to the methodological issues the country report refers to the study of Blok and Eiting (1988) about the size of school effects in primary schools. The results show that real differences between schools (after correction for differences which occurred by chance) as far as pupil achievement in language is concerned are very small. In this research the intra class correlation coefficient rho has been used to estimate school differences as compared to individual differences. Although rho was small for most schools, some school factors could influence this measure. Especially the effect of being a “stimulated” school appeared to be present. Another methodological issue is the stability of school effectiveness. In former studies the effectiveness of schools over the years or between forms did not seem to be very stable. Research conducted by Bosker, Guldemond, Hofman, and Hofman (1988) shows that, for the data they analysed, school effects seemed to be quite stable between school years and cohorts. Another study by Hofman and Oorburg (1988) shows the same trend. The correlation between residual scores of two successive school years was 0.73. It was also shown that this correlation drops when these school years are more distant from each other, which was also the case in the Bosker et al. research. Van den Eeden and Koopman (1988) studied the problem of outliers in random coefficient models for multilevel analysis. Their conclusion is that in interpreting the outcomes of analyses when using a random coefficient model, outliers have to be considered because they can influence the estimated parameters. For the theoretical orientation the country report refers to an early study of Scheerens and Creemers which contains the framework of a comprehensive model for school effectiveness taking into account the contingency approach with respect to organisational factors at the school level and the instruction-learning approach with respect to factors the classroom level (Scheerens & Creemers, 1989). In the country report two other countries appear: Sweden and Hungary. The section on Hungary contains largely a description of the educational system of Hungary in transition from centralised to more autonomy in individual schools. (Halasz & Horvath, 1989, pp. 73–74). The section on Sweden presents an ongoing research and improvement project into school ethos and social climate (Klintestam, Grosin, & Holmberg, 1989, pp. 90–92).

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After the proceedings of the first two international conferences on school effectiveness and school improvement, it was decided not to publish a country report every single year. The start of the Journal for School Effectiveness and School Improvement provided the opportunity to publish the papers presented at the international conferences. Incidentally, country reports about the development of educational effectiveness and improvement in specific countries were published (Creemers & Osinga, 1995; Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000; Townsend et al., 1999). These country reports show that there is a stable interest in educational effectiveness and improvement in the Netherlands. Also some other countries start with research into school effectiveness and school improvement, such as Belarus (Zagoumennov, 1995). The emphasis in Belarus is on educational reform such as the development of a new educational system, putting emphasis more on site-based than management and in relation to that the transformation of a program for school-leaders (Zagoumennov, 1995) and later on changes in the curriculum such as civics education program (Zagoumennov, 1999). In the 1999 overview (Townsend et al., 1999) three new countries provide a report, namely Norway (Hauge, 1999), France (Meuret, 1999) and Cyprus (Kyriakides, 1999). In Norway and Cyprus, educational reforms are in progress. These changes deal with the management of schools (from more centralised to decentralised) and the curriculum of the schools. EER and improvement – especially the evaluation of improvement efforts – are related to these reforms. Hauge comes to the conclusion that his review reveals that it is difficult to differentiate between studies into school effectiveness (research) and studies of school improvement. He addresses the point that compared to other countries Norway likes to keep its own educational policy. Compared to what happens in other countries in the Western world Norway has for many years been very cautious in implementing extensive external school evaluation systems. So far major efforts have been directed to school based evaluation programs focusing on empowerment and professionalisation of teachers and school leaders. Major control functions have been taken care of by other means of governing, for example, budgeting en through national school curricula. However, the national policy of school evaluation is gradually changing, influenced by societal demands on accountability, which are becoming more visible than ever before at the end of the twentieth century. This movement is challenging deep-rooted traditions in the Norwegian society, particularly those concerned with equality and equity in education. Meuret recognises that there is a growing interest in France for educational effectiveness but the main institutions in the field are more interested in the teacher or the policy level than in the school level. Results of school effectiveness research have been interpreted as showing that school effects are rather weak. Moreover, a culture gap remains between institutions mainly in charge of evaluation (Inspection Générale) and the culture of teachers on the one hand and school effectiveness on the other. Studies done in France show that at least for France the school process is highly dependent on the student body (Grisay, 1995) which could be an argument for designing effectiveness studies looking in more detail at effectiveness in schools and classrooms using standardised tests. A country that does not appear in the country reports is Belgium – Flanders, where in 1989 a project on educational effectiveness was started, the so-called cohort study LOSO

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in which students for followed during their secondary education. From 1996 on there is a growing number of publications, first in Dutch but later also in English, about the analysis of this cohort (Van Damme, De Fraine, Landeghem, Opdenakker, & Onghena, 2002). In mainland Europe countries are rather different with respect to educational effectiveness and improvement. In The Netherlands effectiveness and improvement research started in the eighties and caught up quite easily with international (US and UK) research in this area. In some other countries, for example, Cyprus it started rather late, and individual researchers picked up ideas from educational effectiveness and improvement. Even at the start there were some differences in interest between countries. In some countries the emphasis was originally on research into educational effectiveness and the methodology which is used in studies, like in The Netherlands. In other countries the emphasis or the starting point is educational reform and the emphasis is on the research and evaluation of educational innovations. Sometimes this turns into research on the effectiveness issues. This is not necessarily the case in all countries. In The Netherlands the emphasis is on research and it is used more or less in reforms. Belgium – Flanders is another example where originally it started as a research exercise and gradually it was used for reform efforts as well. In other countries however the prime interest is on the reforms in education and especially curriculum reform and decentralisation of education. In relation to the improvement interests there is also more emphasis on issues like educational leadership, management organisation and curriculum issues. Examples are Belarus and Hungary and to a lesser extent Norway, Sweden and Germany. In some countries interest in educational effectiveness and improvement comes up and gradually declines. This is reflected in country reports. Countries only appear once and others are quite stable over time. When we also take into consideration publications in international journals like the Journal for School Effectiveness and School Improvement, we see quite a constant interest in EER in Belgium – Flanders, The Netherlands and Cyprus.

(Some) Results of SESI in Europe It is difficult to give a description of European research on educational effectiveness and improvement. As mentioned in the previous section, the research and improvement processes in European countries are not related to each other. Countries have their own program and might participate in international research projects like the International School Effectiveness Research Project or the Effective School Improvement Project (Reynolds, Creemers, Stringfield, & Teddlie, 2000; Creemers, Stoll, Reezigt, & ESI team, 2007 in this volume). Similar topics in research and improvement receive attention in countries at different points in time. In the following we more or less disregard these differences and describe the results independent of the period of time and the country. In the specific format we make a difference between the effectiveness studies and improvement studies, especially the evaluation of improvement efforts. Within effectiveness studies we look in more detail in methodological studies which address issues like the stability of school effects and the way to measure the effects, studies that address different aspects of effectiveness and finally related to the European interest in

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development of theory and testing of theory, the development of theoretical models of theories about educational effectiveness and the testing of these models. With regard to the school improvement, we pay particular attention to the input and studies related to effectiveness and evaluation of educational improvement efforts.

Methodology of Educational Effectiveness Research Several studies address the issue of consistency of effectiveness across organisational sub-units and across time (stability). Luyten (1994) found inconsistency across grades: the difference between subjects within schools appeared to be larger than the general differences between schools. Moreover, the school effects for each subject also varied. Doolaard (1999) investigated stability over time by replicating the school effectiveness study carried out by Brandsma and Knuver (1989). Bosker (1990) found evidence for differential effects of school characteristics on the secondary school careers of low and high SES pupils. High and low SES pupils similarly profit from the type of school that appeared to be most effective: the cohesive, goal-oriented and transparently organised school. The variance explained by school types, however, was only 1%. With respect to the departmental level, some support for the theory of differential effects was found. Low SES pupils did better in departments characterised by consistency and openness, whereas high SES pupils were better off in other department types (explained variance 1%). Campbell, Kyriakides, Muijs, and Robinson (2003) found next to typical characteristics of effective teaching also differential teacher effects which can be combined with school characteristics. In a Flemish study into effective schools, De Maeyer and Rymenans (2004) found also a differential school effect. Some school teachers do not equally enhance the achievement level of different types of pupils. A strong educational policy has an effect on boys’ reading scores but not on girls’. Furthermore, some school features only seem to work in a certain grade or discipline. De Maeyer and Rymenans’ study focuses on a couple of methodological issues such as the design of the study. They show in simulation studies that the multi-cohort design produces results of equal value as longitudinal design. When the selection is not being taken into account, multi-cohort design leads to conservative statements of school effects. The inadequate modelling of selection leads to an over-estimation of the standard errors of parameter estimations for the effect of a school characteristic. Therefore it is more difficult to detect a significant effect. Further they compare different models by means of multi-level Structural Equation Modelling. Apart from direct effects also indirect effects (through an achievement oriented climate) and antecedent effects (characteristics of the school population) have been modelled. The last one shows the best fit in the research project. Luyten (2006) and Kyriakides and Luyten (2006) propose different ways of measuring school and schooling effects. The amount of variation between schools always looks small in comparison to differences in student achievement within schools. This is not a good indication for the effects of schooling. The effect of schooling might be substantial even though the differences between schools are limited. Kyriakides and Creemers (2006) suggest another way of measuring long-term effects of schools and teachers which might provide a better estimation of the effects of schooling.

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The methodological development in the past mainly concerned multi-level causal modelling but we need more complex modelling in effectiveness studies. It seems useful for instance to look at threshold levels of effectiveness characteristics, levels where effectiveness of a characteristic might turn into its opposite. The development of curvilinear model and system dynamic models to study the relationship between the effectiveness school factors and outcomes in a process of educational change is one of the major tasks in the near future of EER (see the section Modelling educational effectiveness).

Correlates of Educational Effectiveness Between 1985 and 1995 a number of studies were published in The Netherlands to find out which factors mentioned in the literature show positive and negative correlations with educational achievement. In their review Scheerens and Creemers (1995) table says Creemers and Osinga make an analysis of these studies (see Table 1). In the columns the total number of significant positive and negative correlations between these conditions and educational attainment are shown. The main organisational and instructional effectiveness enhancing conditions, as known from the international literature, are shown in the left-hand column. The total number of effectiveness studies presented in Table 1 in primary education is 29, while the total of studies in secondary education is 13, thus indicating that primary education is the main educational sector for effectiveness studies in The Netherlands. Primary and secondary education schools with a majority of lower

Table 1. Dutch school effectiveness studies: Total number of positive and negative correlations between selected factors and educational achievement Primary level Positive association Structured teaching/feedback Teacher experience Instructional leadership Orderly climate Student evaluation Differentiation Whole class teaching Achievement orientation Team stability/cooperation Time/homework Other variables Average between school variance Number of studies

Secondary level

Negative association

5 3

Positive association

Negative association

1 1 2

2 5 2 3 4

1 1 3 0 0 0 4

1

3 4 16

3 4 8

9 29

Note: Not all variables mentioned in the columns were measured in each and every study. Source: Creemers and Osinga (1995).

13.5 13

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SES-pupils and pupils from minority groups comprise the research sample of about 25% of the studies. The line near the bottom of the table that shows the percentage of variance that is between schools gives an indication of the importance of the factor “school” in Dutch education. The average percentage in primary schools is nine, and in secondary schools 13.5. It should be noted that this is an average not only over studies, but also over output measures. Generally schools have a greater effect on mathematics than on language/reading, as suggested in Fitz-Gibbon (1992). Since at the time the studies included in the review were conducted most primary schools had just one class per grade level, the school and classroom levels usually coincide. It is difficult to draw a firm conclusion about the contribution of factors at classroom and school level separately although there are indications that in The Netherlands the classroom level factors explain more variance in student outcomes than factors at other levels. A study related to both the instructional and school level carried out by the universities of Twente and Groningen was an experimental study aimed at comparing school-level and classroom-level determinants of mathematics achievement in secondary education. It was one of the rare examples of an effectiveness study in which treatments are actively controlled by researchers. The experimental treatments consisted of training courses that teachers received and feedback to teachers and pupils. Four conditions were compared: a condition where teachers received special training in the structuring of learning tasks and providing feedback on achievement to students; a similar condition to which consultation sessions with school leaders was added; a condition where principals received feedback about student achievement; and a no-treatment condition. Stated in very general terms, the results seemed to support the predominance of the instructional level and of the teacher behaviour (Brandsma, Edelenbos, Boskers, Akkermans, & Bos, 1995). Scheerens and Bosker (1997) confirm in a later review and an analysis of findings of international studies on school organisational or structural characteristics of educational effectiveness the limited evidence of school and structural characteristics. Qualitative reviews are more optimistic than the international analysis and research synthesis. On the school level monitoring and evaluation might have small effects as well as parental involvement and climate. Positive classroom conditions are related to aspects of structured teaching such as cognitive learning feedback, re-enforcement and adaptive instruction (Scheerens & Bosker, 1997, p. 305). Later studies in The Netherlands and elsewhere confirmed the importance of the factors mentioned (Reynolds, Teddlie, Creemers, Scheerens, & Townsend, 2000; Scheerens, 1999). Maslowski (2001) could identify five types of school cultures such as schools that were primarily oriented towards internal processes, achievement-oriented schools, changeoriented schools, control-oriented schools and “strong comprehensive” schools. The problem however was that none of these schools show a significant connection with student performance. In most studies, instructional factors dealing with structuring and evaluation could explain small parts of the variance in student outcomes. Even at the university level the quality of instruction and evaluation still have a (small) effect on student outcomes (Bruinsma, 2003).

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In Belgium – Flanders, the LOSO cohort study confirms largely the findings with regard to student background characteristics like ability and home environment, classroom characteristics like teacher and instructional characteristics and school organisational characteristics (Opdenakker, 2003). It is interesting to note that this study could explain variance in student behaviour based on the joint effects of schools and classrooms but also differential effects that are somewhat different than in other countries. When the strength was defined operationally in terms of family characteristics, indicators for intelligence and mathematics achievements or efforts for mathematics during the school year, it was found that students with a strong background have a strong sensitivity to the educational environment. However, when the strength of the student was defined in terms of motivation and general effort variables or in terms of the indicator for economic capital, it was found that students scoring low on prior achievement motivation or general effort or belonging to economically disadvantaged families are more sensitive to the educational environment than students scoring high on these characteristics (Opdenakker, 2003). Opdenakker found also evidence for configurations (combinations of characteristics at school- and classroom-level) which could explain variance in student outcomes. The other study in Belgium – Flanders (De Maeyer & Rymenans, 2004) could provide evidence for a relationship between effective education characteristics on the one hand and student outcomes on the other. As well as in the LOSO study (Van Damme et al., 2002) the study shows that the overall picture of an effective school differs for the cognitive and the non-cognitive criteria. Pupils perform relatively well on the cognitive level in a school with an orderly and positive climate, a high degree of achievement orientation, a powerful educational leadership, a smooth integration of the school leader and the middle management, and extensive co-operation within the team of teachers. Moreover, the school communicates extensively with the business community, and representatives from trade and industry from the non-profit sector participate in advisory committees. The school is prepared to adjust its curriculum and the contents and didactics of its subjects to suggestions from the business community. On the other hand pupils achieve worse for mathematics and/or reading comprehension in a school where general and practical subjects are integrated, where pupil counselling and tutoring are highly developed, and where an active policy is pursued on “learning to learn.” The school receives a substantial contribution of the business community on the technological and material level, training for pupils is being organised and the business community provides educational support for it. In a school where pupils feel well, an active policy is pursued on “learning to learn,” and tutoring is highly developed. And in a school where pupils feel bad, performance interviews are held, self-evaluation is carried out and the educational policy is evaluated regularly. Trying to explain why certain school features influence pupils’ achievement level or their well-being, is not always obvious. From our observations we have derived three tendencies of plausible explanations. It can be assumed that some school characteristics, such as educational leadership or an orderly and positive climate, influence pupils’ performance or well-being positively in a direct or indirect way. The observed negative effects we have tried to explain in two ways. It is plausible that school features

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such as pupil counselling or tutoring, are organised as a reaction on a negative situation (a low level of performance or well-being). Another possible explanation is that organising pupil counselling or tutoring is not sufficient to achieve good results; more important is that these school features are implemented in the most effective way (De Maeyer & Rymenans, 2004, pp. 361–362).

Modelling Educational Effectiveness and the Empirical Evidence As mentioned already in the first section there was from the beginning a strong interest in the development of models and/or theories that could explain differences in student outcomes in different schools. In the 1990s attention was given to studies that are strongly related to more or less explicit models of educational effectiveness as developed by Scheerens (1992) and Creemers (1994). The Scheerens model emphasises organisational factors such as the evaluation policy of the school in relation to what happens at the instructional level. In the comprehensive model of Creemers ideas about instructional effectiveness provide the main perspective. The emphasis is more on the classroom instructional level, grouping procedures and mediums for instruction like the teacher and instructional materials and the classroom-school interface. Larger educational effectiveness studies like the LOSO study in Belgium – Flanders (Van Damme et al., 2002) departed from the international theory and research and developed their own theoretical frameworks (see e.g., Opdenakker, 2003). These models all have a multi-level structure where schools are embedded in a context, classrooms are embedded in schools and students are embedded in classrooms or teachers. Most of the time, these models reflect the researcher’s own view on effectiveness, just a few models are based on further empirical evidence. In general, Deijnum can confirm in his study the importance of the classroom level in the comprehensive model, but he was not very successful in tracing the influence of policy- and school-level (Deinum, 2000). This might be caused by the general perspective (not precise enough) of his study. Later on more studies have been conducted in order to test the validity of the comprehensive model in more detail (De Jong, Westerhof, & Kruiter, 2004) and in Cyprus (Kyriakides, 2005; Kyriakides, Campbell, & Gagatsis, 2000; Kyriakides & Tsangaridou, 2004). All studies reveal that the influences on student achievement are multi-level. This finding is in line with the findings of most studies into educational effectiveness conducted in various other countries (Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000) and provide support for the argument that models of EER should be multi-level in nature. The analysis of the studies reveals that next to the multi-level nature of effectiveness the relationship between factors at different levels might be more complex than assumed in the comprehensive model. This is especially true for interaction effects among factors operating at the classroom- and student-level which reveals the importance of investigating differentiated effectiveness (Muijs, Campbell, Kyriakides, & Robinson, 2005). Further, the theories/models might include more student background factors (also suggested by Opdenakker, 2003). Finally, “new” learning and teaching processes related to a broader set of educational outcomes (like meta-cognition, see also De Jager, Jansen, & Reezigt, 2005).

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School Improvement and Evaluation Studies The International Congress for School Effectiveness and School Improvement (ICSEI) was established with the purpose to make a combination between educational effectiveness and school improvement. School improvement was particularly interesting for educational policy and practice and got attention in different European countries. This was mostly related to educational reforms within the countries and differed over time. In The Netherlands for example this was the case in the early nineties. Later on it became more important in other European countries as the process of decentralisation and school autonomy took place (e.g., in Spain in the mid-nineties and in Cyprus in the late-nineties). In educational practice the interest in educational effectiveness and the link with school improvement was may be like in educational policy triggered and stimulated by the fact that a knowledge base was available and usable to implement in education. In fact this was not the case and resulted in a distinction, and sometimes tension, between school effectiveness and school improvement. This is described in several studies (see e.g., Creemers & Reezigt, 1997; Reynolds, Teddlie, Hopkins, & Stringfield, 2000). All these descriptions result in a plea to (re)-establish a relationship between the two in order to make use of the mutual benefits of educational effectiveness on the one hand and educational improvement on the other. Empirically validated knowledge should be used in educational practice for educational improvement and the results of the evaluation of improvement efforts create the basis for theories about educational effectiveness. However, in general educational improvement concentrates on changes in schools through specific improvement projects. These projects emphasise the role and co-operation of different participants such as school-leaders, teachers, parents, students together and the support by internal and external advisors. Further educational improvement takes place through specific projects like for example Improving Educational Leadership (Huber, 2004) and specific strategies like school improvement through performance feedback (Visscher & Coe, 2002). Educational effectiveness was more successful in the evaluation of school reforms and improvement programs. The design of the studies reflected the conceptual frameworks of educational effectiveness for example, in the evaluation of the educational priority program in The Netherlands and the design of the Dutch cohort studies in primary and secondary education and for the evaluation frameworks used by inspectorates in different countries like, for example, in Belgium–Flanders and The Netherlands. Mostly smaller school improvement projects make a link between the educational effectiveness knowledge base and the implementation of knowledge in the strategy for school improvement and finally evaluation in terms of student outcomes. In The Netherlands, Houtveen carried out different projects in which the school effectiveness knowledge base was combined with ideas about adaptive instruction and was implemented in schools. The results are successful as can be seen in the evaluation of the mathematics program (Houtveen, van de Grift, & Creemers, 2004). In an international program in which several European countries have taken part an attempt is made to combine the effective educational knowledge base with school improvement programs and to look for successful combinations of the two in European

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countries. The project resulted in a framework that can be used to design and implement an effective school improvement project (see for more details Creemers, Stoll, & Reezigt, in this volume).

Conclusion It is clear from this section that educational effectiveness and improvement is an important topic. It combines different separated early research strands like teacher effectiveness, learning and instruction and school organisation. From the start between 1985 and 1990 in The Netherlands and afterwards in other countries, educational effectiveness has been an important program. Especially after 1990 different theoretical positions were developed and research has taken place to test specific arguments. In different areas progress has been made. The research in different countries and the elaboration of specific theoretical positions with respect to instructional and school organisational issues has been investigated. Progress has been made in the methodology and the scientific properties of EER (such as multi-level and structural equation modelling). Specific components such as opportunity to learn and stability issues have been studied intensively and successfully. The development of theories, models and frameworks for educational effectiveness turned out to be beneficial for educational effectiveness. Theoretical orientations have taken place in various areas of learning and instruction and school organisation. These theoretical orientations have guided research in mainland Europe in specific areas such as student background, instruction and school organisation as well as in the testing of the model as a whole. The merging between educational effectiveness on the one hand and educational improvement on the other is still an important (and so far unsolved) problem. Together it might be that their influence on educational practice and policy-making can be increased. At present the influence of educational effectiveness on practice and policy is modest and sometimes criticised (Thrupp, 2001 and the debate around it). The results of improvement projects in which effectiveness and improvement knowledge is combined points at the possibility to increase the contribution of effectiveness and improvement on educational practice. This issue points also to the fact that international comparative research and collaboration in the area of school effectiveness and school improvement is needed (Creemers, 2005; Reynolds, 2000, in press).

Future In the review of educational effectiveness and improvement in mainland Europe studies have been used that were done in different European countries and in different periods of time. In these studies recommendations have been made for the future. Some of them still hold. ●

Specific studies with respect to characteristics which can explain variance in educational effectiveness and improvement are still needed. These studies can be

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directed to specific factors and characteristics such as opportunity to learn, teaching, learning etc. It is still needed to clarify specific important scientific properties of educational effectiveness such as the size of the effects, stability, long-term effects of teachers, schools and schooling, and the differential effects. Operationalisation and instrumentation of variables needs improvement, preferably embedded in longitudinal, experimental and international studies. It is advocated to develop further theoretical models for studying educational effectiveness. In this respect it is important to note that new models should take notice of the research results from the past, for example, look for differential effects, relations between factors and between levels and the relationships between the factors and student outcomes (Creemers & Kyriakides, 2005). This also holds for the ongoing discussion in educational effectiveness in the relationship between the stability of effectiveness on the one hand and educational change, that is, the improvement of education on the other (see also Luyten, Visscher, & Witziers, 2005). International studies are needed. They can increase the variation and also emphasise the context in which the education takes place (Creemers, 2005; Reynolds, 2000). The foregoing review is based on national studies mainly, but the international studies such as the Effective School Improvement Project (Creemers et al., in this issue) and the International School Effectiveness Research Project (Reynolds, Creemers, Stringfield, Teddlie, & Schaffer, 2002) are examples of international studies which show that international studies might, more than national studies, increase our knowledge base. The same holds for the re-analysis of international comparative studies like the data-sets provided by the TIMSS and PISA with research questions derived from educational effectiveness theory (Kyriakides, 2005).

References Aurin, K. (1989). School effectiveness and improvement in the Federal Republic of Germany. School effectiveness and school improvement. Proceedings of the First International Congress of School Effectiveness and Improvement (pp. 83–87). School of Education, University College of Wales: Cardiff. Bennett, N. (1988). The effective primary school teacher: The search for a theory of pedagogy. Teaching and Teacher Education, 4(1), 19–30. Biddle, B. J. (1967). Methods and concepts in classroom research. Review of Educational Research, 37, 337–357. Blok, H., & Eiting, M. H. (1988). De grootte van schooleffecten: Hoe verschillend presteren leerlingen van verschillende scholen? Tijdschrift voor Onderwijsresearch, 13(1), 16–30. [The size of effects: How differently do pupils from different schools perform?]. Bosker, R. J. (1990). Extra kansen dankzij de school?: het differentieel effect van schoolkenmerken op loopbanen in het voortgezet onderwijs voor lager versus hoger milieu leerlingen en jongens versus meisjes [Does the school provide more chances?]. Proefschrift Groningen. Nijmegen: Instituut voor Toegepaste Sociale Wetenschappen. Bosker, R. J., Guldemond, H., Hofman, R. H., & Hofman, W. H. A. (1988). De stabiliteit van schoolkwaliteit. In J. Scheerens, & J. C. Verhoeven, (Eds.), Schoolorganisatie, beleid en onderwijskwaliteit. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger. [The stability of school quality]. Brandsma, H. P., Edelenbos, P., Boskers, R. J. M. M. V., Akkermans, W., & Bos, M. (1995). Effecten van trainingen voor docenten en schoolleiders. Een experiment in het voortgezet onderwijs. Enschede/Groningen: OCTO/GION.

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Doyle, W. (1986). Classroom organization and management. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed.) (pp. 392–431). New York: Macmillan. Edmonds, R. R. (1979). Effective schools for the urban poor. Educational Leadership, 37(1), 15–27. Eeden, P. van den, & Koopman, P. (1988). De invloed van outliers op de schattingen van de groepsparameters. Paper presented on the Dutch Educational Research Conference. Leuven, Belgium. [The influence of outliers on the estimates of group parameters]. Emmer, E. T. (1987). Classroom management. In M. J. Dunkin (Ed.), The international encyclopedia of teaching and teacher education (pp. 437–446). Oxford: Pergamon Press. Evertson, C. M., & Green, J. L. (1986). Observation as inquiry and method. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed.). New York: Macmillan. Fitz-Gibbon, C. T. (1992). School effects at A-level – Genesis of an information system. In D. Reynolds, & P. Cuttance (Eds.), School effectiveness: Research, policy and practice. London: Cassell. Flanders, N. (1970). Analyzing teacher behavior. Reading, MA: Addison-Wes. Fraser, B. J. (1986). Classroom environment. London: Croom Helm. Gage, N. L. (1972). Teacher effectiveness and teacher education. The search for a scientific basis. Palo Alto, CA: Pacific Books. Grift, W., van de. (1987). Implementatie van Vernieuwingen: De Rol van de Schoolleider. R. U. Leiden: proefschrift (dissertation University of Leiden). Grisay, A. (1995). Effective and less effective junior schools in France. Paper for the ICSEI congress in Leeuwarden, January 1995. Halasz, G., & Horvath, A. (1989). Hungary. In B. P. M. Creemers, T. Peters, & D. Reynolds (Eds.), School effectiveness and school improvement (pp. 73–74). Amsterdam/Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger. Hauge, T. E. (1999). Research and policy developments in school effectiveness and improvement in Norway. In T. Townsend, P. Clarke, & M. Ainscow (Eds.), Third millennium Schools. A world of difference in school effectiveness and school improvement (pp. 161–178). Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger. Hofman, R. H., & Oorburg, G. H. (1988). Schoolwerkplangebruik en schooleffectiviteit: selectie van outliers. Interimrapport RION, Groningen. [The use of school curricula and school effectiveness: The selection of outliers]. Houtveen, A. A. M., Grift, W. J. C. M., van de, & Creemers, B. P. M. (2004), Effective school improvement in mathematics. In B. P. M. Creemers, & D. Reynolds (Eds.), School effectiveness and school improvement. Lisse: Taylor & Francis. Huber, S. G. (2004). Preparing school leaders for the 21st century. An international comparison of development programs in 15 countries. London/New York: Routledge-Falmer. Jencks, C., Smith, M., Acland, H., Bane, M. J., Cohen, D., Gintis, H., et al. (1972). Inequality: A reassessment of the effects of family and schooling in America. New York: Basic Books. Klintestam, L., Grosin, L., & Holmberg, P. (1989). Sweden. In B. P. M. Creemers, T. Peters, & D. Reynolds (Eds.), School effectiveness and school improvement (pp. 90–92) Amsterdam/Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger. Kyriakides, L. (1999). The management of curriculum improvement in Cyprus: A critique of a “centreperiphery” model in a centralised system. In T. Townsend, P. Clarke, & M. Ainscow (Eds.), Third millennium schools. A world of difference in school effectiveness and school improvement (pp. 107–124). Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger. Kyriakides, L. (2005). Extending the comprehensive model of educational effectiveness by an empirical investigation. School Effectiveness and School Improvement 16(2), 103–152. Kyriakides, L., Campbell, R. J., & Gagatsis, A. (2000). The significance of the classroom effect in primary schools: An application of Creemers comprehensive model of educational effectiveness. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 11(4), 501–529. Kyriakides, L., & Creemers, B. P. M. (2006). Using different approaches to measure the school and teacher long-term effect: A longitudinal study on primary student achievement in mathematics. Paper presented at the Conference of ICSEI, Fort Lauderdale (USA), January 2006. Kyriakides, L., & Luyten, H. (2006). Using different methodological approaches and criteria to measure the effect of schooling: Implications for the development of educational effectiveness research. Paper presented at the Conference of ICSEI, Fort Lauderdale (USA), January 2006.

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Scheerens, J., & Creemers, B. P. M. (1989). Conceptualizing school effectiveness. International Journal of Educational Research, 13, 691–706. Scheerens, J., & Creemers, B. P. M. (1995). School effectiveness in the Netherlands: Research, policy and practice. In B. P. M. Creemers, & N. Osinga (Eds.), ICSEI country reports (pp. 81–106). Leeuwarden, Netherlands: ICSEI Secretariat. Schon, D. A. (1971). Beyond the stable state. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Schweitzer, J. H. (1984). Characteristics of effective schools. AERA paper, New Orleans. Stringfield, S. (1994). A model of elementary school effects. In D. Reynolds, B. P. M. Creemers, P. S. Nesselrodt, E. C. Schaffer, S. Stringfield, & C. Teddlie (Eds.), Advances in school effectiveness research and practice (pp. 153–187). Oxford: Pergamon Press. Teddlie, C., & Reynolds, D. (2000). The international handbook of school effectiveness research. London: Falmer Press. Thrupp, M. (2001). Sociological and political concerns about school effectiveness research: Time for a new research agenda. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12(1), 7–40. Townsend, T., Clarke, P., & Ainscow, M. (Eds.). (1999). Third millennium schools. A world of difference in school effectiveness and school improvement. Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger. Van Damme, J., De Fraine, B., Van Landeghem, G., Opdenakker, M. C., & Onghena, P. (2002). A new study on educational effectiveness in secondary schools in Flanders: An introduction. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 13(4), 383–397. Van de Grift, W. (1987). Implementatie van vernieuwingen: de rol van de schoolleider [Implementation of innovations: The role of the school leader]. University of Leiden: Dissertation. Van de Grift, W. (1990). Educational leadership and academic achievement in elementary education. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 1(1), 26–40. Van der Hoeven-Van Doornum, A. A., Voeten, M. J. M., & Jungbluth, P. (1989). The effects of aspiration levels set by teachers for their pupils. In B. P. M. Creemers, T. Peters, & D. Reynolds (Eds.), School effectiveness and school improvement (pp. 231–239). Amsterdam/Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger. Van Landeghem, G., Van Damme, J., Opdenakker, M. C., De Fraine, B., & Onghena (2002). The effect of schools and classes on noncognitive outcomes. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 13(4), 429–452. Veenman, S. (1992). Effectieve instructie volgens het directe instructiemodel [Direct instruction]. Pedagogische Studiën, 69(4), 242–269. Veenman, S., Lem, P., Roelofs, E., & Nijssen, F. (1992). Effective instructie en doelmatig Klassemanagement [Effective instruction and adequate classroom management]. Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger. Vermeulen, C. J. (1987). De effectiviteit van onderwijs bij zeventien Rotterdamse stimuleringsscholen. Pedagogische Studieen, 64, 49–58. Visscher, A. J., & Coe, R. (2002). School Improvement through performance feedback. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger. Zagoumennov, I. (1995). Guidelines for evaluation of school effectiveness. Minsk: Ministry of Education of the Republic of Belarus (in Russian). Zagoumennov, I. (1999). School effectiveness and school improvement in the Republic of Belarus. In T. Townsend, P. Clarke, & M. Ainscow (Eds.), Third millennium schools (pp. 89–106). A world of difference in school effectiveness and school improvement. Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger.

ASIA AND THE PACIFIC

13 SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT IN ASIA: THREE WAVES, NINE TRENDS AND CHALLENGES

Yin-Cheong Cheng and Wai-ming Tam

In the past three decades, there have been numerous initiatives for school effectiveness and improvement in many countries and areas of Asia. These initiatives were in response to the influences and needs of social, economic, and political developments in fast-changing regional and global environments. Given the increasing interactions between Asia and its counterparts such as North America, Australia, and Europe in the past decades, the review and analysis of the development and effect of these efforts at the country and the regional levels in Asia may be in a larger international context of educational reforms in different parts of the world. This chapter aims to provide an overview of the development of initiatives for school effectiveness and improvement in Asia. It also aims to show how the development has experienced three waves of educational reforms with contrastingly different paradigms in policy formulation and practical implementation. Furthermore, this chapter reviews the nine trends and related challenges of initiatives for changing school education and draws implications for research, policy, and practice in school effectiveness and improvement.

Three Waves of School Effectiveness and Improvement As part of worldwide educational reforms, the initiatives of school effectiveness and improvement in various areas of Asia have experienced three waves of movement in the past decades (Cheng, 2001c, 2001d, 2005) (see Figure 1). The first wave focuses on internal school effectiveness, and the second wave on interface school effectiveness. The third wave emphasizes future school effectiveness. Each wave has a focus and a paradigm in conceptualizing the theory of school effectiveness, initiatives for school improvement, and methods of implementation and practice at the system, site, and operational levels. These three waves of school initiatives, when considered together, are themselves a general typology for capturing and understanding the key paradigms 245 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 245–268. © 2007 Springer.

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Effective school movements

E Effectiveness

1980s–1990s Internal effectiveness Figure 1.

Quality/competitive school movements

Q Quality

1990s Interface effectiveness

World class school movements

R Relevance

2000s Future effectiveness

Three waves of school effectiveness and improvement

and characteristics of various educational reforms for school effectiveness and improvement in Asia in these three decades.

First Wave: Effective School Movements Since the 1980s, following the successful expansion of basic education systems to meet the needs of national economic developments, many policy-makers and educators in Asia began to pay attention to the improvement of internal school process, including teaching and learning. The aim was to enhance internal school effectiveness in achieving planned educational aims and curriculum targets. In Hong Kong, India, South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, and mainland China, numerous initiatives were evident to target improving some factors of internal school process. Examples are school management, teacher quality, curriculum design, teaching methods, evaluation approaches, facilities, and environment for teaching and learning (Abdullah, 2001; Cheng, 2001a; Gopinathan & Ho, 2000; Kim, 2000; Rajput, 2001; Tang & Wu, 2000). There is a strong emphasis on using the benchmarking concept (Bogan & English, 1994) to ensure that the effectiveness or performance of some internal factors is at a certain standard. For example, in Hong Kong, English language teachers were asked to take a benchmark examination in order to show their English language proficiency reached a given benchmark (Coniam, Falvey, Bodycott, Crew, & Sze, 2000). Consistent with the effective school movements in the UK, the US, and Australia, the efforts for school improvement in the above areas of Asia often assumed that goals and objectives of school education were clear and had the consensus of all involved parties – parents, students, teachers, employers, policy-makers, and social leaders. Therefore, the first wave of school initiatives in Asia focused mainly on internal effectiveness

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assurance. Efforts were made to improve and ensure the internal performance of schools generally, and the methods and processes of teaching and learning in particular, to achieve the planned school goals. Then, higher achievement represented higher school effectiveness. As indicated in the latter part of this chapter on trends of educational reforms, many of the initiatives and changes made were government-directed and top-down. The aim was to rationalize institutional arrangements and improve educational practices for enhancing their effectiveness in achieving the goals planned at either the site level or the system level. Improvement of teacher performance and then student learning outcomes to identified standards, particularly in public examinations or international academic assessments, was obviously a popular and important target for school improvement in this first wave. Over the past decades, numerous initiatives of the first wave have been introduced in Asia and other parts of the world (Cheng & Townsend, 2000; Dimmock, 2003). Some focused on improvement of school management and classroom environment (Cheng, 1996b); some on curriculum development and change (Baker & Begg, 2003; Cheng, Chow, & Tsui, 2000); some on teacher qualifications and competencies (Cheng, Chow, & Mok, 2004; Fidler & Atton, 1999; Gopinathan & Ho, 2003; Lee, 2004; Walia, 2004; Wang, 2004); some on improvement of teaching and learning processes (Bubb, 2001; Morgan & Morris, 1999; Renshaw & Power, 2003); and some on evaluation and assessment (Headington, 2000; Leithwood, Aitken, & Jantzi, 2001; MacBeath, 1999, 2000; Mohandas, Meng, & Keeves, 2003; Sunstein & Lovell, 2000). Unfortunately, the results of these efforts were often very limited and could not satisfy the increasing needs and expectations of the public. People began to doubt the effectiveness of the improvement initiatives in meeting the diverse needs and expectations of parents, students, employers, policy-makers, and those concerned in the community. How can education be held accountable to the public? How relevant to the changing demands of the local community are education practices and outcomes? All these questions are concerned with the interface between education institutions and the community. This means that assurance of school effectiveness is not only a question of internal process improvement but is also an interface issue of meeting the stakeholders’ satisfaction and ensuring accountability to the community.

Second Wave: Quality School Movements In the 1990s, in response to concerns about school accountability to the public and the quality of education satisfying stakeholders’ expectations, the second wave of international educational reforms for school effectiveness and improvement emerged. This wave emphasized interface school effectiveness, typically defined by education quality, stakeholders’ satisfaction, and market competitiveness. Most policy efforts were directed at ensuring the quality and accountability of schools to the internal and external stakeholders (see, e.g., Coulson, 1999; Evans, 1999; Goertz & Duffy, 2001; Headington, 2000; Heller, 2001; Mahony & Hextall, 2000). In some areas of Asia, such as Hong Kong, South Korea, India, mainland China, Singapore, and Taiwan, there was a growing trend of quality school movements

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emphasizing quality assurance, school monitoring and review, parental choice, student coupons, parental and community involvement in governance, school charters, and performance-based funding. These are some typical examples of the measures taken to pursue and enhance effectiveness at the interface between schools and the community (Cheng & Townsend, 2000; Mohandas et al., 2003; Mok et al., 2003; Mukhopadhyay, 2001; Pang et al., 2003). In the second wave, school effectiveness (or more commonly, school quality) mainly refers to the satisfaction of stakeholders (parents, students, policy-makers, etc.) with the education services of a school. The accountability of a school to the public is often perceived as an important indicator for satisfying the needs of key stakeholders. Therefore, assurance of school effectiveness in this wave often means the efforts to ensure education services provided by schools are satisfying the needs of stakeholders and are accountable to the public. In the past decade, there have been numerous initiatives of the second wave introduced in Asia and other parts of the world. The use of school monitoring, school self-evaluation, quality inspection, indicators and benchmarks, survey of the satisfaction of key stakeholders, accountability reporting to the community, and school development planning has become more and more popular in ensuring interface school effectiveness and improvement (Cheng, 1997b; Glickman, 2001; Headington, 2000; Jackson & Lund, 2000; Leithwood et al., 2001; MacBeath, 1999, 2000; Smith, Armstrong, & Brown, 1999; Sunstein & Lovell, 2000). For example, in South Korea, Hong Kong, mainland China, and Thailand, school-based management is being promoted as the major school reform that includes most of these initiatives for ensuring interface effectiveness between the school and the community (Caldwell, 2003; Cheng, 1996a, 2003a). At the turn of the millennium, rapid globalization, the long-lasting effects of information technology (IT), the drastic shock of the economic downturn, and strong demands for economic and social developments in international competition stimulated deep reflection on educational reforms in Asia (Keeves, Njora, & Darmawan, 2003; Ramirez & Chan-Tiberghein, 2003). Policy-makers and educators had to think of ways to reform curriculum and pedagogy and to prepare young people to more effectively cope with the fast-changing environment of the future. In such a context, most policy-makers and educators began to doubt whether the second wave of educational reforms could meet the challenges in a new era of globalization, IT, and the knowledge-based economy. They were concerned about the relevance of interface school effectiveness to the future development of students. It is not surprising that, even though school performance is accountable to the community and stakeholders are satisfied, education may be “useless” or ineffective in the new millennium, if it has nothing to do with the future needs of students and the society.

Third Wave: World-Class School Movements To ensure that the younger generation can meet the challenges and needs of rapid transformations in an era of globalization and IT, many educators, policy-makers, and stakeholders in Asia and other regions urge a paradigm shift in learning and teaching. They demand a reform of the aims, content, practice, and management of school education, to ensure relevance to the future (see, e.g., Burbules & Torres, 2000; Cheng,

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2000a, 2000b, 2003a; Daun, 2001; Ramirez & Chan-Tiberghein, 2003; Stromquist & Monkman, 2000). In such a global context in the new century, there is an emerging third wave of school reforms and initiatives in Asia, with strong emphasis on future school effectiveness, often defined by the relevance of school education to the future developments of individuals and their society. In particular, this relevance is in relation to new education functions in the new century, and a new paradigm of education concerning contextualized multiple intelligences, globalization, localization, and individualization (Baker & Begg, 2003; Cheng, 2005; Maclean, 2003). As a result of strong implications from globalization and international competition, this third wave of school reforms is often driven by the notion of world-class school movements. School effectiveness and improvement should be defined by world-class standards and global comparability to ensure that the future developments of students and societies are sustainable in such a challenging era of globalization. Therefore, the pursuit of new vision and aims of school education, lifelong learning, global networking, international outlook, and use of IT are just some evidence of the emerging third wave in many advanced and developing areas of Asia (Cheng, 2001a; Pefianco, Curtis, & Keeves, 2003; Peterson, 2003). The above three waves of school reforms provide us with an overview to show how educators and policy-makers in Asia have employed different paradigms and focuses in conceptualizing initiatives and making efforts for school effectiveness and improvement in the last decades.

Nine Trends for School Effectiveness and Improvement Asia is one of the fastest developing areas in the world. Since the 1990s, huge national resources have been invested in education and related initiatives in nearly every country in the region, in order to bring about substantial improvement and development in various aspects of society (Cheng, 2003a). Unfortunately, many countries are still very disappointed with their school education, in view of the challenges of the new century. In order to redress the problems in the school system, they are proposing more and more reforms to improve the practice and effectiveness of education at different levels. Therefore, we would like to know the following: What lessons can be learned and shared from these ongoing educational reforms in Asia, so that we can avoid repeating failure, thus preparing for policy formulation and implementation of educational changes in our own countries? Particularly for policy-makers, educators, and researchers, the following questions should receive due attention in considering educational reforms for school effectiveness: ●

●

●

What are the major trends and characteristics of the ongoing educational reforms for school effectiveness in Asia? What are the major challenges that policy-makers and educators are facing in the current educational reforms, particularly in such a new era of globalization, IT, competition, and the knowledge-driven economy? What implications can be drawn from these trends and challenges for research and policy development in the areas of school effectiveness and improvement?

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Based on the comprehensive reviews of Cheng (1999, 2003a, 2003b) and Cheng and Townsend (2000), and with reference to Keeves and Watanabe (2003), nine major trends of ongoing educational reforms for school effectiveness and improvement in Asia can be observed. These trends are mainly in the second and third waves (see Figure 2). The discussion that follows is guided by a conceptual framework for a four-level analysis that reflects the scope, focus, and general nature of the trends.

Trends of Reforms at Four Levels in the Second and Third Waves At the macro level, the main trends include: (1) re-establishing a new national vision and new educational aims for schools; (2) restructuring school systems at different levels for new educational aims; and (3) market-driving, privatizing, and diversifying school education. The first two are in the domain of the third wave and the last one in the second wave. To a great extent, these trends address the important issues at the societal level, particularly the following: ●

●

●

How can the national vision and aims in school education be redefined and, correspondingly, the school systems be restructured to cope effectively with the challenges in an era of globalization, IT, and a knowledge-based economy? How can the consumption of limited resources be maximized in planning and managing school education provision for meeting new educational aims and satisfying the diverse and increasing demands from the society, the community, and individuals? How can the various educational services by schools be financed to achieve national aims in a more equitable, efficient, and effective way?

Macro level • Towards re-establishing new national vision and education aims for schools • Towards restructuring school system at different levels • Towards market-driving, privatizing, and diversifying school education

School operational level • Towards using it and new technologies in education • Towards paradigm shifts in learning, teaching, and assessment

Figure 2.

Nine trends for school effectiveness and improvement

3rd wave

School site level • Towards ensuring education quality, standards, and accountability • Towards decentralization and school-based management • Towards enhancing teacher quality and lifelong professional development

2nd wave

Meso level • Towards parental and community involvement in school education

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At the meso level, increasing parental and community involvement in school education and management is a salient trend. The educational reforms in this trend often encourage and promote wide participation and partnership in school education. The purpose is to broaden support from the community and family for the provision of quality educational services and to ensure the accountability of schools to the public. This is especially important when the educational services provided are funded with public money. This trend is in the domain of the second wave. At the site level, the major trends are: (1) ensuring education quality, standards, and accountability in schools; (2) increasing decentralization and school-based management; and (3) enhancing teacher quality and lifelong professional development. In general, these trends address the issues at the school level, the first two in the domain of the second wave and the last one in both the second and third waves. The trends address the following questions: ●

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How can the quality, effectiveness, and accountability of education be provided in schools to meet diverse expectations and demands? How can an authority be decentralized to maximize the flexibility and efficiency in consuming resources to solve problems and meet diverse needs at the school site level? How can teacher quality and educational leadership in schools be enhanced to provide better educational services in such a fast-changing and challenging environment?

At the operational level of schools, the main trends include (1) using information technology in learning and teaching and applying new technologies in management, and (2) making a paradigm shift in learning, teaching, and assessment. The reforms aim to facilitate change and development of educational practices in schools, particularly at the classroom or the operational level, in order to meet the future development needs of individuals and society. These two trends are in the domain of the third wave.

Towards Re-Establishing New National Visions and Educational Aims for Schools In facing the rapid changes and global challenges from economic, cultural, and political transformations, national leaders in Asia have become dissatisfied with the short-term achievements of their school systems. Political leaders increasingly draw connections between the role of school education and the achievement of their national visions for growth and prosperity in the new era. They propose new educational visions and long-term aims for schools to prepare the new generation for the future in a globally competitive environment. This trend is consistent with the third wave of initiatives, which aims at future school effectiveness. Malaysia is a typical example of this connection between national visions and educational goals. Under Dr. Mahathir Mohammed’s leadership, the Malaysian government put forward Vision 2020. This plan, developed during the 1980s, proposed that Malaysia would transform itself from a commodity-export country to an industrialized and developed country by the year 2020. Education in general and schools in

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particular played a central role in Vision 2020 as an instrument for promoting national unity, social equality, and economic development (Lee, 2000). By way of further example, Singapore’s national leaders took a similarly strategic view of school education in their plans for nation building. Indeed, they accepted the challenge of making learning part of the national culture. Accordingly, they proposed the slogan “Thinking schools, a learning nation” as a vision for directing national educational changes. This is illustrated in Gopinathan and Ho (2000, p. 161): … While the national economy (Singaporean) is adjusting through structural shifts, such as liberalisation, deregulation, and privatization, which help integrate a national economy with the larger world economy …, the education system must also adjust structurally to a changing national economy. Many similar examples can be found in Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Singapore. Leaders in these countries and areas have reviewed their educational aims and established new goals that reflect new national and global visions (see, e.g., Castillo, 2001; Cheng, 2001a, 2001b; Rajput, 2001; Rung, 2001; Sereyrath, 2001; Shan & Chang, 2000; Sharpe & Gopinathan, 2001; Suzuki, 2000; Tang, 2001; Yu, 2001). Nonetheless, the changing role of school education in national development has created serious challenges for educators, leaders, and practitioners in Asia. They have to echo these new national visions and goals and consider changes in the aims, content, process, and practice of school education. They are facing important challenges, such as: (1) How can they conduct effectively these necessary changes in the school systems? (2) How should they lead their teachers, students, and other stakeholders to face to the changes and pursue a new school education that is relevant to the future? (3) How can they ensure school changes that are relevant to the national growth and development in a competitive global environment? (4) How can the knowledge base of educational aims and school functions be broadened to support more relevant policy-making and educational planning? (5) Given that there are new functions of schools in the new century, including technical, economic, human, social, political, cultural, and educational functions (Cheng, 1996a), it is necessary to ask to what extent the ongoing school reforms take all these functions into consideration. Unfortunately, there seems to be lack of a comprehensive knowledge framework for policy-makers and country leaders in Asia to have a broader perspective for review and development of the new school aims. There is an urgent need for educational research to understand and tackle these issues in the process of redefining and re-establishing school aims in the light of new national visions in the new century.

Towards Restructuring the School System at Different Levels The development of the school system often has to meet the needs of the development of the economy in the country (Chabbott & Ramirez, 2000). In the past two or three decades, most developing countries or areas in Asia have made great efforts to expand

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compulsory education to nine years, when they were establishing their industries. Now, some of them are making efforts to expand their senior secondary school sectors and improve enrolment to higher education. Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia, and Taiwan are representative cases (Cheng, 2001a, 2001b; Kim, 2000; Lee, 2000; Shan & Chang, 2000). Comparatively, some countries like Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos put more effort into further expanding compulsory education (Pok, 2001; Sereyrath, 2001; Sisavanh, 2001). Singapore and Taiwan provide more vocational and technical training opportunities at the secondary and post-secondary levels (Gopinathan & Ho, 2000; Shan, & Chang, 2000). All these efforts directly or indirectly contribute to school effectiveness and improvement at the system level. In facing the challenges of globalization, the knowledge-based economy, and international competition, some areas in Asia – such as South Korea, mainland China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Singapore – are very concerned with the effectiveness and relevance of the school system to their national development in a highly competitive global context. They have started to review and change the school system from early childhood education to citizenship and lifelong education. For example, they put more emphasis on early childhood education, enhancing the provision of vocational education in quantity, quality, variety, and relevance, and to reviewing the interface between levels of school education. The reform of the examination system is also an important area of review in education systems. For example, in mainland China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Malaysia, many different types of policy efforts are being made, to review and change the examination system. The purposes of these changes are to reflect the changes towards new aims of school education, to improve the process of selection and allocation of students, to promote multiple intelligences of students, to enhance educational equality, to redirect educational practice, and to redress serious drawbacks in the examination-oriented culture, particularly in some Asian countries. This trend of efforts is in the line of the third wave of reforms for school effectiveness and improvement. In the process of reviewing and restructuring the school system, policy-makers, educators, and researchers in the region have to face some challenges in such a fundamental structural change. For example: (1) Given changes in educational aims and national vision, how can the restructuring of the school system serve the needs of these changes and be relevant to the future? (2) There may be a number of options for school systems that can serve new educational aims and national visions. How can policy-makers identify those options and understand which one is most appropriate for the country within the existing cultural, political, and economic constraints (Cheng, Ng, & Mok, 2002)? (3) Reform of the school system is in fact a fundamental structural change, involving complicated and extensive political interests and concerns of nearly all key parties and actors in education and the larger community. As such, how can policy-makers and stakeholders overcome all existing structural and political difficulties and conflicts involved in review and reform, and then reach a rational, feasible, and commonly acceptable plan for action (Cheng, & Cheung, 1995)?

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(4) The reform of the school system is a very complex and large-scale social endeavor and should be founded on a very comprehensive knowledge base for review, planning, and implementation at different levels of the school system. How can policy-makers, educators and other key actors be provided with such a knowledge base for their actions? Clearly, all these challenges and issues would inevitably become a core agenda for policy debate that needs to be examined and investigated extensively by research. Unfortunately, there would seem to be a gap between the ongoing reform and the research being undertaken in many countries in Asia.

Towards Market-Driving, Privatizing, and Diversifying School Education There are tight financial constraints on meeting the rapidly increasing needs of diverse developments in nearly all countries in Asia. Policy-makers in some countries are trying to shift the exclusive public funding model to privatization as an important approach to expanding, diversifying, and improving school education. For example, China is caught in the stream of development, and its market economy playing an increasingly important role. It is confronting more complicated and tighter financial constraints in developing its school system to satisfy the huge and diverse needs for education (Tang & Wu, 2000). In South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, China, and the Philippines, it is generally believed that privatization will allow schools to increase the flexibility of use of physical and human resources. How to create a market or semi-market environment for promoting competition between schools has become a salient issue in reform at the turn of the century. Some areas in Asia (e.g., Kong Hong) are experimenting with funding methods designed to encourage self-improvement as well as competition among schools. Some (e.g., Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong) are trying out different types of parental choice schemes. As this trend is in the domain of the second wave of initiatives for interface school effectiveness, some critical issues are emerging to challenge policy-makers, social leaders, and educators. Salient examples are listed below: (1) How can equity and quality in school education be ensured for students in disadvantaged circumstances? This is often a crucial issue in policy debate in many developing countries in the region (Cheng et al., 2002). (2) There are diverse and conflicting expectations of stakeholders about school education in Asia. For example, teachers or educators emphasize the citizenship quality of their graduates. Parents are more concerned about whether their children can pass the examinations and get the necessary qualifications for employment. Employers often doubt whether the graduates have the necessary knowledge and skills to perform in the workplace. In view of the above, how should the expectations of these key stakeholders be identified and given priority, if schools have to survive in a competitive market environment? How should schools deal

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with the diverse and even conflicting expectations of different stakeholders on the aims, content, practice, and outcomes of school education? (3) The market forces may or may not aim at achieving and realizing the national aims and visions through school education. As such, how can policy-makers and educators ensure that the market forces at the local or the community level are in operation in the direction of development at the national or international level? (4) Specifically, how consistent are the parental or individual choices in school education with the national visions and goals? How should these choices be supported by the state? (5) To what extent should a national framework of school education be set according to the market system and privatization, without hindering initiatives from the marketplace but maintaining the national direction and forces within global competitiveness? The above are just some of the dilemmas and issues that policy-makers and educators face in formulating changes in school education towards marketization and privatization. Unfortunately, the knowledge for understanding and handling these challenges in Asia is slight. Research in this important area to address and inform the management of the above challenges is inevitably necessary, if the trend towards marketization and privatization in education is to be maintained.

Towards Parental and Community Involvement in Education During the past several decades, parents and the community have increased the expectations of education and are becoming more demanding of better school performance for their children. Also, there is an increasing demand for school accountability to the public and to demonstrate value for money, because school education is mainly financed with public funds (Adams, & Kirst, 1999). Inevitably, educational leaders at the school, district, and national levels have to provide more direct avenues for parents and the community to participate in developing the schools. In many Asian areas like Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Thailand, a tradition of parental participation and community partnership in school education has been largely absent. Recently, people in these areas have become more aware of the importance of involving parents and local communities in school education (Pang et al., 2003; Wang, 2000). Although there is seldom legislation in some areas to guarantee parental involvement in school education, sentiment is growing that parents should be given this right (Tik, 1996). In addition to parents, the local community and the business sector are direct stakeholders in school education. Their experiences, resources, social networks, and knowledge are often very useful to the development and delivery of school education. From a positive perspective, community involvement can benefit schools by providing more local resources, support, and intellectual input, particularly when schools are facing the increasing but diverse demands for quality education. This growing trend of parental and community involvement in education in Asia is in the domain of the

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second wave for pursuing interface school effectiveness. The major concerns in this trend may include the following: (1) How to promote and implement parental and community participation in schools effectively is still difficult. Most Asian countries lack a culture of accepting and supporting the practice of parental and community involvement. This type of involvement is often perceived as an act of distrust of teachers and principals. How can policy-makers and educators change this culture? (2) Parental and community involvement in school management and leadership will inevitably increase the complexity, ambiguities, and uncertainties in the political domain of schools. Would the induced political problems and difficulties from external involvement in fact dilute the scarce time and energy of teachers and leaders from educational work with students? How can they be well prepared to handle these problems? Unfortunately, research in this area is still underdeveloped, particularly in the context of the Asian tradition.

Towards Ensuring Education Quality, Standards and Accountability Along the second wave of educational reforms, since the 1990s, there have been a lot of school initiatives in many areas of Asia with a strong emphasis on school quality assurance, and accountability to the public (Mok et al., 2003). Particularly following quality movements in the business and industry sectors over the last two decades, concepts and measures such as quality control, quality assurance, total quality management, and benchmarking have been included in efforts for school effectiveness and improvement (Mukhopadhyay, 2001). In Asia, some areas such as China, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, and Thailand have introduced different types of quality assurance initiatives to monitor and promote education quality and accountability as a major approach to school effectiveness and improvement (Abdullah, 2001; Lloyd, 2001; Mok et al., 2003; Mukhopadhyay, 2001; Townsend, 2000). In planning and implementing these initiatives, some issues are challenging policy-makers, educators, and researchers (Cheng 1997a, 1997b): (1) How can they know the satisfaction and expectations of existing stakeholders are relevant to the future development of the new generation and the society? (2) How can they ensure a balance between a school’s internal development and accountability to the public? A very strong emphasis on accountability to the public is often accompanied by close supervision and control that restricts initiatives for internal development and creates stronger defensive mechanisms that limit effective organizational learning of schools. (3) How can different stakeholders with diverse and even conflicting interests handle the potential contradictory purposes between school self-evaluation and external evaluation for quality assurance?

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(4) Educational processes are complicated, involving many factors. How can they know what indicators are valid and reliable to reflect quality and effectiveness in education, and what combinations of indicators of input, performance, and outcomes are appropriate to schools in specific contexts or a specific time frame? (5) Monitoring education quality at the school site level should be different from that at the system level. How could this difference be managed in a more efficient and effective way, so that schools are not overburdened?

Towards Decentralization and School-Based Management As discussed, school-based management is a major school reform of the second wave in many areas of Asia and other parts of the world. Since the 1990s, it has aimed at enhancing school autonomy and then interface effectiveness to meet the changing expectations of the local community and stakeholders. For example, in Hong Kong, the School Management Initiative was implemented in 1991 with the goal of enhancing education quality through school-based management. Hong Kong’s Education Commission further reinforced school-based management as one facet of its quality assurance process for all schools in 1997 (Education Commission, 1997). In South Korea, hundreds of public primary and secondary schools experimentally organized a School Governing Board involving teachers, parents, principals, alumni, and community leaders, to promote school self-management and to enable schools to provide diverse educational services to meet the needs of their local communities (Kim, 2000). In Malaysia, the administrative system is being decentralized, to encourage school-based management and teacher empowerment (Lee, 2000). In Singapore, the government set up autonomous schools as early as 1991, as a mechanism for improving quality in education (Gopinathan & Ho, 2000). In China, decentralization of power from the central government to local communities and to the school level is becoming evident. School autonomy and the participation of local communities are now being encouraged, to facilitate school development and effectiveness (Tang & Wu, 2000). According to Cheng and Townsend (2000), in the change from traditional external control management to school-based management (SBM), Asian countries may confront a number of issues that have to be tackled in the process of school reform. These are: (1) After decentralizing authority and power to the school site level, there is a need to keep self-managing schools and teachers accountable with respect to the quality of education provided and the use of public money. Even though a concept of “tight-loose coupling” (Cheng, 1996a) has been proposed to tackle this issue, it is still a long way from being put into practice. It remains a key area in ongoing policy discussion about decentralization in education (Cheng & Ng, 1994). (2) Often, people believe that better schools may take advantage of having greater autonomy to recruit better students and teachers, and procure more resources so that educational inequality will not only be maintained but enlarged, particularly for disadvantaged students.

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(3) The shift to SBM represents a type of change in management technology. Yet, whether or not it can be effectively implemented at both the system and school site levels depends heavily on the cultural change for those concerned (Levy, 1986; Ng & Cheng, 1995). Numerous studies have reported that various barriers and conflicts exist in implementing SBM, because both educational officers at the system level and school practitioners at the school level still have the attitude of external control management when implementing management change to the SBM model (Cheng & Chan, 2000). (4) Many contemporary SBM studies address self-management only at the school level and often assume that increased autonomy and responsibility given to schools will result in increased school effectiveness in producing quality. Yet, this assumption is questionable, and past empirical studies do not yield a consistent view (Sackney & Dibski, 1994). From the perspective of Cheung and Cheng (1996), the linkage of SBM to educational outcomes should be strengthened through multi-level self-management at the individual, group, and school levels. Even though multi-level self-management may be a theoretical effort to bridge the gap between management change and student performance, the debate on this issue is still strong and will continue until there is sufficient empirical evidence to show a clear linkage. The above issues together present a wide spectrum of research areas that need a great deal of intellectual effort in order to understand the complexity of school transformation and to inform policy-making and implementation of school-based management for school effectiveness and improvement.

Towards Enhancing Teacher Quality and Lifelong Professional Development In response to the fast-changing educational environment and the increasing and demanding challenges from the local and global communities, there is a trend for educational reforms in many areas of Asia to emphasize teacher quality and continuous lifelong professional development of both teachers and principals (Cheng, Chow, & Mok, 2004; Chen, Lim, & Gopinathan, 2003; Hallinger, 2003; Kennedy, 2003). Many policymakers understand that teacher quality is the key to school effectiveness and improvement. For example, China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, and Vietnam have made major policy efforts in recent years to enhance the quality of teachers and principals. More and more professional training is provided to teachers through in-service professional development programs. The required professional qualifications for entering the teaching profession also tend to be gradually enhanced, even though the extent of progress may be different in different countries. Nowadays, educational environments in the region are changing very quickly, and goals are not so clear and unchanging anymore. This is evident in the context of the second and third waves of educational reforms in Asia. In the past decade, numerous changes of the second wave have been imposed on schools and teachers in different

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parts of Asia, and the changes of the third wave seem to be accelerated in the new century. If teachers, principals, and the schools are not enabled and prepared to deal with these changes, all the efforts for enhancing education quality and effectiveness will result in failure. Because educational change and development are ongoing in such a changing environment, there is inevitably a strong need for continuous lifelong professional development of school practitioners. Most areas in Asia, like China, Hong Kong and South Korea, have already reviewed their teacher education programs and put lifelong professional development of teachers and principals onto their agenda for educational reform (Gopinathan & Ho, 2003; Hallinger, 2003). This trend of enhancing teacher quality and professional development is in the domains of both the second and third waves for interface and future school effectiveness. In such a trend, educators, leaders, and researchers are facing some new challenges (Cheng, 2002). (1) How can school leaders build up a new culture of continuous lifelong staff development among their colleagues and related school stakeholders (Cheng, 2001e)? In other words, how can they develop their schools as learning organizations that can support all types of continuous learning and development of students, teachers, and the school organization itself (Senge et al., 2000)? (2) How can we ensure that professional development or formal teacher education is relevant to ongoing educational reforms and major shifts in education (Elliot, & Morris, 2001)? (3) How can a knowledge management system be built in schools to encourage active learning, accumulate experience and knowledge from daily practices, and inform further development of staff? (4) How can the diverse needs of ongoing school improvement and staff development be identified and satisfied within a limited resource framework? (5) Given the challenges from the second and third waves of educational reforms, there is a strong local and international demand for a major shift in approach to educational leadership (Walker, 2003). What kind of new leadership should be developed in such a context? How should the necessary shift be conceptualized, organized, and implemented successfully among educational leaders? When compared with the magnificent scale of ongoing school reforms, the existing advances in understanding the nature of staff development, teacher education, and leadership development are still insufficient. Clearly, a broad spectrum of research effort is needed in these areas in coming years.

Towards Using Information Technology and New Technologies in School Education The increasing and tremendous effects of IT on every aspect of society are evident to most national leaders and educational leaders in Asia. Many policy-makers take IT in education as one of the most strategic initiatives for school effectiveness in ongoing educational reforms in Asia (Birch & Maclean, 2001). Countries like Japan and Singapore

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implemented strategies to promote IT in education a few years ago; other countries have developed their IT plans during the last three years (Gopinathan & Ho, 2000; Suzuki, 2000). In Hong Kong, schools are getting more and more computers and other IT facilities, and they are helped to network both locally and internationally through the intranet and Internet. More and more training is provided for teachers in the use of IT in teaching. Teachers and students are often expected to become IT competent in a very short time (Education and Manpower Bureau, 1998). In addition to IT in education, there has been a clear shift of emphasis from using simplistic techniques towards applying sophisticated technology in educational management in the past decade. Traditionally, all schools or educational institutions were under external control and dependent on management by central authorities. Educational leaders or managers did not see a need to use sophisticated management technologies. Today, however, the environment is changing much more rapidly. Consequently, such management technologies as strategic management, development planning, participative management, and quality assurance are increasingly emphasized for school improvement. Policy-makers in Asia and in other parts of the world are promoting the use of these methods (see, e.g., Bush & Coleman, 2000). The trend of initiatives for promoting information and communications technology (ICT) in school education in Asia is confronting some basic concerns (Cheng & Townsend, 2000). Although ICT is very powerful for creating opportunities for learning and facilitating learning and teaching in a very efficient way, its functions should not be over-emphasized. ICT is a means rather than the end of education. Therefore, when formulating strategies for ICT in education, both policy-makers and educators have to consider its relevance for the achievement of educational aims. Some basic questions have to be answered. How and what types of ICT are related to existing or new aims? To what extent and in what aspects can the use of ICT help to achieve school aims? What are the potential limitations for ICT within education? From the experiences in some countries, it seems easier to purchase hardware, such as computers and other ICT facilities for schools, than to provide appropriate software and training for teachers and students. Many school practitioners spend a lot of time and energy developing so-called “homemade” software, due to a lack of a more comprehensive and sophisticated software system to support teaching and learning in ICT. Unfortunately, the quality of the homemade software is often questionable, and the development is time-consuming. How to provide a comprehensive package including the necessary hardware, software, and training, as well as an ICT platform to support and maintain the effective and efficient use of ICT in teaching and learning, is an important question, particularly in some developing sub-regions and countries where resources for development are limited. Stakeholders wonder whether the aims, subject content, instructional process, or assessment of the existing school curriculum should be changed to adapt to the new ICT learning environment. Moreover, teachers do not know how to do this. There is often a lack of new framework for integrating the strengths and benefits of ICT into curriculum development. The advances in ICT happen very fast. There is a clear gap between the rapidly changing ICT environment and curriculum development in most countries in Asia.

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In the past few years, the efforts by many policy-makers in Asia to implement ICT in schools have met with strong resistance from school practitioners. There have been not only technological difficulties but also cultural problems. Implementation of ICT in school education is an extensive technological transformation and inevitably involves cultural change for teachers, principals, education officers, other change agents, and even students, if successful change is expected (Cheng, 1996a; Levy, 1986). Therefore, how to change the existing attitudes and beliefs into a new ICT culture is clearly a serious challenge for the reform program, whether in developing countries or developed sub-regions in Asia. How to lead the implementation of ICT and other new technology for school effectiveness and improvement is a completely new issue for most policy-makers, educators, and leaders in Asia. The effective strategies for handling the issues and challenges raised above depend heavily on a thorough understanding of them and a knowledge base of implementation of cultural and technological changes in different contexts. All this are in need of support from educational research.

Towards Paradigm Shifts in Learning, Teaching, and Assessment In response to the challenges of globalization, IT, and a knowledge-based economy in the new millennium, there is a growing trend for educational reforms to emphasize paradigm shifts in learning, teaching, and assessment in many areas of Asia. As discussed above, this is the rise of the third wave of school reforms. For example, Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan have started new initiatives with the support of IT and networking, to promote major changes in curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. The hope is to bring about a paradigm shift in learning and teaching in the classroom. As pointed out in Cheng (2000a), the whole world is moving towards multiple globalizations and is becoming a global village with boundless interaction among countries and areas. Many societies in Asia are diverse and moving towards becoming learning societies. In such a fast-changing environment, the aim of educational reform tends to develop students as lifelong learning citizens who will contribute creatively to the formation of a learning society and a learning global village with numerous developments in technological, economic, social, political, cultural, and learning aspects. There should be a paradigm shift in school education from the traditional site-bounded paradigm to a new paradigm with an emphasis on the development of contextualized multiple intelligence (CMI) for the new generation. This can be accomplished through the processes of globalization, localization, and individualization in school education (Cheng, 2000a, 2005). The ongoing educational reforms in some parts of Asia, like Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Japan, have already provided evidence of moving to a new trend with various types of initiative in globalization, localization, and individualization in education, for future school effectiveness. The learning and teaching will tend to be globalized, localized, and individualized in the coming years, with the help of IT and boundless multiple networking. Unlimited opportunities and various global and local sources will be created for lifelong learning and development of both students and teachers.

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These shifts in education inevitably induce a completely different set of concerns and challenges for educational reform. The following are just some of them: (1) A major paradigm shift is not only a kind of technological and theoretical change but also a kind of deep cultural change including changes in the attitudes of all concerned stakeholders and in their whole line of thinking about the future of the global world, the vision, aims, content, methods, processes, practices, management, and funding of education. How can such a comprehensive paradigm shift be achieved at different levels in ongoing educational reforms? (2) Clearly, teachers will play a crucial role in the whole process of globalization, localization, and individualization in education and in the development of students’ CMI (see Cheng, 2001e). Without them, such a major shift in learning and teaching is impossible. How, then, can teachers be prepared to develop themselves as globalized, localized, and individualized CMI teachers, and facilitate their students becoming CMI leaders and citizens? Also, how can they help transform curriculum and pedagogy into something that meets world-class standards? (3) As explained by Cheng (2001a), there should be a new conception of quality assurance responding to the paradigm shift in learning, teaching, and assessment. How can students’ learning and teachers’ teaching be well placed in a globalized, localized, and individualized context? How well can students’ learning opportunities be maximized through ICT application, and networking of teachers in educational reforms? How well can students’ self-learning be facilitated and sustained as potentially lifelong? How well can students’ CMI and ability of self-learning be developed?

Conclusion The three waves of educational reforms provide an overview for educators, policymakers, and scholars to understand the paradigm shifts in conceptualizing and implementing initiatives and efforts for school effectiveness and improvement in Asia in the past decades. Different countries or areas in Asia may have different historical and contextual constraints. Therefore, up to now the progress and characteristics of their school reforms for school effectiveness and improvement may be different and moving forward in different waves. Some areas may still be in the first wave, struggling to enhance internal school effectiveness and focusing mainly on the improvement of internal process. Some areas may be moving forward in the second wave or a mix of the first and the second waves, pursuing both internal and interface effectiveness. Responding to the challenges of globalization and influences of IT, some areas may have already started the third wave of educational reform to pursue future school effectiveness. To deepen the understanding of the dynamics and complexity of school reforms, further studies should be conducted to observe the progress of national or regional cases in pursuing school effectiveness and improvement in these three waves. In addition to the three waves, we would understand and investigate the initiatives and efforts for school effectiveness and improvement in Asia from the nine major

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trends of educational reforms. The nine trends at the macro, meso, site, and operational levels in association with the three waves present a comprehensive framework to discuss and analyze numerous reforms and changes conducted for educational development and school effectiveness in Asia. There may be mutual influence of initiatives across levels on the pursuit of internal, interface, and future school effectiveness in each area or country of Asia. It is hardly surprising that the educational environment shaped by the educational reforms at the macro and the meso levels will often influence the management, functioning, process, and output of school education at the site and the operational levels. Clearly, the effectiveness and quality of school outputs from the operational and site levels may also influence the development of policies and initiatives at the macro and meso levels. Even though the congruence or mutual support between educational reforms of different trends or different levels is strongly expected in policy-making and implementation, unfortunately it is often not the case in the reality of educational reforms in some areas in Asia, for example, Hong Kong (Cheng, 2005, Ch. 8). In the past decade, policy gaps between initiatives inevitably became a major problem and challenge accounting for reform failure in education (Cheng & Cheung, 1995). Clearly, the implications from the issues and challenges of educational initiatives for studying school effectiveness and improvement in Asia are significant and fruitful. A great deal of inter-disciplinary and long-term research effort is needed to study major shifts in learning, teaching, curriculum, and assessment; to investigate and understand the above issues in policy-making, school management, and practice; and to develop appropriate strategies and methods for implementing major shifts and reforms at different levels of school system in each area or the whole region of Asia. Some challenges arising from the ongoing trends of educational reforms in different parts of Asia are crucial and greatly influence the policy formulation and reform implementation in school education in many countries. It is therefore of great concern to consider how those challenges can become priorities on the urgent agenda of educational research, if reforms for school effectiveness and improvement are to be fully informed and finally successful in implementation. All in all, given the complexity of research on such comprehensive reforms of school education in many countries in Asia, there is an urgent need to develop a critical mass of research intelligence through different types of networking in the region. This work is a necessity not only for individual countries but also for the whole Asia region to meet the numerous challenges in educational reforms in the new millennium. It is hoped that this chapter will open a wide range of issues and implications for policy development as well as educational research on initiatives for school effectiveness and improvement in Asia and other parts of the world.

Authors’ Note Part of this material is adapted from Cheng (2003a, 2003b), Cheng (2005, Ch. 2, & Ch. 7), and Cheng & Townsend (2000).

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References Abdullah, H. M. (2001, June 12–15). Policy dialogue on quality improvement in education: A Malaysian experience. Paper presented at the Second International Forum on Quality Education: Policy, Research and Innovative Practices in Improving Quality of Education, Beijing, China. Adams, J. E., & Kirst, M. W. (1999). New demands and concepts for educational accountability: Striving for results in an era of excellence. In J. Murphy, & K. S. Louis (Eds.), Handbook of research on educational administration (2nd ed., pp. 463–490). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Baker, R., & Begg, A. (2003). Change in the school curriculum: Looking to the future. In J. P. Keeves, & R. Watanabe (Eds.), International handbook of educational research in the Asia-Pacific region (pp. 541–554). The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Birch, I., & Maclean, R. (2001). Information and communication technologies for education and teacher development in the Asia-Pacific region: Issues and challenges. In Y. C. Cheng, M. M. C. Mok, & K. T. Tsui (Eds.), Teaching effectiveness and teacher development: Towards a new knowledge base (pp. 347–370). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Bogan, C. E., & English, M. J. (1994). Benchmarking for best practices. New York: McGraw-Hill. Bubb, S. (2001). Performance management: Monitoring teaching in the primary school. UK: David Fulton Publishers. Burbules, N. C., & Torres, C. A. (Eds.). (2000). Globalization and education: Critical perspectives. New York: Routledge. Bush, T., & Coleman, M. (2000). Leadership and strategic management in education. London: Paul Chapman. Caldwell, B. J. (2003). Decentralization and the self-managing school. In J. P. Keeves, & R. Watanabe (Eds.), International handbook of educational research in the Asia-Pacific region (pp. 931–944). The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Castillo, E. S. (2001). Educational reform: The PCER strategy and findings/recommendations. Plenary speech presented at the International Forum on Educational reforms in the Asia-Pacific Region “Globalization, Localization, and Individualization for the Future”, HKSAR, China. Chabbott, C., & Ramirez, F. O. (2000). Development and education. In M. T. Hallinam (Ed.), Handbook of the sociology of education (pp. 163–188). New York: Kluwer and Plenum. Chen, A. Y., Lim, C. P., & Gopinathan, S. (2003). The recruitment and reparation of teachers. In J. P. Keeves, & R. Watanabe (Eds.), International handbook of educational research in the Asia-Pacific region (pp. 899–914). The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Cheng, Y. C. (1996a). School effectiveness and school-based improvement: A mechanism for development. London, UK: Falmer Press. Cheng, Y. C. (1996b). The improvement of school management: Theory, change and practice. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Institute of Educational Research and Chinese University of Hong Kong. Cheng, Y. C. (1997a). Monitoring school effectiveness: Conceptual and practical dilemmas in developing a framework. In H. Meng, Y. Zhou, & Y. Fang (Eds.), School based indicators of effectiveness: Experiences and practices in APEC members (pp.197–206). China: Guangxi Normal University Press. Cheng, Y. C. (1997b). A framework of indicators of education quality in Hong Kong primary schools: Development and application. In H. Meng, Y. Zhou, & Y. Fang (Eds.), School based indicators of effectiveness: Experiences and practices in APEC members (pp. 207–250). China: Guangxi Normal University Press. Cheng, Y. C. (Ed.). (1999). Recent education developments in South East Asia. Special Issue of School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 10(1), 3–124. Cheng, Y. C. (2000a). A CMI-triplization paradigm for reforming education in the new millennium. International Journal of Educational Management, 14(4), 156–174. Cheng, Y. C. (2000b). Educational change and development in Hong Kong: Effectiveness, quality, and relevance. In T. Townsend, & Y. C. Cheng (Eds.), Educational change and development in the Asia-Pacific region: Challenges for the future (pp.17–56). The Netherlands: Swets and Zeitlinger Publisher. Cheng, Y. C. (2001a). Towards the third wave of educational reforms in Hong Kong: Triplization in the new millennium. Plenary speech presented at the International Forum on Educational reforms in the AsiaPacific Region “Globalization, Localization, and Individualization for the Future”, HKSAR, China.

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14 SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT IN TAIWAN

Hui-Ling Pan

Introduction A number of international research studies indicate that students in Asian countries receive higher scores of achievement than do their Western counterparts (e.g., Stevenson & Stigler, 1992). This has prompted researchers to investigate the causes of the phenomenon. In the past, school effectiveness research was criticized for a lack of contextual perspective. Then, studies investigating the characteristics of school effectiveness across different SES, areas, and even nations were generated. But even so, educational systems and policies in many regions of the world, ironically, seem to be homogeneous, as supported by the Western English-speaking literature (Walker & Dimmock, 2002). This symbolizes the trend of globalization. Situated in this global village, one cannot escape the influence of globalization. However, globalization reflects the fact that the Western-based values transmitted through various media, including economy, politics, technology, and culture, have become the norm to regulate people’s life. How to avoid the disappearance of indigenous cultures has become a great concern for some, especially those in disadvantaged positions. Localization is a response to the strong force of globalization. Although indigenous cultures face global convergence, it is believed that some parts of these cultures are resistant to such homogenization. In many ways, globalization of policy and practice in education is a response to common problems faced by many of the world’s societies and education systems (Walker & Dimmock, 2002). How to think globally and act locally is an unavoidable path for developing countries. As Porter (2000) pointed out, “cultural differences can contribute to specialized advantages so important in improving the prosperity of nations” (p. 27). The accumulation of globalized narrations from different countries is conducive to enriching the academic field of school effectiveness and educational change. Thus, it becomes significant for researchers from various nations to propose conceptions and practices of school improvement, based on the context they are located in. 269 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 269–286. © 2007 Springer.

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Taking a cultural perspective at the societal level, this chapter first aims to help readers understand the context of school changes in Taiwan. After the abolition of Martial Law in 1987, an open and democratic atmosphere has freely circulated through the political system, but other elements of the society are exposed as well. Education is no exception. Maladies in education over the past decades finally have the opportunity to be cured, and a campaign for a more liberal, pluralist education system has heated up the debate between the trends of localization and of globalization. The blueprint of education reform is sketched by civil organizations and the government responding to the new concerns in Taiwan. Deregulation is used as the basic tone of this recent wave of education reform. Second, practices of school improvement are analyzed. Over the past decade, deregulation of power and curriculum, two main initiatives taken, generated the school improvement experiences of success and failure. But, what are the factors influencing school practices? This is the discussion in the third part of the chapter. Finally, some directions for future efforts are proposed.

Contexts for School Effectiveness and Improvement In order to counter the belief that “education cannot compensate for society” (Berstein, 1970), and to establish that “schools make a difference,” school effectiveness research has been booming since the 1970s. Especially over the last ten years, school effectiveness has become one of the most important educational movements and discourses in the West (Weiner, 2002). The findings of school effectiveness research have been used by policy-makers to enhance the quality of education.

The Recent Education Reforms Different from what is shown in the Western history of school effectiveness research, the belief that “school matters” is deeply embedded in the Confucian-heritage culture of Taiwan. Practices of school improvement are not based on the results of school effectiveness research. Rather, they are responses to long-standing educational malfunction. Pupils suffer from the pressure of entering higher-level schools after the nine-year compulsory education requirement. Education has become a tool for preparation of the school entrance examination. Centralization of educational administration constrains diversity and results in lack of flexibility. The individual learning needs of students are hard to meet in schools. The dissatisfaction with problems in education consequently culminated in the April 10th parade in 1994 (Pan & Yu, 1999). Since that time, Taiwan has had over a decade of the most recent wave of education reforms. Responding to people’s eagerness for educational change, the Ministry of Education held the 7th National Education Conference in June 1994 and declared two main aims: (1) to lessen pressure on students to enter higher-level schools, and (2) to liberalize education. The Council on Education Reform affiliated with the Executive Yuan was established at the end of the same year. The concluding report issued in December 1996 outlined the master plan of education reform for the coming ten years. Five reform directions were proposed: deregulating education, helping every student to learn, broadening the channels for student recruitment, promoting educational quality, and establishing a

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lifelong learning society (Council on Education Reform, 1996). Here, deregulation was used as the main thread linking all the initiatives of improvement.

Changing Conception of School Effectiveness and Improvement Increasing levels of achievement in the “basics” has been the focus for school effectiveness researchers (e.g., Reynolds & Teddlie, 2000). But, is this the only goal of education? This question has stimulated educators’ thinking for decades. Taiwan is a society that deeply believes that education is a significant means for social mobility. Parents expect that the main tasks of schools are to have students thoroughly learn the content of each subject and to have a high rate of students passing the school entrance exam. These expectations result in the instrumental use of education. How to transfer schooling from helping students master subject knowledge to helping students develop competence has been a new concern in education reform during these years. In other words, the new policy emphasizes competence-based curriculum instead of contentoriented curriculum. This indicates that the conception of school effectiveness nowadays is changing in Taiwan. Although one may still observe that the newspapers use headlines to celebrate students’ outstanding performance in the entrance examination (e.g., China Daily News, 2006), the definition of an effective school is broadened, at least in education circles. A policy is not simply a document that mandates action. The past failure of largescale innovations shows that the top-down approach has limitations. The school as a center of change and teachers as agents of change are new claims for this wave of educational changes. The new Grade 1 to Grade 9 Curriculum delegates some decisionmaking to the schools: twenty percent of the curriculum is left for the school to design. This is a substantial measure of school-based management. The schools are expected to assume the role of developing the curriculum. As a result, teachers are not subjects to be reformed; rather, they play a leading role in curriculum development. In the implementation process of the new curriculum, frustration unavoidably exists in schools. There are schools that still think that curriculum development is an event that relies on quickly produced paperwork rather than as a long process of curriculum activity. Also, the visions drafted by schools look similar across campuses, and the products of a fragmented “integrated curriculum” are shared and celebrated among schools. All of this reflects that schools do not really realize how to take advantage of their autonomy and use the school as a base for innovation. Nevertheless, after several years of trial and error, there are schools that have broken out of the “cage” and have created admirable experiences of innovation.

Practices of School Improvement Under the influence of globalization and localization, Taiwan’s education, driven by the ideology of educational deregulation, has made great changes. Market orientation, accountability, democratic participation accompanied with professionalism

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and educators’ autonomy all led to the delegation of some power from the central level to the local government and schools. In the Education Basic Law, educational affairs that need to be undertaken are clearly stipulated. And the new system of principal recruitment, the establishment of a Teachers’ Review Committee and Teachers’ Association in schools, and parents’ participation in the school meetings have indeed altered the power balance in schools. Such innovation broadens the dimensions of teacher decision-making. It also permits the school consumers – the parents – to have a say in school affairs. Viewed as a subject, the school has a right and a responsibility to select competent teachers, and some schools have even chosen the principal they want. Empowering schools is an important feature of this wave of educational reform. It is hoped that decentralization may help schools move toward self-renewal, in which teachers act as agents of change. In addition to the restructuring of school management, the new Grade 1 to Grade 9 Curriculum emphasizes the development of school-based curriculum so that teachers may embody their professional role. A number of initiatives were launched by the government to advance teachers’ capacity, such as a teaching portfolio, action research, and the system of mentor teachers. Facing external policies initiated by the government, schools are managed in their own way. According to Fink and Stoll (1998), restructuring and reculturing were two approaches adopted by schools in addition to the school effectiveness movement and school improvement processes, to boost change in schools. Restructuring describes mandated change through top-down directives from the government, and usually the agenda included some version of site-based management. Reculturing emphasizes the process of developing new values, beliefs, and norms; it involves building new conceptions about instruction and new forms of professionalism for teachers (Fullan, 1996). It is observed that the restructuring approach has been adopted in a large number of schools in Taiwan, but some schools take advantage of the autonomy granted by the government and walk away from the route to school innovation. Involving teachers in school decision-making and curriculum development have been the two main initiatives in Taiwan over the past decade. Therefore, the following paragraphs focus on the analysis of how schools face the two large-scale reforms and create their own ways of changing their schools.

Decentralization of Decision-Making Over the past ten years, several breakthroughs have been seen in the primary and secondary school systems, after a number of laws were passed. The promulgation of the Teachers Act in 1994 created two bodies: the Teacher Review Committee and the Teachers’ Association. In addition, the amendment of the Compulsory Education Law and its Enforcement Rules altered the process of selecting a principal and the function of staff-faculty meetings. These policies are attempts to, first, offer autonomy to schools so the administration group of a school is able to build up the environment most suitable for its students and teachers; and second, offer teachers more freedom in developing teaching materials and methods and involving them more in administrative affairs beyond their classroom concerns.

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The voices of parents is another major issue. The Education Basic Law and the Compulsory Education Law guarantee the right of parents to be involved in school affairs. The Teachers Act allows parents to participate in teacher recruitment. The numerous directional interactions among school administration, teachers, and parents reveal a new era of power ecology in schools. Thus, the principal as the sole pilot steering a school has become history. Following the Teachers Act in 1994, the Teacher Review Committee (responsible for teacher recruitment and appraisal) must be established in the school. As well, the Teachers’ Association is allowed to be established voluntarily at the school level, creating a channel for teachers to get involved in the decision-making of school affairs. The two bodies signify the realization of school-based management and teacher empowerment. In the past, it was the business of the City/County Education Bureau to recruit teachers. Now, the power is delegated to the school. Teachers, and even the parent delegates, have the right to select the teachers they want. The Teachers’ Association, playing the role of another eye of administration, mainly looks after teachers’ benefits. The Teacher Review Committee and the Teachers’ Association embody the decentralization from the local level to the school level and from the principal’s control to the teachers’ control. In response to the mandated directives from the government, schools set up the Teacher Review Committee (Chang, 2002), and most schools have a Teachers’ Association. However, in an authority-oriented cultural context, it is not easy to share power. In the early stage of implementing the two policies, a great many problems occurred. The lack of legal process to elect teacher representatives in the committee, the operations of the committee dominated by the principal, teachers troubled by lobbying, and the narrowmindedness of the faculty all contributed to the ineffectiveness of the committee. This ineffectiveness caught the attention of the public and gave rise to debates. After a few years of experimentation, although there are still some obstacles restricting the function of the committee, the difficulties that schools now face are somewhat different. Teachers’ reluctance to devote time to the committee and the high cost of teacher recruitment are two of the major concerns faced by schools. The satisfaction the schools expressed about the function of the committee is around moderate to above moderate (Hong, 2003; Huang, 2000). With respect to the Teachers’ Association, Wang and Pan (2000) found that teachers in schools that did not have the association got higher scores on the empowerment scale than did teachers in schools that had the association. Many reasons might explain this finding. Probably, teachers in schools that had the association had higher expectations of the schools, making them use a stricter standard for answering survey questions. But there is a possibility that teachers used power improperly when they had the opportunity to become involved in school decisions. Confrontations between the administration and the Teachers’Association often took place. The aim of professional development of the association was not realized in most schools, although there were high expectations that this could be achieved. Teachers fighting for their own benefits caused agitation in the school. School administrators often complained that members of the association were hungry for power. However, people do learn from the past. After more than a decade, the Teachers’Association is maturing. Conflicts among staff

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are not as serious as they were previously. Several studies indicate that the development of the association usually goes through different stages, from confrontation to peaceful coexistence between the administration and teachers (e.g., Lin, 2001).

Curriculum Development The form and content of a national curriculum document may vary according to a nation’s administrative system. Following the path of deregulation, Taiwan’s Curriculum Standard was replaced in recent years by the Curriculum Framework, for example, as the Grade 1–9 Curriculum Framework issued in 2002, and the High School Curriculum Framework issued in 2004. The Curriculum Standard had been the guide for schools. The teaching content of every subject was clearly stipulated in this standard. In this wave of reform, promoting teachers’ autonomy is an important strategy. Therefore, the Curriculum Framework replaced the Curriculum Standard. In the Grade 1–9 Curriculum Framework, ten basic competences for pupils to achieve are illustrated, and competence indicators of seven learning areas for assessing students’ learning are listed. This reform has the intention of breaking the boundaries of subject-based curriculum, to promote school-based curriculum, to encourage team teaching, and to use competence indicators in place of content prescriptions. The curriculum initiative may be seen as influenced by Western curriculum reform. In the 1980s and early 1990s, defining student learning outcomes became a common educational initiative in many countries such as the United States, Australia and Canada. Since the late 1990s, standards-based reform has replaced its outcomes-driven predecessor. The more broadly defined outcomes-driven curriculum establishes the ends of education but leaves methods to the teachers themselves. Standards-based curriculum is more specific in content prescriptions and performance demands (Hargreaves, Earl, Moore, & Manning, 2001). What students should learn is what teachers should teach is the new focus on curriculum reform in these two decades, although there are different ways of defining students’ learning outcomes and the degree of teacher autonomy in teaching. Under this global trend, the new curriculum implemented in Taiwan not only changes the concept of students’ achievement but also changes the concept of the teaching profession. The concept that students should learn subject knowledge is replaced by the concept that students should be educated to have the competence that they need. And teachers have to alter their role from a curriculum implementer to a curriculum planner. This policy demands not just first-order changes, which are initiatives for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of what is currently done, without disturbing the basic organizational features and substantially altering the way that children and adults perform their roles (Cuban, 1988). It also demands second-order change, which is systemic and comprehensive, to alter the fundamental ways that affect the culture and structure of schools, to restructure roles and reorganize responsibilities of school participants (Fullan, 1982). Each school implementing the curriculum develops it own strategies. Some schools have only the structure of the Curriculum Development Committee without its effective functioning; some are engaged in second-order change when implementing the curriculum policy and experience great success in school

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improvement. Of the successful schools, two approaches, joining school networks and establishing university-school partnerships, are noteworthy.

The School Networks Approach The newly implemented curriculum leaves schools more freedom to develop their own curriculum than they previously had. As mentioned, from Grade 1 to Grade 9, 20% of the curriculum is left for schools to design. In this context, schools are encouraged to develop school-based curriculum. The Curriculum Development Committee is set up in schools, as required by the government. Curriculum reform might be viewed as the core element of school changes in Taiwan during these years. In order to implement the new curriculum policy effectively, three strategic networks in the northern, central, and southern areas of Taiwan were established at the central level by the Ministry of Education. At the local level, school networks were also established within the city or county. Responding to this large-scale reform, some schools enacted the policy passively, whereas other schools were transformed into centers of change. Taipei City is an example of a typical bottom-up model of this wave of curriculum reform. The local education authority, the Bureau of Education, left time and autonomy to schools at the pilot stage of implementation. Eight strategic networks were established by the schools, eventually resulting in nine networks. The initiation for the networks was prompted by disproving the idea that teachers thought they were doing what the principal commanded and their schools were the only ones doing the job of curriculum design. Through collaboration among schools, teachers regularly shared their curriculum products with faculties from other schools. These dynamic group interactions enabled schools to have the opportunity to improve themselves and create peer pressure for positive competition among schools. In addition to the operation of each strategic network, a common session every Monday morning was arranged for dialogue between the network schools and the members of the Curriculum Committee of the Education Bureau, for discussion on issues of common concern by the nine strategic networks. Each network developed its own features to enhance the quality of curriculum design and teacher development. Voluntary school networks might also be found in Taipei County. Northern Corner Strategic Network and Hishan Strategic Network are well-known ones. Zueifong Strategic Network, part of the Northern Corner Strategic Network, is composed of seven elementary schools. The schools are situated in rural areas and are small in scale. These characteristics make them more flexible in curriculum development. Concern of parents for pupils’ academic performance is not so strong as in cities and in families from a higher socio-economic background. In-service training courses and curriculum workshops are offered. In the monthly curriculum workshops, teachers are introduced to cases of different countries and they do exercises on curriculum mapping. Through knowledge sharing and skill training, teachers gradually construct curriculum consciousness. In the past, teachers were simply curriculum implementers. Now, teachers have the role of curriculum designers. In addition, the Bureau of Education in Taipei embarked on a program entitled “Community as Classroom,” which started in 2000.

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This program embodies the concept of using the community as a learning space. The traditional boundary of a classroom is broken. Recognizing that the community is the root of schools, integrating community resources into the curriculum is the main idea of the program. So far, approximately 100 schools have joined in the program (Yu, 2004). Because schools are given a certain degree of autonomy in curriculum decisions, experiences of site-based curriculum development have gradually accumulated in recent years. Exploring the school exemplars, we may find that enhancing teachers’ competence in curriculum design and their intrinsic motivation to change are the main strategies for principals. Principals need to identify the school goals and mission with the faculty, clarify the conception of curriculum, and then work with teachers to develop the school curriculum. Many professional development activities are arranged for teachers, and organizational learning in schools is common. A survey revealed that nearly half of the 88 sampled schools (51 elementary and 37 secondary) are engaged in some kind of organizational learning (Lam, Wei, Pan, & Chan, 2002). This offers a general picture of schools in Taiwan.

University-School Partnerships Approach As an initiator of curriculum reform, the government needs to draft relevant action plans to ensure that the policy has been carried out. After two years of implementation of the New Curriculum, the Ministry of Education recognizes that the school as a base for curriculum development is significant for the success of the policy. Consequently, the Deep Planting Project, a concept borrowed from agriculture, was initiated in 2002. One part of the project, “Collaborative Hand in Hand Project between the University and Schools,” is to establish partnerships between the university and schools. Every year, the Ministry of Education calls for proposals on the project. A number of projects have been conducted under this categorical funding. The establishment of partnerships between the university and the schools benefits both sides. The university may have an opportunity to apply theories in schools, and the reflections and feedback can benefit the university in teaching and research. At the same time, schools may receive professional support from the university. Hence, this dynamic interaction between theory and practice actually benefits both parties. In these university and school networks, three partnership models are possible. The first is the experts taking the leading role and the teachers acting as assistants. The second is the experts and teachers collaborating equally. The third is the teachers taking the leading role and the experts acting as assistants. The overwhelming majority use the first model, followed by the second one. The third one is the rarest. Enhancing the capacity of schools in developing curriculum is an intended outcome of the partnership projects. Furthermore, in rural areas, the partnership may assist schools and teachers to re-create their own local cultural values. Gu (2004) worries that the rise of the knowledge-based economy may widen the gap between the rich and the poor. People living in rural areas are more likely to be disadvantaged under the social changes that accompany globalization. Gu proposed using the school-based curriculum development model to empower marginal groups to deal with the difficult

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situations caused by the knowledge-based economy and by globalization. Through the model, teachers reflect the local values they possess to counteract the negative selfconcepts in students. The development of school-based curriculum is found as an empowering process for both students and teachers.

Factors Influencing School Improvement Societal and Cultural Factors After decades of martial law, there has been a thirst for democratic participation in Taiwan in the past 20 years. The claim for sharing power has sprawled from politics to education. After 1987, more involvement from educators in shaping educational laws can be seen in the revision of the University Act. The democratization of college governance has expanded to secondary and primary schools. Under the grand slogan of deregulation proposed in the 1990s, more participation in decision-making of school affairs is demanded. The result is that schools have the right to be involved in selecting their principals and teachers. In addition, parents, as consumers, have a say in school operations. In other words, the power is delegated from the local level to the school level and from the principal to other school stakeholders. The clamor for grassroots involvement resulted in the establishment of a Teacher Review Committee and a Teachers’ Association at the school level. The culture and values are like the soil for all initiatives. The nature of the soil determines what will blossom and what will grow. Importing educational initiatives too soon, without sensitivity to the local context, could cause problems. In Chinese societies, leadership is exercised in a more authoritative manner. Teachers traditionally were not encouraged to step out of the classroom. Democratic participation in school affairs is not commonly accepted as an ideal practice of teachers. So, in the initial years of implementing shared governance, some schools were in chaos. Principals were reluctant to share power and some teachers were eager for power. This situation brought about tremendous tensions in schools. Power struggles among stakeholders produced questions about the justification of power (Huang, 2002). Also, the Teachers’ Association became a “territory” for a certain group of teachers who stood in opposition to the school administration. No wonder it was found that teachers in schools with a Teachers’Association had a lower perception of empowerment than those without the association (Wang & Pan, 2002). Past experience of failure gives people wisdom to proceed. After several years of mutual adaptation, principals and teachers gradually changed their attitude. They are more willing to share power and more capable of doing so. This also removes the label of the Teachers’ Association as a barrier to school progress. Furthermore, some associations are actively engaged in promoting teachers’ professional growth. In addition to the authority-oriented culture that may limit the function of democratic participation, the concept of achievement (different from that in the West) is a variable for the recent curriculum reform in Taiwan. Intensely dominated by traditional belief, people in Taiwan take education as a path of upward mobility. In a number of

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international studies on students’ performance, it was found that, as well as schools, many societal and cultural factors affect students’ learning (Lee, Chang, Pan, & Hsu, 1998; Pan, 1999). In order to make up for children’s deficits, parents in Taiwan spend more time helping children with their homework than do parents in Western countries. This suggests that people with a Chinese cultural background still hold onto the belief in “effort,” in contrast to the “ability model” held by Western people. “More effort, more gain” is often deemed a creed. The high expectations of parents brings pressure not only to children but also to teachers and school administrators. The result is that compromise will inevitably occur among all types of reforms.

School Factors Principal leadership and teacher participation play a crucial part in school reform. In addition, school characteristics, teacher characteristics, school culture, and the school support system all affect the process and outcomes of improvement.

Leadership of principal Many studies have pointed out that the principal plays a key role in school reform (Leithwood, Jantzi, & Steinbach, 1998). The principal needs to adjust herself or himself to take new responsibilities, absorb new ideas, and demonstrate new styles of leadership. According to Huang (2002), school reform inevitably will influence the power structure of schools. Principals unable to share power will face conflicts with the Teacher Review Committee. Wang and Pan (2001) found that many principals failed to recognize that they needed to change their conception of power. In response to the establishment of a Teachers’Association, some schools ignore it, some struggle to hold onto their waning power, and some persist in using the association as an instrument for leadership to fight against new advances. Such styles of leadership only bring endless strife to schools. If every member of a school possesses a sense of belonging and is aware that her or his future relies on the school’s future, school reform will proceed more smoothly. How does the school administration cope with the transitional period, and how does the principal’s hands-on curriculum development decide the fruitfulness of school reform? After interviewing many principals who implemented the Grade 1–9 Curriculum or the school-based curriculum, Lin (2000) pointed out that principals personally involved in leading faculty in reading the Curriculum Framework and playing the role of coordinator and who provided assistance during each phase of curriculum development contributed to the success of reform to a significant degree. However, as curriculum leadership is a new role for school leaders, many principals are not familiar with it. Thus, assisting principals to re-skill with the necessary ability to relieve their sense of crisis is an important task for policy promoters. Attitudes of teachers The attitude, belief, perception, capacity, and sense of responsibility of a teacher means a lot to the realization of reforms. The teaching milieu is like an egg carton.

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Each teacher takes an independent section and feels isolated. This environment makes them feel agitated when asked to work on the new curriculum with their colleagues (Fullan & Hargreaves, 1992; Wagner, 2001). Cheng (2002) found that, even after setting up a curriculum development committee, teachers tended to finish their assigned job independently. Teamwork is rarely seen among teachers. Without active participation, teachers can suffer from frustration in developing school-based curriculum or show an indifferent attitude. Sometimes they even resist adopting the new curriculum (Cheng, 2002). Though most English teachers recognize the goals of the new curriculum, few feel they are capable of carrying it out (Su, 2002). These observations remind us that school reform needs to start with a thorough understanding of the teachers’ situation, their faith, and their interests in their career.

The school support system Three fundamentals or the 3Rs are to be considered when a policy is formulated: relevance, readiness, and resources (Fullan, 1982). Resources for education reform are the support systems covering administrative support and facilities as well as time and space arrangements. Su (2002) found that school reform proceeded more smoothly in schools with more support systems, because teachers got more support when they implemented the new curriculum. After visiting the pilot schools that implemented the Grade 1–9 Curriculum, Cheng (2002) discovered that schools that failed to put resources and budgets together, failed to reschedule instructional time, and failed to arrange team teaching hinder curriculum development. Researchers also pointed out that there are several approaches schools can take to create a better working environment for teachers. In the aspect of teacher workload, schools may prioritize school activities according to how educational and meaningful they are. Furthermore, improving efficiency in meetings, making better use of technology, fostering teachers’ competence in time management, giving occasions for teachers to exchange professional experience, and recruiting volunteers from outside the school are all possible approaches to consider (Gao & Shan, 2002). However, the culture of a school determines the quality of interaction among teachers. If the school fails to create a collaborative culture, teachers still work alone even though they are given time for sharing. Moreover, in the aspect of space arrangement, researchers suggest that under the framework of “human-environment,” teaching/learning is used as a basis for consideration. By providing teachers with studios and a common area where they can get together, it is possible to break down the boundaries between teachers. A home-like space, with upholstered couches, a refrigerator, a microwave oven, and a stereo system could comfort teachers, too (Tang, 2002). School Ecology Location, organizational characteristics, and the culture of a school are influential contributors to school reform. Using the operation of the Teachers’ Association as an example, it was found that elementary school staff had a higher perception of empowerment than did their secondary counterparts. And there is no significant relationship

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among location, school size, and teacher empowerment (Wang & Pan, 2000). However, some more subtle findings were obtained in qualitative interviews. Few teachers of schools in the suburbs or even more remote places are interested in participating in Teachers’ Associations, because they do not work in the school nearby. After school hours, they usually hurry home (Wang & Pan, 2001). The age and sex of teachers are also determinants of the operation of the Teachers’ Association. In schools with a large proportion of young female teachers, it is found that many are either of childbearing age or are busy taking care of their children. Female teachers who are occupied by domestic affairs are deprived of the chance to be involved in the school and to develop professionally (Wang & Pan, 2001). Reshaping school culture is the first step in building a quality learning school. In a more open and autonomous environment, teachers and students will have more interactions and will be more willing to try new ideas. Wei (2002) compared two schools. One successfully created learning organization in an open atmosphere on campus, and the other failed due to its conservative style.

Prospects Based on the experiences in efforts for school improvement over the past few years, some directions for future efforts are proposed.

Being Sensitive to Cultural Context Since the 1970s, the inapplicability of Western paradigms in the context of Taiwan has stimulated the “Sinicization” of social science, which evolved into “indigenization” in the 1990s. The marginalization and colonization of educational science has been criticized (Department of Education, NTNU & National Professorship, MOE, 1999; Wu & Chen, 1985). However, there are few reflections on the transplantation of Western theories and models associated with school reform. The overwhelming tide of globalization from developed countries justified the cultural hegemony over developing countries. Education reform will not work without the cultural sensitivity of the reformers (Dimmock & Walker, 2001). Because of very limited experience in participating in public affairs and in school-based management, the Teachers’ Association and Teacher Review Committee created chaos in schools. Dimmock and Walker (2001) pointed out that it was easier to implement school-based management in a society that has more even allocation of power. Therefore, cultural context needs to be taken into consideration when adopting the decentralized initiatives proposed by Western countries. In addition, school reform demands consideration of the locality of each school. Reformers are expected to build an environment supporting school self-renewal after a thorough understanding of the culture of the school and the community.

Creating a Healthy School Ecology The democratic movement in Taiwan has altered the power structure of schools, but principals do not seem to be ready for their new roles and the teachers are still learning

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how to use the power they have recently acquired. Therefore, school-based management is a goal rather than a strategy of innovation. This has resulted in teachers being given more power, but their responsibilities, competence, and passions do not increase along with the power. The design of staff-faculty meetings and the Teacher Review Committee produces an imbalance of power within schools, because principals are asked to be responsible for the decisions made by teachers in meetings. Also, the current system for recruiting principals will inevitably hamper those principals seeking longer tenure in conducting reforms. In some cases, parents manipulate principal recruitment through parents’ associations or the Teachers’ Association. Such a power struggle seriously undermines school functioning. Fullan (2001) argues that education is a highly intellectual and caring enterprise, and without caring minds, education reform is destined to fall apart. Thus, creating a healthy school environment, in which teachers may engage in rational dialogues and in which an atmosphere of respect, trust, and caring is molded, is the first step to save school reform from becoming mired in petty controversy.

Using Evaluation as School Improvement Hopkins (1989) sees school evaluation as playing three functions: “evaluation of school improvement,” “evaluation for school improvement,” and “evaluation as school improvement.” Evaluation can be a tool for examining school improvement, for facilitating school improvement, or as a path to proceed along in the course of school improvement. Hopkins suggested internalizing evaluation in schools that take the future development of the school as their core mission and respond to national and local school reform policies. Such an evaluation is used as a mechanism of feedback for school development. In Taiwan, evaluation of education reforms was rarely implemented. But in recent years, school evaluation is very commonly enforced for accountability purposes. Some schools even express fatigue from being evaluated too frequently. It is recognized that evaluation can be used to investigate the effects of school programs as well as to improve them. Therefore, internalizing evaluations in school is a good way for organizational improvement and development.

Building Learning Communities In order to enhance the learning achievement of students, teachers apply various teaching methods. Cooperative learning is one of them. However, teachers seldom realize that they are actually engaging in collective learning (O’Neil, 1995). Organizational learning has become a necessary strategy in school reform. It facilitates interaction among teachers in school and creates potential cooperation among schools. Many school networks emerge in the United States that facilitate organizational learning. Some of these networks are Accelerated Schools (McCarthy & Still, 1993), Coalition of Essential Schools (Prestine, 1993; Sizer, 1992), Success for All (Slavin, Madden, Shaw, & Donnelly, 1993) and The League for Professional Schools (Allen & Glickman, 1998; Blasé, Blasé, Anderson, & Dungan, 1995). The network of elementary and high schools can be extended to colleges (Seller & Hannay, 2000). There are several types of collaboration between schools and colleges.

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The first type is college researchers simply extracting data from schools. The second type is the building of “clinical partnerships.” And the third is a co-learning relationship. It is only in the third type of relationship that faculties of colleges and schools are equal partners and they can learn from each other (Wagner, 1997). In postmodern society, the dominant status of college researchers is challenged. It is believed that the realities are constructed and there is more than one truth. Different forms of knowledge are valued. Practical knowledge that teachers construct is significant in understanding the world of education (Clandinin, 1986; Connelly & Clandinin, 1988; Elbaz, 1983). Compared with the practical knowledge schoolteachers create on a daily basis, knowledge pursued in college is abstract, universal, and alienated from daily life. It is suggested that such a boundary should be gradually blurred (Hargreaves, 1996). When building equal partnerships between schools and colleges, educational science may further develop through the dialectics of theory and practice.

Providing Opportunities for Professional Growth Too many previous failures in education reforms tell us that teachers might have been placed in the wrong position in reform. Fullan and Hargreaves (1992) proposed the idea of total teacher, suggesting the need to motivate teachers. In Taiwan, courses of staff development have started, in order to meet teachers’ needs in reform; however, many strategies of staff development are fragmented, and top-down in imposition. The courses treat teachers as “partial” instead of “total.” In other words, the teacher’s purpose, the teacher as a person, the real world context in which teachers work, and the culture of teaching are the four aspects ignored in past school reforms. In the process of education reform, reformers have overlooked teachers’ intentions. A teacher is simply treated as a policy implementer. However, when facing changes, the teacher will question whether the change is really worthwhile, whether there are side effects caused by the reform, and whether the reform is practical. Therefore, the voices of teachers must be heard. In order to trigger teachers’ passions for action, it is necessary to let them gain ownership of the changes so that motivation of self-actualization may be aroused. Understanding teachers’ needs and offering them opportunities according to the stage of their career development may recharge teachers to improve schools. Moreover, teachers and school administrators need to adjust their roles in the ever-changing world. New roles such as organizers and mentors are what teachers should be able to take on. Personal traits that used to be necessary only for principals, such as good communicative skills, innovation, analytical ability, self-confidence, and persistence, are in fact necessary for teachers now (Fullan, 1992). Principals nowadays also need to assert diverse styles of leadership, such as transformational leadership (Fullan, 1993; Sergiovanni, 1995), cultural leadership (Caldwell, 1993), moral leadership (Sergiovanni, 1992), empowering leadership (Blasé & Anderson, 1995; Short & Greer, 1997), educational leadership (Caldwell, 1993; Marsh, 2000), strategic leadership (Marsh, 2000), and curriculum leadership (Glatthorn, 1997). Providing courses for teachers and principals to learn the new roles is the persistent driving force of professional growth.

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Investigating Educational Changes Failure of so many education reforms over the past made researchers investigate them cautiously. Fullan (1998) probed three phases of education reforms underlining three periods: the Implementation Decade, 1972–1982; the Meaning Decade, 1982–1992; and the Change Capacity Decade, 1992–present. The Implementation Decade revealed the innovation process that involved teaching materials, structure, roles, behaviors, knowledge, understanding, and values. The Meaning Decade addressed a question to a broad audience including teachers, principals, students, school district officers, consultants, parents, and communities: what is the meaning of education reform? The Change Capacity Decade is devoted to inspiring teachers, principals, and school administrators to enhance their capacities in a changing environment. In addition, Hargreaves and his colleagues analyzed educational change not only as intellectual effort but also as emotional work (Hargreaves et al., 2001). In order to fully grasp the nature of education reforms, to investigate how practitioners think and act in the process of change, how school improvement may be sustained, and how effective innovations are, many more indigenous studies are needed in Taiwan. Education reform is not necessarily a move triggered by university researchers. While given greater autonomy and identified as knowledge constructors, schoolteachers are able to relate reform and practice in classrooms through “action research” (Mctaggart, 1997; Oja & Smulyan, 1989). Teachers may conduct research, reflect in action, and explore problems in situations systematically, to find the solutions through critical dialogues and to be courageous in changing the status quo.

References Allen, L., & Glickman, C. D. (1998). Restructuring and renewal: Capturing the power of democracy. In A. Hargreaves, A. Lieberman, M. Fullan, & D. Hopkins (Eds.), International handbook of educational change (pp. 505–528). London, UK: Kluwer Academic. Bernstein, B. (1970). Education cannot compensate for society. New Society, 387, 344–347. Blasé, J., & Anderson, G. L. (1995). The micropolitics of educational leadership: From control to empowerment. New York: Cassell. Blasé, J., Blasé, J., Anderson, G. L., & Dungan, S. (1995). Democratic principals in action. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Caldwell, B. J. (1993). The changing role of the school principal: A review of developments in Australia and New Zealand. In C. Dimmock (Ed.), School-based management and school effectiveness (pp. 165–184). New York: Routledge. Chang, C. K. (2002). A study of the organization, operation and function of Teacher Review Committee. Unpublished master thesis, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan. Cheng, H. L. (2002). Theory and strategies of school-based curriculum development. In H. L. Pan (Ed.), School innovation: Theory and practice (pp. 141–171). Taipei, Taiwan: Xue Fu. China Daily News. (2006, February 23). A plus rank in entrance exam, p. A1. Clandinin, D. J. (1986). Classroom practice: Teacher images in action. London, UK: Falmer Press. Connelly, F. M., & Clandinin, D. J. (1988). Teachers as curriculum planners: Narratives of experience. New York: Teachers College Press. Council on Education Reform. (1996). The concluding report. Taipei, Taiwan: Council on Education Reform. Cuban, L. (1988). A fundamental puzzle of school reform. Phi Delta Kappan, 70(5), 341–344.

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Department of Education, NTNU, & National Professorship, MOE. (1999). Internationalization and localization of educational science. Taipei, Taiwan: Yang Chih. Dimmock, C., & Walker, A. (2001). Globalization, societal and effective school reform. Unpublished manuscript. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Elbaz, F. (1983). Teacher thinking: A study of practical knowledge. London, UK: Croom Helm. Fink, D., & Stoll, L. (1998). Educational change: Easier said than done. In A. Hargreaves, A. Lieberman, M. Fullan, & D. Hopkins (Eds.), International handbook of educational change (pp. 297–321). London, UK: Kluwer Academic. Fullan, M. (1992). What’s worth fighting for in headship? Strategies for taking charge of the headship. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Fullan, M. (1993). Change forces: Probing the depths of educational reform. New York: Falmer Press. Fullan, M. (1996). Turning systematic thinking on its head. Phi Delta Kappan, 77(6), 420–423. Fullan, M. (2001). The new meaning of educational change (3rd ed.). New York: Teachers College Press. Fullan, M. G. (1982). The meaning of educational change. New York: Teachers College Press. Fullan, M. G. (1998). The meaning of educational change: A quarter of a century of learning. In A. Hargreaves, A. Lieberman, M. Fullan, & D. Hopkins (Eds.), International handbook of educational change (pp. 214–228). London, UK: Kluwer Academic. Fullan, M., & Hargreaves, A. (1992). What’s worth fighting for in your school?: Working together for improvement. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Gao, C. M., & Shan, W. J. (2002). The innovation to school time use. In H. L. Pan (Ed.), School innovation: Theory and practice (pp. 53–278). Taipei, Taiwan: Xue Fu. Glatthorn, A. A. (1997). The principal as curriculum leader: Shaping what is taught and tested. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin press. Gu, Y. C. (2004). Professional developmental model for teachers in marginal area. Educational Research & Information, 12(1), 3–28. Hargreaves, A. (1996). Transforming knowledge: Blurring the boundaries between research, policy, and practice. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 18(2), 105–122. Hargreaves, A., Earl, L., Moore, S., & Manning, S. (2001). Learning to change: Teaching beyond subjects and standards. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Hong, Y. C. (2003). The operations of teacher review committee in Taipei county elementary schools. Unpublished master thesis, Taipei City Teachers College, Taipei, Taiwan. Hopkins, D. (1989). Evaluation for school development. Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press. Huang, K. C. (2000). A study about the influence of the implementation of teacher review committee on principals’ use of power. Unpublished master thesis, National Sinchu Teachers College, Sinchu, Taiwan. Huang, N. Y. (2002). Theory and strategies of school power ecology reconstruction: The example of teachers’ council in junior high school and elementary school. In H. L. Pan (Ed.), School Innovation: Theory and practice (pp.51–100). Taipei, Taiwan: Xue Fu. Lam, Y. L. J., Wei. H. C. P., Pan, H. L. W., & Chan, C. M. M. (2002). In search of basic sources that propel organizational learning under recent Taiwanese school reforms. The International Journal of Educational Management, 16(5), 216–228. Lee, Y. Y., Chang, H. J., Pan, H. L., & Hsu, Y. H. (1998). The longitudinal study on school effectiveness of elementary school. Educational Research & Information, 6(3), 1–25. Leithwood, K., Jantzi, D., & Steinbach, R. (1998). Leadership and other conditions which foster organizational learning in schools. In K. Leithwood, & K. S. Louis (Eds.), Organizational learning in schools (pp. 67–90). Lisse, the Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger. Lin, J. L. (2001). A case study of micropolitics in a junior high school’s Teachers’Association. Unpublished master thesis. National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan. Lin, M. D. (2000). Curriculum leadership of school principals and school-based curriculum. From theory and policy to implementation on grade1 to grade 9 curriculum (pp. 155–186). Kaohsiung: Fuwen. Marsh, D. D. (2000). Educational leadership for the twenty-first century: Integrating three essential perspectives. In M. Fullan (Ed.), The Jossey-Bass reader on educational leadership (pp. 126–145). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. McCarthy, J., & Still, S. (1993). Hollibrook accelerated elementary school. In J. Murphy, & P. Hallinger (Eds.), Restructuring schooling: Learning from ongoing efforts (pp. 32–62). Newbury Park, CA: Corwin Press.

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McTaggart, R. (Ed.). (1997). Participatory action research: International contexts and consequences. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. O’Neil, J. (1995). On schools as learning organizations: A conversation with Peter Senge. Educational Leadership, 52(7), 20–24. Oja, S. N., & Smulyan, L. (1989). Collaborative action research: A developmental approach. New York: Falmer Press. Pan, H. L. (1999). The development of research field in school effectiveness. Bulletin of Education Research, 43, 77–102. Pan, H. L., & Yu, C. (1999). Educational reforms and their impacts on school effectiveness and improvement in Taiwan, R.O.C. School Effectiveness and Improvement, 10(1), 72–85. Porter, M. (2000). Attitudes, values beliefs, and the microeconomics of prosperity. In L. Harrison, & S. Huntington (Eds.), Culture matters: How values shape human progress (pp. 14–28). New York: Basic Books. Prestine, N. A. (1993). Feeling the ripples, riding the waves: Making an essential school. In J. Murphy, & P. Hallinger (Eds.), Restructuring schooling: Learning from ongoing efforts (pp. 63–83). Newbury Park, CA: Corwin Press. Reynolds, D., & Teddlie, C. (2000, April). Reflections on the critics and beyond them. Paper presented at American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans. Seller, W., & Hannay, L. (2000). Inside-ouside change facilitation: Structural and cultural considerations. In N. Bascia, & A. Hargreaves (Eds.), The sharp edge of educational change: Teaching, leading and the realities of reform (pp. 197–216). London: Falmer Press. Sergiovanni, T. J. (1992). Moral leadership: Getting to the heart of school improvement. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Sergiovanni, T. J. (1995). The principalship: A reflective practice perspective. Needham, MA: Allyn and Bacon. Short, P. M., & Greer, J. T. (1997). Leadership in empowered schools: Themes from innovative efforts. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Sizer, T. R. (1992). Horace’s compromise. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. Slavin, R. E., Madden, N. A., Shaw, A. H., Mainzer, K. L., & Donnelly, M. C. (1993). In J. Murphy, & P. Hallinger (Eds.), Restructuring schooling: Learning from ongoing efforts (pp. 84–113). Newbury Park, CA: Corwin Press. Stevenson, H. W., & Stigler, J. W. (1992). The learning gap: Why our schools are failing and what we can learn from Japanese and Chinese education. New York: Simon & Schuster. Su, S. F. (2002). Theory and practice of teaching renewal: An Example of English teaching in junior high school. In H. L. Pan (Ed.), School innovation: Theory and practice (pp. 201–250). Taipei, Taiwan: Xue Fu. Tang, C. M. (2002). Planning of school space renewal. In H. L. Pan (Ed.), School innovation: Theory and practice (pp. 279–330). Taipei, Taiwan: Xue Fu. Wagner, J. (1997). The unavoidable intervention of educational research: A framework for reconsidering researcher-practitioner cooperation. Educational Researcher, 26(7), 13–22. Wagner, T. (2001). Leadership for learning: An action theory of school change. Phi Delta Kappan, 82(5), 378–383. Walker, A., & Dimmock, C. (2002). Moving school leadership beyond its narrow boundaries: Developing a cross-cultural approach. In K. Leithwood, & P. Hallinger (Eds.), Second international handbook of educational leadership and administration (pp. 167–202). London, UK: Kluwer Academic. Wang, L. Y., & Pan, H. L. (2000, December). A survey study on the empowerment of school participants and the cause analysis in junior-high schools and elementary schools: Teacher Association as a focus. Paper presented at the Meeting of the Vision and Planning of Educational Development in the new Era, Taipei, Taiwan. Wang, L. Y., & Pan, H. L. (2001, June). Using empowerment perspective to examine the operation of Teacher Association. Paper presented at the Meeting of the School Innovations, Department of Education, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan. Wang, L. Y., & Pan, H. L. (2002). Seed and soil: The role and practice of school principals and teachers in school innovations. In H. L. Pan (Ed.), School innovations: Theory and practice (pp. 101–137). Taipei: Xue Fu.

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Wei, H. C. (2002). Constructing a learning school: An action research. In H. L. Pan (Ed.), School innovation: Theory and practice (pp. 363–401). Taipei: Xue Fu. Weiner, G. (2002). Auditing failure: Moral competence and school effectiveness. British Educational Journal, 28(6), 789–804. Wu, C. T., & Chen, B. C. (1985). The preliminary review of educational research for forty years in Taiwan. China Forum, 21(1), 230–243. Yu, A. B. (2004). Looking back is a kind of nostalgia … : Curriculum experiences of community as classroom in Taipei county. National Education, 44(6), 56–61.

15 SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT IN MAINLAND CHINA

Daming Feng

Introduction School effectiveness and improvement has long been an important educational issue for researchers and practitioners worldwide. According to Levine and Lezotte (1990), school effectiveness is “the production of a desired result or outcome.” However, “school effectiveness is still a very vague concept, even though it is often used in the literature of school management and improvement” (Cheng, 1996, p. 7). The definition of school effectiveness may vary for individuals as well as for different countries. Relatively speaking, Mortimore has given a clearer meaning when he defines an effective school as “one in which students progress further than might be expected with respect to its intake” (Mortimore, 1998, p. 258). This definition suggests that an effective school should add value to the students’ outcomes in comparison with other schools serving similar intakes (Sammons, 1999, p. 76). The author of this chapter agrees with Mortimore’s definition and believes that the most convincing fruits of school effectiveness and improvement practices should be the improvement of quality in disadvantaged schools.1 This point of view is not groundless but builds on China’s unique history in school effectiveness and improvement. Thus, this chapter begins with a brief historical review of school effectiveness and improvement practices in China and then presents the general context of China’s experiences. The second section of the chapter examines the role the Chinese government plays in promoting improvement in disadvantaged schools, by presenting and discussing the contribution of related initiatives and efforts at the system level. In the third section, the factors at the site level that contribute to improvement in disadvantaged school are identified, through studying a typical case of successful practice in improvement in disadvantaged schools. The fourth section provides researchers and practitioners in other countries with the implications and lessons drawn from China’s best practices in improvement in disadvantaged schools. Throughout this chapter, the author argues that the most valuable and convincing experiences of school effectiveness and improvement are not in traditional, high-performing 287 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 287–306. © 2007 Springer.

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schools but in disadvantaged schools. Also, the initiatives and efforts at system level can substantially promote and enhance the effectiveness and improvement of schools, particularly in disadvantaged schools. Yet, these initiatives and efforts do not work automatically. Rather, they work better if they are matched with the appropriate strategies at the site level. Finally, to develop effective strategies at the site level, an individual school has to fully consider the “status” of the students, based on information from the results of psychological tests, questionnaires, and surveys. Also, the author makes the assertion that school effectiveness and improvement may have a negative side; that is, the excessive expectations and workload in school improvement practices might weigh teachers down. Further, school leaders adopting leadership approaches or management strategies directly from other political and cultural contexts, without considering the appropriateness for their organizations, might do more harm than good.

School Effectiveness and Improvement Efforts in China School effectiveness and improvement has been one of the priorities for China’s education since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. However, by the end of the 1980s, China’s efforts in this area were focused exclusively on a very small proportion of schools. When confronted with immediate economic and technological problems in the early years, the newly established communist government in mainland China was eager to prepare qualified scientists and technicians within a short time. Thus, the government was unable to allocate enough resources to improve all schools in the country. Also, the country experienced a civil war from 1946 to 1949, and the per capita GDP was only US$14–19 in the first five years of the 1950s (Ministry of Education [MOE], 2003a, p. 666). Under these circumstances, the Chinese government decided to develop a policy that classified some schools as key schools and others as ordinary schools, in a top-down manner. In 1953, the central government named 194 schools “key schools.” This was a very small percentage (4.4%) of the large number of schools in China (Li, 2003, p. 276). In 1962, the National Congress of Education again emphasized the importance of key schools and called for accelerating the development of the key schools program. In 1978, the Ministry of Education formulated a new policy regarding the building of a key schools system. According to this policy, key schools were given further priority in funding, human resources, school facilities, and selection of students (Liu, 2005). These particular policies and efforts giving priority to the key schools had constantly improved the quality of these schools and prepared quite a few excellent graduates by 1980s. But these same policies and efforts, which benefited only the key schools, resulted in the problem of uneven development in China’s education. The limited resources for education were allocated unevenly between the minority key schools and majority ordinary schools. Consequently, some of the ordinary schools gradually fell behind and became disadvantaged, whereas the key schools became privileged under such policies and efforts. The statistics in the mid-1980s showed that nearly 40% of China’s elementary and middle schools were identified as disadvantaged (Zhang, 2004, p. 1).

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As a result of the improvement of the national economy during the first five years of the 1980s, the nation’s legislative body, the National People’s Congress, decided to establish the system of nine years of compulsory education in China. Then, the Compulsory Education Act was passed and came into effect when the per capita GDP reached US$138 in 1986 (MOE, 2003a, p. 666). At this time, the Chinese government became aware of the problem of uneven development between key schools and ordinary schools and, in the late 1980s, began to reallocate the resources for education. In 1989, the problem of the effectiveness of ordinary schools, particularly in disadvantaged schools, was placed on the agenda of the Ministry of Education (Zhang, 2004, p. 3). This was seen as a turning point in China’s educational priority, as the policy began to shift from key schools to ordinary schools. In November 1998, the Ministry of Education issued an important document titled Reinforcing the development of disadvantaged schools and making every school work in large and medium cities. This central government document put forward the initiatives and efforts aimed at improving the disadvantaged schools, by introducing changes in funding, governance, policy of enrolment, personnel distribution, and teacher development (MOE, 1998). Since this time, improving the quality of disadvantaged schools has been a focal issue at both system and site levels, because “no school should be left behind” is the essential requirement in the implementation of the Compulsory Education Act. In the above historical account, it is evident that the government in mainland China has shifted its focus from key schools to disadvantaged schools. The purpose of the earlier focus was to breed a corp of élite students from the vast student population for the service of the country, and to make the key schools the benchmark of excellence. The purpose of the latter focus was to reverse the unfavorable conditions of schools suffering from a lack of resources and poor management. Now that the historical context for China’s development has been presented, we turn out attention to the next section, which focuses on the recent practices in disadvantaged schools.

Initiatives and Efforts at System Level Since 1998, the Chinese government has taken various initiatives and made efforts to improve disadvantaged schools. These initiatives and efforts were put into practice with special extra funding, by changing the policy of enrolment and the style of governance, approaching innovation in teacher development, and encouraging school leaders to move to disadvantaged schools.

Special Extra Funding It is a universal consensus that increasing funding is one of the critical factors in improving the quality of disadvantaged schools. In the late 1980s, it was apparent that it would be impossible for the Chinese government to allocate necessary funding to assist these schools. However, things changed in the past decade, as China’s economy has constantly and rapidly developed and improved. As mentioned, China’s per capita GDP was US$19 in 1955 and US$138 in 1986. It reached US$1023 in 2002

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(MOE, 2003a, p. 666). In some coastal cities, the per capita GDP was even higher. For example, in Shanghai, it was US$5642, according to statistics in 2003 (Wen Hui Daily, 2006a, p. 12). This improvement in economy provides the precondition for an increase in funding. Both the central government and the local governments have established various special foundations for restoring the quality of disadvantaged schools in the last decade. The foundation established by the central government mainly aimed to support programs for rebuilding disadvantaged schools in less developed areas.2 For instance, the central government established a special foundation for disadvantaged schools in inland China, where the economic level was low in 1995. By the year 2000, this foundation had provided disadvantaged schools in 852 less developed counties with approximately US$1.6 billion (Li, 2003, p. 251). In another development, the governments in coastal cities tended to establish special foundations themselves for local disadvantaged schools. The most developed coastal city in China, Shanghai, put US$1.1 billion extra funding into 194 local disadvantaged schools from 2002 to 2005 (Wen Hui Daily, 2006a, p. 12). These foundations are employed for building renovations, campus reconstruction, fitting classrooms and laboratories with necessary equipment, and covering expenses in teacher development in disadvantaged schools.

Changing the Enrolment Policy Traditionally, elementary school graduates were required to take a formal entrance examination before they were promoted to middle school. The candidates that got high scores would enter key schools, but the rest had to go to ordinary or even disadvantaged schools. To emphasize equity in the nine-year compulsory education and to provide better support to disadvantaged schools, the Ministry of Education in the late 1980s established several pilot districts in four provinces, to explore the possibility of abolishing the middle school entrance examination and implementing a new policy. This policy stipulated that the key school system at the elementary level and middle education would be abolished. The elementary school graduates in these four pilot districts would be allocated to middle school close to their neighborhoods (MOE, 1993, pp. 10–11). This change of enrolment policy gradually spread to the other 26 provinces and autonomous regions of China, after receiving positive responses from those in the pilot districts. By the end of 2005, all schools in the country had adopted the new policy of enrolment; even the government of the Tibetan Autonomous Region claimed to have adopted the policy of “no entrance examination and going to a school nearby” (Dawarenci, 2005).

Changing the Approach of Support In the past, both the Ministry of Education and the local educational authorities would govern schools in a bureaucratic manner by issuing top-down rules. Now-a-days, this approach is slowly being replaced by a client-centered one in the disadvantaged schools targeted for reform. Evidence of this approach is that the Ministry of Education has recently established a website for a consulting service to provide local

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educational authorities and schools with professional advice (MOE, 2005a). Another example is the National Teacher Networking Program (NTNP) established by the Ministry of Education and supported by eight normal universities.3 In September 2003, the ceremony to launch the NTNP was held in Beijing (MOE, 2003b). According to the news report, the NTNP runs as a supermarket of teacher development for all teachers nationwide. Teachers in any part of the country can select to learn any online course and have access to any presentation any time they wish, through the Internet. The online courses and presentations are prepared by the experts and professors in the field of teacher education in the eight most renowned normal universities. This is one of the solutions to the problem of teachers at disadvantaged schools in inland China having little chance for access to qualified and excellent teacher educators (Chen & Gong, 2004). The changing approach in the support of the Ministry of Education has influenced the administrative behavior of local educational authorities. In Anhui, one of the inland provinces, three initiatives have recently been formulated by the provincial government, to help the leaders and officers at the system level who are concerned about disadvantaged schools. The first initiative is that individual officers at local educational authorities must keep in touch with several disadvantaged schools and assist these schools in addressing difficult problems. The second is that every superintendent of the local authorities must play the role of chief coordinator to organize or coordinate local resource personnel and research institutions of education to support local disadvantaged schools. The third initiative is to build up an accountability system for local educational authorities, related to the condition and extent of improvement in local disadvantaged schools (AEN, 2005).

Innovative Approaches in Teacher Development Based on past experience, we know that teachers in disadvantaged schools are usually good at discipline in the classrooms but lack knowledge and skills in curriculum development and in giving instructions. A survey in 2000 revealed that 25% of the teachers at disadvantaged schools in less developed areas did not have rudimentary knowledge or minimum skills for classroom teaching (Xu, 2003). As a result of the development of the rebuilding program for disadvantaged schools, the matter of professional development for teachers in disadvantaged schools becomes salient. Thus, teacher development in disadvantaged schools has been repeatedly emphasized as the infrastructure for improvement in these schools. Therefore, quite a few innovative approaches beyond the traditional training institute or ordinary workshops for teacher development have emerged in recent years. In addition to the NTNP stated above, the following innovative approaches for teacher development are widely accepted and employed.

“Big Name Teacher Studio” (BNTS) Approach The BNTS is named after a local excellent and renowned teacher; for example, “Steve Teaching Studio,” “Susan Teaching Studio,” etc. The hosts of the studios are selected and named by the local educational authority. Usually, these studios cover all subjects

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such as math, science, Chinese, English, etc. at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. Each host signs a one- or two-year contract with the district. The local educational authority provides the studio with funds and other necessary resources, and each host delivers his or her subject knowledge by mentoring a group of promising young teachers from neighboring disadvantaged schools. It is also necessary for a host to have online presentations and online question-answer sessions for all teachers in the same district (Xinhua, 2004).

“Subject Highland” Approach It is a universal phenomenon that the level of teaching and learning in different subjects gets uneven development in different schools in a district. Usually, a highperforming school4 may get one or two strong subjects but not all. For example, high-performing school A is strong in math and science, whereas high-performing school B is strong in language and social studies. The local educational authorities have recently identified the distribution at the highest level of teaching and learning in different schools within a district and named such schools with the strongest subjects “Math Highland,” “Science Highland,” “Language Highland,” etc. The individual schools with the name of subject highland must take up the responsibility of providing teachers who teach the same subject at disadvantaged schools within the same district with opportunity to join field trips, classroom observation, professional experience sharing sessions, and problem-centered workshops. Of course, these schools will receive extra funding from the local educational authority (Feng, 2002; Wen Hui Daily, 2006b, p. 11). Essentially, it is an inter-school but has a within-district supporting approach for teacher development at disadvantaged schools.

“Inter-District Supporting” Approach Sometimes, it is impossible for a district that has few high-performing schools to employ the subject highland within-district supporting approach. Thus, the interdistrict supporting approach is advocated and promoted by the local educational authorities to be in charge of more than one district. In 2004, the Shanghai Education Commission (SEC) published its new action plan for educational development. As one of the strategic actions, SEC required its 19 districts to carry out the inter-district supporting approach for teacher development, in case the chances to improve the quality of teachers were unevenly distributed among different districts (Wang and Su, 2004). In implementing this requirement of SEC, several inter-district supporting approaches have been developed. These include interdistrict partnership, inter-district internship, inter-district mentoring, and inter-district volunteering (Wen Hui Daily, 2006b, p. 11).

Inter-district partnership An individual disadvantaged school in one district builds up a partnership with a highperforming school in another district, with the assistance of the local educational authority in charge of these two districts. Then, the two schools negotiate what and how the latter helps the former in a fixed period (e.g., one year or two years).

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Inter-district internship A disadvantaged school in one district selects a few promising young teachers to learn instructional skills and acquire other knowledge in practice for a period at a highperforming school located in another district. This is accomplished through the coordination of the local educational authority in charge of these two districts. These young teachers will go back to the disadvantaged school after one semester or one school year. Inter-district mentoring An experienced teacher at a high-performing school in one district meets and talks with a group of promising young teachers teaching the same subject from several disadvantaged schools in another district. These meetings occur once a week, and the teachers give guidance and advice on their teaching and their professional development, according to the expectations and objectives set by the local educational authority in charge of these two districts. The actual needs of these young teachers are also considered. Usually, the mentor will get a little extra pay from the local educational authority. Inter-district volunteering According to the rule of teacher promotion formulated by some local educational authorities, it is necessary for a candidate who is seeking a position of Senior Teacher working in a high-performing school to work at a disadvantaged school in another district located in a less developed town or rural area, for at least one school year. Consequently, many qualified teachers who want to be promoted to senior positions from high-performing schools become inter-district volunteers.

Encouraging School Leaders to Move to Disadvantaged Schools Historically, high-performing schools pool excellent human resources in leadership, whereas disadvantaged schools lack qualified personnel in leadership. In recent years, a new system of performance-related pay for school principals has been developed in Shanghai, to encourage school leaders to move to disadvantaged schools (Wu, Feng, & Zhou, 2000, p. 193). According to this system, all serving principals in Shanghai are divided into 4 grades and 12 levels (see Table 1). The principals at Grade 1 Level 1 status will get the highest pay; the principals at Grade 4 Level 2 status will get the lowest. Every principal has the right to apply for the grade and level he or she considers appropriate. However, a special committee will evaluate the performance of each Table 1.

The system promotion ladder for school principals

Grade 1

Grade 2

Grade 3

Grade 4

Level 1-1 Level 1-2 Level 1-3 Level 1-4

Level 2-1 Level 2-2 Level 2-3 Level 2-4

Level 3-1 Level 3-2

Level 4-1 Level 4-2

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applicant and decide the appropriate professional status for him or her, using a newly developed evaluation system based on a set of indicators. The evidence of the performance of each principal is gathered in four ways: field observation, data-based review, interviews of stakeholders, and evidence-based task reporting by individual principals. This evaluation process ignores the school’s historical achievements and does not care about the status of the school in which a principal is working at the moment. It mainly focuses on the current performance of the school and the evidence of school improvement after the candidate became principal. To encourage qualified leaders to move to disadvantaged schools, a principal will get extra marks in evaluation if he or she is working at a disadvantaged school. The allocation of the principals to a particular grade and level determines their income, as mentioned (Feng, 2003a; Feng & Tomlinson, 2002). This system apparently provides not only performance-related pay mechanism but also an orientation of qualified human resources in leadership toward disadvantaged schools. This system of performance-related pay for school principals developed by the Shanghai Municipal Government was encouraged in 2001 by the central government (State Council, 2001). There is a distinct possibility that this system will be implemented in the whole country.

The Case of Shanghai Zabei No. 8 Middle School Before and After Improvement of the School Shanghai Zabei No. 8 Middle School is located in Zabei District, an inner-city, working-class community in Shanghai. Most of the students come from families of lower socio-economic status. The statistics and psychological tests conducted in 1986 and 1987 show that it was a typical disadvantaged school (Chen, 2003, p. 2; Wang, 1993, pp. 283–285; Xiong & Yu, 2005, pp. 749–750): ● ●

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The equipment and facilities for teaching and learning were out of date. The focal issue of school leadership was not the improvement of quality in learning but keeping order. Most of the teachers had little confidence in improving their students’ learning. 20% of the teachers were identified as unqualified. Out of 35 middle schools in the district, the average score of students in this school in the entrance examination for middle school was at the bottom, but the ratio of criminal behavior was at the top. One-third of the students had the experience of repeating grades in elementary school. Only 22% of the graduates of this school passed the final standardized test. Only 14.9% of the students had the habit of preparing lessons before class. Only 16.2% of the students reviewed lessons after class. Only 11.1% of the students completed their homework without plagiarizing the work of others.

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Only 10% of the students had confidence that they would succeed in passing the final standardized test. More than 60% of the students had little motivation for learning. 10% of the students completely lost heart in learning and had little hope for their adult life. Only 10% of the students expressed satisfaction with the school.

Supported by the local educational authority, this school started its project in 1987, aimed at improving the effectiveness of teaching and the quality of learning. By the end of the 1980s, the positive outcome of the project was apparent. The following facts and data show that this school is no longer disadvantaged (Chen, 2003, pp. 4, 19; Xiong & Yu, 2005, pp. 761–762): ● ●

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Some of the equipment and facilities for teaching and learning have been replaced. The focal issue of school leadership has shifted from keeping school in order to the constant improvement in teaching and learning. Most of the teachers have confidence in improving their students’ learning. Most of the teachers are qualified to teach. Out of 35 middle schools in the district, the average academic achievement went from the bottom (in 1987) to the middle range. Student criminal cases dropped from the top to zero. Of all ordinary schools in the district, the average performance of the students’ conduct/behavior of this school is in first place. The students’ proficiency in English listening comprehension, speed reading and comprehension, and oral expression is significantly higher than that of students from ordinary schools in the district. Almost 100% of the graduates of this school pass the final standardized examination. Students tend to have confidence in participating in various academic events and contests and for the first time won third place in an English contest with all ordinary and high-performing schools in the district. 74.3% of the students have the habit of preparing lessons before class. 86.5% of the students review lessons after class. 91.1% of the students complete their homework without plagiarizing the work of others. More than 90% of the students have confidence that they would succeed in passing the final standardized test. More than 90% of the students believe that they will have a promising future after graduation. More than 90% of the students expressed their satisfaction with the school.

Major Strategies for Improvement in the School To restore the quality of Shanghai Zabei No. 8 Middle School, the school improvement project team was established in 1987, funded and organized by the local educational authority of Zabei District. The project team consisted of school leaders and a few professional researchers from the local research institution of education. The project

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began with a series of psychological tests, questionnaires, surveys, and interviews with individual teachers and students. The results showed the following (Xiong & Yu, 2005, p. 750): ●

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The prime reason for students who have difficulty in learning is not intelligence but psychological factors. The prime reason for students with little motivation for learning and little confidence in learning is that they have too often experienced failure in learning.

Based on these two findings, the project team decided to regard helping students to regain their confidence as a fundamental effort, which provides students with opportunities of success in their learning experience. Later, this project was named “Successful Education.” In implementing the “Successful Education” project, six major strategies were developed in Shanghai Zabei No. 8 Middle School (Chen, 2003, pp. 33, 135–136; Liu, 2005, pp. 9–13; Xiong & Yu, 2005, pp. 756–760):

Building Guiding Values and Beliefs The following guiding values and beliefs leading all members of the school in search of success were gradually built into the school by various data-based demonstrations and evidence-based presentations. There was also repeated two-way communication: ●

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The precise value of education is to help children pass through the fog in their life to find themselves. Success is not the exclusive privilege of one person or some people. Rather, it is something that belongs to everyone. It is essential for educators to believe that every student has the potential to be successful. One of the most important responsibilities for educators is to teach children “learning to learn” and “learning to strive for success.” “Success” refers to a person’s relative progress in comparison with his or her past. The core meaning of “success” is constant development and constant improvement.

Adjusting Expectations for Students According to Liu Jing-hai (2005), head of the project team and the principal of Shanghai Zabei No. 8 Middle School, “Successful Education” is an education approach aimed at serving students with difficulties in learning. It does not try to create an élite for society. Rather, it aims to turn the “failures” into “successes” through the process of appropriate education, in order to avoid the educational tragedy of so many school graduates entering society and the labor force with the memory of failure and frustration (pp. 9–10). “Appropriate education” here refers to the education based on S
f (e. c. a), the formula of “Successful Education” developed by the project team. In this formula, “S” stands for “success in learning,” “e” stands for “appropriate expectations

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for students,” “c” stands for “the chance to experience success by suitable pedagogy,” and “a” stands for “encouraged appraisal.” According to this formula, the expectations for the students at disadvantaged schools must be adjusted. In other words, the expectations for students in this school should be different from the expectations for students at high-performing or ordinary schools. Or, to be more precise, the expectation for most students at this school is just to PASS the final standardized test, not to pursue EXCELLENT achievement in that test. Thus, expectations should start from the current status of individual students rather than from the general requirements of the national curriculum standards. Keeping in mind the progress of individual students, the expectations for them will gradually approach the requirements of national curriculum standards. To accomplish this, a suitable pedagogy is needed.

LSMI Pedagogy From 1987 to 1988, the project team developed a pedagogy with four characteristics in classroom teaching, to create chances of success and increase the experience of success for students. These four characteristics of this so-called “LSMI pedagogy” are “lower starting point,” “slow pace,” “many activities,” and “instant feedback.”

Lower starting point A teacher gets to know and understand the status of individual students by interviewing them and their parents, checking students’ previous homework, conducting quizzes before class, and conducting question and answer activities during class. The teacher will set proper starting points for individual students at the beginning of a semester. Given the status of the students at Shanghai Zabei No. 8 Middle School, the starting points are usually lower than the general requirements of national curriculum standards. Slow pace To minimize the chance of frustration and maximize the chance of success in classroom experience for students, teachers set a slow pace of learning for students with difficulty, in keeping pace with normal requirements. In this way, students with difficulty in learning will get more chance to see progress and success in learning. Many varieties of activity Usually, students having difficulty with learning become easily distracted if a teacher’s presentation lasts for 15 minutes or more. Given such a fact, teachers shift the format of teaching and learning from time to time, by providing students with various interactive activities with other students. Instant feedback Teaching (by teacher), doing and practicing (by students), checking and correcting (by teacher), identifying problems and problem-solving (by teacher together with students) is a basic cycle in every lesson. Through this instant feedback, teachers or students can

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identify problems in their teaching or their learning, respectively. This enables them to improve their work. Also, students can see progress day by day through instant feedback. This recognition is essential to rebuild confidence in learning over time.

Encouraged Appraisal Encouraged appraisal is central to cultivate students’ interest in learning and to provide students with positive reinforcement. In explaining the meaning of encouraged appraisal, Liu (2005, p. 13) argues that effective appraisal for students with difficulty in learning should include the following encouraging factors: Through the appraisal, (1) students will recognize the relation between their endeavors and improved learning outcomes; (2) students will learn to attribute failures in the learning process to their insufficient input, insufficient previous knowledge, or inappropriate methods rather than to their own intelligence; (3) students will learn how to identify problems, how to analyze the reasons for errors, and how to adjust the goals for further learning; and (4) students will learn to respect each other.

Innovative Approaches to Teacher Development From the very beginning, the project team recognized that the quality of teachers was the precondition and assurance for carrying out the “Successful Education” project effectively. By the end of the 1980s, the project team had developed several useful approaches to school-based teacher development. Of these, “micro study with peers” and “co-authored script” were widely acknowledged.

Micro Study with Peers The school videotapes a ten-minute portion of a teacher’s teaching period, selected by the teacher, and shows it to the teacher and other teachers in the same department. The teachers discuss and analyze the advantages and disadvantages of the teacher’s teaching mirrored by this ten-minute period and find ways for the teacher’s further improvement through peer feedback (Chen, 2003, p. 6; Xiong & Yu, 2005, p. 760).

Co-Authored Script The school encourages every teacher to show a selected lesson plan for a 45-minute class. This lesson plan will be presented to other teachers in the same department. Each teacher who receives the plan is required to revise or refine the original one based on his or her values, perspectives, and understanding for teaching and learning. The plan is revised and refined many times and then passed back to the original author weeks later. It is very helpful for the original author (particularly for a teacher at an early stage of his or her career) to read and understand the refined lesson plan in which the wisdom and experiences of other teachers are included. Later, the school will collect all of the co-authored plans as common materials to be shared (Wen Hui Daily, 2006b, p. 12).

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Making Full Use of External Factors During the process of implementing “Successful Education” in the late 1980s, the school consistently employed the strategy of “making full use of external factors.” The school made full use of such government initiatives as inter-school supporting and special funding for rebuilding disadvantaged schools, which emerged in the late 1980s in Zabei District, to improve the quality of the teachers and renew the facilities and equipment for teaching and learning. Also, the school made full use of the forces from the local community and families to establish a parent council at the school level, a parent team at the grade level, and parent volunteers at the class level, to provide the school with various types of support for rebuilding a secure and supportive atmosphere within the school (Xiong & Yu, 2005, p. 760).

Contributory Factors at Site Level The author chose the case of Shanghai Zabei No. 8 Middle School to identify the internal factors contributing to school improvement, because it is one of the best-known and most influential stories in the movement of restoring the quality of disadvantaged schools in China. As one of the few successful experiences in school improvement, it was strongly recommended by the Ministry of Education in the 1990s (Liu, 2005, p. 8). It has been influencing the movement of restoring the quality of disadvantaged schools in China since then, by conferences, symposiums, and publications on “Successful Education.” Since 1995, a number of disadvantaged schools in different parts of China have used the strategies of Shanghai Zabei No. 8 Middle School to improve the quality of their schools and have achieved satisfactory results (Chen, 2003, pp. 19–21). For example, the Lanzhou No. 11 High School (in inland China where the economic level is less developed) was identified in 1996 as disadvantaged. By employing the school improvement strategies from Shanghai Zabei No. 8 Middle School, the Lanzhou school had greatly improved its quality by the year 2000 (Zhang, 2004). Through the case of Shanghai Zabei No. 8 Middle School and other successful cases elsewhere in China (Chen, 2001; Chen, 2003; Liu, 2005; Qian, 2004; Xiong & Yu, 2005; Zhang, 2004), the contributory factors for effectiveness of disadvantaged schools at site level can be identified: ●

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Guiding values and beliefs is a set shared assumptions for learners and educators, learning and teaching, failure and success, and the essential purposes and functions of school and education, through which a school will be led to the vision of quality. Research-based leadership refers to the major decisions of leadership and changes of school policy, based on findings of research literature and the results of psychological tests, questionnaires, and surveys. Appropriate expectations for students means the expectations are adjusted according to the status of individual students in a certain school. Suitable pedagogy creates chances of success for students and provides students with the experience of success.

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Encouraged appraisal is central to cultivating students’ interest in learning and to providing students with positive reinforcement. School-based teacher development is problem-centered teacher development within a school. Making full use of external factors requires a school to make full use of government initiatives and policies aimed at developing school strategies to match these initiatives and policies.

No doubt the initiatives and efforts at system level have substantially contributed to the improvement of Shanghai Zabei No. 8 Middle School. Yet, the extent or degree of improvement in quality may be different in another school under the same policy in the same system. In fact, some of the disadvantaged schools have been merged with other ordinary schools or high-performing schools since 1998, in the program of school redistribution, because little change has taken place in these disadvantaged schools for years (Li, 2003, p. 255). This fact convinced us that the initiatives and efforts at system level are only external forces and preconditions for the improvement of individual schools. When these initiatives and efforts reach an individual school, they do not work automatically. Rather, they work when they are matched with internal changes in an individual school. In this sense, the final extent or degree of quality improvement for an individual school largely depends on the effective strategies at site level.

Implications and Lessons to Learn Many lessons and implications can be drawn from the school improvement experience in mainland China. Many of these lessons and implications are valid not only for disadvantaged schools but also for ordinary schools as well. First, the effectiveness of disadvantaged schools should be given necessary attention. According to the 1990 World Declaration on Education for All, all children, “shall be able to benefit from educational opportunities designed to meet their learning needs” and “an active commitment must be made to removing educational disparities” (UNESCO, 1990). The provision of quality education for poorly motivated students at disadvantaged schools is not only a focal issue in China’s education, but it is also a big challenge in many countries. The experiences gained in China suggest that the most valuable and convincing experience of school improvement is not from traditional high-performing schools but from disadvantaged schools. Second, the initiatives and efforts backed by fiscal policy at system level are indispensable for endeavors in school improvement, particularly in disadvantaged schools. Yet, these initiatives and efforts are only external factors. They will not work automatically if they are not matched with appropriate strategies at site level. In this sense, the leverage of school improvement still largely rests at site level rather than at system level. Third, to develop effective strategies for school improvement at the site level, an individual school has to consider fully the current status of its students based on information from the results of psychological tests, questionnaires, and surveys. For example, in many international studies, “high expectations for students” has been identified

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as one of the key factors in school effectiveness. However, based on the experience of “Successful Education,” “high expectations for students” may not work when dealing with students who are having learning difficulties in disadvantaged schools.

Problems and Concerns As an important part of China’s educational development, improvement in China’s disadvantaged schools has made apparent progress thus far. But a cluster of explicit and implicit problems is impeding the progress of China’s effort in school improvement. The document, Reinforcing the development of disadvantaged schools and making every school work in large and medium cities, issued in 1998 by the Ministry of Education, is seen as the beginning of China’s effort in school improvement for disadvantaged schools. However, the scope of application is rather limited. Given policymakers’ preoccupation with the challenges associated with urban schooling, school improvement for disadvantaged schools in small towns or rural settings has not been given priority, though there are several central government foundations for disadvantaged schools in inland China. Also, the local educational authorities in small towns or rural areas of inland China are unable to allocate extra funding for local disadvantaged schools, because of the less developed economic conditions. Hence, in solving the problem of uneven development between key schools and ordinary schools, a new problem of uneven development between the schools in coastal cities and those in small towns or rural areas of inland China is created (CPUA, 2005; Dong Fang Prospect, 2005; Liu, 2005). This is the first major problem of school improvement for disadvantaged schools in China. The second problem is the workload of teachers. As a result of the implementation of such projects as “Successful Education,” the requirements and expectations for a teacher are increasing. In Chinese culture, the primary responsibility of a teacher is not to teach students subject knowledge but to guide them towards socialization. Therefore, the term “educator” is quite different from “instructor” in the Chinese cultural context, because an “educator” is not only an “instructor” but also a “moral guide.” If a teacher acts only as an “instructor,” he or she will be seen as an underperforming teacher. In this sense, when the question “What is a performing teacher?” is raised, the traditional answer is very simple: a performing teacher is an educator. For a teacher who is implementing a school improvement project in a disadvantaged school, the answer has recently changed to “not only an educator but also a learner.” Now, the answer is “an educator, learner, innovator, facilitator, researcher …” Consequently, the teacher’s workload has increased because of the endless requirements and expectations of the role of a teacher (Feng, 2003b). What is the maximum workload for a teacher? Perhaps it is not in the job assignment but in the conscience of a teacher. The third problem is the leadership dilemma. As the knowledge of school improvement in disadvantaged schools has been accumulated, the school leaders of these schools have begun to introduce such Western leadership and managerial approaches as Distributed Leadership and Total Quality Management (TQM) into their schools. However, these leadership and managerial approaches are based on the cultural

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context of Western societies. Hence, there may be a conflict in values when Western leadership and managerial approaches are introduced into the schools. Basically, the traditional Chinese culture rooted in Confucianism is quite different from the Western Judeo-Christian culture (Walker & Quong, 1998). For example, in contrast to the “original sin” of Judeo-Christian religion, Confucianism believes that “man, by nature, is good.” Given this fundamental assumption about people, a school leader’s priority, according to the Confucian perspective of leadership, is not “supervision” but tapping the natural moral source from his or her subordinates and bringing every positive factor into being. This assumption about school leaders’ priority is apparently contradictory to the assumption of school leaders’ priority in TQM. Taking another example, to address the challenges from school improvement practices, a school principal is planning to apply the distributed leadership approach. But Confucius (1998), the founder of Confucianism, said 3,000 years ago in The Analects, “He who holds no rank in a State does not discuss its policies.” In the light of this teaching, a true gentleman, even in his thoughts, never departs from what is appropriate to his rank. That is, leadership in a school is the principal’s job and no one else’s business. Thus, a school leader sometimes finds himself or herself in a cultural dilemma: To attain school improvement goals in the school, the school leader needs to introduce distributed leadership or other Western leadership and managerial approaches. But the leader will very likely encounter resistance from subordinates and other stakeholders. To be more exact, a school leader is likely to fail to lead the school to attain the planned school improvement goals if he or she does not apply some Western leadership and managerial approaches. However, the same leader will probably meet strong resistance and fail to achieve the goals of improvement at the school if he or she decides to implement Western leadership and managerial approaches based on Western culture (Feng, 2005). Given the above problems, educators and policy-makers in other countries would draw the following conclusion: First, like any effort at change, school effectiveness and improvement has both a positive and a negative side. Fullan and Miles (1992) remind us, “Changing is a learning process that is loaded with uncertainty. No one should ever be fooled into thinking that the change process works the way it is supposed to. ‘Anxiety, difficulties, and uncertainty are intrinsic to all successful change’ ” (quoted in Hanson, 2003, p. 331). Educators and policy-makers thus should be ready to face new challenges when they enjoy the fruits of school improvement. Second, it is necessary to bear in mind that a teacher is a person, not a machine. It is possible for teachers engaging in the improvement of their schools to be weighed down by the excessive expectations and a heavy workload. How to set priorities, what should be retained, and what should be abandoned is an enduring challenge for school leaders. Last but not least, cultural conflicts inevitably exist when school leaders, in the practice of school effectiveness and improvement, employ leadership approaches or strategies rooted in other cultural contexts. How can we solve the problems resulting from cultural conflict and resulting in leadership dilemma? So far as the author knows, this is still a problem that awaits resolution in China.

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Conclusion In the last 8 years, the issue of disadvantaged schools has emerged as a focal issue in the education system in China, and the education community has witnessed unprecedented initiatives and efforts aiming to improve these schools. National and local policy-makers appear to realize that the most convincing evidence of school effectiveness should be the improvement in quality in disadvantaged schools rather than in key schools. This realization has led to significant changes of policies and priority given to disadvantaged schools. The initiatives and efforts for school improvement at system level, matched with appropriate strategies at site level, have produced positive outcomes in disadvantaged schools since 1998. However, the emerging problems in China’s efforts to improve schools remain to be solved. These problems, from the perspective of the author, can be categorized as explicit and implicit. It is not very difficult for the Chinese government to recognize and to deal with the explicit problems. For example, in further promoting the even development in nine-year compulsory education, a document published by the Ministry of Education in May 2005, the government affirmed its position to give high priority to disadvantaged schools in small towns and rural areas in inland China. In this document, the Ministry of Education also called for local educational authorities in inland China to make further efforts and to develop effective strategies to combat problems in disadvantaged schools (MOE, 2005b). In another development, society has recently turned its attention to the problem of the excessive workload of teachers. The Shanghai teachers’ union, for example, has been working for about 2 years on a project of setting an appropriate workload of teachers. The problem of the excessive workload of teachers is likely to be solved in the near future (Feng, 2005). Comparatively speaking, both researchers and practitioners have not paid sufficient attention to such implicit problems as the cultural dilemma in school leadership thus far. Also, there is only a very small body of educational literature on the theme of cultural conflicts or cultural dilemma in school leadership of China. So far as the author knows, the reasons underlying the conflicts and the solution for the dilemma have not been carefully analyzed and explored (Feng, 2005). How to effectively resolve these implicit problems would be an important theme for researchers and practitioners to work on in the field of school effectiveness and improvement. School improvement experiences in China presented in this chapter suggest that there is no easy path to successful school improvement, because success is accompanied by problems. Therefore, the author would like to close this chapter with the advice from Fullan and Miles (1992): “Problems along the journey should be embraced rather than avoided. Educational change is a problem-solving process; only by seeking out problems and resolving them through ‘deep coping’ can we confidently continue the journey.” (Quoted in Hanson, 2003, p. 331)

Notes 1. In China, a disadvantaged school is the lowest performing school among ordinary schools, in which at least four major characteristics can be observed: (1) lack of sufficient funding and necessary equipment

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for normal operation; (2) most students coming from working-class families and having lower motivation for learning; (3) most teachers having lower confidence in improving students’ achievement and not being skillful in instruction; and (4) the focal point of school leadership not being improvement of quality in learning but keeping order. 2. The terms “developed” and “less developed” are for domestic comparisons and not international ones. 3. A normal university is a teacher education university. 4. After abolishing the key school system at the stage of elementary and middle education, educators and parents would like to call an ex-key school a “high-performing school” to make a distinction between ex-key schools and ordinary schools.

References Anhui Education Network (AEN). (2005). Review of rebuilding disadvantaged schools in Anhui Province. Available: http://www.hbjy.net/2005/10-14/ Chen, A. (2001). Progress at different levels and improvement for all. In P. Huang, & X. Fang (Eds.), Classroom instruction and school quality (pp. 38–47). Nanjing: Dong Nan University Press. Chen, D. (2003). Liu and successful education. Beijing: International Cultural Publishing Company. Chen, H., & Gong, P. (2004, January 5). Key words of ICT in education in 2003. China Education Daily. Available: http://www.jyb.com.cn/ Cheng, Y. C. (1996). School effectiveness and school-based management: A mechanism for development. London: Falmer Press. Confucius (Ed.). (1998). The analects. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Teaching & Research Press. CUPA. (2005). The problem of uneven development in education between cities and rural areas: Interview with Cai Yongxiao, Deputy Director of Chongqing Municipal Education Commission. Available: http://www. Cupa.com.cn/2005.article.print.asp?articleID
158 Dawarenci. (2005). Carrying out the policy “no entrance exam and going to school nearby” in 2006. Available: http://tibetancn.chinabroadcast.cn/ Dong Fang Prospect News Report. (2005, June 9). The increasing unequal conditions of education between cities and rural areas: A problem to be resolved. Dong Fang Prospect. Available: http://www.sina.com.cn Feng, D. (2002). Problem-centered approach: One of choices for China’s teacher development during Tenth Five-Year Plan period. Instruction & Management, 13(5), 21–22. Feng, D. (2003a). Principal training and development in the people’s republic of China: Retrospect and prospect. In P. Hallinger (Ed.), Reshaping the landscape of school leadership development: A global perspective (pp. 205–216). Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger Publishers. Feng, D. (2003b). “Organized abandon”: A strategy to deal with over load for teachers. Management in Elementary and Secondary Schools, 20(6), 31–32. Feng, D. (2005). Can we find a solution for the current cultural conflicts in the field of school leadership. Paper presentation at the International Seminar on Education in China: The Dialectics of the Global and the Local, Beijing, China. Feng, D., & Tomlinson, H. (2002). Lessons from China: Research based CPD. Professional Development Today, 5(2), 39–46. Fullan, M., & Miles, M. (1992). Getting reform right: What works and what doesn’t. Phi Delta Kappan, 73(10), 744–752. Hanson, E. M. (2003). Educational administration and organizational behavior. San Francisco: Allyn and Bacon. Levine, D., & Lezotte, L. (1990). Unusually effective schools: A review and analysis of research and practice. Madison, WI: National Center for Effective Schools Research and Development. Li, L. (2003). Talking about education: Interview with Li Lanqing. Beijing: People’s Education Press. Liu, J. (2005). Success from initiatives and efforts. In L. Ma (Ed.), A wise conversation with sixty principals (pp. 8–14). Shanghai: Shanghai Educational Publishing House. Liu, X. (2005). Suggestion on making the policy aiming at equality. Available: http://www.news.tom.com

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Ministry of Education (MOE). (1993). The on going reform of China’s education. Beijing: Higher Education Press. Ministry of Education (MOE). (1998). Reinforcing the development of disadvantaged schools and making every elementary and middle school works in large and medium cities. Available: http://www. bjsupervision.gov.cn/zcfg/ Ministry of Education (MOE). (2003a). Educational statistics yearbook of China 2003. Beijing: People’s Education Press. Ministry of Education (MOE). (2003b). The National Teacher Networking Program: Starting operation. Available: http://news.xinhuanet.com/zhengfu/2003-08/13/content_1023573.htm Ministry of Education (MOE). (2005a). The MOE guidance of promoting further experimental programs in high school. Available: http://www.moe.edu.cn/edoas/website18/info9485.htm Ministry of Education (MOE). (2005b, May 31). Further promoting the even development in nine-year compulsory education. China Education Daily. Mortimore, P. (1998). The road to improvement: Reflections on school effectiveness. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger Publishers. Qian, Y. (2004). Building up the platform for students’ success. In H. Lan (Ed.), Reform in school administrative system and curriculum (pp. 147–152). Beijing: Beijing Educational Publishing House. Sammons, P. (1999). School effectiveness: Coming of age in the twenty-first century. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger Publishers. State Council. (2001). The state decision on reform and development for basic education, 2001. Available: http://www.moe.edu.cn/ UNESCO. (1990). World Declaration on Education For All. New York. Available: http://www.cies.ws/ PaperDocuments/PDF/WorldDeclarationon EducationForAll.pdf Walker, A., & Quong, T. (1998). Valuing differences: Strategies for dealing with the tensions of educational leadership in a global society. Peabody Journal of Education, 73(2), 81–105. Wang, M. (1993). The well-known pilot programs of educational reform in China. Qingdao: Qingdao Ocean Press. Wang, X., & Su, J. (2004, October 22). The action plan with 10 strategic action published in Shanghai. Wen Hui Daily. Wen Hui Daily. (2006a, January 11). Achievements of the rebuilding advantaged middle schools project in Shanghai. Wen Hui Daily. Wen Hui Daily. (2006b, January 12). Achievements of the rebuilding advantaged middle schools project in Shanghai. Wen Hui Daily. Wu, Z., Feng, D., & Zhou, J. (2000). A new framework of educational administration. Shanghai: East China Normal University Press. Xinhua. (2004). The establishment of big name teacher studios in Yuzhong district. Available: http:// www.cq.xinhuanet.com/2004-09/03/content_ 2798476.htm Xiong, M., & Yu, B. (2005). A history of educational explorations and experiments in modern China. Jinan: Shandong Educational Publishing House. Xu, F. (2003, February 11). Self-learning to reflection: An approach responsive to difficulties in teacher development. China Education Daily. Available: http://www.jyb.com.cn/ Zhang, D. (2004). Providing good education for every student. Beijing: Education & Science Publishing House.

16 THE MATURING OF A MOVEMENT: TRACKING RESEARCH, POLICY AND PRACTICE IN AUSTRALIA

Brian Caldwell

Introduction Three decades of studies have resulted in a broad consensus on the characteristics of an effective school. There is now impressive evidence from empirical research and sophisticated case studies on how an ineffective school can become an effective school. The challenge at this time is to scale up the use of this knowledge to ensure that all schools are effective. The focus is shifting from creating an effective school to creating an effective school system. Achieving such an outcome is an indicator that the school effectiveness movement is reaching its maturity. The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the extent to which such maturity has been achieved in Australia by tracking the evolution of research, policy and practice in respect to one particular factor in school effectiveness and school improvement, namely, the locus of decision-making in a shift in the balance of centralization and decentralization. More specifically, the focus is on what is variously known as school-based management or self-management or devolution, defined here as significant and systematic decentralization to the school level of authority and responsibility to make decisions within a centrally-determined framework of policies, standards and accountabilities. The time frame of the review is three decades, from the early 1970s to the early 2000s. The author has been involved in research, policy and practice on the phenomenon for much of this time, and this work is summarized, with cross-referencing to other chapters in this book which have contributed to and helped complete the “story.” It is concluded that there have been five stages in development to maturity in this particular field: Stage 1 Values – building a case on the basis of “what ought to be”; Stage 2 Reputation – identification of good practice based on early indicators of effectiveness; Stage 3 Modeling – refinement of practice in the light of a better data base and more robust analysis; Stage 4 Dependability – achieving clarity and confidence in what ought to be done at the school level; and Stage 5 Alignment – achieving coherence and certainty in moving from school effectiveness to system effectiveness. 307 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 307–324. © 2007 Springer.

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It seems that research, policy and practice are moving from Stage 4 to Stage 5. It is proposed that these stages of maturation may be discerned in other work in school effectiveness and school improvement. There are implications for linkages of policy, practice and research.

Context In Australia, the constitutional responsibility for education lies with the six states and two territories, each of which administers its schools through a department of education responsible to a minister. Australia is one of the few nations where constitutional responsibility for education does not lie with a national government. For example, only 3 of the 21 members of the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) consortium locate such responsibility with state or provincial governments, these being Australia, Canada and the United States. While the state and territory departments have constitutional responsibility for schooling, the Australian Government exerts a powerful influence on primary (elementary) and secondary education because it is the only level of government that can raise an income tax. It can allocate funds to the states and territories for any purpose provided state and territory governments and non-government school authorities meet certain conditions. Many of the current federal education policies aim to increase “national consistency,” for example, the starting age of students. Others require testing in literacy and numeracy for primary and secondary students. There is considerable tension on these arrangements, but a degree of “cooperative federalism” is achieved through meetings of all ministers in the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs. Across the country, about 70% of students attend schools owned and operated by government. These are referred to as government, state, or public schools. About 30% attend schools that are owned and operated by a non-government entity, and these are referred to as non-government, private or independent schools, the majority of which have an affiliation with a church. All non-government schools receive some public funding on a scale that reflects the socio-economic status of their communities. In recent decades there has been a steady drift of students from government to non-government schools to the extent that in the capital cities of most states and territories more than 40% of students at the senior secondary level now attend a non-government school. Students in Australia are among the top performers in international tests such as the Program in International Student Assessment (PISA) or the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). However, the gaps between high performing and low performing students are among the widest in participating countries, especially in differences between girls and boys, students in urban and rural settings, non-Indigenous and Indigenous students, and those in high and low socio-economic communities. There is concern to close these gaps and this underpins the intentions of governments and other authorities to ensure that all schools are effective schools. Each of the states and territories has its policy counterpart to No Child Left Behind (USA), Every Child Matters (UK) and Nurturing Every Child (Singapore).

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Australia has traditionally been considered to have a highly centralized system of education. Reports of distinguished scholars were highly critical of the arrangement (Butts, 1955; Kandel, 1938). In a report for the Australian Council for Educational Research, R. Freeman Butts from Columbia University wondered whether undue centralization caused Australians to “miss something of the vitality, initiative, creativeness and variety that would come if the doors and windows of discussion were kept more open all the way up and down the educational edifice” (Butts, 1955, p. 11 cited by Partridge, 1973, p. 67). Consistent with developments in most public and private sector organizations and institutions around the world in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a loosening of the central grip on public schools but, even in the early 2000s, Australia was still considered to have a highly centralized system of public education. There are exceptions to this pattern with some states giving schools more authority and responsibility. This is particularly the case in Victoria, where local school councils determine policies and approve the budgets of schools within centrally-determined guidelines, and more than 90% of the state budget for schools is decentralized for local decision-making.

Stage 1 Values While there were precursors at the state level, the seminal event in shifting the balance of centralization and decentralization was the release of the report of the Interim Committee of the Australian Schools Commission (1973), generally known as the Karmel Report. Decentralization, or devolution as it was referred to at the time, was elevated to the status of a value that underpinned its recommendations. The Committee agreed that “there is an obligation on it to set forth the principal values from which its recommendations have been derived” (p. 10). The seven values were devolution of responsibility, equality, diversity, public and private schooling, community involvement, special purposes of schools, and recurrent (lifelong) education. The key statements on devolution are set out below: 2.4 The Committee favours less rather than more centralized control over the operation of schools. Responsibility should be devolved as far as possible upon the people involved in the actual task of schooling, in consultation with the parents of the pupils whom they teach and, at senior levels, with the students themselves. Its belief in this grass-roots approach to the control of schools reflects a conviction that responsibility will be most effectively discharged where the people entrusted with making the decisions are also the people responsible for carrying them out, with an obligation to justify them, and in a position to profit from their experience. 2.5 Many consequences follow from this basic position. In the first place, a national bureaucracy, being further removed from the schools than are State ones, should not presume to interfere with the details of their operations. Secondly, the need for overall planning of the scale and distribution of resources becomes more necessary than ever if the devolution of authority is not to result in gross inequalities of provision between regions, whether they are States or smaller areas … . [Interim Committee for the Australian Schools Commission, 1973, pp. 10–11]

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These excerpts show unmistakably that the Committee was concerned with “control over the operation of schools,” not limiting its view of devolution to concepts such as participation or consultation, and that a role for the center, at a state or territory rather than national level, was important in determining an equitable approach to the allocation of resources. The report led to the creation of the Australian Schools Commission, later known as the Commonwealth Schools Commission, that administered a program of grants to government and non-government schools, most of which called for local decision-making. The intention was to improve access to schooling, reduce disparities in funding, encourage diversity, address special educational needs, build capacity in the profession, and foster community involvement in decision-making. While proposals were prepared by and implemented in schools, grants for government schools were administered by state and territory departments of education. The scheme was well-received at all levels and there is little doubt that it had a major impact. It is important to note, however, that while there was substantial evidence of need for funding of the kind that flowed from the work of the Australian Schools Commission, there was little research to support the efficacy of the particular approaches that were funded. There was a strong sense of “what ought to be,” that is, there was a strong foundation in a set of values about local decision-making that was consistent with the social movements of the times. As cited above, there was “a conviction that responsibility will be most effectively discharged where the people entrusted with making the decisions are also the people responsible for carrying them out.”

Stage 2 Reputation The late 1970s and early 1980s were characterized by concern for accountability and the effective use of resources, especially in the public sector. It was also the time when the school effectiveness movement gathered momentum. The author was the chief investigator of a Project of National Significance funded by the Commonwealth Schools Commission in Australia. The Effective Resource Allocation in Schools Project (ERASP) was conducted in two states (Victoria and South Australia) in 1983. Two sets of schools were identified on the basis of their reputation among knowledgeable people in the education sector. One set consisted of schools that were deemed to be highly effective in a general sense; the other comprised schools considered to be highly effective in the manner in which they allocated their resources. Schools that were nominated in both sets were selected for detailed study (see Caldwell & Spinks, 1988 for a detailed account of the project and its methodology). A comprehensive review of literature in the effective schools movement was undertaken to provide a list of characteristics of highly effective schools. The limitations of this literature were acknowledged at the time and are reported elsewhere in this volume, for Australia and elsewhere. Table 1 contains the list. Senior officers in departments of education provided nominations of schools that had these characteristics. Nominations reflected different levels, size, location and socio-economic status of schools. Nominators were asked to include schools that had shown marked improvement in areas in which they had been deficient. A second review of literature resulted

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Table 1. Characteristics of highly effective schools as employed in a 1983 study of school effectiveness in Australia (Caldwell & Spinks, 1988, pp. 31–32) Domain

Characteristic

Curriculum

1. The school has clearly stated educational goals. 2. The school has a well-planned, balanced and organized program which meets the needs of students. 3. The school has a program which provides students with required skills. 4. There are high levels of parental involvement in the children’s educational activities. 1. There is a high degree of staff involvement in the development of school goals. 2. Teachers are involved in decision-making at the school. 3. There are high levels of community involvement in decision-making at the school. A principal who: 1. Enables the sharing of duties and resources to occur in an efficient manner. 2. Ensures that resources are allocated in a manner consistent with educational needs. 3. Is responsive to and supportive of the needs of teachers. 4. Is concerned with his or her own professional development. 5. Encourages staff involvement in professional development programs and makes use of skills teachers acquire in these programs. 6. Has a high level of awareness of what is happening in the school. 7. Establishes effective relationships with the Education Department, the community, teachers and students. 8. Has a flexible administrative style. 9. Is willing to take risks. 10. Provides a high level of feedback to teachers. 11. Ensures that a continual review of the school program occurs and that progress towards goals is evaluated. 1. There are adequate resources in the school to enable staff to teach effectively. 2. The staff has motivated and capable teachers. 1. There is a low student drop-out rate. 2. Scores on tests reflect high levels of achievement. 3. There is a high degree of success in the placement of students in colleges, universities and jobs. 1. The school has a set of values which are considered important. 2. The principal, teachers and students demonstrate commitment and loyalty to school goals and values. 3. The school offers a pleasant, exciting and challenging environment for students and teachers. 4. There is a climate of respect and mutual trust among teachers and students. 5. There is a climate of trust and open communication in the school. 6. There are expectations at the school that all students will do well. 7. There is a strong commitment to learning in the school. 8. The principal, teachers and students have high expectations for achievement. 9. There is high morale among students in the school. 10. Students have respect for others and the property of others. 11. There is provision for students to take on responsibility in the school. 12. There is good discipline in the school. 13. There are few occasions when senior administrators in the school need to be directly involved in the discipline of students.

Decision-making

Leadership

Resources Outcomes

Climate

(Continued)

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Table 1. (Continued) Domain

Characteristic

Climate

14. There is a low absentee rate among students. 15. There is a low student suspension rate. 16. There is a low delinquency rate among students. 17. There is high morale among teachers in the school. 18. There are high levels of cohesiveness and team spirit among teachers. 19. There is a low absentee rate among teachers. 20. There are few applications from teachers for transfer.

Table 2. Characteristics of schools that allocate their resources in a highly effective manner as employed in a 1983 study of school effectiveness in Australia (Caldwell & Spinks, 1988, p. 33) Domain

Characteristic

Process

There is a systematic and identifiable process in which: 1. Educational needs are determined and placed in an order of priority. 2. Financial resources are allocated according to priorities among educational needs. 3. There is opportunity for appropriate involvement of staff, students and the community. 4. Participants are satisfied with their involvement in the process. 5. Consideration is given to evaluating the impact of resource allocation. 6. A budget document is produced for staff and others which outlines the financial plan in understandable fashion. 7. Appropriate accounting procedures are established to monitor and control expenditure. 8. Money can be transferred from one category of the budget to another as needs change or emerge during the period covered by the budget. 1. High priority educational goals are consistently satisfied through the planned allocation of resources of all kinds. 2. Actual expenditure matches intended expenditure, allowing for flexibility to meet emerging and/or changing needs. 3. There is general understanding and broad acceptance of the outcomes of budgeting.

Outcomes

in a list of characteristics of effectiveness in the allocation of resources. Table 2 contains the list. The same methodology was used to secure nominations of schools that were considered on the basis of their reputation to be highly effective. A model derived from experience in the school that received most nominations in both categories (Rosebery District High School in Tasmania), but reflecting practice in many schools among those nominated, became the centerpiece of a training program. The program was conducted from 1984 to 1986 for more than 5,000 principals, teachers and parents, and in some cases students, in a three-year project to build capacity for local policymaking, planning and budgeting in the state of Victoria. This followed the adoption of new policies in Victoria for the further decentralization of authority and responsibility for schools within centrally-determined guidelines. The model consisted of an orderly approach to goal-setting, policy-making, planning, budgeting, and program evaluation, with distinct but complementary roles for policy groups, such as a school

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council, and program teams, consisting of teachers and other staff who contributed to policy but were largely concerned with implementation. The workshop program was subsequently refined and adapted for use in different settings, including England, Hong Kong and New Zealand, from 1988 to 1992. These coincided with major policy initiatives in each setting; for example, the introduction of local management of schools in England as set out in the 1988 Education Reform Act; the School Management Initiative (SMI) in Hong Kong; and the Tomorrow’s Schools initiative in New Zealand. These developments in self-managing schools were sometimes the subject of fierce attack. Some tackled the topic from an ideological perspective, with the practice seen as an example of market-oriented reform by conservative governments (e.g., Smyth, 1993). There was often a demand for evidence that self-management led in cause-andeffect fashion to improved student outcomes. This was a reasonable demand. It was sobering to note the consistent finding in early research that there appeared to be few if any direct links between local management, self-management or school-based management and learning outcomes (Malen, Ogawa, & Kranz, 1990; Summers & Johnson, 1996). Some researchers noted that such gains are unlikely to be achieved in the absence of purposeful links between capacities associated with school reform, in this instance, self-management, and what occurs in the classroom, in learning and teaching and the support of learning and teaching (see Bullock & Thomas, 1997; Caldwell, 2002; Cheng, 1996; Hanushek, 1996, 1997; Levacˇi´c, 1995; Smith, Scoll, & Link, 1996; OECD, 1994).

Stage 3 Modeling Further reform in Victoria in the 1990s provided an opportunity to explore the links between self-management and learning outcomes because this was an explicit objective. Significantly, in the context of the chapter, school effectiveness and school improvement had moved on; there was a much sturdier data base on student achievement than had existed before and those researching in the field were employing more robust methodologies. The Victorian reform began in 1993 with a significant tilt to decentralization in the Schools of the Future program. About 90% of the state’s education budget was decentralized to schools for local decision-making, extending to staff, but within a centrallydetermined framework of curriculum, standards and accountabilities. Employment arrangements were determined within collective agreements that applied to all schools. Longitudinal research was conducted over five years in the Cooperative Research Project, steered by a committee of senior officers of the education department, principals and scholars at the University of Melbourne, including several with skills in structural equation modeling. The objectives and purposes of the Schools of the Future (SOF) program ranged over educational (“to enhance student learning outcomes,” “actively foster the attributes of good schools”); professional (“recognize teachers as true professionals,” “allow principals to be true leaders”); community (“to determine the destiny of the school, its character and ethos”) and accountability (“for the progress of the school and the achievement of its students”).

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Successive surveys in the Cooperative Research Project (1994, 1995a, 1995b, 1996, 1997, 1998) consistently found that principals believed there had been moderate to high level of realization of the expected benefit in respect to improved learning outcomes for students. In the final survey in 1997, 84% gave a rating of 3 or more on a 5-point scale (1 is “low” and 5 is “high”). Such findings did not illuminate the issue of the extent to which the capacities fostered by the reform impact on learning outcomes. Structural equation modeling using LISREL 8 (Jöreskog & Sörbom, 1993) was employed in the analysis of data in the 1995, 1996 and 1997 survey. It was conducted by Ken Rowe who contributes elsewhere in this volume on the theme of teacher effectiveness. The model reported here derives from the 1997 survey (Cooperative Research Project, 1998). The first step was to create seven clusters of related survey items and to treat these as constructs. These constructs were formed from 45 survey items concerned with attitudes to the reform (Confidence in the Attainment of Schools of the Future Objectives), support (Curriculum and Standards Framework Curriculum Support), and outcomes (Curriculum and Learning Benefits, Curriculum Improvement due to the Curriculum and Standards Framework, Planning and Resource Allocation Benefits, School and Community Benefits, Personnel and Professional Benefits). Figure 1 contains the explanatory regression model that shows the interdependent effects among variables (in this instance, latent variables that represent the constructs)

School and community benefits

0.343 Personnel and professional benefits

0.271

0.299

Planning and resource allocation benefits

0.359

0.230 0.364

Confidence in attainment of SOF objectives

0.420

0.173

CSF curriculum support

0.388

0.309

Curriculum and learning benefits

0.226 Curriculum improvement due to CSF

Figure 1. Explanatory regression model showing interdependent effects among factors influencing perceived Curriculum and learning benefits (Cooperative Research Project, 1998) Note: SOF = Schools of the Future (the reform initiative that included a higher level of self-management); CSF = Curriculum and Standards Framework.

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on the variable Curriculum and Learning Benefits. Standardized path coefficients are shown, representing the direct effects (all paths are statistically significant beyond the p  0.05 level by univariate two-tailed test). The fit between the data and model is very good indeed, with an Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index of 0.969, indicating that almost all (96.9%) of the variances and co-variances in the data are accounted for by the model. Two sets of case studies in Victoria (Hillier, 1999; Wee, 1999) helped illuminate the links illustrated in the model in Figure 1 under conditions where principals reported improved learning outcomes. Are the linkages evident in the model confirmed in deep on-site investigations in particular schools where improvement is claimed? The research design in both studies thus started with schools where principals made such a claim. The first task was to test the validity of these claims, drawing on evidence in the particular schools selected for study. The second task was to seek explanations for how such improvement occurred and then to match it against the linkages or pathways that are shown in the model in Figure 1. The findings revealed that schools could cite evidence that their efforts had led to improved outcomes for students. They drew on many sources of data in recognizing improved student learning in their schools. This illustrated the capacity being developed in the system to gather information about the performance of schools. Maps of direct and indirect links were prepared by Wee (1999) for each school using the rigorous approach to data collection, data display and data reduction for qualitative research proposed by Miles and Huberman (1994). These maps showed how school capacity associated with being a School of the Future had led to improved outcomes for students. Actions at the school level that had a direct impact on student learning are in the domains of professional development, implementation of the curriculum and standards framework, and monitoring. The impact of resource allocation is indirect, mediated through curriculum, professional development, monitoring and staffing. It is noteworthy that the government that implemented the Schools of the Future program in 1993 was defeated in elections in 1999. It was one of the reforms criticized by Smyth (1993) as being a market-oriented project that threatened the future of public education. The Kennett Coalition, generally perceived as a right wing government, was replaced by Bracks Labor, which is a left of centre government. The self-management thrust in Schools of the Future was the subject of independent review (Connors, 2000) and was affirmed, with self-management extended so that 94% of the state’s education budget is now decentralized to schools. Much of the ideological overtone in debates about self-management has disappeared and the focus is on how schools use their authorities and responsibilities to secure improved learning outcomes. Schools are encouraged to frame their efforts in a school effectiveness model adopted from Sammons, Hillman, and Mortimore (1995).

Stage 4 Dependability Research reported in Stage 3 sharpened the focus on processes whereby the capacities associated with self-management led in identifiable ways to gains in student improvement. Robust methodologies and a better data base were helpful. The next

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stage in the maturing of the movement, as illustrated in the context of the selfmanaging school, is the association with studies of teacher effectiveness (see Rowe, elsewhere in this volume). It is worthwhile to briefly review the evidence on the relative impact of quality of teaching and socio-economic circumstance. Rowe, who chaired the National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy for the Australian Government, concluded that: In every case more variance [among measures of student achievement] was accounted for at the department level than between schools, and the proportion of variance at the class level was more than at the departmental level. A general principle emerges from data such as these and that is the smaller the unit of analysis and the closer one gets to the pupil’s experience of education, the greater the proportion of variance explicable by that unit. In accountability terms the models indicate that teachers have the greatest influence. (Adapted from Rowe, 2004, p. 9) Hattie (2003) drew on an extensive review of literature and a synthesis of findings in more than half a million studies and reached a similar conclusion. Percentages of explained variance were students (50), teachers (30), home and peers (5–10) and schools and principals (5–10). He concluded that: We should focus on the greatest source of variance that can make the difference – the teacher. We need to ensure that this greatest influence is optimized to have powerful and sensationally positive effects, but they must be exceptional effects. We need to direct attention at higher quality teaching, and higher expectations that students can meet appropriate challenges – and these occur once the classroom door is closed and not by reorganizing which or how many students are behind those doors, by promoting different topics for teachers to teach, or by bringing in more sticks to ensure they are following policy’. (cited in Rowe, 2004, pp. 12–13) The work of Silins and Mulford in their Leadership for Organizational Learning and Student Outcomes (LOLSO) project, reported elsewhere in this volume, reveals how effects such as those reported by Hattie can be facilitated by the efforts of leaders. They remain skeptical about the impact of decentralization of decisions about resources but conclude: Our research on leadership, OL and student outcomes provides the strongest support for the four critical conditions … to refocus school-based management strategies. School leaders need to establish systems and environments that promote improved teaching and learning by involving teachers and the school community in shared decision making, increasing participation of students in school activities and creating a culture of collaboration and trust where leadership sources are distributed throughout the school community. Where teachers believe they are empowered in areas of importance to them, especially in schools where

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there are collaborative, cooperative, and consultative decision making processes in place, teachers will respond to reform as actors and leaders. Shared learning, empowerment and leadership are pre-requisites for school improvement. Where school-based management is implemented to promote student outcomes, conditions that promote shared learning, empowerment and leadership must first be established. (Silins & Mulford, 2007) Silins and Mulford have affirmed the findings of the later work in the Cooperative Research Project but have produced a more fine-grained analysis of the role of leaders and the links to learning. There is now a sense of dependability in research on school effectiveness and school improvement that has been achieved with a focus on learning and teaching. A broader view of resources is accommodated in their models. This dependability is illustrated in the case studies by Lewis and Paphitis reported elsewhere in this volume. An “ideal case” is furnished in what has been achieved at Bellfield Primary School, which serves the Melbourne suburb of West Heidelberg, a community characterized by high levels of aggression, gambling, alcohol and drug abuse. Enrolment is about 220 and remains steady. About 80% of children’s families receive the Education Maintenance Allowance (an indicator of socio-economic status), nearly 60% of students come from single parent families, and slightly more than 20% are from Non-English Speaking Backgrounds. Many of these students are refugees from Somalia. There is an Indigenous (aboriginal) enrolment of about 20 students. It is one of the most disadvantaged schools in Victoria. The 1996 Triennial Review revealed that over 85% of students were behind state-wide benchmarks in literacy and numeracy. School improvement at Bellfield Primary School is reflected in the performance of students on tests that show remarkable gains. Trends in results on state-wide tests in the Preparatory Grade and in Grades 1 and 2, as summarized in Table 3, illustrate what has been accomplished when comparisons are made with schools in similar settings (“like schools”), with all schools across the state, and with results in 1998. The kinds of data summarized in Table 3 illustrate approaches to benchmarking in Victoria. These data were not available in the early years of self-management. Transformation was achieved by building the capacity of staff. It also called for outstanding leadership, furnished in this instance by former principal John Fleming. A visit to the school reveals a quiet, safe and orderly environment. A teaching vacancy Table 3.

School improvement at Bellfield Primary School (Caldwell, 2006, p. 139)

Bellfield 2004

Like schools 2004

State-wide 2004

Bellfield 1998

Preparatory grade: Percentage reading with 100% accuracy at Level 1 97.4 58.5 67.5

33.3

Grade 1: Percentage reading with 100% accuracy at Level 15 100 26.3

35.9

34.6

Grade 2: Percentage reading with 100% accuracy at Level 20 83.3 38.7

47

30.6

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results in scores of applications to fill the post, with the school able to make such appointments because it is self-managing. A key feature of Table 3 is the performance of students at Bellfield compared to those in like schools. If socio-economic circumstance can be overcome at Bellfield it can be overcome in similar settings if similar strategies to build the capacity of staff prove as successful. A first step is rejection of the view that socio-economic circumstance necessarily leads to low achievement even if research has shown that it is an important predictor of such an outcome. Indeed, approaches to the allocation of resources that simply direct additional resources to schools to compensate for socioeconomic circumstance may be ineffective, as they clearly have been in the case of many of the like schools whose performance is summarised in Table 3. Leadership was important at Bellfield, as it was in the case studies reported by Lewis and Paphitis (see Caldwell, 2006 for a detailed account of Bellfield).

Stage 5 Alignment The final stage of maturation in the school effectiveness and school improvement movement is to ensure that all schools in a system of education can perform as well as the best schools. Expressed another way, in the context of Table 3: how can “like schools,” and “state-wide” schools perform as well as Bellfield? There is an impressive literature building around this theme, especially in the light of experience where large-scale system-wide change has occurred. Those who have been involved in or have evaluated such change are contributing (see, e.g., Fullan, 2005). However, there is not yet the same degree of dependability as has been achieved in relation to strategies for effectiveness and improvement in a single school (Stage 4 Dependability). In 2004, the author conducted a review of developments in several countries, notably Australia, especially Victoria, and England, and found that the best practice of self-management had far outstripped its initial conceptualization and that the operations of self-managing schools and the roles of their leaders were changing in significant ways. Further information was gathered in nine workshops conducted over nine weeks in four countries in early 2005 (Australia, England, Chile and New Zealand). It was found that the changes were so deep that they amounted to a “new enterprise logic of schools.” The concept of “new enterprise logic” was taken from the work of Zuboff and Maxmin (2004) who found that profound changes that went deeper than structure and function were underway in education, health and a range of enterprises in the public and private sectors. The following were proposed (Caldwell, 2006) as major elements in the new enterprise logic of schools: (1) The student is the most important unit of organization – not the classroom, not the school, and not the school system. (2) Schools cannot achieve expectations for transformation by acting alone or operating in a line of support from the centre of a school system to the level of the school, classroom or student. The success of a school depends on its capacity to join networks to share knowledge, address problems and pool resources.

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(3) Leadership is distributed across schools in networks as well as within schools. (4) Networks involve a range of individuals, agencies, institutions and organizations across public and private sectors in educational and non-educational settings. Personnel and other resources are allocated to energize and sustain them. (5) New approaches to resource allocation are required under these conditions. These take account of developments in personalizing learning and the networking of expertise and support. (6) Intellectual capital and social capital are as important as other forms of capital. These elements were explored in workshops of educational leaders in England and Australia, notably in the latter where 19 were conducted by the author in every state and territory in mid-2006 under the auspices of the Australian College of Educators. Two directions for research, policy and practice emerged. One is the shift in focus from determining the relative effectiveness of “top down” or “bottom up” approaches to effectiveness and improvement. It is both of these, but also “lateral,” and there is heightened interest in the networking of knowledge. There are impressive reviews of policy and practice (Hildreth & Kimble, 2004; OECD, 2003) but there is a need for more research on processes and outcomes. It illustrates the disjunction of research and policy that characterized the earlier stages of the school effectiveness and school improvement movement, as illustrated in the shifts in the balance of centralization and decentralization under consideration in this chapter. More recent work by Caldwell and Spinks (1992, 1998) points to the importance of “alignment” in two senses. One is between policies and practices at different levels of government and within school systems. The other is in relation to resources. In our earlier work, as reflected in the Effective Resource Allocation in Schools Project (ERASP) reported above (Stage 2 Reputation), resources were narrowly conceived in monetary terms. The “new enterprise logic” suggests a broader view that includes intellectual capital, social capital and financial capital and the need to align these, one with the other, with each directed at securing high levels of achievement by all students in all settings. An “alignment for transformation” model has emerged from the author’s work described above. “New approaches to resource allocation” (element 5 above) have been identified in Spinks’ recent work on needs-based funding at the system and school level in Victoria and South Australia as reported by Spinks elsewhere in this volume (see also Caldwell & Spinks, 2007). One outcome has been the development of a new set of characteristics of effectiveness in the allocation of resources at the school level, as summarized in Table 4, which takes a broader view than the narrowly financial perspective in Table 2.

Discussion There are impressive aspects in the Australian experience in school effectiveness and school improvement. Some are illustrated in the contributions of Australian authors in this volume. The International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) has been held in Australia on two occasions and three groups of key stakeholders (policymakers, practitioners and researchers) have been engaged on each occasion.

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Table 4.

A contemporary view of indicators of effective resource allocation (Caldwell & Spinks, 2007)

Domain

Characteristic

Process

There is a systematic and identifiable process in which: 1. Annual planning occurs in the context of a multi-year development plan for the school. 2. Educational needs are determined and placed in an order of priority on the basis of data on student achievement, evidence-based practice, and targets to be achieved. 3. Resources to be acquired and allocated include intellectual and social capital. 4. A range of sources are included in plans for the acquisition and allocation of resources, including money allocated by formula from the school system, funds generated from other sources, other kinds of support from public and private organizations and institutions, and resources shared for the common good in networks or federations. 5. There is appropriate involvement of all stakeholders in the planning process including representatives of sources of support. 6. The financial plan has a multi-year outlook as well as an annual budget, with all components set out in a manner that can be understood by all stakeholders. 7. Appropriate accounting procedures are established to monitor and control expenditure. 8. Money can be transferred from one category of the budget to another as needs change or emerge during the period covered by the budget. 9. Plans for knowledge management and the building of social capital, including philanthropy and the contributions of social entrepreneurs, are included in or complement the financial plan. 10. All plans specify how processes and outcomes are to be evaluated. 1.Targets are consistently achieved through the planned allocation of resources of all kinds. 2. Actual expenditure matches intended expenditure, allowing for flexibility to meet emerging and/or changing needs. 3. There is general understanding and broad acceptance of the outcomes of resource acquisition and allocation.

Outcomes

Senior policymakers in several states have participated elsewhere and are clearly in touch with developments around the world. There is now a robust evidence base to guide school improvement, as illustrated in the kinds of data contained in Table 3. Other aspects of the Australian experience are more limiting. At the national level, the Australian Government has produced a digest of research on school effectiveness (Department of Education, Science and Training [DEST], 2004) but, while it refers to developments in research methodologies such as multilevel modeling and value-added indicators, it consists mainly of lists of characteristics of effective schools. At the state level, Victoria’s Blueprint for Government Schools (Department of Education and Training, 2003) is shaped by the somewhat dated model of Sammons, Hillman and Mortimore (1995). On the other hand, its Department of Premier and Cabinet commissioned an analysis of school performance across Australia that utilizes state-of-theart multilevel analysis and value-added measures (Lamb, Rumberger, Jesson, & Teese, 2004). The challenge is to ensure that policy and practice are shaped by the findings.

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This chapter has traced developments over more than three decades in an important issue in effectiveness and improvement, as reflected in the locus of decision-making and decentralization of authority and responsibility to schools within a centrally-determined framework (self-management). Five stages were identified, with much yet to be done in the final stage of moving from effective schools to effective school systems. However, in respect to the issue under consideration, there is a sense of maturity in the movement, but it has taken more than three decades. These five stages and sense of maturity are likely to have counterparts in other facets of effectiveness and improvement. It is unlikely that policymakers and the public at large will countenance such a timeconsuming effort in this or any other field in the future, given expectations for schools and school systems. The good news is that the time frame is tightening as a better evidence-base is built and more robust methodologies are employed. However, there must be renewed efforts to more closely align the work of researchers, policymakers and practitioners.

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Cooperative Research Project. (1997). Still more work to be done but … No turning back. Report of the Cooperative Research Project on “Leading Victoria’s Schools of the Future,” Department of School Education, Victorian Association of State Secondary Principals, Victorian Primary Principals Association, The University of Melbourne (Fay Thomas, Chair). Melbourne: Department of Education, Employment and Training. Cooperative Research Project. (1998). Assessing the outcomes. Report of the Cooperative Research Project on “Leading Victoria’s Schools of the Future,” Department of Education, Victorian Association of State Secondary Principals, Victorian Primary Principals Association, The University of Melbourne (Fay Thomas, Chair). Melbourne: Department of Education, Employment and Training. Department of Education and Training (DET). (Victoria). (2003). Blueprint for government schools. Melbourne: DET. Available: www.sofweb.vic.edu.au/blueprint Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST). (Australia). (2004). School effectiveness. School Issue Digest No. 1. Canberra: DEST. Fullan, M. (2005). Leadership sustainability. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin Press. Hanushek, E. A. (1996). Outcomes, costs, and incentives in schools. In E. A. Hanushek, & D. W. Jorgenson (Eds.), Improving America’s schools: The role of incentives (pp. 29–52). Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, Paper 3. Hanushek, E. A. (1997). “Assessing the effects of school resources on student performance: An update.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 19(2), 141–164. Hattie, J. A. (2003). Teachers make a difference: What is the research evidence? Background paper to invited address presented at the 2003 ACER Research Conference, Carlton Crest Hotel, Melbourne, Australia, October 19–21, 2003. Hildreth, P., & Kimble, C. (Eds.). (2004). Knowledge networks: Innovation through communities of practice. London: Idea Group Publishing. Hillier, N. (1999). “Educational reform and school improvement in Victorian primary schools 1993–1999.” Unpublished thesis for the degree of Doctor of Education, University of Melbourne. Interim Committee of the Australian Schools Commission. (1973). Schools in Australia. Peter Karmel (Chair). Canberra: Australian Government Printing Service. Jöreskog, K. G. & Sörbom, D. (1993). LISREL 8: User’s reference guide. Chicago: Scientific Software, Inc. Kandel, I. L. (1938). Types of administration. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research. Lamb, S., Rumberger, R., Jesson, D., & Teese, R. (2004). School performance in Australia: Results from analyses of school effectiveness. A report for the Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) (Victoria). Melbourne: DPC. Leva cˇ i´c, R. (1995). Local management of schools: Analysis and practice. Buckingham: Open University Press. Malen, B., Ogawa, R. T., & Kranz, J. (1990). “What do we know about site-based management: A case study of the literature – A call for research.” In W. Clune, & J. Witte (Eds.), Choice and control in American education Volume 2: The practice of choice, decentralization and school restructuring pp. 289–342. London: Falmer Press. Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded sourcebook. (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. OECD, Directorate of Education, Employment, Labor and Social Affairs, Education Committee. (1994). Effectiveness of schooling and of educational resource management: Synthesis of country studies. Points 22 and 23. Paris: OECD. OECD. (2003). Networks of innovation: Towards new models for managing schools and school systems. Paris: OECD. Partridge, P. H. (1973). Society, schools and progress in Australian. Revised edition. Rushcutters Bay: Pergamon Australia. Rowe, K. J. (2004). “The Importance of Teaching: Ensuring Better Schooling by Building Teacher Capacities that Maximize the Quality of Teaching and Learning Provision – Implications of Findings from Emerging International and Australian Evidence-Based Research.” Invited paper at the Making Schools Better Conference of the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne 26–27 August.

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Sammons, P., Hillman, J., & Mortimore, P. (1995). Key characteristics of effective schools: A review of school effectiveness research. A report by the Institute of Education for the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED). London: IOE. Silins, H., & Mulford, B. (2007). “Leadership and school effectiveness and improvement.” In Townsend, T. (Ed.) (this volume). Smith, M. S., Scoll, B. W., & Link, J. (1996). “Research-based school reform: The Clinton Administration’s Agenda.” In E. A. Hanushek, & D. W. Jorgenson (Eds.), Improving America’s schools: The role of incentives (Paper 2, pp. 9–27). Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Smyth, J. (Ed.). (1993). A socially-critical review of the self-managing school. London: Falmer Press. Summers, A. A., & Johnson, A. W. (1996). “The effects of school-based management plans.” In E. A. Hanushek, & D. W. Jorgenson (Eds.), Improving America’s schools: The role of incentives (Paper 5, pp. 75–96). Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Wee, J. (1999). “Improved Student Learning and Leadership in Self-Managed Schools.” Unpublished thesis for the degree of Doctor of Education, The University of Melbourne. Zuboff, S., & Maxmin, J. (2004). The support economy. New York: Penguin Books.

17 SCHOOLING REFORM: REFLECTIONS ON THE NEW ZEALAND EXPERIENCE

Howard Fancy

Introduction The New Zealand education system has experienced considerable reform and policy change since 1989. These have occurred in the context of major economic, social and public sector reforms. Fiske and Ladd (2000) comment that “Rarely has any country engaged in such a sustained and far-reaching overhaul of its education system.” In 1989 major administrative reforms were initiated followed closely by the development of a new national curriculum and qualifications framework. From 1996 to 2002 the emphasis shifted much more directly onto a sharpening professional and policy focus directed towards lifting achievement. The period since 2002 has extended the focus on raising student achievement through a concentrated emphasis on increasing the effectiveness of teaching and strengthening the roles of family and community as the two most important “levers” to influence student achievement. Associated with this has been a major investment in building a strong evidence base, professional development more strongly designed and judged in relation to its impact on student outcomes and increased monitoring of the performance of the school system. Over this period the “role of government” has evolved from one that initially emphasised a sharp separation of roles to one that now looks for greater clarity and understanding of the different roles and relationships between government, schools, profession and communities within a system characterised by interdependent relationships.

Brief Description of the New Zealand System Within the 2,650 New Zealand schools (of which 350 are secondary), are approximately 750,000 pupils who generally start school when they turn five and leave when they are 16 or 17 years old. Within our student population are a growing student proportion identifying as M¯aori, Pacific or Asian. 325 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 325–338. © 2007 Springer.

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Less than 3% of schools are private schools. There are also around 90 M¯aori language immersion schools. Around 10% of the schools are integrated schools with a range of special characteristics including religious affiliations. There are no layers of local government or state government administration between central government and schools. Schools since 1989 have been governed by Boards appointed by the school’s parent community and carry the full legal responsibilities for governance including compliance with the law, the employment of the principal and staff and curriculum delivery. On international measures New Zealand students generally perform well, ranking above OECD averages in surveys. But relative to other countries with similar averages New Zealand has a wider dispersion in achievement between top and lowest achieving students. For a significant minority of students the system has failed to engage them effectively in learning at school with the lack of engagement of some students also evidenced by comparatively poor indicators of absences, exclusions and bullying.

Administrative Reforms In the late 1970s and 1980s, New Zealand in grappling with a changing global context and rising unemployment undertook major economic reforms to address major macro economic imbalances and deregulate product, financial and labour markets. The combination of many more students staying longer at school and the wider economic reforms set the context for the major education reviews that were initiated. Reviews of the school administration (Department of Education, 1988) known as the Picot Report, the early childhood education sector (Report of the Early Childhood Care and Education Working Group, 1988), known as the Meade report and the post compulsory sector (Hawke, 1989) reflected concerns that: ●

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the existing education administration was over centralized, cumbersome, and too intertwined with the profession to be an effective driver of change; large scale remedial education would be needed for young people who did not have the life skills or educational knowledge to succeed in a modern economy and society; the education system needed to become more responsive to a changing economy and attuned to the different interests of students, communities and employers; the role of government in education needed clarifying.

As Hawke (2001, pp. 2–3) said in respect of this period “… the reforms were not simply the next step in a process of continual adaptation, … a new reforming government … had few commitments to existing institutions … . Education was caught up in the general thrust (and excitement) of a questioning of all conventions and a determination to focus public policy on efficiency and equity … . Whether education was best delivered through a large public bureaucracy or through some other units which looked more like business firms may have been a strange question to many educationalists but it was very natural to those who wanted to ensure that the public sector contributed as much as possible to living standards in a vibrant society.”

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Again to quote Hawke (p. 3), “… the pressure on education was not frontal. Rather, the government’s program of reform generated levels of unemployment that were unprecedented in NZ … . The standard educational institutions were not, in the view of officials, involved responsive to what was required.” The adoption of the recommendations from the review of school administration triggered school administrative reforms that became known as “Tomorrow’s Schools”. These transferred responsibility for running schools to parent-elected school boards of trustees from October 1, 1989. Boards became the legal employers of teachers, appointed principals and became responsible for the overall management and performance of a school. A layer of departmental administration that had previously taken the form of ten regional education boards was removed. The reforms shifted decision-making closer to parents, communities and schools seeing these groups as being better informed to tailor education to local needs and priorities. Responsibility for a national curriculum and industrial relations was left at the centre while a higher level of flexibility in resource use at the school levels was seen to enable improved responsiveness at a school and community level. Brian Picot, who chaired the review of school administration review, described the issue as a “good people/bad system” problem. Hawke (p. 7) states “The basic argument was the standard one against excessive centralisation. … The proposal was never to substitute local control for central.” The Picot language of “local autonomy within central guidelines” was carefully chosen and the intention was “to shift the balance between central and local in favour of the latter while retaining both central and local components. … The critical judgement was not to abandon a central administration but to eliminate the existing regional organisations, district education boards.” The focus on parents and communities was reinforced through the role of the newly created specialised review and evaluation agency, the Education Review Office (ERO), whose reports on individual schools were to be publicly available. This move was consistent with the wider moves in public sector reforms towards increasing transparency in accounting, departmental and official information.

Curriculum and Qualification Reforms On the heels of “Tomorrow’s Schools,” major curriculum and qualification reforms were initiated. These emphasised (Ministry of Education, 1994) life long learning and a seamless education system that could support learning from the cradle to the grave. This recognised the need for students to acquire the skills to keep learning and adapting in a rapidly changing world. The curriculum changes (Ministry of Education, 1993), rather than prescribing precisely what was to be taught, set out the learning outcomes being sought. For example, objectives for written language specified the ability to use language for expressive, poetic and transactional purposes. Responding to the growth in teaching in M¯aori language, each curriculum area was also available in the M¯aori language. Schools were required to ensure their students developed core skills including those in communication, numeracy, information, problem-solving, along with self-management

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and competitive skills, social and co-operative skills, physical skills, and work and study skills. The school curriculum through its practices and procedures, was expected to reinforce the commonly held values of individual and collective responsibility that include honesty, reliability, respect for others, respect for the law, tolerance, fairness, caring or compassion, non-sexism, and non-racism. The intention was to allow teachers to focus much more explicitly on learning outcomes while at the same time freeing them up to use a much wider range of resources, learning materials and methods in the pursuit of these outcomes. Some specific curriculum changes represented major shifts. The technology curriculum emphasised the need to develop an understanding about how technology both shapes and is shaped by society. It linked to areas that are critical in a modern economy such as information and communication, electronics, bio-technology, materials technology, design and graphics. It represented a substantial lift in academic content from the much more practically orientated technical subjects previously taught. The Health and Physical Education curriculum introduced much deeper and broader concepts of well being. It looked to develop in students the ability to learn about and develop confidence in themselves and their abilities, to take responsibility for their own health and physical fitness and to contribute to the well being and safety of others. The National Qualifications Framework (NQF), (New Zealand Qualifications Authority, 1991) initially developed during 1990 and 1991, was designed to create a single co-ordinated framework of nationally assured qualifications and a consistent basis for recognising educational achievement wherever that achievement occurs in vocational, academic, workplace or formal education settings. Emphasis was placed on recognising a wider range of skills for working life and enabling different pathways through the education system to develop. The new framework enabled a modular system that allowed for units of learning, with assessment against defined standards, and a flexible system of delivery. It recognised different levels of qualifications. It looked to recognise prior learning.

Change in Practice Not all schools, though, performed well in this new environment. In reality this would not have been a new phenomenon but ERO was helping make non-performance more obvious and with this came requirements for policy responses. In 1994 a policy was developed that provided the Minister or Ministry with power to intervene where schools were experiencing serious difficulties. Initially these powers were quite limited but progressively a school support and monitoring capability within the Ministry of Education has developed that now allows for a wider range of interventions to address financial management, curriculum delivery, governance, performance issues or to replace a school’s board with a commissioner. At any one time approximately 10% of all schools receive some form of support or assistance from the Ministry. The focus of any intervention looks to impose strong disciplines on schools to take necessary corrective action and build the capability to sustain performance while supporting them to do so.

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One significant project symbolised this shift in approach as well as proving very influential in terms of subsequent policy development. In 1997 ERO released a very critical report (Education Review Office, 1996) about the widespread educational failure in two Auckland communities that were amongst the poorest economically in the country. A strengthening education project involving some 45 schools was initiated – Strengthening Education in Mangere and Otara (SEMO). Some essential initial judgements were made. First, that significant change would require a sustained approach over a period of years. Second, durable change would require new policies, practices and relationships. Third, the development and ownership of such successful strategies would need to reside within those schools and communities. Fourth, government support would be essential but such support would need to complement the resources schools committed to these strategies. The project involved an initial extensive and difficult series of public and school meetings where it proved necessary draw out the considerable anger felt by parents and schools before an understanding of the key issues to be faced could be built. This was followed by an intensive period of problem identification and the development of strategies to address these problems. This was then followed by implementation of school based strategies complemented by government support. Throughout facilitation and action research was funded by the government (Timperley, Robinson, & Bullard, 1999, 2000, 2004). The project concentrated on literacy and over a period of several years has seen significant lifts in student achievement (Phillips, McNaughton, & MacDonald, 2002). By the time they were 6 years old, the new entrants targeted as part of this project were reading and writing close to the expected levels achieved by 6 year olds across the country. The professional development associated with the project looked to enhance teachers’ ideas, expectations and practice. Professional development, coaching and a much greater problem solving approach saw teachers increasingly recognising the relevance of the experience and strengths in language and literacy that different children bring to school. It also led to teachers making more effective connections between the children’s diverse worlds and understandings with those of the school. The project showed that low rates of progress in literacy are neither inevitable nor unchangeable. Around the same time, results from international achievement surveys (Garden, 1996) in the mid 1990s triggered an intensive focus on aspects of student achievement. These surveys indicated that New Zealand’s past comparative high standing in international surveys in science, reading and mathematics could not be taken for granted. Taskforces were established to review literacy, mathematics and science teaching. The Taskforces (Ministry of Education, 1997, 1999) revealed that it could not be assumed that all teachers were equally confident or competent in particular curriculum areas. They highlighted the need to raise expectations of success among parents and teachers; the need to address a lack of skill and confidence amongst some teachers and to provide access to different resources and professional development to teachers. The late 1990s also saw growing public and political awareness that New Zealand had a significant proportion of its population over represented in poor social, economic and education statistics. There was also recognition that for groups of students with special needs and disabilities, new and more effective approaches were needed. The voice of

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M¯aori was also becoming much louder and more critical about the failure of mainstream systems and institutions to work for them. Addressing these issues increasingly became a major focus for policy. Three main factors were seen as significant influences behind the disparity in achievement. First, too many people made deficit assumptions that the background of students was the major barrier to learning. Second, teachers were finding it difficult to adapt their teaching knowledge, practice and classroom strategies to a growing diversity of students in schools. Third was the need to develop effective teaching strategies that utilised different student cultures and home backgrounds as strengths in teaching and learning processes. One project highlighted these factors. The Te Kotahitanga project (Bishop, Berryman, Tiakiwai, & Richardson, 2002) looked at M¯aori achievement in mainstream schools. The project team interviewed some 100 M¯aori students, their teachers, principals and families about what each saw as major reasons for their success or failure. While a small project, the results were significant and attracted nationwide professional interest. At its simplest, the research showed that 80% of the students identified their relationship with their teacher as the critical influence over their learning. By contrast 60% of teachers identified the student’s home and family background as the major influence. Teachers when confronted with this evidence and supported with professional development came to recognise the power they had to make a difference if they adapted their professional beliefs, values, and practices. When they did the results were marked in terms of improved engagement and increased academic achievement. At the heart of the policy response were three things. ●

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First, was a drive for both policy and practice to be informed by good evidence about what all children should be capable of achieving. Second, central to improving student outcomes was the need to develop more effective professional practices. Third, the government and the Ministry needed to see itself as an integral part of the system with the need to work differently with professionals and communities in developing a wider range of responses to obtain better outcomes.

Several underlying shifts in thinking were implied by these changes. First, that the background or particular needs of a child should not act as a barrier to learning. Rather the challenge for policy and practice was to find strategies and support that enabled that child to succeed. Second, there was the need to move away from underlying assumptions of homogeneity where implicitly all teachers and students were assumed to be similar, to those where diversity was a reality. Third, instead of a system to which students and communities were expected to adjust, the challenge was seen to be to build the capabilities within the system to successfully support the realities of diverse students and diverse teachers but would also allow students to study at different levels and progress at different speeds through this part of the system. Fourth, especially at senior secondary schools, was the need to develop broader ranges of pathways and progressions into tertiary and in doing so move away from time served assumptions. The emphasis on developing strong and effective professional practices and capabilities was a key reason why New Zealand did not go down the national testing route followed by a number of other countries. Rather than risk a narrowing down of teacher

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and school focus our approach emphasised the importance of teachers and schools being able to benchmark and report on how student achievement aligned with national norms. The importance of assessment for learning rather than assessment of learning was emphasised. This was expected to see teachers more explicity involve their students in goal setting. We also saw the information base and reporting over time strengthening the role of parents with the role of the ERO continuing to be critical in the evaluation of school practice and effectiveness. Schools have been required by law to report to their parent community on the learning goals for their school and in terms of how well they did in relation to those goals. Again, the growing evidence base strengthens the ability and the expectation of schools to benchmark against national norms. Since the mid-1990s there has been a major investment in growing an evidence base. A sizeable increase in student achievement information is becoming available through national sampling of students at school entry, Year 4 and Year 8; through participation in international surveys, and through an extensive development of exemplars at different curriculum levels and through research and evaluation. Alongside the growing evidence base, priority was given to develop the ability of teachers, schools and policy makers to better assess and analyse information about achievement. For example the information gained about different student groupings in different curriculum areas and in different settings showed not only shortcomings in achievement but much more significantly demonstrated what students from all kinds of backgrounds and different needs were capable of achieving. The increase in achievement information is progressively enabling more finely grained analysis at a system, school and classroom level to occur. The development of new diagnostic tools and assessment resources was an important element of this approach. For example, a new assessment tool was developed to enable teachers to track the progress and achievement of both individual students and groups of students in literacy and numeracy in Years 5, 6, and 7, in English and M¯aori. These tools are called “asTTle,” Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning. These tools: ● ●

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link to an underlying achievement continuum in each curriculum area; are available for teachers to assemble electronically into tests that suit the learning needs of their students; electronically generate results that provide useful feedback about students’ achievements and future learning needs in literacy and numeracy; and contain options for teachers to seek information about how their students are progressing in relation to national standards.

Another example of the emphasis on professional development related to ICT. The Government deliberately did not invest in computers in schools. Rather it funded a range of school clusters where the emphasis was on learning, understanding and disseminating the different ways in which ICT could support and enhance better teaching and better learning outcomes. In 2002 a series of research reports were commissioned by the Ministry of Education called Best Evidence Syntheses (BES). These reports reviewed a wide range of international and New Zealand studies from the perspective of identifying the influences that

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Families & Communities About 40–65% of variance in outcomes

Quality teaching

Outcomes 16–60% of variance in outcomes

0–20.9% of variance in outcomes Educators, teacher education and research infrastructure

Physical resources & organisation

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Figure 1.

Research findings in quality teaching for diverse students in schooling

most contributed to key learning outcomes. Put differently, this research identified the essence of effective practices that makes the difference to learning outcomes. This contrasts with research that evaluates program effectiveness or analyses from the perspective of a specific paradigm. Figure 1 shows the essence of the research findings in Quality Teaching for Diverse Students in Schooling (Alton-Lee, 2003). Some ten characteristics of effective teaching for diverse students were identified. These included a teacher’s focus on student achievement, pedagogical practices that enable classes to work as cohesive working communities, effective links being created between school and other cultural contexts, responsiveness to student learning processes, alignment of curriculum goals, resources, task design and school practices, teachers and students engaging in goal orientated assessment, pedagogy scaffolding, providing appropriate feedback on students’ task engagement and multiple task support learning cycles. The SEMO, Te Kotahitanga and the BES research highlighted a number of things that have subsequently had a significant influence on policy. They highlighted the effectiveness of teaching as the most powerful system lever available to change learning outcomes. This research revealed how much debate and effort in the past years had centred on issues at a school or system level where the influences on education outcomes were much less direct. They highlighted the different ways in which cultural inclusiveness, peer support, evidence-based practice, task design could all help develop stronger learning communities that better succeed with diverse students. The research emphasised the importance of focusing on family and community influences and the effectiveness of teaching practice. In doing so it also suggested that it was relatively easier to change teaching practice than it is to change many of the influences in a child’s home or social background. Hence the focus on effective teaching in New Zealand is now seen as the biggest and most powerful lever within the education system to change outcomes. Such research and experience also highlighted how past policies and practices implicitly made assumptions of homogeneity – in other words that all students were similar and all teachers had similar experiences, prior knowledge and confidence. The challenge then became how to build policies, supports and practices that positively recognised and effectively responded to the diversities of student, teacher and community.

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Schooling improvement projects, and the growing evidence base, have made it clear that effective teaching could overcome adverse influences in a child’s life. It is also strongly evident that a critical aspect of effective teaching lies in the relationships between teachers and learners. Central to effective relationships are teachers having the knowledge, skills, strategies, beliefs and confidence to much more explicitly see the varied life experiences of their different students as important strengths to harness in their teaching and the students’ learning. The focus on effective teaching was a much broader one than simply focussing on teachers. Clearly the quality and ability of teachers is important but so is the way in which a whole system focuses its different capabilities to support and enhance the effectiveness of teaching. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s there had been deep divisions amongst secondary schools over future school qualifications policy. Secondary schools had been evenly divided between those who supported the shifts towards unit standards and an explicit shift towards standards based assessment and those who supported a continuation of the external assessment systems. In late 1998 a new approach was announced. This saw students earn credits through both external and internal assessments that assessed achievement against defined standards. It did not seek to change what was being taught but to make changes that made explicit standards required within a subject. This National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) took four years to develop and is now in its third year of implementation. The NCEA looks to better integrate into one qualification structure a wider range of achievement than was the case previously. As implementation proceeds a new challenging agenda is emerging relating to the educational coherence of different pathways, the need for different supports for students and teachers, greater curriculum alignment between schools and tertiary. The more transparent information relating to student achievement is raising interesting professional and policy questions about learning objectives in different subjects; issues of curriculum and standards design, student motivation and different priorities for professional development.

Results The curriculum changes helped shift the focus of teaching towards learning outcomes and provided greater flexibility to adapt teaching strategies. The qualification framework supported the development of a much wider range of learning pathways through the senior secondary schools and tertiary systems and this has been reflected in a growing range of courses being provided to students at the senior secondary level. The real test of policy lies in whether student achievement is rising. Here there are a number of early but positive indicators. These include: ●

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33% of school leavers in 2005 gained entrance to degree level programs – an increase of almost 7% points since 2001. The performance of Year 5 students in mathematics and science has improved significantly. In numeracy, evaluation of a project involving some 17,000 teachers and 460,000 pupils has shown improvements across all groups along with some reduction in disparity between top and lowest achievers.

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In a number of schooling improvement projects significant improvements in different aspects of literacy and numeracy are all being reported.

Where success is happening, one characteristic has been the way in which teachers have focused on achievement data and collectively undertaken deeper analysis and diagnosis of achievement information to analyse it and test assumptions relating to their beliefs and practices. The associated professional development has emphasised different dimensions of effective teaching, namely, content knowledge, knowledge of the students, and knowledge of the range of teaching strategies that could be used. As Timperley (2004) has argued, the evidence-based enquiry model requires a new professionalism that emphasises the need for schools to become strong professional learning communities, teachers to “open” their doors for others to observe and critique and for all teachers to believe in their ability to make a difference.

Concluding Thoughts By any measure the overall degree of change faced by the New Zealand school system over the period has been huge. Over a relatively short period all the major levers of influence over schools were significantly changed with major changes in funding, regulation, curriculum and qualifications and with this, major shifts in roles and responsibility. The Tomorrow’s Schools reforms of 1989 had a goal of reformed administration and increased system responsiveness to different students and different communities. Today the involvement of parents in the governance of their school is deeply embedded. This has helped schools to be more responsive and accountable to the needs of their communities and their different students. It has allowed innovation at local level. The role ERO has played has proved central in providing evidence both of failure and success and in becoming a major driver of school performance. The popular beliefs and rhetoric in 1989 and 1990 suggested that the architects of the reforms expected the teaching profession would not only continue to do what they currently did but that there could be more focus on learning because the systems of support would be more direct, with decision-making at the school and tertiary levels closer to the learners and their learning needs. But the degree to which schools, and indeed the system had to develop new skills and understandings for administration, governance, management and legal compliance was substantially under estimated – both in terms of the shifts in governance and management responsibilities and in terms of the wider curriculum and qualification reforms initiated in the early 1990s. Building new capabilities took much longer than envisaged. The loosening of the rules and constraints certainly allowed for innovation and trial and error learning but, with the benefit of hindsight, were poorly supported by the absence of a consistent evidence and research base to inform policy and insufficient supports for implementation. The sequential changes to curriculum saw teachers concentrating on each subject as it changed before they could start exploiting the potential of the changes. Although each new curriculum statement was introduced with considerable investment in professional development for teachers, with hindsight this was inadequate, both in terms of its duration and its means of delivery.

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In practice many teachers spent a lot of time internalising the intended learning outcomes and then developing or modifying existing resources to create new curriculum resources. This created workload pressures and a feeling that the same wheel was being invented many times over. These initial reforms laid foundations for greater success but were not going to be sufficient without a much more explicit focus on the expectations that should be held regarding learning outcomes and a stronger system focus on raising achievement. From the mid-1990s the focus of policy began to switch to one that was more explicitly focussed on achievement with a growing emphasis on teaching effectiveness. A strong outcome focus has been progressively developed with an associated emphasis on evidence and a growing information base relating to student achievement and system performance. The system is now much more transparent with decision making at all levels increasingly able to be informed by a growing body of hard education indicators, achievement data and research at both a policy and practice level. Experience over the past 16 years highlights a number of things that are important to successful change. ●

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Hearts and minds matter. The experience of the last 16 years confirms this. If people believe a child can succeed and that as a teacher that they can make a difference then that child probably will succeed. If those beliefs are not there, then the child probably won’t. Therefore shaping expectations and beliefs has to be a key element aspect of policy and professional development. Some of the key shifts now starting to take hold in our schools are characterised by significant shifts in beliefs. Good information plays a powerful role, especially when it can demonstrate what is possible irrespective of a child’s background and circumstances; when it can inform and assist positive changes to teaching practices and when it can support stronger relationships between teachers, schools, students and parents. I see increasing transparency, increasing the availability of hard evidence and linking every debate and discussion to learning outcomes as critical to changing thinking, relationships, and system dynamics in ways that will focus and align greater effort onto raising achievement. This helps ensure that teachers, trustees, parents, students, communities and government are not only well informed but are also informed in ways that strengthens their roles and the value gained through different relationships. Effective teaching and the role of families are the two most powerful influences over student achievement and it is important that policies focus on these. Increasing teaching effectiveness in ways that sees the prior knowledge and experiences of a student as integral to effective teaching strategies is seen as vital. Alongside this, strengthening the ability of parents and communities to engage effectively with teachers and schools and to effectively support the learning of their children is also vital. Tomorrow’s Schools had at their heart greater family and community influence. We have gained deeper understandings about the nature of the knowledge that need to be gained and shared between families and schools and how such knowledge can strengthen the roles of all parties in

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contributing to a student’s learning. The SEMO and Te Kotahitanga projects demonstrate the gains in achievement that occur when the ability to bridge communication and understandings across different worlds is built. We have found that processes with a clear long term focus and a genuine engagement with the profession may take longer in the initial phases but are more likely to make change more effective in the longer term. Success is more likely when there is agreement about common goals and the kind of shifts needed to achieve them. When this happens, the less polarised debates become, and the easier it becomes to focus effort on the things that matter most. In these processes it is important to shift the focus away from what is not working to what is working and how other parts of the system can learn from what is working. This takes time. System change requires recognition of the realities of building new capabilities, ways of working and different relationships. The new capabilities need to be understood and building them does take time and does require a sustained focus. Assumptions of homogeneity are being replaced by recognition of diversity but this involves big shifts in beliefs, practices and supports. Different strategies are needed for success with different students. Different teachers have needs for different support. System change also requires a broadening to concepts of building effective professional communities and the capabilities that are needed within a wider system to support effective teaching and learning. The original idea of greater independence is gradually being replaced by an emphasis on interdependence and a growing understanding about what this means. Debates that were originally expressed in terms of decentralisation or centralisation or self management struggled to come to grips with the need for understanding, aligning and integrating of the different perspectives and capabilities that make up the entire system. Working within a framework of interdependency is demanding and more complex. It requires committed effort to invest in building shared understandings, strong and trusting relationships, and good understandings of respective roles and relationships. It also requires a willingness to confront evidence that might be unpalatable and to have robust critical but constructive challenges and debates with each other – not with a view of assigning blame but to create a basis from which to learn and from which to build future improvements. It also highlights the important role of the centre to help build a more sophisticated infrastructure of knowledge, support, networks and specialised capabilities. The issue of trust is important – trust is hard won, fragile and can be easily lost. The more willing people are to see the world through different eyes the more likely will be the development of common understandings and shared goals. This applies in the classroom when different family and cultural practices and beliefs are seen as strengths rather than barriers to learning. It applies to how the perspectives of a classroom teacher can be effectively bridged with the system views of a government. Compared with some other countries New Zealand has a predominantly public education system with little debate about this. The administrative flexibility provided by the initial reforms has been complemented by curriculum and qualification frameworks that also allow for flexibility in teaching and learning pathways for students. This is now

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strengthened by a stronger outcome focus, an increasing emphasis on evidence and effective teaching practice. More support is available to schools and teachers in the form of more information and specialist resources. I am optimistic about how our system has developed over the past 16 years and the future prospects for our students. While we have been diverted at times I think there has been a willingness across all levels of our system to respond to evidence and to allow the “model” to evolve and develop in the light of that evidence. The past 15 years has seen a marked shift in focus away from issues at a school or system level where the influences on education outcomes are much less direct to ones explicitly focussed on learning outcomes and evidence. Policy centres on the two areas of greatest influence on learning outcomes – teaching and families. In this emerging world the governance, curriculum and qualification reforms now provide the ability for teaching and learning to much better take account of the diverse students who attend our schools. I now see a number of indicators that suggest we are making good progress through many exciting and positive things happening in our schools. These suggest that the past 15 years has seen a wide range of changes put in place that in aggregate offer the promise of not only greater responsiveness but now also of higher achievement.

References Alton-Lee, A. (2003). Quality teaching for diverse students in schooling: Best evidence synthesis. Wellington, NZ: Ministry of Education. Bishop, R., Berryman, M., Tiakiwai, S., & Richardson, C. (2002). Te Kotahitanga: The Experiences of Year 9 and Year 10 M¯aori students in mainstream classrooms. Report to the Ministry of Education. Wellington NZ: Ministry of Education. Department of Education. (1988). Administering for excellence: Report of the Taskforce to Review Education Administration (Picot Report). Wellington: Government Printer. Education Review Office. (1996). Improving schooling in Mangere and Otara. Available: http://www.ero. govt.nz/ero/publishing.nsf/Print/Improving%20Schooling%20in%20Mangere%20and%20Otara. Fiske, E. B., & Ladd, H. F. (2000). When schools compete – A cautionary tale. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press. Garden, R. (Ed.). (1996). Mathematics performance of New Zealand Form 2 and Form 3 students: National Results for New Zealand’s Participation in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study. Wellington, NZ: Ministry of Education. Hawke, G. (1989). “Report of the working group on post-compulsory education and training (the Hawke Report)”. Prepared for the Cabinet Social Equity Committee, Wellington. Hawke, G. (2001) – Education Reform: The New Zealand Experience; a paper prepared for the First International Education Reform Experiences of Selected Countries, The Office of the National Education System, Government of Thailand, Bangkok, 29 July–2 August 2001. Ministry of Education. (1993). The New Zealand curriculum framework: Te Anga Marautanga, o Aotearoa. Wellington: Learning Media. Ministry of Education. (1994). Education for the 21st century. Wellington: Learning Media. Ministry of Education. (1997). Report of the mathematics and science taskforce. Wellington: Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education. (1999). Report of the literacy taskforce. Wellington: Ministry of Education. New Zealand Qualifications Authority. (1991). Designing the framework. Wellington: New Zealand Qualifications Authority.

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Phillips, G., McNaughton, S., & MacDonald, S. (2002). The Child Literacy Foundation and Woolf Fisher Centre. Picking up the Pace. Report to the Ministry of Education. Report of the Early Childhood Care and Education Working Group. (1998). Education to be more. Wellington: Department of Education. Timperley, H. S. (2004). Enhancing professional learning through evidence-based enquiry. Auckland: Auckland University. Timperley, H., Robinson, V., & Bullard, T. (1999). Strengthening education in Mangere and Otara: First evaluation report. Wellington, NZ: The Ministry of Education. Timperley, H., Robinson, V., & Bullard, T. (2000). Strengthening education in Mangere and Otara: Second evaluation report. Wellington, NZ: The Ministry of Education. Timperley, H., Robinson, V., & Bullard, T. (2004). Strengthening education in Mangere and Otara: Final evaluation report. Wellington, NZ: The Ministry of Education.

AFRICA AND THE MIDDLE EAST

18 HISTORY OF THE SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT MOVEMENT IN AFRICA

Brahm Fleisch

Introduction The notion of a history of an indigenous school effectiveness and improvement movement in Africa is a bit of a misnomer. While there have been scores of education improvement initiatives in specific countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and some exemplary research projects in the past 30 years, a home-grown movement such as exists in North America, Europe or even Latin America is yet to come to the fore. A community of scholars, policy-makers and practitioners from various institutions across national borders, committed to common intellectual projects, engaged in a dialogue with both internal and external critics, meeting regularly at conferences or in symposiums, publishing in regional journals, has never taken hold in Sub-Saharan Africa. While the biannual meetings of the Association for the Development of African Education (ADEA) has become an important forum where donors, government policy-makers and international researchers now meet, it has not developed into a decisive catalyst for regular and robust debate and exchange on themes related to school effectiveness and improvement. While a genuine home-grown movement is yet to emerge, there has nonetheless been research and practice in this field on the African continent. This research and practice has largely been initiated, supported, directed and undertaken by international aid agencies and external researchers. The origins of these efforts can be traced directly to the education crises of the late 1970s and early 1980s (which were in part the consequence of the implementation of fiscal austerity policies at that time). Supported with donor funding, undertaken mainly by American and European researchers and consultants, the school effectiveness and school improvement research and practice in Sub-Saharan Africa was initially focused on the identification of cost-effective policy and intervention options. Once the intractable problems of institutional culture and limited central government capacity became evident, the emphasis in the foreign directed research began to shift towards school improvement. 341 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 341–350. © 2007 Springer.

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This chapter explores reasons why an indigenous school effectiveness and improvement movement has not flourished in Sub-Saharan Africa. While the continent has not produced a home-grown movement, researchers and clusters of practitioners often based outside Sub-Saharan Africa have contributed and continue to contribute to the field in important ways. As demonstrated in the chapters on aspects of school effectiveness and improvement in Africa, empirical research and practitioner experience from the continent have consistently pointed to the centrality of context as key to understanding schooling and achievement. Alain Mingat provides an overview of key aspects of financial and economic aspects of education on the continent. Nick Taylor’s chapter points to the unique contribution that South Africa’s recent experience and research has to offer to the knowledge base in the field.

Why No Movement? Reviews of the research in the fields of school effectiveness and school improvement in developing countries seldom refer to research undertaken by Africans working in institutions on the African continent. While a sprinkling of articles has been published in international journals and some regional publications and a number of noteworthy books in the field have appeared, a critical mass of writing indicating the existence of an indigenous “movement” has not emerged on the continent. How can we explain this? There are at least three possible explanations. First, in North America, Australia and Europe, the school effectiveness and school improvement movements were largely spearheaded by university researchers. While the successes of the movements were contingent on the dialogue with policy-makers and practitioners, the core of the movement was originally and has remained university-based academic researchers. No such critical mass has emerged among university researchers based in Africa. This is unsurprising given the general decline of university research on the continent in the 1980s and 1990s as competing forces – under-funding, repressive central governments, and the academic staff shortages – have undermined the academe (Nyamnjoh & Jue, 2002). While Teferra and Altbach (2004) caution against generalizing about higher education on the continent, they similarly note that diverse challenges such as inadequate funding, lack of adequate governance and autonomy, poor management and the brain-drain have limited many institutions’ research capacity. This problem is particularly acute in the applied field of education as financial pressures often means that research becomes consulting (Samoff, 1999). Second, while the seeds of an African school effectiveness movement have been planted by foreign-based and funded research, they have not taken root because of competing concerns in the sector. While the low quality of education offered to many children in schools across the region has been highlighted periodically, the primary concerns has been the low levels of enrolment, gender imbalances, and the lack of basic infrastructure. Improving access, gender equity, and internal efficiency have come to dominate much of the intellectual energy of many leading scholars on the continent. Concerns about the problem of low primary school enrolment have been reinforced by education targets set at the Jomtein World Conference for Education for All (1990) and more recently the Dakar Conference (2000).

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Finally, where the issues of quality education and equity have been on top of the agenda, there has not been a consensus on the utility of the effectiveness/improvement paradigm. In South Africa in particular, there has been considerable hostility to the school effectiveness approach. For example, Harber and Muthukrishna (2000) and Harber (1996) have been critical of the Western school effectiveness tradition for the narrowness within which outcomes are defined. Given the particular history of education in South Africa, they argue that democratic values, safety and non-violence are possibly the most important measures of the effectiveness of schools and the school systems. Jansen (1995) on the other hand, has criticized the mainstream school effectiveness research for its “positivist paradigm which assumed that schools basically consist of interrelated units which can be ‘fixed’ by applying the right mix of policy and resource inputs which would result in greater effectiveness” (p. 190) and suggested the extent to which ethnographicinformed approaches had begun to eclipse the older paradigm.

History of the Field in Africa Riddell (1998) observed that school effectiveness and school improvement research in developing countries emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as a reaction to the quantitative expansion of the education systems in the immediate post-colonial era. The quantitative expansion did not provide the envisaged solutions to the social and economic problems experienced by developing countries, but more importantly the massive expansion of the sector became increasingly difficulty to afford under the conditions of economic austerity. Scholars like Riddell (1998), link the rise of school effectiveness research in SubSaharan Africa to the introduction of the Structural Adjustment Programs in the 1980s. Unlike the pre-occupation with understanding if and how schools make a difference in many developed countries, the leitmotif of school effectiveness research in Africa was all about “value for money.” Encouraged by research that pointed to the importance of school effects relative to the influence of family characteristics (Heyneman, 1976) the school effects research appeared to show the cost-effectiveness of the three t’s – teachers inset, textbook provision and time-on-task (Fuller, 1987; Fuller & Clarke, 1994; Lockheed & Verspoor, 1991). This research was generally undertaken within production-function framework, often aligned to donor interest in identifying discrete cost-effective interventions. Riddell (1998) notes that within this research, “only infrequently were costeffectiveness studies carried out to further substantiate them as policy variables, and building investment programs developed around them, alongside other factors.” There are important exceptions such as Fuller, Hua, and Snyder’s (1994) insightful study that shows the gendered aspects of time effects in Botswana junior secondary schools. Fuller and Clarke’s (1994) review (in which they coined the terms policy mechanics and classroom culturalists) cited 15 school effectiveness African country studies published prior to 1994. The dominant figures in this school effectiveness literature included Marliane Lockheed, Abby Riddell, Kenneth Ross, Neville Postlethwaite, Bruce Fuller, Paul Glewee and Hanan Jacoby, and Emmanuel Jimenez. This literature review mentions only two scholars working on the continent, Levi Nyagura and Indira Chacko.

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While the Fuller and Clarke review was certainly not exhaustive as school effectiveness studies have appeared in national journals such as the Zimbabwean Journal of Education, the imbalance reflects the dominance of American and European scholars over those working and living on the continent. Many of the studies cited were published by and/or undertaken for the World Bank and other leading donor organizations. Drawing on the research findings undertaken by “classroom culturalists,” Fuller and Clarke convincingly argue that, even in instances where determinants of achievement appear consistently across studies and countries, the cultural meanings can vary dramatically. For example Earnest policy mechanics … have conducted country studies which show an association between the supply of pupil exercise books and higher achievement. The inference is then make that more exercise books lead to more frequent cognitive exercise and independent work by students, either in class or at home. Resulting policy advice: buy and distribute more exercise books … . Our research group, however, is currently observing classrooms in the South African community of Soweto, where the majority of teachers simply instruct their students to copy material from the board or from the teachers’ recitation into their “exercise books.” This same instructional tool is assigned a particular local meaning by Soweto teachers, quite different from its actual meaning and use elsewhere in the southern African region. Unless these local meanings, activated by classroom teachers in a specific institutional culture, are taken into account, researchers will fail to understand the process by which a classroom “input” influences student learning. (p. 141) During the course of the past two decades, a number of World Bank publications have defined the field. Alexander and Simmons (1975) began much of the debates about the determinants of school achievement. While Lockheed’s (1991) study was not exclusively focused on education in Africa, it drew extensively on African sources and was frequently cited on the continent. Verspoor’s (2006) review is the most recent summation of knowledge in the field in Africa. In addition to the identification of the fairly standard factors of effective schools and knowledge about how schools improve, the review also includes recent perspectives on curriculum adaptation and the language of instruction, two themes that have not typically been featured in school effectiveness and school improvement studies. The Fuller and Clarke (1994) literature review marked a significant shift that began to take place within the field. The concerns about the impact of local context and the cultural specificity of educational practices, as well as the failure of many centrallydriven policy reform efforts, allowed studies within school improvement perspective to gain prominence. In the mid-1990s, leading scholars were increasingly airing concerns about the earlier generation of scholarship. As Riddell commented: If the production functions were the craze in the 1960s and 1970s and the education processes received more attention in the 1980s, it is the cultural context that

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is drawing increasing interest in the 1990s. Do the same list of effective factors apply across contexts for all students? This question is starting to be investigated more carefully in the industrialized countries, but not unfortunately in developing countries. Instead, the approach tends to be piecemeal research in a handful of countries, all too often with questionable research design, driven by a small number of industrialized country academics utilizing donor funds and with donor timetables that emasculate the measures or make case studies out of what otherwise could be major longitudinal studies. (p. 202) Within this trend, the publication of Heneveld and Craig’s (1996) seminal study Schools Count signaled the degree to which the discourse had shifted away from productionfunction studies of school effectiveness toward research on the underlying dynamics of educational projects and institutional change. While the older school effectiveness literature continued to be cited in reviews (see e.g., Scheerens, 2000), by the 1990s, key donor institutions began to engage more actively with studies of school improvement. The preoccupation with decentralization of education on the continent in the 1990s reflects the recognition of the complexities of institutional reform and the weakness of many African governments. The emergence of decentralization as a reform theme and its links to school improvement paralleled similar developments in developed countries. The various kinds of decentralization reforms in education came in the wake of growing recognition of the weaknesses of many central governments in low-income African countries. Some of these decentralization efforts concentrated on the development of districts and district education officers, others on clustering schools to make specialized services more affordable; still others concentrated on the development of teacher centres, and head teacher training (Naidoo, 2002). One of the important exceptions to the dominant role played by North American and European researchers and donor agencies in school effectiveness and improvement on the continent is a collection of initiatives funded by the Aga Khan Foundation. Beginning in the late 1980s, the Aga Khan Foundation initiated a number of teacher development projects that gradually overtime evolved into a whole-school reform model. While most projects were relatively modest in scale, the fact that the initiatives were undertaken in a range of countries, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya at every levels and over an extended period meant that the lessons learnt from these school improvement initiatives have contributed significantly to the knowledge in the field. Important insights have been documented in Anderson’s (2002) edited collection. The collection of studies consistently point to the importance of curriculum models within school improvement. While the majority of the school effectiveness research studies in the African context have been undertaken by researchers outside the continent, there are a number of scholars working in African institutions that have taken on the task of researching the field of school leadership and management. For example, the work of George Oduro from Ghana has contributed to our understanding not only of the limits of leadership, but more importantly of the real challenges of undertaking field research in remote study sites. Oduro and MacBeath (2003), working in a classroom culturalist framework, has convincingly shown that rural primary school heads face a range of profound constraints

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linked to the geographic isolation and cultural and gendered expectations. These constraints severely limit their potential to contribute to school improvement. Oduro and other scholars (see e.g., Crossley, Chisholm, & Holmes, 2005) working within the culturalist framework are mapping context variables at local and national levels. By the late 1990s, concerns about the absence of a genuine home-grown movement have increasingly come to the fore. A number of efforts have emerged to remedy the situation. The ADEA, which was originally established as a network for donors working on the African continent, now serves as a forum for the exchange of ideas between African ministries of education, development agencies, education specialists and researchers and non-government organizations working in education. Reviews of research within the school effectiveness and school improvement field frequently take centre stage at the biannual meetings. For example, the ADEA 2003 meeting held in Mauritius focused on improving quality education. The Gabon ADEA meeting in March 2006 had as its theme “what makes effective learning in schools and in literacy and early childhood development programs?” At the 2006 meeting, two of keynote papers, delivered by Verspoor (2006), Michaelowa and Wetchler (2006), reviewed the literature on effective schools and cost-effective inputs for Sub-Saharan Africa. At the most recent meeting, two new themes, the language of instruction and curriculum relevance, were placed high on school effectiveness/improvement agenda. The Southern and East African Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality (SACMEQ) represents another effort to move away from legacy of the exogenous reform. Beginning in the early 1990s, the initiative drew on the work of a consortium of fifteen national ministries of education brought together to develop capacity to monitor and evaluate the quality of education. SACMEQ mission, as originally conceived, was to assist educational planners and researchers in Southern and East Africa to understand the dynamics of quality. It has subsequently become an important vehicle for accountability within education systems and is increasingly becoming the forum where experiences and insights about policies in basic education are shared. While significant technical assistance has been provided by the International Institute for Educational Planning in Paris, the secretariat is based in Harare, Zimbabwe. Preliminary findings from this research (Lee, Zuze, & Ross, 2005), however, suggest few consistent factors that are strongly correlated with achievement, save students’ economic background.

School Effectiveness and School Improvement in South Africa While there is little evidence of a school effectiveness and school improvement movement on the continent as a whole, in South Africa such a movement has emerged around the work of the Joint Education Trust and university academics. Since the political transition began in 1990, there has a been a growing dialogue between research and practice about what constitutes evidence on the one hand and the mechanics of school change on the other. Despite the decade and a half of work, a “movement” is still very much in its infancy, and the insights gained are small. While the momentum of South African’s school change proto-movement was given impetus by the political transition that began with the freeing of political prisoners and

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the unbanning of political parties in 1990, during the apartheid period a number of important initiatives did take place. Possibly the most important of these was an initiative known as the Primary Education Upgrading Program (PEUP) in one of the homeland governments. While little was published on its implementation and impact, professionals in the field widely recognised its “success” as a large-scale multi-level intervention aimed at improving first- and second-language literacy in the disadvantaged primary schools. As with most other improvement initiatives on the continent, the model that it adopted was borrowed from an external developed country source, the initiative was crafted around the findings of an extensive and robust research project (Macdonald, 1990). Of particular interest in this context was that the evidence that pointed not to the predictable findings in both the school effectiveness and school improvement literature, but rather was built on evidence from the field of applied linguistics. While PEUP stands out as unique example of a relatively “successful” evidence-informed large-scale education improvement initiative, given its association with the apartheid ‘homeland’ state, the lessons from this program did not feed into the practitioner knowledge or the collective memory or point of reference of the local research community. The period immediately after 1990 marked the start of South Africa’s proto school improvement movement. With substantial state funding, a group of non-governmental organizations coordinated by leading academics launched the Thousand Schools Project. Building on models from Latin America, and consciously designed around what was considered “best-practice” in school improvement at the time, this project was a dismal failure. While concerns were subsequently raised about the appropriateness of the some of the design features, the underlying reason for the failure was contextual. In the early period of the transition, disadvantaged schools, particularly secondary schools, were at the epicenter of political and social struggles. This contestation was also evident at management levels and within and between service providers (Fleisch, 2002). It was only after the first democratic election in 1994, when tensions and contradictions could be managed, that genuine progress in the field could be made. A milestone in the national school effectiveness and school improvement movement was the establishment of the Joint Education Trust (JET). With a mandate to spearhead research and program implementation, as an external agency with strong linkages to government, it was strategically positioned to advanced research and implementation. One of the first major achievements of the Trust was management of the Presidential Education Initiative, which culminated in Getting Learning Right (1999). For the first time in South Africa’s history, the initiative brought together both researchers from different backgrounds and different research traditions in intensive process to begin to map the terrain. Alongside this initiative, smaller but nonetheless important initiatives began exploring exceptional schools, trying to understand the psychological mechanism of dysfunctional schools and the features of “resilient” schools in profoundly hostile environments (Carrim, 1999; Christie, 1998). Running parallel to the revitalized research community, a number of large-scale school improvement projects were initiated in the late 1990s. Based on an analysis of the failures of earlier generations of improvement projects and drawing international knowledge-base and recent empirical evidence, many of these initiatives attempted to combine systemic intervention design features (working at the levels of the learner, classroom,

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school and district) using a government/NGO partnership approach. Increased emphasis in the new design models focused on the role of district offices (Fleisch, 2006a). While designed, managed and implemented by South African service providers, many of the projects were externally funded. The South African school improvement “movement” had gained considerable experience and expertise by the time the first evaluations began to show limited success of the generation of projects initiated in the late 1990s. As with the failures of earlier generations, contextual factors, both political and organisational, remained key features of the school improvement landscape. Even as the South African community began to show research leadership in some of their flagship publications on school change (Taylor, Muller, & Vinjevold, 2003) particularly in the insertion of strong theoretical base, large-scale school improvement in practice has remained elusive (for an interesting exception see Fleisch, 2006b). Nick Taylor’s chapter in this volume reflects on the findings of the numerous research projects and school improvement baseline studies that have been undertaken in the past 5 years. While mirroring many of the themes in the international literature, South African school effectiveness and school improvement research has the potential to contribute important insights. Given its political history and the profoundly contested nature of schooling, Taylor has identified the weak central government as manifest in unstable and ineffective district offices as a key obstacle in the way of implementing comprehensive school improvement models. His work also points to the conceptual issues related to the difficulties in working with profoundly dysfunctional schools.

Conclusion One of the major conclusions about the history of school effectiveness and school improvement movement in Africa is that a home-grown movement per se has never existed, even if there are some promising signs for the future. Equally clear is that much of the research within these traditions has been undertaken by outsiders. With few noteworthy exceptions, few research centres have developed extensive and sustained research capacity in these fields. Certainly one would be hard pressed to find examples of major methodological or theoretical contributions emanating from the continent. Much of the sporadic work is largely dependent on research design models and theory from the European and the American literature. Questions need to be asked about the appropriateness and relevance of these to the various contexts of education on the continent. One of the most sobering findings is the recent publication of an initial analysis of the SACMEQ II data (Lee et al., 2005). In addition to re-evaluate the optimistic assumptions that have pervaded the developing country literature about the relative importance of schools on learner achievement, this cross-national study has not provided clear evidence of uniform or consistent school-level determinants translatable into policy options. Equally, the numerous school improvement project and program evaluations consistently point to consistent patterns of failure and the absence of sustainability.

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References Alexander, L., & Simmons, J. (1975). The determinants of school achievement in developing countries: the education production function. International Bank of Reconstruction and Development Staff Working Paper No. 201. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Anderson, S. (2002). Improving schools through teacher development: Case studies of Aga Khan Foundation projects in East Africa. Lisse, the Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger. Carrim, N. (1999). School effectiveness in South Africa. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 12(1), 59–83. Christie, P. (1998). Schools as (dis)organisations: The “breakdown of the culture of learning and teaching” in South African schools. Cambridge Journal of Education, 28(3), 283–300. Crossley, M., Chisholm, L., & Holmes, K. (2005). Educational change and evaluation in eastern and southern Africa. Compare: Journal of Comparative Education, 35(1), 1–6. Fleisch, B. (2002). Managing educational change: The state and school reform in South Africa. Johannesburg: Heinemann. Fleisch, B. (2006a). Education district development in South Africa. In J. Chrispeels, & A. Harris (Eds.), Improving schools and educational systems: International perspectives. London: Routledge. Fleisch, B. (2006b). Accountability in the education action zone. South African Journal of Education, 26(3), 369–382. Fuller, B. (1987). What school factors raise achievement in the Third World? Review of Educational Research, 57(3), 255–292. Fuller, B., & Clarke, P. (1994). Raising school effects while ignoring culture? Local conditions and the influence of classroom tools, rules and pedagogy. Review of Educational Research, 64(1), 119–157. Fuller, B., Hua, H., & Snyder, C. (1994). When girls learn more than boys: The influence of time in school and pedagogy in Botswana. Comparative Eduction Review, 38(3), 347–376. Harber, C. (1996). Educational violence and education for peace in Africa. Peabody Journal of Education, 71(3), 151–169. Harber, C., & Muthukrishna, N. (2000). School effectiveness and school improvement in context: The case of South Africa. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 11(3), 421–434. Heneveld, W., & Craig, H. (1996). Schools count: World Bank project designs and the quality of primary education in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Heyneman, S. (1976). Influences on academic achievement: A comparison of results of Uganda and more industrialized societies. Sociology of Education, 49(3), 200–211. Jansen, J. (1995). Effective schools? Comparative Education, 31(2), 181–200. Lee, V., Zuze, T., & Ross, K. (2005). School effectiveness in 14 Sub-Saharan African countries: Links with 6th Graders’ reading. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 31(2/3), 207–246. Lockheed, M., & Verspoor, A. (1991). Improving primary education in developing countries. Oxford: Oxford University Press for the World Bank. MacDonald, C. (1990). Crossing the threshold into Standard Three in black education. Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council Press. Michaelowa, K., & Wechtler, A. (2006). The cost-effectiveness of inputs in primary education: Insights from the literature and recent student surveys from Sub-Saharan Africa. Paper presented at the ADEA conference, Libreville, Gabon, 27–31 March 2006. Accessed on 12 June 2006, Retrieved from http://www.adeanet.org/biennial-2006/doc/document/B1_2_michaelova_en.pdf Naidoo, J. (2002). Education Decentralization in Sub-Saharan Africa – Espoused Theories and Theories in Use. Unpublished Paper. Nyamnjoh, F., & Jua, N. (2002). African universities in crisis and the promotion of a democratic culture: The political economy of violence in African education systems. African Studies Review, 45(2), 1–26. Oduro, G., & MacBeath, K. (2003). Traditions and tension in leadership: The Ghanaian experience. Cambridge Journal of Education, 33(3), 441–455. Riddell, A. (1998). Reforms in educational efficiency and quality in developing countries: An overview. Compare, 28(3), 277–292. Samoff, J. (1999). When research becomes consulting. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Comparative and International Education Society. Toronto Canada, 14–18 April 1999.

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Scheerens, J. (2000). Improving school effectiveness. Paris: IIEP/UNESCO. Taylor, N., Muller, J., & Vinjevold, P. (2003). Getting schools working: Research and systemic school reform in South Africa. Johannesburg: Pearson. Teferra, D., & Altbach, P. (2004). African higher education: Challenges for the 21st century. Higher Education, 47, 21–50. Verspoor, A. (2006). Effective Schools in Sub-Saharan Africa. Paper presented at the Association for the Development of Education in Africa. Gabon 27–31 March 2006. Retrieved on July 12, 2006, from http://www.adeanet.org/biennial-2006/en_papers_B-2006.html

19 SCHOOL AUTONOMY FOR SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT: THE CASE OF ISRAEL

Ami Volansky

Introduction The ethos of equality has been a driving force of Israel’s education system since Israel became an independent state in 1948. This deep concern for equality was closely allied to the view that education is the main means of consolidating Israel’s largely immigrant population into one nation. With this focus on equality, national policy mainly looked to improve school attendance rates and to convey a national heritage to young citizens. It was felt that a centralized system would be most appropriate in meeting the extensive educational needs of the young country. Priority needs included the construction of new schools, the training of teachers, the development of curricula and learning resources. By centralizing decisions and policies on pedagogical and administrative matters, the Israeli government sought to avoid inequities among schools and communities. The pattern of government involvement in all the school’s spheres of activity developed gradually and systematically. The state determined – by law, regulation, circulars and procedures – all matters and concerns, including pedagogic issues such as curricula, class structure and organization; procedures for preparing homework; how pupils should write in their notebooks; school climate; as well as other areas such as for example, the physical planning of schools – the schoolyard, the width of hallways, size of the classrooms, and the precise angle at which light should fall on the pupils’ desks. In 1953, all teachers working in the official education system became employees of the public service sector. This move further increased the involvement of the Ministry of Education in all aspects of personnel management. Now, the Ministry was required to regulate the movement of teachers between cities, between schools and between the public (secular) and religious public schools at the same time it was expected to engage in issuing authorizations for in-service training, retirement, vacations, transfers, disciplinary warnings, dismissals, etc. This involvement of central and local authorities with the schools increased over time. This was true for the slowly expanding authority of the 351 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 351–362. © 2007 Springer.

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Ministry’s district office and its inspectors, the various units at the Ministry – which were increasing in number – and the local authorities. It was only natural, of course, that the greater the authority of such external agencies, the lesser the space given to any consideration of those who were responsible for actually teaching the children – the principals and teachers. This arrangement has several flaws. First, it reflects limited confidence in the school principal’s capacity to undertake leadership roles when representing the school’s interests in interactions with its environment. School principals are, in such a case, allowed minimal freedom to launch their own school-based initiatives or to engage in shared decisionmaking within their schools. Second, Ministry of Education regulations and policy guidance have tended to be fragmentary, complex and multi-layered, with formal and informal policy components, very often in conflict with each other, something which is typical of strongly centralized systems. Principals and schools in such a situation are, then, confronted daily with guidelines, incentives, sanctions, and programs prepared by numerous Ministry divisions and regional inspectors. It is no wonder, therefore, that teachers themselves claimed that the extreme centralization that developed took away all their pedagogic initiative and ability to think autonomously and creatively. It was therefore no surprise that they were the ones who began to call for greater autonomy. The subsequent shifts in policy which occurred in Israel from the 1970s – from a strong and dominant centralized system to school-based management – can be seen to have involved new educational meanings and changing educators’ roles for effective leadership; this process can be seen to divide into three phases. The first turning point toward pedagogic autonomy occurred during the 1970s.

First Phase – 1970s–1980s The first phase, towards school autonomy, occurred during the 1970s and 1980s. Pressures from parents, local authorities, various interest groups and from within the school themselves are part of the explanation of a perceived gradual departure from strong centralization towards school decentralization and greater autonomy (Gibton, Saabar, & Goldring, 2000; Goldring, 1993). Goldring (1992), in her study of Israel’s school system, found that autonomous schools, like other forms of restructuring, are the result of principals’ leadership and the demands of the social environment. Yogev (1997), and Haymann, Golan, and Shapira (1997, p. 11) explain the process of school autonomy as a result of local and community empowerment which increased “participation of local authorities in planning educational policy, enhancement of the schools’ autonomy, empowerment of teachers, diversification of curricula and teaching methods, and parental participation.” Gibton and Goldring (2002) explain the process of decentralization as a result of restratification and disengagement from the unifying ethos and “melting pot” policy in Israel’s early years and the move towards a civil society in which various groups struggled to maintain their particular identity. In 1972, concern about the impact of sweeping external initiatives was raised by the Ministry of Education’s Initiative in Primary Education committee. The committee,

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Initiative in Primary Education, recommended encouragement of teacher-led initiatives and identified the need for a platform for addressing the widespread apathy, weariness, and even bitterness experienced by teachers vis a vis the existing style of central management. The committee argued that in an education regime as centralized as the Israeli system, even the most dedicated teachers will lose interest, suffer low morale and avoid taking personal responsibility in school. There was a dominant feeling that the centralized structure had made management clumsy, had slowed down decision-making and led to faulty supervision. The 1972 Initiative in Primary Education report sowed the initial seeds for the movement towards school autonomy, which gained momentum throughout the 1970s and the 1980s. The program’s main point was to encourage initiatives among teachers so that elective subjects would constitute 25% of the national curriculum, leaving teachers with pedagogic autonomy concerning the organization of three class hours, rotation in job positions, and so forth (Reshef, 1984). The main assumption was that an autonomous school satisfies its own needs; it must therefore adopt its own educational philosophy, determine its operative goals in the academic sphere and independently assess its own performance. However, the Ministry of Education’s encouragement of initiative, flexible methods and greater pedagogical and managerial autonomy encountered problems in the second half of the 1980s. Heavy budget cuts meant that from the middle of the 1980s, classrooms hours decreased by 9.2% in elementary education and by 20% in junior high schools. This meant a reversal in the freedom and flexibility already delegated as schools no longer had the capacity to implement elective programs and subjects. Another factor that eroded school autonomy was central administration’s reluctance to relinquish its power and control. This change in conditions left the schools dependent on the bureaucracies that constituted the Ministry’s network of decision-makers and inspectors. Efforts made during the 1970s and 1980s to provide schools with greater autonomy thus had limited success. Dan Inbar, in his 1987 article “Is Autonomy Possible in a Centralized Education System?” analyzes the limitations of Israel’s system. In his view, the efforts towards decentralization were unsuccessful because those who held power, including inspectors and supervisors, were reluctant to relinquish their hierarchically rooted power and the right to control school policies, plans and activities. School autonomy therefore remained an abstract concept, bereft of any real opportunity for implementation.

Second Phase – 1990s The failure to implement school autonomy and the disparity between hopes and reality in the previous two decades were carefully studied by Ministry of Education officials in the early 1990s. The gap between the early expectations for a full range of school empowerment and greater institute flexibility, were among those motivating a new initiative to formulate a full-scale model of school-based management (SBM) and school leadership. Another major effort to change the status quo was begun in 1992 when the Ministry established the Steering Committee for the Self-Management of

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Schools. At the conclusion of its deliberations in 1993, the Steering Committee’s recommendations made it clear that a self-managed school was not an independent school, totally free to chart its own course. The Steering Committee’s definition of a self-managed school was of one that acts within the framework of national goals while responding to the declared needs of the students and community it serves. The model identified six central elements for implementation, drawn from findings on effective schools and other school reforms (Beare, 1989; Brown, 1990; Cheng, 1993; Dimmock, 1993; Volansky, 1992): ● ● ● ● ● ●

Identification of clear and focused goals Development of a working plan in accordance with defined goals Implementation of a school-based monitoring and assessment system Broadening school authority in personnel matters (staff recruitment and dismissal) Establishing school-based budget decision making Establishing a governing body for each school

Consistent with the concept developed, the Steering Committee recommended that schools operate as closed fiscal systems with budgets based on a per capita allocation formula. This formula would be published to ensure equitable treatment. The allocation formula would also be differentiated to reflect the special needs of low SES pupils in poor neighborhood schools (Ministry of Education, 1993). These recommendations sparked a bitter public debate. The opposition argued that shifting power from the government to the schools and the principals would undermine equality. They claimed that school-based management would benefit only affluent communities, and that the proposal would broaden the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged school populations. On this view, school-based management would culminate in privatization while relieving government of its obligation to prevent inequities between schools. In addition, the teachers’ unions objected to running schools with the help of a governing body, arguing that it would diminish the principal’s status and role as well as damage the teacher’s professional authority. Opposition to the systemic change was regularly reflected in partisan slogans and newspaper headlines, such as: “The Privatization of Education,” “The End of Government Control” and “The Penetration of Market Principles into Education.” Suffice to say, these antagonistic reactions were similar to those expressed in response to school reform in England and Wales during the late 1980s (Volansky, 2003). After a long and acrimonious confrontation, Israel’s main teacher union agreed to devise a model for implementation of systemic reform, beginning with a nationwide pilot project in 1996. Two Steering Committee recommendations were, however, discarded: the requirement that each school establish a governing body and that the principal be empowered regarding teacher dismissals. So long as the program operated on an experimental basis, its impact on Ministry of Education authority and budgets was minimal. However, once the transition was made, from the end of the 1998, from pilot to policy, with the program expanded to over 44% of all elementary schools (about 650 elementary schools and another 50 high schools), it became clear to Ministry officials and decision-makers that the transition to schoolbased management meant a serious reduction in their power and authority over the

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schools. That is, the move towards a new formula for public budget allocation left officials with much less freedom than they had previously enjoyed, as budgets now had to be transferred to the schools on the basis of clear and specified criteria. The school leadership, and it alone, had the right to determine how those resources would be used. This step created tremendous pressure and tension within the Ministry of Education and between the Ministry and the schools – much of this , however, resulted from worries about the loss of power among some of the Ministry officials, as a result of further spreading of school-based management in new LEAs. Similar obstacles were identified in LEAs. In some of them, officials continued to determine the internal distribution of resources that had actually been allocated to the schools according to the stipulated criteria and in contradiction with the wishes of principals and school staff or school working plan. Attempts were consequently made to reduce the scope of criteria-based allocations in order to allow Ministry of Education and LEA officials to retain more of the power and authority that they had originally agreed to relinquish. The response to the idea of school based management in the 1990s was, in effect, as serious as the opposition to the idea of school autonomy observed in the 1980s. Systemic difficulties arose within the Ministry of Education regarding loss of authority and power over budgeting and other aspects of decision making. In several cases, a crisis of faith erupted between the Ministry and school principals. The latter lacked the power to decisively halt reform and the introduction of school-based management. Thus, by the end of 2001, about 700 schools within 44 LEAs had adopted schoolbased management although significant diversity in the power to lead and manage their schools can be observed among the various LEAs and districts. Even though the introduction of school-based management had progressed significantly, schools, school staff and particularly principals were quite embittered as a result of some discrepancies between the Ministry’s and officials’ early promises and reality, particularly where management freedom actually became more restricted (Volansky, 2003). Still, when the Jerusalem principals union asked their membership whether they would prefer to move back to the old system, the response was unanimously negative. The principals mentioned many weaknesses and unfulfilled promises but they preferred to run their schools through SBM.

Research findings on SBM Early in the 1995–1996 academic year a pilot study, initially introduced in 9 schools and at later expanded to 700 schools, was launched to study the effect of the new policy. The research was sponsored by the Ministry of Education who needed data about the pros and cons of SBM policy as the main platform for structural and educational change. The study, carried out by The National Institute for Research in the Behavioral Sciences, (Szold Institute), was the first to consider in depth a pilot sample of 6 case studies out of 9 schools, and a year later, closely examined the process of transition of the entire City of Jerusalem (70 schools) to SBM. This study, however, didn’t look at

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the effect of the new management system on any particular school, at that stage. The researchers (Friedman & Barma, 1998; Friedman, Barma, & Toren, 1997) in the six case studies identified “a new culture of management and independent thinking” in those schools that were trained and empowered in school based decision making. The schools which participated in the experiment underwent two key changes: (1) In the organizational-pedagogic sphere – the schools improved their pedagogical goals; curricula were implemented so as to better serve the set goals. (2) In the operational resources sphere – the schools’ authority grew with regard to personnel and budget management. In another study, Nir (2001) cast some light on the effect of SBM introduction in Jerusalem when he looked at changes in teachers’ commitment to school, as a result of transition to SBM, in 28 local schools. The research, which started soon after SBM reform introduction, was conducted over the course of 3 years. Nir (2001, p. 11) found: As for teachers’ commitment, the study reveals that SBM positively affects teachers’ commitment to the teaching profession and to students’ academic achievements and negatively affects their commitment to the school and to students’ social integration in the classroom. At the same time the findings show, that teachers’ autonomy on the job remains unchanged after SBM is introduced in schools. It is argued that SBM is perceived by teachers as having a potential to increase their professional autonomy. Yet at the same time, it is perceived as an immediate demand to increase the effectiveness of the teaching processes which they conduct. Following the annual national assessment of schools, a further attempt to investigate SBM effectiveness was carried out by the Ministry of Education. In the academic year 2003–2004, 1,448 primary schools were tested in four subjects: mathematics, Hebrew or Arabic, science and English. The analysis compared two groups of schools – those with SBM (637 schools) and traditional schools (809 schools). The researchers (Giladi, Assolin, & Shild, 2005) found that “the average score of the four subjects of based management schools is higher than in traditional schools, with modest differences which is statistically insignificant” (p. 2). The following Figure 1 presents these findings. The researchers conclude by stating that “school based management has a positive impact on pupils’ achievement without any dependency in the sector or social setting that the school is affiliated to. The pupils of a school in the same sort of inspection and at the same level of SES – will perform better if he would be managed as a school based” in comparison to the traditional management of schools (Giladi et al., 2005, p. 3). Another study on SBM effectiveness was published in 2005 by Gaziel, Bogler, and Nir. The research project covers 44 SBM schools which are compared to 109 traditional schools. The main research findings were as follows: ●

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SBM implementation didn’t lead to substantive change, when comparing between the two groups of schools. There is no significant difference between schools that introduced SBM earlier compared to those that did so later.

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70 68

68 67

67

68

67

66

66 66 64 62

61

60 58 56 English

Science

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Hebrew/Arabic

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Figure 1. Test result of School-based management in comparison to Traditional management Source: Giladi et al. (2005).

The researchers mentioned that the fact that their research was carried out soon after the implementation of SBM might explain the absence of significant change and that more time might be needed for schools to adjust to the reform. The researchers argued the study was premature, insofar as it came to measure the effect of SBM, (Gaziel et al., 2005, p. 204). Another study, currently only in its initial stages, is a case study analysis on the meaning of school accountability and the changing role of school staff in self managing schools. The research findings are so far limited to only one case study, and therefore this study cannot be informative on the effect of SBM in the Israeli system as a whole.1 “Tadmor” primary school, located in a less affluent area of Tel Aviv, adopted SBM in 1997, and has since then been awarded some significant prizes. The research findings on the changing role of school staff identified the following five main factors which characterized the school management style: ● ● ● ● ●

Shared values of the staff members Strong group decision making Encouraging creativity Recognition of staff members’ personal achievement Shifting power from the principal to staff members

In a series of 15 interviews designed to gain information about the school characteristics (Volansky, 2005, p. 17), a young teacher explained: Before I arrived at “Tadmor School” I worked in two other schools. There was a very clear difference between the way the other two schools were run and Tadmor’s

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management style. In the other two schools I would spend the day doing routine work, fulfilling my formal duty and then go home with minimum confrontations or without taking any initiative. When I started at Tadmor I couldn’t figure out why everybody was taking their work so seriously. It took me about two to three weeks to realize that it was not one big show – this was the reality of this school . . . for example – a deep personal commitment to disadvantaged pupils for individual enrichment, having an action plan, setting priorities, class based evaluation and making decisions for further improvement – you couldn’t compare this with my previous experience at the other schools. A more experienced staff member in the school explains the sense of commitment to the school’s missions as follows: . . . as a staff member you are deeply involved. There is a feeling of controlling the events and the daily life at school and I feel that I have fulfilled myself I am very satisfied doing my job as a result of constructive pressure and a constant sense of responsibility that things should be done. She elaborated her view by adding that: You are asked to be responsible and to lead one of the school’s objectives . . . so I feel highly committed to be a leader of my colleagues and to attain our shared mission successfully. The school principal explains her management approach: Moving into school based management all staff members become much more involved and responsible. The outcome of such an approach is that staff members are eager to get more duties at school and to get more responsibility. Junior as well as senior staff generated many more activities than a school could supply even in a longer school day. It has created a high-intensity school life, and I have found myself having to balance staff’s too many initiatives and plans. Part of my role since we became school based is long-term planning of several initiatives and encouraging greater creativity in staff members. Tadmor school’s SBM reform is representative in the way it shares management values with all the staff members and encourages the latter to take responsibility for school results – the national approach of schools that have turned from traditional management to SBM. This doesn’t have automatic implications for other schools’ performance and improvement: it only is about the new approach of leadership at the school level. The approach emphasizes greater decentralization and new meanings of school empowerment and effectiveness. Concluding on the basis of the research findings that were reviewed, we might say that at this early stage of the reform implementation, only few years after SBM was launched, there is no conclusive evidence that such a policy has a dramatic impact on

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school performance and school improvement. We have, however, much evidence that staff members working with SBM feel encouraged and empowered to create many more education initiatives, have a deeper internal locus of control in managing school targets and a greater self efficacy alongside principals and senior school staff. In these aspects we can say that SMB has so far made a modest contribution. Though SMB has come to be seen as a precondition for school organization for greater effectiveness, it has, in fact, not yet brought about such effectiveness, at least not at the early stage of its development and introduction. For this to be the case, some other conditions should be fulfilled, such as constant support of schools in fostering the new style of management, particularly during the first years of transition. Five years after launching SBM as a national policy, the Ministry of Education ceased to play an active role in leading the process. New administration led by a new political leadership, new slogans, new flags replaced the old ones. SBM has become a “secret garden” of the Israeli education system: as of 2001 this reform – even though an explicit announcement was made on further Ministerial commitment to SBM policy – no longer receives any priority or support from the Ministry of Education. The message has been very clear to all involved – heads of divisions, Chief Education Officers, principals and inspectors. This had a direct adverse impact on any further dedication to the idea of SBM as the main platform for school improvement policy. Two years later, in 2003, the new administration set up a National Task Force. This committee was to recommend on reform that would improve education standards2 and would establish a much more effective system.

Third Phase The first draft of recommendations by the Task Force, submitted to the government and approved in May 2004, demanded a comprehensive and radical reform throughout the education system; this would include a new step towards SBM. The recommendations stressed that the school-based management reform, along with further steps leading to full school empowerment, begun in the 1990s, should be completed. The measures to be taken include: ●

●

● ● ●

90% of the education budget will be managed and fully controlled by school staff exclusively Principals will exercise full power over schools’ human resources including selection and dismissal of school staff Each school will design its own working plan and be responsible for its success Schools will institute internal monitoring and assessment systems Each school will be required to publish its success rate regarding school targets and national standards

Further recommendations of the Task Force, approved by the Government, were: extension of the school day to 8 hours; cutting the school week from 6 days to 5; lowering the age of compulsory schooling to 3; establishing standards and a new Central National Evaluation system; adding hours to the teachers’ working day; introducing changes in

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the matriculation examinations; restructuring the roles of the Districts and LEAs; reducing the powers of the Ministry of Education Inspectorate and restructuring the role of the Ministry of Education. From now on, it was recommended, the Ministry would undertake the following tasks: ● ● ● ●

Planning of policy and national curriculum Budgetary planning to improve equality Setting of standards National evaluation and assessment of agreed-upon standards

This comprehensive and radical reform, which was approved by the government, touches on almost every function and role in the education system – from an individual teacher in the class to senior officials at the Ministry and at each of the LEAs. A bitter dispute was sparked because many educational workers, as interested groups, regarded the Task Force recommendations as a threat to their position. LEAs, the two teacher unions, the head of the districts, the Inspectorate, senior officials at the Ministry of Education and even senior officials within the Ministry of Finance – all of whom were asked to take an active role in implementing the Task Force recommendations – ignored it. The reform, which touches on almost every part of the education system, and mainly on the old pillars of the system – aroused cynicism and very little trust that it would actually be implemented. The two teacher unions argued that the Task Force didn’t meet the main challenges or obstacles for high educational standards, namely: overcrowded classes, low teachers’ salaries, and the need to improve the school climate.3 So unsurprisingly, towards the end of 2005, the Task Force recommendations were far from being implemented. The drive for a comprehensive and radical change in many aspects of education simultaneously, or in the words of the Minister of Education: “turning over every stone” – has not been able to gain momentum. One result of this failure and the ambitions for radical reform is a failure to continue SMB reform, which had already been initiated and was appreciated by many as a necessary step for greater effectiveness of the school system, an issue that was central in the recommendations of the Task Force. We can say, therefore, that the move towards School Based Management, which was initiated in the middle of the 1990s ground to a halt at the beginning of the 2000s.

Conclusions From the early 1970s school autonomy and, later on, School Based Management were regarded as the main platform for greater effectiveness and school improvement in the Israeli education system. Some research projects, such as those carried out by Friedman et al. (1997), by Friedman and Brama (1998), by Nir (2001) or by Giladi et al. (2005) and Volansky (2005) offer evidence on the modest benefits of SMB while Gaziel et al.’s (2005) findings were less conclusive. The fact that principals in Jerusalem, Givatayim and Tel Aviv declared that they did not want to return to the traditional way of managing their schools, and the request by the mayors of 64 LEAs to join the SBM reform, in addition to the 44 LEAs that were already implementing it,

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testifies to some of the appreciation and respect that this reform actually gained on the national level. The implementation policy of SBM suffered from a lack of dedication and determination. Frequent reshuffles of Ministers of Education, General Directors and senior officials at the Ministry, as well as at the LEAs, obviously affected this process. SBM as a school improvement policy gained momentum during the 1990s but from the beginning of the 2000s it has progressively lost visibility and attention. The main reason for this was not related to any questioning of the merits of the policy. On the contrary, three committee recommendations and several other Ministry circulars, including some research findings, consistently supported further elaboration and expansion of school empowering policy. The search for a panacea for fast improvement of the school system, and the political leadership’s need to make its mark rapidly and clear, are major explanations for this neglect of school empowerment policy. Pressure to gain high standards via a faster, shorter way, left long-term reform in the shape of school empowerment neglected and abandoned. On the other hand, it would be overly ambitious and unrealistic to think that the Ministry can implement both SBM and the Task Force recommendations at the same time. This is not a comment on either the quality or the necessity of the recommendations, but only about the ability of the government and the Ministry of Education to successfully implement such complicated reforms at the same time. Furthermore, the decision to implement part of the Task Force recommendations completely ignored what had already been agreed and achieved with all the stakeholders of the education system, namely, to extend SBM as a prime improvement system to the entire education system. So the first decade of the twenty-first century can be regarded as the losing decade in term of moving towards a greater school effectiveness by empowering schools as self managed organizations. So, increased school effectiveness through greater school autonomy and flexibility of school action is formally on the agenda of the Israeli education system but not in practice. The ideas behind SBM are still and only in use as slogans but not in practical terms at the beginning of 2007.

Notes 1. The rest of the case studies are on the way to be accomplished in the coming 2 years. 2. In 1999 Israel had appeared in the league table of international comparison test as last third in the table. Such a result was one of the reasons for setting up a national Task Force to recommend school improvement policy. 3. The unions agreed upon part implementation of the recommendation, mainly a long learning day of 8 hours per day and shortening the number of learning days for 5 a week instead of 6 on experimental basis.

References Beare, J. (1989). Creating excellent schools. London: Routledge. Brown, D. (1990). Decentralization and school-based management. London: Falmer Press. Cheng, Y. C. (1993). The theory and characteristics of school-based management. International Journal of Educational Management, 7(6), 6–17.

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Dimmock, C. (Ed.). (1993). School-based management and school effectiveness. London: Routledge. Friedman, I., & Barma, R. (1998). The transition to school-based management in Jerusalem schools. Jerusalem: Szold Institute. [in Hebrew] Friedman, I., Barma, Y., & Toren, S. (1997). School-based management: Changing the school’s management culture. Jerusalem: Szold Institute. [in Hebrew] Gaziel, C., Bogler, R., & Nir, A. (2005). Evaluation and projection on schools transition to based management and on delay or acceleration factors in school development. Jerusalem: Ministry of Education and Culture. Gibton, D., & Goldring, E. (2002). The role of legislation in education decentralization: The case of Israel and the United Kingdom. Peabody Journal of Education, 76(3/4), 81–101. Gibton, D., Saabar, N., & Goldring, E. B. (2000). How principals of autonomous schools in Israel view implementation of decentralization and restructuring policy: Risks, rights and wrongs. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 22(2), 193–210. Giladi, A., Assolin, M., & Shild, G. (2005). School based-management – Test results for the year 2003–2004 (p. 3). Jerusalem: Ministry of Education Culture and Sport. Goldring, E. B. (1992). System-wide diversity in Israel: Principals as tranfromatinal and environmental Leaders. Journal of Educational Administration, 30(3), 49–62. Goldring, E. B. (1993). Principals, parents and administrative superiors. Educational Administration Quarterly, 29(1), 93–117. Haymann, F., Golan, H., & Shapira, R. (1997). School autonomy and parental choice: Steps in local education planning. In R. Shapira, & P. W. Cookson (Eds.), Autonomy and choice in context: An international perspective (pp. 77–108). Oxford, UK: Pergamon. Ministry of Education. (1993). Steering Committee on the Transition to School-Based Management, MOE, Jerusalem. Nir, E. A. (2001). Developing aspects of school-based managing schools (p. 11). The NCJW Research Institute for Innovation in Education’ Hebrew University. Reshef, S. (1984). Autonomy in education – Background, chances and principles for implementation. Tel Aviv: Ministry of Education and Culture, Tel Aviv University. [in Hebrew] Volansky, A. (1992). Proposal for a program of reform in the education system. (Planning Document No. 1). Jerusalem: Ministry of Education. [in Hebrew] Volansky, A. (2003). From experiment to educational policy: The transition to school-based management in Israeli schools. In A. Volansky, & I. Friedman (Eds.), School-based management – An international perspective. Jerusalem: Ministry of Education. Volansky, A. (2005). The Meaning of “Accountability” in the work of Tadmor’s school Teachers, A case study analysis (p. 17). Tel-Aviv: CET. Yogev, A. (1977). Autonomy and choice as school strategies for peripheral communities in Israel. In R. Shapira, & P. W. Cookson (Eds.), Autonomy and choice in context: An international perspective (pp. 177–203). Oxford, UK: Pergamon.

20 RECENT INITIATIVES IN SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT: THE CASE OF TURKEY . Ismail Güven

Introduction In order to gain a perspective of the school effectiveness and improvement efforts in Turkey, one needs to know the economic and social contexts of the issues at hand. Hence, the following section is a brief summary of the current economic condition and the education system of Turkey. Turkey is located in the north-east of the Middle East. The population of the country is about 70 million, with a GNI per capita about US$2,500, and 2% of the population has income below US$1 a day. Hence, in this country, poverty in general and growing urban poverty in particular, is a matter of concern. The illiteracy rate of Turkey is approximately 14%. Secondary school enrolment has reached 60 and 24% of the adult population has upper secondary education. In the early 1980s, the Turkish government carried out a series of economic reforms to reverse the previous decades of state-led industrialization. The main focus of the change was the opening of the economy through trade liberalization. However the government failed to follow through with enterprise privatization and was unable to reduce the overall deficit of the government budget. After the Asian and Russian crises, the Turkish economy began to slow down in 1998. The Government kept the key elements of the reform package in place and committed itself to the negotiation for membership in the European Union. Therefore, the social and cultural sectors of the country were working hard to join the European community (MEB, 2004; World Bank, 1997). The Turkish national education system is divided into two main parts, namely, formal education and non-formal education. For formal education, the Turkish education system consists of preschool, 8 years of elementary and 4 years of secondary education, and higher education. Compulsory education is free in the public schools. Secondary education is made up of general and vocational/technical schools where, depending on the type of secondary school, an additional three or 4 years of training takes place after elementary education. Higher education has been organized as four-year degree programs in the universities or two-year sub-degree programs in post-secondary 363 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 363–378. © 2007 Springer.

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institutions. Also, there are two-year pre-bachelor degree programs that offer vocational training. The Higher Education Council (YÖK) governs all Turkish universities. Nonformal education in Turkey aims to teach adults how to read and write, to provide basic knowledge, to develop further knowledge and skills already acquired and to create new opportunities for improving their living standard. Given the Turkish education system is situated in such an economic and political environment, the question for policy makers to contemplate is: how can the national government enhance the effectiveness of the system and consolidate efforts to support school improvement endeavors? In the following sections, the author describes the current education reform endeavors of the country, focusing first on the primary and then secondary education, and asserts that teacher education is the primary means for achieving the reform objectives.

Reform in Primary Education Since 1970, governments of Turkey have aimed to provide 8 years compulsory education to all children and to expand coverage to 100% of school-age children. However, there was much difficulty covering the last segment of the target population, namely, children from the ages of 11 to 13. The Government established the legal status of eight-year compulsory education in 1997. These developments contributed to the restructuring of Turkish elementary education. The legislation was buttressed by substantial new funding, which financed additional infrastructure and human resources to raise five-year primary schools to eight-year schools. The government also provided incentives to encourage all families to send their children to school. In the four years immediately after the legislation, the government spent nearly $2 billion from a World Bank loan to construct and furnish school buildings, provide new educational materials and equipment, and recruit additional teachers. As a result, enrollment in compulsory education increased from 85.63% in 1997 to 96.30% in 2002. Enrollment of girls in rural areas rose impressively, increasing by 160% in the first year of the program alone in the 9 provinces (out of 81) with the highest gender disparity (Ho¸sgör, 2004; MEB, 2003a). During the past 10 years, reforming and improving school effectiveness has become acutely politicized. The concept of “improving quality of education,” a critical issue in debates about educational effectiveness, was the main issue the politicians are facing. Nationwide, there was an emerging consensus that quality makes a significant difference in learning and in overall school effectiveness. There was no consensus, however, about how to define effectiveness of education and there appeared multiple thinking about this issue. The focus of the discussion was the relationship between incentives and accountability. In simplest terms, the objective is to improve the performance of education and the effectiveness of education was the central focus of policy. Political debates about school effectiveness were to a great extent enacted in pithy face-to face debates, sound bites, bold-printed newspaper headlines, and policy briefs with charts, graphs and statistical numbers. The integration of Europe produced intensive debates on school effectiveness at international levels. Many representatives

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from the World Bank, OECD and EU criticized Turkish education as lacking quality and effectiveness. Turkey has one of the lowest levels of preschool education coverage among the lower to middle income countries. In 1996, there were only 175,000 students participating in pre-primary schooling. This represented less than 7% of the cohort. By 2002 the enrollment rate increased to 11%, a significant improvement but still well below the average rate for countries in the same income group (28%). This means that the vast majority of children entering first grade have had no prior experience in a school environment. A number of pilot projects were introduced during the pilot phase of implementation of the new program. The Government has experimented with school-improvement grants, total quality management for school quality improvement, elective courses to be decided by the school, and school-developed curricular revision. One-year pre-school classes in primary schools, teacher empowerment and flexibility for multiple intelligence approaches in education, more democratic modeling for school climate, opendoors policy at schools have dominated the policy agenda. Empowerment of school administrations, decentralization of the central bureaucracy, alternative primary school and school buildings, variations in social areas and physical education space, differential school construction projects according to regions, workshop rooms and skills practice schools, networking and computer-aided instruction have been implemented. There were laboratory schools, where the projects to be scaled up were tested (Gözcü & Ziariti, 2002). The private sector also supported the extension of the compulsory education program. More careful planning for utilization of the additional funds and existing infrastructure have saved the reform effort from becoming too unidimensional. The planning has directed attention and resources toward addressing qualitative and organizational issues, such as the need for incentives and support for teacher development, reorganization of the central ministry structure and its related general directorates, empowerment of the local authorities and school administrations, curricula revision, and higher quality standards. The budget also included investments toward the construction of new schools and the renovation or expansion of existing ones, a massive provision of computers, educational equipment and materials, recurrent spending on the remuneration of teachers and other educational staff, and on new recruitment, and additional staff training to expand the provision and quality of schooling (MEB, 2003a). Nonetheless, improvement on other measures of educational performance, such as learning achievement, secondary school access and completion, and school-to-work transition rates, were not commensurate with the gains in access to basic education. Recent international assessment results, such as TIMSS and PIRLS, and other comparative measures, place Turkey well behind most of its counterparts on student learning achievement1 (Berbero˘glu, 2004). In Turkey, the primary aim of education reform was to enhance education opportunities throughout the country and promote particular skills such as problem solving ability, global awarness, social skills and particularly proficiency in ICT and foreign languages. With the approval of the 8 years Compulsory Basic Education Law, the Government of Turkey implemented an expansion of the basic education system as quickly as possible to capitalize on political momentum for growth. In the 6 years

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following the law’s enactment, Turkey increased the supply of primary education classrooms by 30%, making room for an additional one million students. However, all these are still far from the expected targets. In order to meet the education challenges of European integration and EU accession, a pradigm shift is needed to focus the education system on creating high-quality education opportunities and outcomes for all students. The Turkish Government recognized the risks the country faced with respect to an inadequately prepared labor force and has countered with an ambitious agenda of policy reforms across the entire education sector. Besides increasing the coverage of preschool education, the government also sought to improve the vertical integration between secondary and postsecondary education. The proposed reforms, some of which were stated in the 8th Five-Year Plan, and others in the Government’s Emergency Action Plan, include extending upper secondary from 3 to 4 years and promoting the availability of secondary education through distance education and modernization of the curriculum; and improving the efficiency of academic and vocational programs. The plan urges the elimination of regional, gender, and other demographic disparities at all levels of education. Raising the learning standards and outcomes for all students at all levels of schooling through improvements in curriculum, instruction, standards, and delivery, including through the use of information communication technologies (ICTs) were other important aims.

Contemporary Education 2000 Project The Contemporary Education 2000 Project was put into effect when compulsory primary education was extended to 8 years. The following principles have been adopted as the aims of the Project: Eliminate the “double-shift” mode of schooling, which is currently in practice in some schools in big cities. ● Gradually decrease the class sizes down to 30 by the year 2000. ● Bus pupils from small settlements to centrally located schools, (where lunch would be provided), thereby assuring a better quality of education for these pupils. ● Provide education opportunities at Regional Primary Education Boarding Schools (YIBO) and Primary Schools with Pension (PIO), with the State covering all expenses. ● Eliminate the practice of multi-grade education gradually by expanding YIBO and PIO alongside bussing. ● Provide clothing, bags, books and notebooks to pupils with insufficient financial means. ● Complement formal education through the method of distance education. ● Install computer laboratories at primary schools, using these laboratories for Computer Assisted Learning. ● Provide the means to our children to learn at least one foreign language at the level of primary education. ● Equip the schools with adequate facilities in line with contemporary requirements. ●

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Raise “individuals who learn and question ways of learning,” through a rational and scientific approach. Put in place the physical infrastructure that would assure the physical development of our children, along with the development of their mental abilities. Provide Distance Education opportunities to all primary school graduates who are older than the compulsory education age group.

School Improvement in Rural Areas The Government introduced an open basic education program, using the distancelearning mode, to provide core basic education skills to young people over 15 years old who dropped out in the compulsory education stage. Extending the duration of compulsory education from 5 to 8 years and reducing overcrowdedness in existing schools would require a major expansion of school capacity, particularly for Grades 6 through 8. In most urban areas, school attendance was constrained primarily by inadequate classroom capacity, and inadequate numbers of teachers. In rural areas, primary schools (Grades 1 through 5) were generally available, but a beneficiary assessment done in the Eastern and Southeastern provinces found that school attendance in those regions was inhibited by poverty and poor public perception about the quality of village schools. Some rural classes suffered also from the lack of teachers, frequent teacher turnover due to the isolation, as well as poor teaching and living conditions in rural schools. In rural areas, there was a widespread shortage of capacity in the upper grades of basic education (Grades 6 through 8), and parents often could not afford to send their children to school. To address the classroom problems in the rural areas, the Ministry of National Education (MONE) proposed the construction of nearly 3,900 new basic education schools, and the addition of 15,300 classrooms. Schools were designed in such a way that they could also accommodate handicapped children. To address the problem of teacher shortage, MONE planned to recruit an additional 150,000 teachers and inspectors for elementary education, improve the attractiveness of rural schools by upgrading teacher housing, and provide better financial incentives for teachers in disadvantaged areas. MONE also planned to experiment with new teacher recruitment and assignment policies which were currently administered centrally, in order to identify more effective and efficient ways to deploy teachers in elementary education. The Program aimed to respond to difficulties encountered in elementary education by increasing the quality of basic education, providing material incentives to children from poor families in the form of free school meals, student uniforms, and textbooks, and improving the incentives for husbands and wives who are both teachers to teach in the same rural schools (World Bank, 1997).

Computer Literacy in Primary Schools To improve computer literacy of the population, the government established computer laboratories at all primary schools thus assuring that all teachers and inspectors of primary education become computer-literate and trained in computer-aided education.

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The metaphor of becoming a knowledge society is a driving force in Turkey, as the country ranks among the last 50 countries in the use of ICT worldwide. World Bank provided loans to the Turkish Government for equipping 2,802 primary schools with ICT facilities. Despite all the current limitations, students are well aware of the potential of ICT in terms of educational opportunities. This investment in education was vital in supporting the country in taking part in the global knowledge economy. This was another important development in teacher competence building in ICT. As the majority of teachers did not have computer lessons in their preservice education, they did not feel confident using ICT, and even some of them were afraid that computer may take their places. With support of the above efforts, teachers felt at ease to use ICT facilities (Guven & Gulbahar, 2004). However, international research shows that traditional training seminars and academically focused training programs are ineffective because they do not provide the opportunity for practice, follow-up, and reflection (World Bank, 2005).

Reforms in Secondary Education The Secondary Education Development Project includes the following targets: (1) increasing compulsory education from 8 to 12 years (a longer-term goal), (2) enrolling 95% of basic education graduates in secondary education (which was to start in the 2001 academic year); (3) increasing secondary education from 11 to 12 years. MONE has also initiated several related reforms, including: (1) making Grade 9 a common core general education program for all secondary education students to ensure all graduates have good basic skills; (2) delaying vocational specialization until Grade 10; and (3) reducing the number of vocational subjects from 130 specialty programs to 30 broad vocational programs (World Bank, 2006). The World Bank recommended against early placement of students into vocational specializations. MONE pointed out these issues by reforming secondary education, including strengthening guidance programs in primary and secondary schools, updating and increasing the proportion of general education classes in vocational schools, and finalizing selection of vocational training at a higher grade level. MONE broadened the nature of vocational training to prepare students for further specialized post-secondary training and for lifelong learning. The Government made a Law to ease the entry of vocational graduates into post-secondary education. As such, the differences in content and goals of general and vocational education have decreased. The proposed Secondary Education Project directly supported these technical reforms through an interrelated set of components. It should be emphasized that the project focused on program development, as opposed to expanding the duration of, and enrollment in, secondary education. The rationale for this choice was twofold. First, a simple expansion of existing outdated programs could not meet the needs of the country, and the Government has requested the Bank’s support for system reform, not simple expansion of the existing system. Second, the costs of expansion were considerable with regard to construction and equipping of new schools, and the size of the proposed project would not have made a significant contribution to these activities, which were supported from Government resources.

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Objective and Key Indicators The overall development objective of the project was to improve the quality, economic relevance, and equity of secondary education to support lifelong learning. There were several key outcome indicators. First, the project provided technical assistance, equipment and materials to strengthen the institutional structures, developed technical procedures and new curricular content, implemented revised general education and vocational education curriculum programs, and provided related in-service training for MONE managers and teachers. Second, the project financed technical assistance, goods and materials to utilize ICT to improve instruction, access on-line educational content and services on the Internet, and assess the educational impact of the ICT investments. Third, the project provided technical assistance, equipment, and materials to facilitate interagency cooperation, develop core career information and guidance resources and supply them to education and labor institutions, train staff for career guidance and improve the integration of career guidance and counseling into the overall basic and secondary education programs. Finally, the project attempted to improve the quality and outcomes of secondary education by developing systems to collect and disseminate reliable information on student learning and outcomes, on the performance of the education system staff and institutions, as well as to use information from these assessments to improve system performance and student outcomes. These quality assurance measures have implications for institutions within the Turkish Higher Education. In Turkey, there are 72 universities, of which 19 are classified as private universities managed by non-profit making foundations. The Turkish Government therefore decided to review the situation in the higher education sector and so, based on encouragement received from the OECD (2005), a pilot program was instigated to implement the British system of quality assessment in some 20 universities across Turkey. This pilot program was implemented in the 1997/1998 academic year.

Human Resources Planning The availability of highly qualified and motivated teachers was an essential requirement for the success of reforms. The government has undertaken a number of important measures to staff the new schools and to improve the overall efficiency of teacher allocation across Turkey, including the following: MONE planned to advance the skills and motivation of education staff across the system, including inspectors, teachers, principals and provincial officials of the MONE. In accordance with the Ministry’s approach to basic education, training programs for all staff emphasized the role of educators as leaders within the local community, inspectors were responsible for organizing and implementing in-service training activities for teachers and education managers, and for providing on-site support to teachers through school visits. MONE expanded these activities under the reform program, through the hiring of additional inspectors in order to provide teachers with more frequent contact and mentoring opportunities. Training of managers and principals aimed to strengthen management capacity at the school level, in order to improve decision-making, parental participation and

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support for teachers’ professional development. MONE has developed a number of in-service training courses for managers addressing education planning, communication, leadership training and the use of technology in schools. MONE developed a resource guide on guidance issues, including psychological counseling as well as career guidance for teachers and school managers, and plans to incorporate training on guidance as well as counseling into in-service training curriculum for teachers and administrators (MEB, 2003a). Many schools have improved their resource usage. The service have been delivered to the public schools effectively, and effective support services in the local and school centers have also been developed.

Teaching Materials In order to jump-start the change from the traditional “declaratory” method of teaching to a new student active learning approach, MONE has commissioned the development of an entirely new generation of textbooks for a broad spectrum of basic education courses. They were also intended to complement the multimedia and IT resources. A teachers’ guide and a parents’ guide accompanied each of the new student textbooks. The parent guides were prepared to enrich the students’ learning at home, to help parents understand what their children are doing in school and to equip them to be more supportive of and more involved in their children’s learning. Building an information network was an important challenge to Turkey as it implements its strategy for economic development based on open competitive markets. The young population is potentially the nation’s greatest competitive asset, provided that the talent and skill base central to an information-based economy can be developed. MONE intended under the Basic Education Program “that all basic education age students have access to computers in the learning process” to attain computer literacy, support and enhance the existing curricula and open the computer laboratories to the local community as technology-intensive learning environments. All these helped students access to resources provided by schools effectively. The students have the opportunity to use the latest ICT facilities, even for homeworks and exercises.

Strategies to Support Education Reform Knowledge of school effectiveness and improvement is new to policy makers in Turkey. Hence, efforts for improving schools are now mainly focused on building more classrooms, supporting students from rural and poverty-ridden areas, and hiring qualified teachers. Nevertheless, policy makers also realize that it takes the entire nation to enhance the effectiveness of schools, and there needs to be a broader scope as well as long-term perspectives. In the following section, two school improvement initiatives, namely, institutional renewal and special needs education, will be mentioned which are aimed at a more long-term perspective of school effectiveness.

Institutional Renewal Surprisingly few changes in institutional arrangements were made to support the education reform mentioned above. No new formal accountability mechanisms were

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introduced. The education system remained centrally managed and operated. The MONE maintained its existing structure with minor modifications. The one organizational change MONE of Education undertook was with regards to the ICT directorate. This general directorate was strengthened and elevated in importance within the structure of MONE. The high inflation of the 1990s, deteriorating standard of living, worsening income distribution and the appearance of a poverty-stricken population in the 6–7 years preceding the program were risks the government felt it needed to address. There were rising complaints that the government was not protecting the rights of the poor, especially since corrupted officials misused resources. The government had introduced some minor poverty alleviation measures, but these were generally thought to be uncoordinated and a waste of public resources. In addition, studies had shown that there were serious lags in the implementation of the compulsory education policies (Dulger, 2004; World Bank, 2005). Education directors from provinces and subprovinces, were given additional responsibilities, but made little change to the existing management structure. Also, departments and units within MONE headquarters in Ankara were integrated electronically, and connected to many of the units in the provinces and sub-provinces by means of a new Management Information System (the ILSIS). MONE has begun to provide some additional information to the public in response to the controversy sparked by the inadequately consulted Law and Program. Although some reengineering was proposed for such areas as reorganization, change of MONE’s legislative authority, curriculum development, institutionalizing in-service training, assignment and transfer procedures, these were evaded because of central bureaucracy’s resistance to change. The proposal to integrate small primary schools with lower-secondary schools into a virtual education administration was never realized for the same reason. Finally, the MONE currently has some pilot activities to introduce a modern inspection and quality supervision system (MEB, 2003b). A temporary set of earmarked taxes were targeted to finance the expansion of schooling. These new taxes raised US$2 billion in new revenues to support the construction of new schools, the hiring of new teachers, and the provision of educational materials to new students. The government supported the Program as a way of enhancing social cohesion through reduction of economic disparities and social inequities. Other initiatives included the Social Solidarity Fund, organized at the sub-province level with demanded programs by the local people. Most of the help ended in handing out money. Only computer-aided instruction, pre-school classes and physical facilities improvement received any significant inclusion in the scaling up of the Eight-Year Compulsory Education School as is reflected in the Three-Year Catch 2000 Project of MONE. These innovations were mostly limited to construction or to purchase and installation of equipment rather than any substantial innovations in the way in which education was organized. The World Bank played a supportive and advisory role during the lending discussions, from which the Ministry benefited. Finally, the IMF indicated its acceptance of the Program and did not restrict expenditures on education and health (MEB, 2003c; MEB-Ankara Üniversitesi, 2002). More careful planning for the utilization of additional funds and existing infrastructure have saved the reform effort from becoming too unidimensional. These had directed attentions and resources towards addressing qualitative and organizational

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issues, such as the need for incentives and support for teacher development, reorganization of the central ministry structure and its related general directorates, empowerment of the local authorities and school administrations, curricula revision, and higher quality standards. The budget also included investments towards the construction of new schools and the renovation or expansion of existing ones, a massive provision of computers, educational equipment and materials, recurrent spending on the remuneration of teachers and other educational staff, and on new recruitment, and additional staff training to expand the provision and quality of schooling (MEB, 2003a). However, the infrastructure for providing support and technical assistance to schools was ineffective. Furthermore, the recommendations relating to school improvement or classroom pedagogy are not conveyed by inspectorates to schools in any formal, documented form (World Bank, 2005). The Government should count on circulars, mandates, punishment or other mechanisms of the central authority to address all of the myriad and individual factors that constrain school effectiveness. Funds must be provided to schools for self-managed school improvement projects and achievement of the quality targets.

Supporting Students with Special Needs School quality was to be improved through greater parental involvement and participation in school based activities. The program contained an innovative component, called the Monitoring Response Facility (MRF), which allowed Parent Teacher Associations, school committees and other school-based organizations to apply for funds to support local initiatives consistent with the Basic Education Program. The MRF provided direct support to schools to facilitate innovative projects, which could be approved based on a pre-defined set of criteria, and help them respond to children with disabilities. Activities supported through the MRF built upon the results of the studies and assessments carried out under the monitoring and evaluation component of the Program. The social aid program for improving school attendance and performance for low-income students has been supported and expanded through the Program. The MONE used its network of girls’ vocational schools and adult education centers to make and provide school uniforms and meals to poor students. The program was actively supported through donations from the public. Evidence illustrates that the provision of social aid positively impacted on school attendance and student performance. Precautions have been taken for accommodating people with physical handicaps. The entertainment and recreation centers have been planned for easy access and to avoid vertical circulation, multiple stores were avoided, apart from buildings on small sites, which were limited to four floors. The new schools offered science and computer laboratories, art as well as music rooms and workshops were designed for individual and group work. Faculty rooms were also designed for both individual work and meetings. The schools have outdoor fields and the community could use the recreational areas (MEB, 2003a). Thus handicapped students had better opportunities for their education and school life. They could have access to educational resources with much easily than before.

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Reform in Teacher Education The first Turkish teacher training institution, known as the Darulmuallimin, was established in 1848. While many different models of teacher training have been implemented since then, the most important change in the Turkish teacher education system took place in 1981 when “the responsibilities and activities of teacher training were transferred from MONE of Education to the universities” (Akyüz, 2004). Before 1981, all teacher education institutions were both academically and administratively under the control of MONE of Education. The Higher Education Reform in 1981 changed all four-year teacher training institutions and three-year foreign language high schools into four-year faculties of education. Today, most of the faculties of education in Turkey have programs for training preschool (kindergarten) teachers, elementary teachers (both primary school teachers and subject teachers for middle schools), and secondary teachers who are employed by both MONE and private schools. Apart from graduating from teacher training programs, students who have completed a bachelor degree in the faculties of science and letters, and have completed pedagogical course requirements in the faculties of education are also eligible to apply for a secondary teaching position. Today, there are 77 (53 public and 24 private) universities in Turkey, 43 (one private and 42 public) of them have faculties of education, and most of them offer dual (both full-time and part-time evening) programs. Although students in the evening programs are required to pay much higher tuition than the ones enrolling in the full-time programs, they are admitted to the same courses of study with relatively lower scores than the full-time students.

Problems and Challenges For the selection of those who will enter university programs, a student must pass a highly competitive central university examination to enroll in a college and make a list of 18 choices of their desired fields. Teacher education departments do not usually attract talented students. National Advisory Council for Teacher Education, convened in June 1989, advised the MONE to launch a scholarship program to attract gifted students into the teaching profession. Although a significant increase in university admissions was observed as a result of this, the quality of students is still a great problem in many departments of the education faculties. Although the number of academic staff at education faculties has dramatically increased since 1981, one cannot say whether the staff quality has improved. This area desperately needs further study. During the Higher Education Reform in 1981, many faculty members, especially from the Departments of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, History and Western Languages, were transferred from the colleges of letters and sciences, which were amongst the first colleges opened in every university, to the education faculties. Most of them held a doctorate degree and many of them obtained an administrative position in education faculties. The new departments or the new positions in education faculties continued to recruit graduates from colleges of letters and science. Unfortunately, this tradition is still alive, though not to the same degree. Although these faculties were qualified in their subject, they were not trained in curriculum and

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pedagogy. Education faculties were graduating students who resembled graduates of colleges of letters and science, who may know their subjects well, but may not be competent inside the classrooms (Altan, 1998). Therefore, most academic staff in education faculties, except perhaps for primary education, educational administration or instructional technology, were not producing research or writing about education. The subject was important to them, but most of them did not see a need to relate theory to practice. This situation still prevails, though not on the same scale, in all education faculties. But in departments such as Arts, Physical Education, and Music, the situation differs somewhat, where the selection of staff members is based on the skills and talents of the artists, professional sportsmen, as well as musicians, and courses are designed accordingly. For many years, there has been a consensus among teacher trainers that teacher training should include the development of both a knowledge base and skills in instruction. The knowledge base includes emphasis on such areas as teaching theory, pedagogy, child development, educational research, and subject content. The skill development part of the curriculum consists of practice, including early field experience and student teaching experiences where students must put into practice the knowledge they have gained through their course work. Both these elements were totally neglected in the curriculum of the education faculties. A close analysis shows that it lacked coherence and that the purpose of many courses was outdated and hazy. There is also a lack of empirical evidence on the impact of the courses (YÖK, 1998). Recruitment of teachers, which was managed by the MONE, was based on expected number of vacancies. Approximately 70,000 new teachers were recruited each year. All teachers had to have university graduation, plus they acquired pedagogical formation through theoretical and practical courses. However, because the program started up immediately without a scale-up phase, many students in the pre-service courses could receive only a very short teacher training program. Teachers with little pedagogical preparation were sent out to schools. Many of these new teachers were given temporary graduation certificates and were expected to complete training in the summertime. Universities launched massive summer courses in order to keep up with the needs in the field. As was mentioned above, in addition to the graduates of education faculties, large numbers of graduates from the colleges of science and letters apply for positions in secondary schools because they cannot find jobs in their own field. In 1995, MONE employed some 12,000 graduates, regardless of their college and subject, as teachers at elementary schools due to the teacher shortage. Hence, any university graduate, even without a teaching certificate, could become a teacher. This proved the old saying in Turkey: “If you cannot be anything you can at least be a teacher!” But teachers in Turkey, as in many countries, also suffer problems such as low salary, heavy demands made upon time, crowded classrooms, outdated textbooks, less sophisticated physical facilities and a lack of opportunity to improve their professional knowledge and performance.

The Reform Agenda Being aware of the importance of teachers and teacher training, MONE and the Council of Higher Education implemented reforms in teacher training collaboratively. Special

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National Advisory Council for Teacher Education was convened in June 1989 to advise MONE. As a result, a scholarship program to attract talented students into the teaching profession was launched, and some three-year teacher high schools were transformed into four-year schools, which poor but able students prefer to attend because they will receive free accommodation and extra scores in the General University Examination if they choose to attend education faculties. Other resolutions include creating programs for in-service training centers in major universities throughout the country, establishing a teacher education academy to train mentor teachers, and, more recently, the creation of professional development schools in pilot cities. With a US$177.2 million loan (US$90.2 million from the World Bank and US$87 million from the Turkish Government), academic staff and research fellows from education faculties were sent abroad to attend higher degree or Post Doctoral courses. The World Bank supported the project provided that the Higher Education Council revised and improved pre-service teacher training curricula, textbooks and pedagogical material and support research projects. The National Education Development Project (NEDP) was launched with the loan agreement concluded between the Turkish Government and the World Bank in 1990 (Karagözo˘glu, 1991). It was administered by the Higher Education Council and the British Council provided technical assistance. The goals of the project were: ● ●

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to improve the quality of primary and secondary education to reach OECD levels; to reach standards that are identical to those in OECD countries so as to upgrade the quality and validity of teacher training; and to ensure more effective and economical resource utilization in the areas of administration and management.

Another important issue was integrating technology into the curricula in education faculties. Recent advances in interactive multimedia computer practices have provided teacher educators with the means to develop technology-enhanced class presentations. Audio, video, film and slides have been integrated into lecture outlines and course content to illustrate learning models and instructional methods. Instructors were expected to develop presentations that might provide trainee teachers with examples of classroom contexts where they can apply their learning through multimedia. The benefits for student teachers might also extend beyond their actual experience with the technology.

Further Education Opportunities To improve graduate education in teacher training, the government has undertaken the following measures. First, the curricula of the graduate programs have been changed according to changes made in undergraduate programs. Second, the examination procedure has been assessed and redesigned and, universities that specialize in certain subjects have been allowed to introduce masters and doctorate programs according to demand. An important issue here was to send research assistants abroad for masters and doctoral studies. For each subject, the government would restrict the universities and the number of graduate student advisors. The subject of theses and

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dissertations were directly related to education, and, more specifically, to the problems encountered in the education system of the country (YÖK, 1998). Over 50,000 additional teachers for basic education have been recruited. In addition, four annual cycles of in-service training have been provided to these teachers, principals, inspectors, and provincial education staff. Reconstruction of education faculties in Turkey was commenced in December 1994, under the scope of the Turkish Higher Education Council (YÖK) and World Bank Project. With the expansion of compulsory education to 8 years, YÖK and MONE were confronted with the need for mathematics teachers for 6–8 and 9–11 levels and then split 6–11 level teacher education programs as the elementary (6–8 level) and secondary (9–11 level) schools programs. The teacher education program was revised in 1998. The purposes of these changes were: the need for elementary school mathematics teachers for 6–8 levels, the need for secondary school mathematics teachers for 9–11 levels, to increase the quality of teachers, to enhance the teaching and learning process, to get teachers to better place in the special teaching methods of mathematics, to give more rational structure to faculties, to strengthen the education side of the teacher training programs. The secondary school mathematics teacher-training program was raised to graduate level. Two different programs were formed for the training of secondary school mathematics teachers: The Five-Year Integrated Programs (3.5  1.5) and the Masters Program (4  1.5). The program model is described in more detail in YÖK (1998). The program improved the pedagogical knowledge of the prospective teachers. They now produce postgraduates with the maturity and experience to deal with the type of situations they may get in guidance and counseling in the schools or inspection, curriculum development, and materials production in the Ministry or other institutions. During teaching practice the student teacher can also extend the experience to wider school issues by, for example, working with teachers on some needed curriculum development, helping teachers to produce resources, searching the Internet, joining extracurricular activities, or other tasks. The partnerships formalized the arrangement between faculties and schools, with designated roles and responsibilities on each side. However, teacher preparation and support need to be aligned with the new approaches such as child centered competency base and new examination system with collaboration of MONE.

Conclusion Education is one of the most crucial factors that shape the future of individuals and societies. The strategic importance of education is more obvious in the era of globalization. The future of Turkey depends on how well it can integrate with the world economy and transform itself into an information society. An education system with high quality is needed for development, industrialization, democratization and security for today and tomorrow. The Turkish government has done much to improve education quality both by its own efforts and through the help of external bodies. External bodies such as the World Bank, OECD and the European Community pushed Turkey to modernize its educational system. The most important efforts have been made at the basic

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education level in the last two decades, especially extending 5 years of compulsory education into 8 years. To support these efforts, the World Bank provided loans to the Turkish Government. The government implemented these efforts through MONE. The efforts of investing in educational effectiveness focused mainly on elementary education, and the government revised the whole compulsory school curriculum under the basic education program. Experts on organisational change agree that in order for large, complex organisations to change, they need to create not only a vision of a different future but also a new “field of vision” made up of concepts that spread so effectively throughout the organisations that nobody can avoid them. Unless and until there is a commitment to enhance the quality and professionalism of the teaching body, it is unlikely that the national goal of reaching the level of the developed countries in the near future can be achieved. It is clear that many attributes that characterize the profession are not hallmarks of today’s teaching profession in Turkey. The teacher education institutions needed to change as well. Teacher education faculties in the universities have been reorganized to support changes in the basic education levels. All the education faculties followed the curriculum designated by the government. Also, in order to implement the smart school concept, the government established computer laboratories in all primary schools thus assuring that all teachers and inspectors of primary education become computer-literate. The government organized in-service education programs in ICT competencies and MONE established infrastructure for providing free Internet services in schools. Yet the issue of whether this has changed the level of effectiveness of the school system is yet to be answered.

Note 1. Among the 38 countries that participated in the 1999 TIMSS science and math assessment, Turkey scored in the 33rd place in science and 31st in mathematics. Of the 35 countries in the 2001 PIRLS reading literacy test, Turkey scored 28th.

References Akyüz, Y. (2004). Türk e˘gitim tarihi (Ba¸slangıçtan 2004’e) (9th ed.). [History of Turkish educaiton: From beginning to 2004 (9th ed.)]. Ankara: Anı Yayınları. Altan, Z. (1998). A call for change and pedagogy: A critical analysis of teacher education in Turkey. European Journal of Education, 33(4), 407–418. Berbero˘glu, G. (2004). The quality and effectiveness of teaching and learning in Turkey: Quantitative study. In Turkey Education Sector Study (Ed.), Sustainable pathways to an equitable, effective, and efficient education system. World Bank Turkey Office Publications: Istanbul. Dulger, I. (2004). Turkey: Rapid Coverage for Compulsory Education – The 1997 Basic Education Program. Ankara, Turkey: MEB Yayinlari. Guven, I., & Gulbahar, Y. (2004, June). Integrating ICT in Social Studies Teacher’s Education: Efficacy and Knowledge of ICT of Social Studies Teachers in Turkey. Paper presented at the conference of “The Challange of Integrating ICT in Teacher Education – The Need for Dialogue, Change and Innovation,” Sweden. Ho¸sgör, S. ¸ (2004). Status and trends in the education system. In Turkey education sector study (Ed.), Sustainable pathways to an equitable, effective, and efficient education system. Istanbul.

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Karagözo˘glu, G. (1991). Teacher education reform in Turkey. Action in Teacher Education, 13, 26–29. ˙ sim Teknolojisi Araçları ve Ortamlarının MEB. (2003a). Tebli˘gler Dergisi. Millˆı e˘gitim bakanlı˘gı. Bilgi ve Ileti¸ E˘gitim Etkinliklerinde Kullanımı Yönergesi, 66(2554), 663–668. MEB. (2003b). National education at the beginning of 2003. Ankara: MEB Publications, National Education Ministry. ˙ skin Rapor [Government Proposal for the 2004 Fiscal Year MEB. (2003c). 2004 Mali Yılı Bütçe Tasarısına Ili¸ Education Budget]. Ministry of National Education APKYayinlari; Ankara. MEB. (2004). National education at glance beginning 2004. Ankara. ˙ gretim Okullarının Sosyal Etkilerinin De˘gerlendirilmesi Ara¸stırması MEB-Ankara Üniversitesi. (2002). Ilkö˘ [Social Impact Assessment of Primary Education Schools]. MEB Projeler Koordinasyon Merkezi Ba¸skanlı˘gı, Ankara. OECD. (2005). Education at a glance 2005. Paris. World Bank. (1997). Turkey: Rapid coverage for compulsory education. The 1997 Basic Education Program. Washington DC. (Report by ˙Ilhan Dulger). World Bank. (2005). Secondary education project (Turkey) (Project Information Document Concept Stage). Washington, DC. World Bank. (2006). Turkey education sector study, executive summary. Document of the World Bank, Report No. 32450. Washington, DC. YÖK. (1998). E˘gitim fakülteleri ö˘gretmen yeti¸stirme programlarının yeniden düzenlenmesi. Yüksek Ög˘ retim Kurulu Yayınları (Higher Education Council Publications): Ankara.

21 RECENT INITIATIVES IN SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT: THE CASE OF THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

Azam Azimi

Historical Background The written history of Iran began at about 800 years B.C. The culture of ancient Iran, particularly in the Sassanian Dynasty (226–641 A.D.) was focused on developing citizens who were patriotic with moral character and good behavior. At the beginning, only parents and fire-temples were responsible for education. However, at the time of Sassanian dynasty royal schools and universities were established, but only princes, nobles and aristocrats had the right to study and common people were deprived. Zoroaster and his religion appreciated education very much and Zoroastrians believe that humanity is achieved only by learning. At the time of Zoroaster, children were trained in the households for 7 years and then they were sent to the fire-temples to be trained for another 8 years. The aim of training was to bring up youth to serve both the house and the society. The children usually took over their fathers’ professions, so vocational education was taught by the parents or the professionals. The rulers, too, were chosen from the princes. After the entrance of Islam in 628 A.D., education in Iran, like other Muslim countries, was run by religious authorities and Muslim Scholars. Children and youth attended Maktabs and Madrasahs where they were taught reading, writing in Persian language, arithmetic, the Qur’an and religious instruction. It is interesting to note that Iran witnessed great scientific progress during the centuries 9–13 A.D. A number of Iranian scientists of the classical period such as Kharazmi (died 863) in mathematics, Razi (died 926) and Avicenna (died 1037) in medicine, Khayam (died 1123) in algebra and astronomy, Tusi (died 1274) in astrology were considered as great scientists in their time. This traditional system of education remained unchanged until the end of the eighteenth century. In the mid nineteenth century, along with the establishment of foreign schools, a few Iranian educators who had either been educated in European 379 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 379–392. © 2007 Springer.

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countries or visited there, established a number of modern schools. Yet, it was Amir Kabir who, during the reign of Nasser al-Din shah (1848–1896), tried to establish a modern institute aimed at training manpower for the government. Military subjects, mining, engineering, medicine and mathematics constituted the fields of study of this institution. The number of modern schools increased in the second half of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century. The Council for National Schools was formed in 1898, and the Ministry of Education was established in 1910. In 1911, the Parliament passed a law and called upon the Ministry of Education to organize a system of public education. It is worth mentioning that in the first three decades of the twentieth century, two separate and parallel systems of education, the modern and the traditional, existed in the country. Gradually, as the modern schools benefited from the financial support of the government, Maktabs were dissolved and the Iranian educational system was put into a unique mold. After the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the education system underwent essential changes. It was necessary to re-examine the philosophy, objectives and policies of the previous educational system. The Council for Fundamental Change in Education, established in 1986 as a commission affiliated to the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution, revised the education system, and studied some ideal alternatives, and finally proposed a system of education at the Pre-university level, based on the Islamic doctrine, as well as the new social, economic, and the political needs. So, during recent years, reforms were introduced into the education system and school curricula, in order to modify them. At the beginning of the new millennium and in the midst of the global changes taking place in the world, the Islamic Republic of Iran is faced with internal and external pressure, both to meet global challenges and preserve its cultural identity. In order to do these, the schooling system must be reformed and made effective. But what is the purpose of school effectiveness in Iran? How to reform the schooling system in a way that satisfies the needs of the country and conforms to the norms of the society? How to develop the schooling system that is sustainable and effective in the future? These are the questions that decision makers in the Council were struggling with. The present chapter is divided into four main sections. The first section sets the stage for a school effectiveness discussion by outlining the structure of the school system and the goals of education. The second section describes teacher education in Iran as the means of achieving quality in the school system. The third section summarizes the recent school improvement and innovations endeavors. Finally, challenges within the system and future prospects are discussed (Hakimi, 2005).

The Present School System Structure of the School System In the Islamic Republic of Iran, primary education begins at the age of 6 and lasts for 5 years. Then follows a guidance course (lower secondary) lasting 3 years. These 8 years of education are assumed as basic education. Upper Secondary education lasts

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three years and is divided into three main branches: Academic, Technical and Vocational and Kar-Danesh which is a new flexible vocational branch. The school year lasts nine months (about 35 working weeks/200 active days), which begins from September 23rd of each year and ends in June 21st of the subsequent year (Academic, Technical and Vocational and Kar-Danesh, 2003). Pre-school education is a program which is accessible in most regions and is financed through parents and the government. The one-year pre-school program enrolled 404,000 in 2002–2003. The government intends to expand Pre-school education with the participation of the private sector. Pre-university Cycle is a one-year course for students who complete their upper secondary education and seek to enter universities or other higher educational institutions (Academic, Technical and Vocational and Kar-Danesh, 2003). The last decade saw a period of considerable reform in Iranian educational structure. The structure changed from 5  3  4 to 5  3  3  1, and the one year pre-university course was introduced in the educational system. New strategies were carried out for the expansion of techno-vocational courses and improving its quality, and for the first time in Iranian system, the students were given permission to have optional units (Ministry of Education, 2003a). During the past few years, the Ministry of Education has put special emphasis on the reform and promotion of education in Iran. The efforts and educational reforms have helped Iran toward a massive development program, which has resulted in much progress in the education system (Hakimi, 2005).

Literacy Rate and Schooling Population In the 25 years from 1976 to 2001, there have been increases in the overall literacy rate of the country from 47.5 to 85.1% , women’s literacy rate from 35.5 to 81%, and literacy in rural areas from 30.5 to 79.8%. In addition, in the 2000–2001 school year, with the system successfully maintaining a low dropout rate, the population of school age students receiving basic education had reached 99.2%, and the ratio of female students in the student population was 48% (Literacy Movement Organization, 2002, 2003; Ministry of Education, 2003b). In the last decade, there have been significant improvements in many aspects in the educational service. These include a large reduction in the number of teachers holding high school diplomas, decrease in the teacher-student ratio in primary education, an increase in the opportunity to access Technical-Vocational and Kar-Danesh education in 86% of country regions especially in rural areas, and reform in the curriculum and assessment methods (Hakimi, 2005; Ministry of Education, 2003b).

Goals of Education In order to set the goals of the education system for the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Supreme Council of Education of Iran established six domains as the educational goals. These include the ideological, moral, scientific and pedagogical, cultural and

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artistic, social, biological and economic goals. It is worth mentioning that many of these goals are related to the Islamic religion and the teaching of the Qur’an. Ideological goals: ● ● ●

Paving the ground for self-knowledge and monotheism. Strengthening the spirit of truth seeking. Strengthening the religious beliefs of students with respect to Islamic tradition.

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Fostering the spirit of conscious obedience to Islamic teachings, and the growth of ethical virtues, based upon faith & piety. Fostering the spirit of self-reliance and independence, order and discipline. Strengthening the belief in moral generosity & self-respect. Developing balanced humanitarian affections and peaceful coexistence

Scientific & Pedagogical goals: ●

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Realizing the mysteries of the cosmos and nature in order to promote human knowledge and experience. Fostering the spirit of thinking, studying, searching, criticizing, innovating, and continuous learning. Teaching of sciences, technologies, and skills, which are required for personal and social development. Teaching of Persian language and script as the official language of the country, teaching of Arabic Language in order to familiarize with Qur’an and Islamic culture, and teaching of English language to communicate to other countries. Fostering the spirit of participation and cooperation in group work.

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Discovering, guiding, & developing artistic and aesthetic aptitudes. Recognizing the beauties of the world, the Islamic art and the appropriate national & international arts. Fostering the spirit of conserving the cultural, artistic & historical heritage. Recognizing Persian Literature as the glory of the artistic manifestation and national and social unity of the country. Recognizing the praiseworthy cultures; customs, & traditions of the Islamic society of Iran. Recognizing the history, culture and civilization of Islam, Iran, and other countries with emphasis upon contemporary culture.

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Fostering the spirit of Protection of the dignity and health of family relations based on Islamic ethics. Actualizing the social & economic justice of Islam.

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Extending and strengthening Islamic brotherhood and cooperation as well as strengthening national integrity, and bringing about participation in social, religious, & cultural activities. Fostering the spirit of calling for virtue, enjoining the good and prohibiting evil, creating respect for the law. Respecting other people & observing their rights in social relations.

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Providing suitable conditions for physical health & spiritual hygiene. Observing public hygiene & conserving the environment. Paying attention to physical education as a ground for the spiritual growth of man.

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Training students to participate in agriculture, industry, & service sections in order to lead the country toward self-sufficiency. Creating a spirit of contentment and avoiding lavish practices in all aspects of the economy. Paying attention to the importance of economic growth as a means towards the growth of the social development. Strengthening the value of work. Discovering the economic resources of the country and adopting proper methods for their exploitation (Hakimi, 2005).

The Teacher Education System There are two types of teacher training institutions in Iran. Teacher training centers mainly train teachers for primary and junior secondary schools, and the universities train teachers for secondary schools. The following sections provide a brief description of these institutions (Institute of Research & Planning, 2002).

Teacher Training Centers Teacher training centers are post-secondary institutes that select their students among high school graduates. Those graduates who wish to continue their studies in these centers should take part in a nationwide entrance examination. Students in teacher training centers receive their training in boarding facilities during their two year studies. After having completed their courses, students are awarded an Associate Degree, and begin their careers in primary or guidance schools. The Ministry of Education upon their entrance to either program employs students and they are officially committed to work for a certain period anywhere that is required. At first, the purpose of establishing teacher-training centers is to provide competent teaching staff for primary, guidance and exceptional education. But since 2001, the centers are also responsible for in-service training courses. It should be noted that from 2003, upon the approved constitution, a board of trustee directs these centers.

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At present, 12 teacher training programs are offered in these centers, including mathematics, experimental sciences, physical education, social studies, primary education, Persian language and literature, fostering affairs, Islamic teaching and Arabic language, arts, and special needs education (mentally retarded, blind & deaf). In the present decade, because of reduction in student enrollment at primary and lower secondary schools, the number of teacher training centers have been reduced and the annual admission capacity of these centers has been reduced, too. In 2002–2003, there were 69 Teacher Training Centers, with a total of 9,729 students and 970 staff, trying to meet the needs of primary and lower secondary education.

Teacher Training Programs in Universities The teaching staff for secondary education, both in the academic and vocational streams, are conducted by the universities and higher education institutes. In addition to the teacher training universities, other universities & colleges also offer teacher training programs. Students who study in these programs have to take courses in pedagogy and education psychology, along with specialized courses (Institute of Research & Planning, 2002, 2003). About 270 students in ten fields were admitted to teacher training programs offered by universities in 2003. The Ministry of Education employs students upon their entrance to either program. The admitted students sign official documents related to their employment. According to the agreement made by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, some of the applicants who sit the nationwide university entrance examination can also apply for special courses required by the Ministry of Education every year. The Ministry of Education employs these students as they start their university studies. Their teaching career starts after graduation through the one-year course. These students are often selected from the native high schools graduates, and are trained for local schools. In most of the rural and deprived regions of the country, the supply of the required teachers is maintained by this way (Institute of Research & Planning, 2002, 2003; Public Relations Office, 2003).

Technical and Vocational Colleges Technical and Vocational Colleges act under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Higher Technical and Vocational Education, and are training technical teachers and technicians. These colleges select their students among the graduates of secondary, technical and vocational and Kar-Danesh schools. In 2003, there are 142 Technical and Vocational colleges, with some of their graduates maintaining the required manpower for the secondary technical and vocational and Kar-Danesh schools. Because of the recent development in these branches, the demand for TVE teacher has greatly expanded. The colleges offer around 40 fields of study, which include: Construction, Electronics, Computer, Food industries, Wood Industry, Ceramics, Industrial design, etc.

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In 2002–2003, the annual admission was around 50,000 students and at present about 130,000 students are studying in these colleges. Research shows the number of technical and vocational Collages increased from 101 in 1997–1998 to 143 in 2002–2003 (Hakimi, 2005).

In-Service Training Courses In order to update teachers’ knowledge and skills as well as training administrative personnel in the Ministry of Education, the Bureau for Scientific Promotion of Human Resources develops short-term and long-term courses for all the Ministry’s personnel, including the teaching staff. In-service training for the teaching staff are of different length and are provided in different institutes. There are two types of in-service courses for teachers and they are differentiated by their duration. Long-term courses are programs that lead to higher degrees. These courses are offered at three levels of associate, bachelor, and master degrees in the different centers and colleges. Until 2001, most of the teachers and educational staff were admitted to Higher In-service Education Centers, which were under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Education. Since 2002, in-service, long-term degree programs have been offered by other universities and higher education institutes. Teacher training centers also provide In-Service evening and summer training courses leading to equivalent associate and bachelor degrees. Short-term in-service training courses aim to improve specific competencies of the teachers and educational staff. In some cases such as pre-employment training, training for promotion and training for teaching, teaching in special courses (such as reformed programs, because of the latest changes in textbooks) participation in these course is compulsory. It is obligatory to have some of the certificates of short-term in-service training courses in order to be promoted. There are intensive courses in the summer time, regular courses during the academic year, seminars, educational meetings, etc. The courses are held in two different ways, being either centralized and decentralized. In 2002, a total of 10,982 courses were offered and about one million teachers participated in these courses. The educational content of the short-term In-service training programs is divided into two categories: general and special courses. General courses include Islamic Courses, Political Themes, and pedagogy, and specialized courses pertain to specific teaching subjects. In addition to the above-mentioned courses, there are educational seminars and scientific conferences, which are held to increase the general and scientific knowledge of teachers and other personnel of the Ministry (Hakimi, 2005).

Recent Educational Innovations The following section describes three major strategies implemented by the government to improve the effectiveness of the school system. The first strategy is the Education for All Plan which is a major endeavor of the country trying to shift the emphasize from an elitist to a more equitable education system. This plan attempts to

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redefine the meaning of school effectiveness by setting a vision that education is a basic right of all citizens of the country. The second strategy is student organizations which are statutory bodies created by the government but managed by the students themselves. The purpose of student organizations is to encourage self-management and participation of the students in school affairs. Self-management, or taking control of oneself, is seen as a primary factor determining educational success. The third strategy is information and communication technology which is a common approach employed by many countries to build the knowledge platform for teaching and learning (Ministry of Education, 2003c, 2003d).

Education For All (EFA) Plan Since early 2000, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran initiated preliminary efforts to prepare and implement the Education For All Plan. On the one hand, key steps were taken to adapt the plan to the education system of the country, and on the other, all respective systems and micro systems were asked to fully recognize the plan. Continuous and goal-based efforts resulted in introducing the EFA National Plan with the collaboration of other sectors and sub-sectors of the country’s education system, and was coordinated by officials and organizations relevant to the plan and approved by the Cabinet and respective authorities. Education For All is seen as a grand educational experiment of the country. It now stands in an exclusive place in the development plans of the country and is included as a provision in the 4th Development Plan. Furthermore, dissemination of the plan in the provinces and various districts of the Ministry of Education has always been regarded as a key strategy, so as all provinces of the country have already started preparing their own EFA document, setting their goals and organizing all their activities in line with EFA Plan (Ministry of Education, 2005). To implement the Dakar Framework for Action in Iran, the following actions were taken under the supervision of the Ministry of Education: ●

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Bringing the subject to the Cabinet for approval underscoring the need for inclusion of EFA Plan in the Fourth and Fifth Economic, Social, and Cultural Plans of the country. Organizing the EFA National working Group in the MOE, formed by representatives from relevant Ministries and organizations based on government approval. Drawing up the EFA National Plan to be approved by the Government and to communicate it to the Management & Planning Organization, all ministries end administrative institutions for further coordination with MOE. Organizing the EFA Coordination and Monitoring Department. Allocating funds for implementation of the EFA Plan in the Budget Law, and specifying the budget distribution system of the Plan based on certain criteria such as under development poverty index of provinces, promotional activities for pre-primary education, increasing enrollment rate at primary and lower secondary, parents’ training, teachers’ training, life/citizenship skills education for children, research, assessment and evaluation.

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Helping the EFA coordination Committee in the provinces to develop national and provincial action plans in line with the objectives of EFA Plan, and sending related circulars signed by Minister of Education throughout the country. Upgrading experts’ capabilities for planning at provincial level through organizing training courses, technical meetings, drawing up a framework for a provincial action plan as well as conducting activities to develop the EFA Document of the province. Forming technical committees for pre-school, basic, literacy, adult, special children, our-of-school education, information and statistics, reviewing records of the EFA Plan for provinces all over the country and submitting required feedback. Outlining a comprehensive system of proper monitoring and assessment of the EFA terms of budget allocation at the provincial level for academic year 2005– 2006. Organizing a 15-day training course, “Decentralized Education planning In Iran,” with the collaboration of MOE, UNESCO Regional Office in Tehran and UNESCO Office in Thailand to introduce “Analysis & Projection ANPRO-model” for educational planning system and to set up a technical committee to examine the model and its mechanism for MOE’s educational planning system (Hakimi, 2005; Ministry of Education, 2005).

Student Organizations Islamic Republic of Iran’s Student Organization was established in 1999 in order to enhance the religious, moral, intellectual, emotional, scientific and social characteristics of students and to pave the way for their all-around participation in ideological, cultural, social, political, athletic areas. It operates under specific rules and regulations established by the supervision of the Ministry of Education. The Islamic Consultative Assembly (Iranian Parliament) officially ratified it in 2002 as a non-governmental organization. Constituents of this organization are Board of Trustees, Planning council, President and General Assembly (Congress). The Minister of Education appoints the head of this organization for a four-year term. The main duties of this organization are as follows: ●

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Making a general call for the participation of all target groups and concerned members in the society in order to materialize the organization’s objectives. Planning students’ out-of-school extracurricular activities. Conducting research, organizing training and counseling services to improve member students’ capabilities. Adopting proper educational approaches for ideological and ethical development of the students. Establishing relations with cultural and scientific centers and similar grouping at the national and international level through relevant channels in order to share experiences and information and to promote mutual cooperation. Organizing meetings, forums, seminars, festivals, camps, sport and cultural events, congresses and other gatherings for the member students.

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The grouping activities accomplished through various programs including camping expeditions, artistic, cultural and sport events and the organizing of different forums for discussion of educational matters, intellectual pursuits and social affairs. All these activities are aimed at enhancing the student’s understanding of, and capacity as a member of, civil society, embarking on a lifelong commitment to improving the quality of personal commitment to the social contract that binds all communities and nations. These efforts are essential in preparing today’s students for undertaking their responsibilities as the leaders of tomorrow’s world (Ministry of Education, 2003c). The Student Organization’s headquarters is located in Tehran. It supervises and monitors the activities and young scholar-centered programs run by its 29 provincial branches. This network encompasses 400 camps and 1,200 centers nationwide. At present, some 3,000,000 students are listed on the Student Organization’s membership. The Student Organization has planning councils at the provincial and city levels in order to arrange the required planning coordination and support (Ministry of Education, 2003c, 2003d). Student Parliament is a newly-established body founded in 2001. The Student Parliament consists of 270 delegates between ages 15 and 18 who represent their peers, that is, secondary level students nationwide. When a new round of elections is to be held, another 150 students will be voted in, due to some changes adopted on the number of delegates. To date, this body has set up various committees such as the Committee on Sustainable Development and the Education Committee to attract wide-ranging participation of youth in social affairs. The Student Parliament has held two plenary meetings. In its second session (12–14 October 2002) in Tehran , the Secretary General of the European Youth Parliament (EYP) and a representative of international Youth Parliament Action Partner, were the distinguished guests of the Student Organization (Ministry of Education, 2003d). Elections are held first at the high school level for 15–18-year-old students, then at the district level. Those who are elected at the district level are eligible to compete in elections at the city level and finally in nationwide polls to determine the sitting representatives of the Student Parliament. Information on the student parliament can be found at www.irsp.ir (Hakimi, 2005). The Club of the Young Science Researcher is an educational, research and cultural institute. This Club is affiliated to the Ministry of Education. It was established in September 1995 with the aim of identification, absorption, development, support and guidance of gifted students, and enhancement of their scientific knowledge. The members of this Club are mostly the youth aged 15–25 years who will be selected through a series of competitions which are held at school, region and nationwide. The head office of the Club is located in Tehran and the Club may establish some branches in other parts of the country. The Club indeed has a Board of Trustees, a Chief and a Council of the Club. The Chief of Club is responsible for the execution of the Board of Trustees’ decisions and supervises the good performance of the Club. Current activities of the Club include:

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Selecting, training and dispatching various teams of students and their supervisors to international competitions. Holding scientific meetings and lectures with Iranian scholars, authorities, and scientists who reside in Iran or abroad. Organizing new research groups, supporting the existing groups and paying the principal costs. Holding different competitions throughout the country in order to identify the talented and creative students. Providing cultural, sports and supporting services for the members (Ministry of Education, 2003e).

Information and Communication Technology The development in information and communication technology enlarges the learning opportunities of students and enables teachers to gain access to the world wide information hub which was previously impossible using traditional methods. In addition to the enhancement of teaching and learning, ICT also promotes effective management in schools and in the central administration. Hence, ICT competence has been identified as one of the priorities in Iran’s National Plan. In this regard, the ministry of education decided to cooperate with the ICT companies in the private sector to expand the implementation of ICT in schools. The Bureau for Information and Communication Technology Development was organized in 2002 to supervise the procedure of these projects. Through the effort of this Bureau, 7,000 teachers (25% of Tehran high school teachers) received basic ICT training in the 2003–2004 school year, and additional training after that (Institute of Research & Planning, 2005). Recently, the Smart School Project is conceptualized among some pilot schools. These schools are managed through computer and network. The majority of lessons are taught electronically. The goals of creating this kind of school are to develop students holistically; to improve individual competence; to train thoughtful IT men and women; and to enhance people’s contribution to the society (Hakimi, 2005).

Challenges and Possibilities School effectiveness, school improvement and education reform are important issues that have engaged educators and academics in the education community for the past 40 years. Recently, the Islamic Republic of Iran was catching up to this dialogue. What prompts decision makers in Iran to pay attention to the effectiveness of their schools and do something about it is perhaps not because of external pressure such as global economic competition or western influence, but an awareness that some parts within the system are not working properly. Now that there are sufficient school places for the the entire school age population, and decision makers are ready to takle the problems of effectiveness, there are a number of challenges that they need to confront. These challenges can be summarized in four major areas, including inadequate financial resources for education, the high cost of education, an obsolete system, and instability within the system.

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The education system in the Islamic Republic of Iran has long been suffering from inadequate financial resources. This problem is exhibited in the form of inadequate and outdated school buildings and facilities, shortage of equipment and special facilities, lack of facilities and equipment for technical and vocational educational institutions, and inadequate provision of research facilities in the universities. Added to the inadequacy of financial resources for education, the education system is also suffering from economy poverty, which prevents parents from providing incidental expenses in education for their children. Some families simply cannot afford the school fees plus other accompanying expenses, which lowers the enrolment in high schools significantly. Apart from financial concerns, the system is also seriously in need of rejuvenation. In most primary and secondary schools, there is a lack of flexibility in the contents and methods of teaching. Most of the teachers are relying on the traditional teacher-centered approach in curriculum planning and lesson delivery. Hence, learning in classrooms mainly becomes rote memorization, resulting in the absence of creativity, order, responsibility, respect for others, and variations in instructional activity. Yet, what contributes most to this traditional approach in teaching and learning is the shortage of incentives within the system for teachers to improve and build competence, which causes low motivation and morale among teachers. The final challenge in Iran’s education system is instability within the system. On the one hand, there is a large fluctuation in the demand of school places and student population. The social demand for upper secondary education, especially in underprivileged areas, constantly fluctuates due to regional economic and social problems. Also, many young people migrate to large cities which makes the estimation of student populations difficult. On the other hand, the forces of globalization compel policy makers to frequently change education policies which create gaps in standards and quality. Given these challenges, it is no wonder that the decision makers in Iran are not targeting large scale plans or grand schemes to improve the system. Often, only small steps are needed as long as one finds the right leverages. The Education for All Plan sets a new vision of education for the country, the various student organizations are important mechanisms to initiate student participation and self-management, and information and communication technology can be seen as a knowledge platform for a new generation of teaching and learning. These could all be promising levers for enhancing school effectiveness in Iran. However, if the Islamic Republic of Iran continues to engage in dialogues with the international community regarding school effectiveness and education reform, perhaps they need to be able to answer the question: what is effectiveness and in what social contexts?

References Academic, Technical and Vocational and Kar-Danesh. (2003). Educational information and activities (mimeograph). Iran: Deputy Ministry of Academic and Vocational Education, Bureaus of Academic & Pre-University. Hakimi, A. (2005). A general overview of education in the Islamic Republic of Iran (2nd ed.). Iran: Institute for Education Research Publication.

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Institute of Research & Planning. (2002). Higher education in Iran, a national report. Iran: Institute of Research & Planning, Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology. Institute of Research & Planning. (2003). Annual statistics of higher education in Iran, 2002–2003. Iran: Institute of Research & Planning, Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology. Institute of Research & Planning. (2005). Information technology activities of Tehran Education Organization, 2005. Iran: Institute of Research & Planning, Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology. Literacy Movement Organization. (2002). Educational information and statistics of literacy movement activities (mimeograph). Iran: Literacy Movement Organization, Ministry of Education. Literacy Movement Organization. (2003). Report of a decade of literacy movement activities (mimeograph). Iran: Literacy Movement Organization, Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education. (2003a). Education in the Islamic Republic of Iran, 2003. Iran: Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education. (2003b). Educational information and activities (in Persian). Iran: Organization for Research & Educational Planning, Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education. (2003c). Educational information and activities: Iran’s student organization (in Persian). Iran: Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education. (2003d). Educational information and activities: Student Parliament (in Persian). Iran: Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education. (2003e). Educational information and activities: Development and equipments of schools (in Persian). Iran: National Organization for Reconstruction, Ministry of Education. Ministry of Education. (2005). Education for all: National plan of Islamic Republic of Iran, country report, 2000–2005. Iran: Ministry of Education. Public Relations Office. (2003). Annual statistics of higher education in Islamic Azad University, 2002–2003. Iran: Public Relations Office, Islamic Azad University.

Section 3 RESOURCES, SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT

22 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STUDENT ATTAINMENT AND SCHOOL RESOURCES

Rosalind Levaˇci´c

OECD countries on average spend 5.6% of their GDP on education, varying between 7.3% and 4.1%. As a proportion of per capita GDP education spending per student varies between 31% (Denmark) and 18% (Slovakia) (OECD, 2004). This expenditure mobilises resources which produce a wide range of educational outcomes. The immediate outputs of schooling are the cognitive knowledge and skills acquired by pupils and the less tangible benefits of socialisation involving the development of behaviours and attitudes that contribute positively to social welfare. The longer term outcomes of schooling include the additional income individuals earn as a consequence of their education, and the various non-monetary benefits claimed for education, such as better health, parenting, reduced crime and greater social cohesion. The obvious questions for policy are whether the right amount of national resources are being allocated to education. If more is spent, will educational output rise and will it rise sufficiently for the marginal benefits to outweigh the marginal costs? Are the existing resources being spent efficiently? If the same amount were allocated differently – say to increasing class sizes and using the money saved to increase ICT provision – would school outputs increase? Or do schools generally use resources inefficiently because they lack the incentives to be more efficient? All these questions are much easier to ask than they are to answer. In this chapter, I will examine the methodological reasons for these questions being challenging. I then give an overview of the state of current empirical evidence for European countries on the relationship between school resources and pupil attainment. The theoretical framework used in the research reviewed is the education production function, in which school outputs depend on resource inputs. One of the limitations of this research field is that it has almost exclusively focused on easily measurable outputs of schools, which are tests of individuals’ cognitive attainment while at school and earnings in later life. I focus mainly on evidence concerning the effects of overall expenditure per pupil, class size and the pupil–teacher ratio on pupils’ attainment and earnings. If the evidence shows no systematic relationship between school resources and attainment – as 395 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 395–410. © 2007 Springer.

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maintained from reviews of the US literature by Hanushek (1997) – then it is apparent that schools are inefficient since spending more does not systematically result in more output. The consequent policy inference is that the incentive systems facing schools need to be changed so that the methods by which schools receive their resources and manage them encourage their efficient use. Hence, there is interest in investigating whether decentralised systems with greater school autonomy are more efficient (produce more output per unit of resource) than centralised systems.

The Context-Input-Process-Outcome Model of Schools Economists and school effectiveness researchers work within the same theoretical framework but emphasise different aspects of it. This is the context-input-process-output model of the school, which has been developed over the last 35 years in the school effectiveness and education production function literature (Glewwe, 2002; Reynolds & Teddlie, 1999; Scheerens, 1997, 1999; Willms, 1992). In the basic model, pupil outcomes (outputs) are determined by some combination and interaction of the contextual, input and process variables. Contextual variables (e.g., school type, governance, local community and social composition) are not directly under school control, especially in the short term. Two types of inputs are distinguished, resource inputs and pupil inputs. Resource inputs, which have to be acquired by spending money, are subdivided into monetary and real inputs. Monetary inputs include total school revenue and expenditure per pupil per period of time and the allocation of the school budget between expenditure on inputs, such as teachers, classroom support staff, administrative staff, learning resources and the upkeep of the school’s physical environment (rental value, maintenance, cleaning, utilities). Real inputs are those measured in physical quantities, such as the pupil teacher or pupil staff ratio, stock of learning resources, facilities and space. Pupil inputs are the characteristics of the individual pupil that affect their learning outcomes. These are further divided into prior attainment and pupil characteristics, in particular, age, gender, ethnicity and family background. Aggregate pupil input variables, such as the average initial ability of pupils in the school, are contextual variables. The pupil inputs are particularly crucial in assessing the productivity and efficiency of a school. To measure the impact of resource inputs, the pupil input variables that affect educational attainment must be controlled for. Resource inputs are utilized through various school processes, which should contribute to pupils’ learning. As Cohen, Raudenbush, and Ball (2003, p. 135) argue, resources do not cause learning – “systems of instruction are the cause and resources the facilitators or inhibitors of learning.” School processes themselves, while being enabled by resources or restricted by lack of them, also have their own independent effects on learning. School processes embrace a wide range of complex constructs that relate to school climate (or culture) and to teaching and learning. These processes operate at different levels, in particular school-wide influences and those that operate specifically at the class level. A more efficient school is one, which for a given level of resources, has processes that achieve more pupil progress in learning than the average school. School

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effectiveness researchers have endeavoured to find school process variables that are associated with more effective schools, referring to these as “school effectiveness correlates.” Economists have largely treated school processes as a black box. An important issue in school effectiveness research is the division of process variables between school and classroom level. In general, research has found that the class level contributes more to the variance of pupil outcomes than the school level (Reynolds & Teddlie, 1999). The classroom is where the interplay of all the key variables occurs in interactions between pupils and between pupils and teachers. These are influenced by pupil input variables as well as by affective variables such as pupil self-concept and attitudes to learning, which can be influenced by the school. It is here that the influence of resourcing variables on class size, teacher and support-staff quality, learning resources and the physical environment interact with pupil input and process variables to determine pupil outcomes. In this framework, the effects flow from context, both as an independent influence and via its influence on pupil and resource inputs, to processes, which are made possible by the flow of resources. Processes impact on the efficiency of resource usage, by mediating the effects of resources on the various tangible and intangible current and future outputs of the school. However, the causal relationships are likely to flow in more than one direction. While the prime relationship of interest is the effect of school resources on pupil attainment, there may well be reverse relationships from pupil attainment to resources. This may be positive or negative. It is positive if the parents of better motivated or more able pupils, who are consequently higher attaining, select better resourced schools. Alternatively, the influence of pupil attainment on resourcing is inverse when governments practise compensatory funding, allocating more revenue per pupil to schools with higher concentrations of socially disadvantaged pupils. There is also a tendency within schools when setting pupils by ability to place less able pupils in smaller classes. If there is compensatory resourcing, then a simple correlation between pupil attainment and resources per pupil will show that higher expenditure per pupil is associated with lower attainment. Thus a major problem for education production function research is estimating a causal effect of resources on pupil attainment when there is two-way causality between attainment and resourcing.

Methodological Issues in Estimating Education Production Functions For the purposes of obtaining a statistical estimate of the relationship between pupil attainment and resources using regression analysis, the context-input-process-output model is simplified to a single equation in which attainment is the dependent variable and the context, input and process variables (if included) appear as independent variables on the right side of the estimation equation. A general form of the education production function is:

Qsijk = f(Xijk, Vijk, Cjk, Lk),

(1)

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where, Qsijk
attainment in subject s of pupil i in school j in area k; Xijk
vector1 of school resources per pupil at school j in area k; Vijk
vector of pupil characteristics of pupil i at school j in area k; Cjk
vector of school level variables indicating school type, age range, pupil composition etc; Lk
vector of Local Education Authority (LEA) variables for all schools in area k. In this model there are three levels – the pupil, school and area in which the school is located, which can include education authorities which manage schools as well as neighbourhoods. Different functional forms of Equation 1 can be assumed – linear and log linear being the usual ones. The linear form of the equation estimated is given by:

Qsijk =  + Xijk + Vijk + Cjk + Lk + esijk,

(2)

where,
is a constant and esijk is the random error term at pupil level. To estimate the size of the causal effect of resources on attainment – the  coefficient(s) – we need to have an unbiased estimate. This requires that the error terms of the pupil observations are not correlated with each other or with any of the independent variables. This condition is violated if there are omitted variables that affect attainment and are also correlated with resources. It is also violated if resources depend directly on attainment, as happens if schools with lower attaining pupils are funded more per pupil or if parents of high ability children select better resourced schools. In such cases resources are said to be endogenous. An endogenous variable is one that depends on other variables. In contrast, an exogenous variable is completely independent of other variables in the model. So, for a single equation, like Equation 2, to produce unbiased estimates of the  coefficients, which measure the effect of resources on attainment, resources must be exogenous. If lower attaining pupils mean higher resourcing per pupil, then the estimate of the size of the resource effect –  – will be biased downwards. Alternatively, if high ability pupils are selected into better resourced schools than  is biased upwards. There are a number of ways of trying to get round the endogeneity problem. One way is to have random controlled experiments, where some randomly assigned schools or pupils are allocated additional resources and others are not, so creating treatment and control groups. The best known example of such research design is in the Tennessee STAR experiment on reducing class size. However, production function studies utilizing experimental data are quite rare: most studies rely on data collected from natural settings. For such studies there are two compatible approaches to tackling endogeneity: (1) minimizing the problem of omitted variables by including a wide range of variables that affect pupil attainment;2 (2) finding one or more instrumental variables which explain school resources per pupil but are not correlated with pupil attainment. In essence, changes in the value of the instrumental variable cause resources to change independently of attainment and so achieve the exogenous variation in resources needed to obtain an unbiased estimate of the resource effect. The main difficulty is finding

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good instruments, since they have to cause significant variation in resources (or any other “independent” variable of interest in a regression equation) while not being correlated with the dependent variable – in this case attainment. A good instrument is some policy rule or regime change that causes resources to vary independently of pupil attainment. Many of the studies reported later in the chapter use instrumental variables and the quality of the results depends on the quality of the instruments used, there being no failsafe test of whether an instrument is not correlated with the dependent variable. When studies use just a single equation without any instrumental variables they are referred to as using the method of ordinary least squares (OLS). Economists are particularly concerned about endogeneity, whereas school effectiveness researchers are more concerned with modelling hierarchical relationships in the data. These arise when one set of observations – pupils for example – are nested in another set – classrooms, which in turn are nested in schools. When observations are nested or clustered, the error terms of pupils in the same class or school are correlated when the pupils experience a common effect of being in the same class or school. One way of removing the bias to standard errors due to clustering is to apply multilevel modelling, in which random effects are assumed at each level included in the analysis (e.g., at pupil, class and school level). Another way is to still assume random effects only at pupil level but to correct the standard errors for the effects of clustering. In reviewing the evidence on the relationship between school resources and pupil attainment, it is only worth considering studies which have addressed these methodological problems. Many of the older studies – in particular prior to 1990 – did not take into account the endogeneity of resources and/or the hierarchical nature of the data or used data aggregated to school or local education authority level. The quality of the data largely determines the quality of the statistical analysis that can be done. If the data are from natural settings then large data sets are needed, which contain many of the variables affecting attainment. A good quality study should have the following features: ●

●

● ●

use pupil level data and have an outcome measure in terms of exam results, continuing in education, or wages; include at least one resource measure at school level such as expenditure per pupil, teacher pupil ratio, class size; prior attainment or family variables are included as controls; the method of estimation is clearly identified and estimated coefficients with standard errors/t statistics are reported.

Three groups of studies, which meet these criteria, are reviewed below. They are grouped according to geographical area: the UK, the rest of Europe and OECD.

UK Studies As elsewhere, the quality of UK research on the education production function is highly dependent on the quality of the available data. Until recently the most popular dataset for good quality UK studies was the National Child Development Study (NCDS) of a

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sample of people born in one week in March 1958. This dataset includes good family background variables and tests of English and maths taken at 7 and 11 as well as subsequent examination results. However, the studies report on education production function relationships from the-mid 1970s which is of limited use for policy purposes. More recent work in England is able to use the new National Pupil Database (NPD). This has extensive data on prior attainment, pupil level and school context variables to which school resource data can be added (Jenkins, Levacˇi´c, & Vignoles, 2006; Levaˇci´c, Jenkins, & Vignoles, 2004).

National Child Development Studies There are five studies using NCDS which include estimates of resource effects: (Dearden, Ferri, & Meghir, 2001; Dolton & Vignoles, 1999, 2000; Dustmann, Rajah, & van Soest, 2003; Feinstein & Symons, 1999; Iacovou, 2002). These studies use a variety of outcome measures – reading and maths scores at 7 and 11, O level English and maths,3 post-16 participation in education and wages at 23, 33 and 42 years of age. Between them these studies include class size, the student-teacher ratio and expenditure at LEA level as resource variables. The NCDS studies have a relatively large number of control variables for family background, prior attainment, gender, peer group and school type attended and largely rely on the inclusion of a large number of controls to cope with endogeneity. It is notable that resource effects in some of the studies disappear once the full set of controls is included. Iavocou (2002) uses the interaction between class size and school type as an instrumental variable and finds class size significant for reading at age 7 and 11. Dustmann et al. (2003) found a negative effect of higher student teacher ratios (PTR) at 16 on the decision to stay on in full time education but not a direct effect of the PTR on wages. However, participating in full time education post 16 did have a positive effect on wages at 33 and 42, indicating a small indirect effect of PTR on wages.4 Dolton and Vignoles found significant effects of the PTR on maths and English O level results and earnings, and Dearden et al. on women’s wages. Iacovou (2002) reports a positive effect of smaller class size on maths for young children.

National Pupil Database Studies In 2002 the Pupil Level Annual Census of Schools was introduced. It collects data on all pupils in England of compulsory school age. These data are combined with the Key Stage 1, 2 and 3 test results and GCSE examination scores of all 16 year olds in England (apart from a very small percentage who have such severe special educational needs or behavioural problems that they are not entered) to produce the NPD. This has enabled great progress to be made in researching the factors affecting pupil attainment, including resources. Two recent studies by Jenkins et al. (2006) and Levaˇci´c et al. (2004) have used these data to investigate the impact of resources on pupil attainment in English secondary schools. Two cohorts of pupils have been studied, 13/14 year olds taking Key Stage 3 (KS3) tests in English, maths and science in 2003 and 15/16 year olds’ results also in 2003 in the school leaving examination, the General Certificate of Secondary Education

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(GCSE). The NPD also provided data on the pupils’ prior attainment at Key Stage 2 (KS2) taken at age 11 at the end of primary schooling.. The dataset also includes a range of pupil characteristics – gender, special educational needs (SEN) category, ethnicity, English as a first language, age and eligibility for free school meals. In addition, it contains data on pupils’ home post-codes, which were linked to census data so providing several indicators of the socio-economic characteristics of each pupil’s neighbourhood. The study focused on three main resource variables: expenditure per pupil, the average pupil teacher ratio in the school and the ratio of pupils to non-teaching staff. Regional differences in input costs were adjusted for by deflating expenditure per pupil by a measure of relative area input costs. A large number of variables describing the context of the school (size, proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals, with additional educational needs, boy or girl only school) was included, as was information on school type; that is, age range, selective, denominational, and particular school categories in receipt of additional funding, such as specialist schools, Excellence in Cities, Leading Edge, in Special Measures etc.5 The data were assembled for the five years the GCSE pupils had been in secondary school, from 1998/1999 to 2002/2003 and averaged over the five years. For the KS3 pupils, variables averaged over three years were used. The dataset contained around 3,000 secondary schools and over 4,50,000 pupils. Both studies address the endogeneity problem by utilising instrumental variables (IV). The two IVs selected derive from the specific features of the English school finance system. Schools are administered by 150 local education authorities (LEAs) which, at the time of the analysis, were still responsible for determining the amount of funding received by schools in their jurisdiction. Three quarters of the funding came from a central government block grant for all local services and about a quarter raised by a local property tax. Regression analysis showed that the number of years a political party had been in control explained some of the variation in school revenue per pupil. Another factor which affects schools’ revenue per pupil is school size, with smaller schools receiving more. However, once one can include a wide range of school context variables, including capacity utilisation, school size is not statistically significantly related to pupil attainment. Hence political control and school size were used as instruments for expenditure per pupil and staffing per pupil. Separate equations were fitted for expenditure and staffing since to include them both in the same regression equation would bias the expenditure estimate downwards.6 Statistically significant and positive resource effects were found for maths and science at KS3. The coefficient on the pupil teacher ratio was negative; hence a reduction in the pupil teacher ratio had a statistically significant positive effect on maths and science attainment. The estimated resource effects were modest. Spending £100 more per pupil per year (ceteris paribus) would raise maths and science attainment at KS3 on average by 0.04 of a level, compared to the expected progress of half a level a year. Reducing the pupil teacher ratio by one for the whole school would raise maths attainment at KS3 by just under 0.1 of a level and science by 0.12 levels. Pound for pound spending on reducing the pupil teacher ratio had more impact on maths and science than a general increase in spending of the same amount. Similar results were

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found for GCSE. Increased expenditure per pupil and a reduction in the pupil teacher ratio had a positive impact on the total GCSE capped score (i.e., limited to the best eight subjects) and on science but not on mathematics, except for the least able pupils. Again the effects were modest. An additional £100 per annum increased capped GCSE by 0.3 grades and science by 0.05 grades whereas one pupil less per class was estimated to raise GCSE by 0.8 grades and science by 0.25 grades. Increasing the number of non-teaching staff per pupil had a very small positive effect only for KS3 science and English and GCSE maths. Expenditure per pupil and the pupil teacher ratio had no impact on English results at KS3 or at GCSE. It is likely that attainment in English is much more influenced by home background than attainment in maths and science. Both studies also examined whether resource effects differed for different types of pupil. At KS3 resources had a greater effect on pupils eligible for free school meals whereas at GCSE the impact was greater for pupils of lower ability (as measured by their KS2 results). Whereas resources (apart from non-teaching staff ) were not significant for mathematics overall, both expenditure per pupil and a reduced pupil-teacher ratio had a statistically significant positive effect for the lowest 40% by ability. There was also more impact of resources on GCSE results (but not KS3) for pupils with milder forms of special educational need.7 It should be borne in mind that these are marginal effects of small changes in resources from current levels and so do not indicate that firing all English teachers would have no effect on results! Some other English studies, also utilising the NPD, have evaluated the effects of natural experiments, where a specific educational intervention has included additional resourcing. An important intervention introduced in 1999 was Excellence in Cities (EiC), which gave additional resources to schools in disadvantaged inner cities. These provided learning mentors for pupils, Learning Support Centres to provide short-term targeted teaching for pupils causing disruption in general classes and a enhanced programs for “gifted and talented” pupils. About one third of secondary schools were eventually included in the program. However, there is enough variability in English school contexts to identify schools with similar school communities but not in inner cities and hence not part of EiC which are used as a control group. An evaluation of EiC (Machin, McNally, & Meghir, 2004) found significant positive effect after 2 years, with increasing impact over time, especially for pupils of middle and high ability in disadvantaged schools. Two nationally implemented government initiatives, which involved limited additional resources were the Literacy and Numeracy strategies for primary schools. These brought in dedicated daily “hours” for literacy and maths and structured teaching programs. These have been favourably evaluated by government sponsored research (Earl et al., 2003; OFSTED, 2003) but these evaluations were hampered by lack of controls since the strategies were rolled out nationally. An evaluation by Machin and McNally (2004) using data from an earlier pilot of the national literacy strategy compared the Key Stage 2 results of pupils who had been taught in the pilot with those who had not, controlling for pupil and school variables. This found the literacy strategy to be highly cost effective in improving English at KS2 since a substantial improvement was achieved at little extra cost.

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Other English Studies The effects of class size on Advanced Level8 examination results were studied by Graddy and Stevens (2003) using data supplied by the Independent Schools Association. The authors justify the use of OLS regression by arguing that because the sample is restricted to well-off parents, school fee levels and hence class size were not selected by parents according to their child’s ability to succeed. Positive effects on A level results of smaller classes in English independent schools are found but these may nevertheless be biased due to endogeneity. The Class Size and Pupil Adult Ratios (CASPAR) project studied the effects of class size and adult presence in classrooms from reception (aged 5) to year 6 (aged 11) and collected statistical data as well as data from interviews and class room observation (Blatchford, Bassett, Browne, Marin, & Russell, 2004; Blatchford, Goldstein, Martin, & Browne, 2002). There were over 150 schools at the last stage of the study. Both studies used multilevel modelling which corrects for bias in standard errors due to clustering but did not address endogeneity, which economists would see as a major weakness of this research. Positive effects of smaller class size on literacy and numeracy were found for the first year of schooling. The effect was stronger for pupils with the lowest base line scores on entering school. No effects were found for later years. The first year effect persisted for one year and then petered out. No effects were found for additional adult support in the classroom. Qualitative data showed better teaching and more individual attention to pupils in smaller classes but the studies did not succeed in identifying any effect on measured pupil attainment after the first year.

Conclusions: Evidence from UK on Resource Effects Employing large scale datasets, UK education production function studies generally show small but statistically significant effects of additional resources, in terms of class size, pupil-teacher ratio or expenditure per pupil. This finding is not universal, and in particular is not supported by the two CASPAR studies, except for reception classes. However, this study did not address the endogeneity problem and may not have sufficiently extensive pupil background variables to exclude bias due to omitted variables. How the resources are spent also matters – on what subjects and on what kinds of pupils. Less able and socially disadvantaged pupils tend to benefit more and there is some evidence that resources devoted to science and maths have more effect than extra resources allocated to English – at least at secondary level.

Rest of Europe: Single Country Studies As Wößmann (2005, p. 453) notes regarding evidence on education production functions: “In Europe, there is nothing to match the US literature, and not even the literature for developing countries, with the possible limited exception of the UK.” There are few scattered studies focusing mainly on class size using specific national datasets.

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One identification strategy for class size, used in several studies, is a maximum class size rule. Given that the size of pupil cohort varies randomly due to demographic factors, when the maximum class size has been reached, the extra pupil causes the class to be split in two. Thus there are class size discontinuities at particular numbers of pupils in the cohort. This class size variation is unlikely to be related to parental choice of school, unless parents can predict at which school class size will be smaller. Another popular instrumental variable is average class size for the cohort (year group) given that the school has two or more classes per cohort. The actual class, which is endogenous due to within or between school selection, is regressed on average class size, which is determined by the size of the pupil cohort and the availability of teachers. The predicted class size is then entered as the independent variable in the regression of pupil attainment on its determinants. Bonesronning (2003) uses the maximum class size rule and finds small negative class size effects (i.e., smaller classes have a positive impact) in Norway. Another Norwegian study (Haegeand, Raaum, & Salvanes, 2004) also finds positive but modest effects of teacher hours per pupil on pupil performance at age 16 in 11 subjects. This relies on a rich data set of family background variables to identify resource effects. Teacher intensity coefficients change from negative to positive when the family background variables are included, indicating compensatory resourcing bias when these variables are omitted. Lindahl (2005) finds significant class size effects for 16 schools in Stockholm using differences between school time and summer learning to cause exogenous variation in class size. Converse results are found for the Netherlands. Dobbelsteen, Levin, and Oosterbeek (2002), using teacher allocation rules to schools based on enrolment, reported a significant counter-intuitive positive effect of larger class size on attainment. Another identification method tried by Hakkinen, Kirjavainen, and Uusitalo (2003) is to use panel data for Finnish upper secondary schools over a number of years to difference out school and district effects. They find no effect on exam scores from changes in per pupil spending in the 1990s. In summary, the European single country studies are patchy and produce contrasting findings, suggesting that resource effects are country specific.

International Assessment Studies Two international assessment datasets have been used for estimating education production functions, TIMSS and PISA. Both studies collected extensive data on family background, school context and school resources – the latter being class size, teacher experience and qualifications, and perceptions of resource adequacy. These studies also included survey questions on schools’ institutional characteristics. TIMSS has features that enable class size effects to be identified which PISA does not possess – data on pupils in adjacent grades and testing whole classes. In the main only cross country studies can test the effects of different governance arrangements, such as the degree of school autonomy. This is because institutional arrangements are mostly determined by national policies so there is little variation

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within state schools in any given country. Private schools clearly have more autonomy than state schools but this is difficult to separate out from other private school effects. Wößmann (2005) analysed TIMSS data collected in 1995 for 17 European countries and fitted separate education production functions for each country. The pupil background measures were parents’ education, numbers of books and bookcases at home, living with both parents, born in the country, gender and age. The number of pupils per country ranged from 3,600 to 11,700 and the number of schools from 95 to 613. In most countries there were around twice as many classes as schools in the sample. The paper focuses mainly on class size since the researchers found instrumental variables for this. Other resource effects are only tested in ordinary least squares regressions. Principals’ reports of shortage of materials had statistically significant negative effects9 on maths scores in 7 out of 17 countries, instruction time was significantly positive only in Sweden. Teachers’ experience was statistically significant in 9 countries and teachers’ education level was significant and positive in 2 countries. Class size effects in the OLS specification were largely positive indicating that more able pupils were taught in larger classes. In all countries pupil background had by far the strongest effect on pupil attainment. Wößmann (2005) implemented two methods for identifying exogenous class size effects. One was to instrument on average class size in the school for the cohort and the other was to instrument on maximum class size, but the rule had to be inferred from the data, rather than from regulations on class size. Both models are referred to as quasi-experimental. Because pupils were in two adjacent grades, it was possible to include fixed effects for each school by using a school dummy to control for time invariant school effects.10 This meant that the only source of exogenous variation is class size differences between grades. In 6 of the 17 countries the sign on class size became negative in the quasi-experimental models, indicating compensatory resourcing – but in only one – Iceland – was the coefficient statistically significant. In assessing these findings it should be borne in mind that the identification strategy is data demanding. Due to missing responses some values were inputed, using results from multiple regression and so are not random. Another problem is that cohort size is measured at the end of the school year, not the beginning when class sizes are determined. Another study (Ammermuller, Heijke, & Wößmann, 2005) used the same dataset and statistical method for seven East European countries. However, only two of the countries had sufficient data to implement the instrumental variable of cohort average class size. The class size coefficients for the Czech Republic and Romania turn from positive in the OLS regression to negative in the IV model with fixed school effects but are not statistically significant. This may be due to sample size, which at around 6,000 is much smaller than that of the NPD in England. In the other five countries only the fixed effects model can be run and the class size coefficients are not statistically significant, though two are negative. For the other resource variables, great shortage of materials is negative and significant in three countries. There are no consistent findings for the effects of teacher experience or qualifications.

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An OECD study on school quality and equity (OECD, 2005) using PISA 2000 data included resource variables but the researchers, being educationists, used a multilevel model and did not attempt any corrections for endogeneity other than relying on a rich array of variables to minimise omitted variables bias. They find small “effects” in the correct direction for the percentage of teachers with university degrees, perceived quality of school’s resources and teacher shortages.

Institutional Arrangements There has been considerable advocacy of devolution of responsibilities for decision-making to the school level and a general international trend to implement such institutional arrangements. In Europe these developments have been particularly marked in the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, Hungary and Czech Republic. Such devolution involved various and differing combinations of school level and central authority level responsibility for resource management, staff appointments and conditions of service, the curriculum, assessment and school evaluation. Making schools responsible for resource management and funding them according to the number of pupils enrolled while holding them accountable for pupil performance is widely advocated (and criticised) as a way of giving principals and teachers efficiency incentives. Identifying whether such policies actually have a causal impact on pupil performance requires either internationally comparable data or considerable variation in school autonomy within a country. The latter by and large does not exist as devolution policies are generally rolled out nationally, so there are no treatment and control schools within a given country. A few studies have attempted to test the effects of differing degrees of school autonomy and other institutional arrangements using evidence from surveys of school principals in the TIMSS and PISA datasets. These collected data on school principals’ assessment of the extent of principal and teacher decision making powers over a range of functions. Ammermuller et al. (2005) found too little institutional variation within seven Eastern European countries to identify institutional effects. The PISA study (OECD, 2005), which included institutional variables, was similarly hampered by analysing the data at country level – a strategy dictated by the need to allow for differentially sized country effects of pupil background, school context etc. on attainment. Wößmann (2003b) used TIMSS pooled data for 17 west European countries to test for the effects of institutional arrangements on pupil performance. Regression equations were fitted for all countries pooled so as to have sufficient institutional variation. The main finding was that school autonomy in personnel, budgetary and process decisions had positive impacts provided that there was a centralised examination system for evaluating school performance. This result was replicated in a further study Wößmann (2003a) using TIMMS repeat data and by Fuchs and Wößmann (2004) using PIRLS data on reading scores of primary children in 35 countries. This found that emphasis on teachers monitoring pupil progress, school autonomy in deciding instructional material and teacher appointments if accompanied by external examinations, had positive effects on reading scores.

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Conclusion The endogeneity of school resources, in the absence of social experiments which randomly assign additional resources to schools, makes it difficult to measure the causal impact of resources on pupil outcomes. In almost all European studies data are from natural settings so that identifying a causal impact of resources requires one or more instrumental variables. The available evidence indicates that additional marginal resources allocated to a general reduction in class sizes or pupil-teacher ratios has at best a small positive effect in some countries. However, additional resources targeted at particular subjects, such as maths and science, and particularly at less able or more socially disadvantaged pupils, are likely to be more effective than a general increase in spending from current levels. While teachers differ in their effectiveness this is not necessarily related to teacher experience or level of qualification. Hence there is no simple way of identifying the characteristics of people who should be drawn into teaching and induced to remain in it through specific financial incentives. There is some limited evidence that school autonomy if combined with external examinations has a favourable impact on pupil attainment. In economically advanced countries, where state education is by and large adequately funded, the positive impact of a general increase in spending per pupil is at best small. To get most impact from a given increase in educational spending requires both institutional arrangements that encourage schools to use resources efficiently and careful targeting by both schools and government agencies on curriculum areas and groups of students who will benefit most.

Notes 1. A vector is just a list of variables. 2. The more omitted variables there are the more likely it is that changes in these cause changes in attainment which in turn affect resources, so that the error term is correlated with resources (since the error term picks up the effects of the omitted variables). 3. Ordinary level General Certificate of Education was the national school leaving examination until it was replaced in 1988 by the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE). 4. However, Dustmann et al.’s rough estimates of the impact of 1 less pupil per teacher on the subsequent increase in the present value of life time income suggest that the additional cost in teacher salaries would exceed the benefit. This of course assumes that wages are the only benefit of lower PTRs. 5. The Department for Education and Skills has a number of programs targeted at different forms of school improvement for which schools receive additional funding. For example, Excellence in Cities is targeted at schools in socially deprived inner cities, Leading Edge is for effective schools to disseminate good practice and Special Measures schools are those which have failed an inspection and receive additional resources and monitoring in order to improve. 6. Todd, P. and Wolpin, K. (2003) “On the specification and estimation of the production function for cognitive achievement.” The Economic Journal, 113, (February) points out that if expenditure per pupil is included with the pupil–teacher ratio then the coefficient on expenditure is biased downwards since for any given expenditure, the higher the PTR the less expenditure is available for other resources. 7. In English schools and in the PLASC these are pupils who are on the special educational needs register as school action and school action plus but who do not have statements of SEN. 8. An examination taken after 2 years study which qualifies successful candidates for university entrance.

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9. Statistical significance is reported at 1, 5, and 10%: the results reported in the text refer to 10% confidence. 10. “Fixed effects” (using school dummies) is economists’ preferred method of controlling for school effects unlike school effectiveness researchers in the education community who use random effects – multilevel – models. Economists correct for bias in standard errors due to clustering by using a correction known as robust clustered standard errors. The draw back of multilevel models such as MLwiN for economists is that it has no standard procedure for estimations with instrumental variables. Levacˇi´c, R. et al. (2004) “Estimating the relationships between school resources and pupil attainment at Key Stage 3.” DfES Research Report 679 use both methods. MLwiN random effects models are applied by regressing two simultaneous equations – one for attainment and one for resources. The results for resource effects are very similar, with the resource coefficients in the multilevel model being slightly smaller.

References Ammermuller, A., Heijke, H., & Wößmann, L. (2005). Schooling quality in Eastern Europe: Educational production during transition. Economics of Education Review, 24(5), 579–599. Blatchford, P., Bassett, P., Browne, P., Marin, C., & Russell, A. (2004). The effect of class size on attainment and classroom process in English primary schools (Years 4–6) 2000–2003. DfES Research Brief, RBx13 -04. London: Department for Education and Skills. Blatchford, P., Goldstein, H., Martin, C., & Browne, W. (2002). A study of the class size effects in English school reception year classes. British Educational Research Journal, 28(2), 169–185. Bonesronning, H. (2003). Class size effects on student achievement in Norway: Patterns and explanations. Southern Economic Journal, 69(4), 952–967. Cohen, D., Raudenbush, S. W., & Ball, D. L. (2003). Resources, instruction and research. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 25(2), 119–142. Dearden, L., Ferri, J., & Meghir, C. (2001). The effects of school quality on educational attainment and wages. Review of Economics and Statistics, 84(1), 1–20. Dobbelsteen, S., Levin, J., & Oosterbeek, H. (2002). The causal effect of class size on scholastic achievement: Distinguishing the pure class size effect from the effect of changes in class composition. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 64(1), 17–38. Dolton, P., & Vignoles, A. (1999). The impact of school quality on labour market success in the UK. University of Newcastle Discussion Paper, 98-03. Dolton, P., & Vignoles, A. (2000). The effects of school quality on pupil outcomes: An overview. In H. Heijke (Ed.) Education, Training and Employment in the Knowledge-Based Economy. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Dustmann, C., Rajah, N., & van Soest, A. (2003). Class size, education and wages. The Economic Journal, 113(485), F99–F120. Earl, L., Watson, B., Levin, B., Leithwood, K., Fullan, M., & Torrance, N. (2003). Watching and learning 3. OISE/UT evaluation of England’s national literacy and numeracy strategies, third and final report. Ontario: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Ontario. Feinstein, L., & Symons, J. (1999). Attainment in secondary school. Oxford Economic Papers, 51, 300–321. Fuchs, T., & Wößmann, L. (2004). What accounts for international differences in student performance? A re-examination using PISA data. CESifo Working Paper 1235. Glewwe, P. (2002). Schooling and skills in developing countries: Education policies and socio-economic outcomes. Journal of Economic Literature, 40(2), 436–482. Graddy, K., & Stevens, M. (2003). The impact of school inputs on student performance: An empirical study of private schools in the UK, SSRN electronic paper collection. http://papers.ssrn.com/paper Haegeand, T., Raaum, O., & Salvanes, K. (2004). Pupil achievement, school resources and family background. Technology and Change conference, University of Oslo. Hakkinen, I., Kirjavainen, T., & Uusitalo, R. (2003). School resources and student achievement revisited: New evidence from panel data. Economics of Education Review, 22, 329–335.

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Hanushek, E. A. (1997). Assessing the effects of school resources on student performance: An update. Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 19(2), 141–164. Iacovou, M. (2002). Class size in the early years: Is smaller really better? Education Economics, 10(3), 261–290. Jenkins, A., Levacˇi´c, R., & Vignoles, A. (2006). Estimating the relationships between school resources and pupil attainment at GCSE. DfES Research Report RR72. Levacˇi´c, R., Jenkins, A., & Vignoles, A. (2004). Estimating the relationships between school resources and pupil attainment at Key Stage 3. DfES Research Report 679. Lindahl, M. (2005). Home versus school learning: A new approach to estimating the effect of class size on achievement. Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 107(2), 375–394. Machin, S., & McNally, S. (2004). The literacy hour. IZA, DP. 1005 Bonn. Machin, S., McNally, S., & Meghir, S. (2004). Improving pupil performance in English secondary schools: Excellence in cities. Journal of the European Economics Association, 2(2–3), 396–405. OECD. (2004). Education at a glance. Paris: OECD. OECD. (2005). School factors related to quality and equity: Results from PISA 2000. Paris: OECD. OFSTED. (2003). The national literacy and numeracy strategies and the primary curriculum. London: OFSTED. Reynolds, D., & Teddlie, C. (1999). The process of school effectiveness. In C. Teddlie, & D. Reynolds (Eds.), The international handbook of school effectiveness research. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Scheerens, J. (1997). Conceptual models and theory-embedded principles on effective schooling. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 8(3), 269–310. Scheerens, J. (1999). Concepts and theories of school effectiveness. In A. J. Visscher (Ed.), Managing schools towards high performance (pp. 37–70). Lisse: Swets and Zeitlinger. Todd, P., & Wolpin, K. (2003). On the specification and estimation of the production function for cognitive achievement. The Economic Journal, 113(485), F3–F33. Willms, J. D. (1992). Monitoring school performance: A guide for educators. London: Falmer. Wößmann, L. (2003a). Central exit exams and student achievement: International evidence. In P. E. Peterson, & M. R. West (Eds.), No child left behind: The policy and practice of school accountability. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Wößmann, L. (2003b). Schooling resources, educational institutions and student performance: The international evidence. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 65(2), 117–170. Wößmann, L. (2005). Educational production in Europe (pp. 445–504). Economic Policy: CEPR, CES, MSH.

23 ACCOUNTABILITY, FUNDING AND SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT IN CANADA

Charles Ungerleider and Ben Levin

This chapter presents an account of the quest for school effectiveness and school improvement in Canada with a particular focus on accountability and funding. Canada has been part of the western post-war consensus on the importance of public education for many years. Even after the oil price shock, inflation, and growing government deficits of the mid 1970s, support for public education in Canada remained strong. Gradually, however, in the 1980s, education emerged from its long period of growth and relative insularity from competition for scarce public resources to be engulfed by demands for accountability and increased attention to educational outcomes. From the mid 1980s through the mid to late 1990s, most provinces exercised their jurisdictional prerogatives to set policy agendas. In addition to limiting or reducing funding, they revised curricula and curriculum requirements, increased regulations affecting teaching, required more public reporting of system and student performance, increased parental choice and inter-school competition, and pursued a variety of other measures with the professed intention of producing better results with the same or fewer resources. These efforts were not typically guided by a workable theory of school improvement and led to considerable conflict. Although the pressures for accountability and outcomes have, if anything, increased in the last few years, there has also been a trend for provinces to adopt a more nuanced approach with greater attention to building capacity in the school system to achieve better results.

Context Matters Although the trends we identify in Canada may appear similar to those in other jurisdictions, we believe that Canada’s education policy is closely tied to unique historical and socio-political circumstances. For instance, despite the superficial similarities between elementary and secondary schooling in Canada and the United States, structural and values differences between the two countries propel educational policies 411 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 411–424. © 2007 Springer.

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along divergent pathways. Although it is beyond the scope of this paper to document in detail the differences, Table 1 provides a comparison of selected features of elementary and secondary schooling in the United States and Canada. The differences between the two countries should serve as a caution against applying generalizations from one context to the other. We also caution against generalizing across Canadian jurisdictions. Because education in Canada is a matter of provincial jurisdiction, with no federal department or office of education, making sweeping statements about educational policy is dangerous. Whatever trend or tendency is evident in Canada’s ten provinces and three territories, it is almost certain to be contradicted in at least one jurisdiction.

Table 1. A comparison of selected features of elementary and secondary schooling in the United States and Canada Basis of comparison

United States

Canada

Jurisdiction for education Influence of state/provincial departments of education Federal presence in education

Education is a residual power of the states Moderate

Provincial legislatures have exclusive law-making power Strong

Federal department of education; direct funding; federal laws affecting education Representative democracy No state support for faith-based schools

No federal department of education; little funding and indirect influence; no federal law Parliamentary democracy Provincial support for confessional, denominational, and dissentient schooling Support from 5 provinces for private schools Provincial revenues; some relatively modest locally generated revenue in some jurisdictions Relatively modest inequalities among provinces, school boards, and schools Relatively dependent; school boards diminishing in number and influence All provinces permit teacher collective bargaining; only 2/10 provinces prohibit right to strike

Governmental form Status of faith-based schools

Status of private schools Dominant pattern of school board funding

No state support of private schools Locally determined property taxation; some state funding; some federal funding

Funding equality

Significant state, school board, and school inequalities

School board autonomy

Relatively autonomous

Status of teacher unions

Only 33/50 states permit teacher union and employer collective bargaining over wages and terms of employment; only 10/33 grant limited right to strike

Source: Ungerleider (2005b).

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Developments in education also need to be seen in the context of broader social policy issues and trends in Canada and beyond. The demands for greater accountability, improved student success, and more choice over the last 25 years were fuelled by a variety of demographic, financial, political, ideological, and programmatic factors. Population increase and greater emphasis on the cultivation of human capital meant more students were entering school and staying in school longer in the post-war period. Virtually all jurisdictions were struggling to build more schools and hire more teachers. At the same time, the demand for more teachers helped support their claims for better compensation and benefits. The result was a dramatic increase in spending for education at all levels. For example, in 1950 in Ontario, the province paid approximately 36% of school operating costs; by 1970, the percentage had reached 60%. During the same period, the proportion of property taxes devoted to education also doubled (Gidney, 1999). By the mid to late 1970s, the fiscal pressures on provincial governments were of sufficient magnitude that most jurisdictions were beginning to look for ways to control education spending. Figure 1 depicts expenditures on elementary and secondary education in Canada for the period 1954–1995.

Finance and Governance Traditionally, most Canadian provinces funded education through a combination of provincial and local funds. Over the last several decades, however, the balance between the two has gradually shifted toward more provincial funding. In fact, as early as the end of the 1970s, a few provinces, most notably Quebec, were already providing the bulk of the funds.

40 35 Billions of dollars

30 25 20 15 10 5

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0

Figure 1. Elementary and secondary school expenditures in Canada, 1954–1955 to 1994–1995 Source: Acquired through the data liberation initiative from the Education, culture, and tourism division, Education finance section. Decade of education finance; Catalogue 81–560. Financial Statistics of Education; Catalogue 81–208. Advance statistics of education; Catalogue 81–220 Annual.

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As stated earlier, the cost of education rose dramatically in the post-war period because of the dramatic growth in the school-age population, school construction, and the need for qualified teachers. By the early 1980s, Canadian provinces found themselves in a situation in which the need for funds was growing much more rapidly than revenue. In part, this was a consequence of growing pressure for more services and especially as a result of escalating interest rates that increased the cost of debt. At the same time, public resistance toward further tax increases was growing stronger. Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the issue of government spending began to dominate the public policy agenda across Canada. Growth in government spending helped advance the cause of those who, on ideological grounds, wished to see the role of government in the lives of citizens diminished. In a speech to the Economic Club of New York in 1984, Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney stated what would become a recurrent theme for Canadians. He revealed that, as of Canada’s centennial in 1967, the public debt was $4,000 for every Canadian family; by 1984, it had reached $24,000 per family and, if unchecked, would reach $54,000 by 1990. Although not as high as tax rates in many European countries, Canadian taxes were higher than those in the United States in direct terms (i.e., not accounting for the cost of non-public services such as health care in the United States) and comparisons were unavoidable. Provincial governments saw themselves as having little room to increase revenues, so they began to take measures to move towards balanced budgets. Such measures grew increasingly harsh over the 1980s. Education was one of the largest budget items in all provinces. To control their finances, provinces believed they had to control education costs; however, under a system that permitted school boards to raise property taxes for school purposes, controlling education spending proved difficult. Because the provinces and local school boards shared responsibility for funding schools, school boards would increase local taxes and blame the increases on inadequate provincial funding. Under such circumstances, it was inevitable that the provinces would begin to assume greater responsibility for, and control of, education funding. The changes were complex and difficult in almost every case. New financing systems that took into account differing local needs were required. In some provinces, the changes engendered complex questions about the educational rights of religious and linguistic minorities protected under Canada’s constitution (e.g., Adler vs. Ontario, 1996). By 1997, 8 of 10 provinces and all three territories were providing essentially 100% of funding for schools. This was accompanied in most cases by strict limits on spending levels, if not actual reductions. Alberta cut spending on schools by some 10% when it assumed complete responsibility for funding in 1994; Ontario also made significant reductions when it moved to 100% provincial funding in 1997. By the year 2000, real per-pupil spending on education had declined across Canada for the first time in 50 years. As might be expected, school systems had great difficulty responding to these reductions. In most school jurisdictions, the numbers of students identified as special needs had been steadily increasing. School boards in Canada’s major cities were struggling to address the needs of growing numbers of students whose home languages were neither English nor French. Education remained a labor-intensive enterprise with individual teachers working with groups of students based on age and subject area.

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Many school governors, whether provinces or local school boards, saw their options for reduced spending as being quite limited: reduce spending on central functions such as instructional support, eliminate extra or alternative programs such as parent involvement, reduce maintenance of facilities, and/or increase the numbers of students in classes. Various combinations of these options were adopted depending on local priorities and circumstances. In all cases, the changes were difficult to make and badly received by teachers and many parents. Whether intended or not, changes in the source of funding brought other changes. Because the single biggest component of education spending is salaries, and especially teacher salaries, controlling spending meant restricting either the number of teachers or their pay levels. Most provinces tried to do both. Some provinces passed legislation to make unilateral cuts in teachers’ pay or working conditions. The number of professional development days was reduced in some provinces, while others forced teachers to take some days off without pay or specifically increased teaching assignments or class sizes. British Columbia (B.C.) and Ontario both passed legislation to remove principals from the teachers’ unions so that they could take a more directly managerial role. B.C. and Ontario were also the two provinces that established Colleges of Teachers to regulate the profession and, not incidentally, to transfer the costs of such regulation from the provincial government to teachers themselves through fees to the colleges. Nonetheless, the basic components of compulsory certification and universal teacher unionization were not altered in any province. Once provinces controlled all the money, they could also exercise much more control over priorities. Many introduced changes that altered the roles and responsibilities of the various agencies and organizations involved in elementary and secondary education. These included the amalgamation of school boards, the introduction of performance planning and performance “agreements,” the use of “results-based” incentives for increased pupil performance, the provision of data to outside agencies that used the information to rank schools, and the introduction of school and district parent councils. The reduction in the number of school boards was significant. At one time, Canada had thousands of very small local school districts. By the 1980s, these numbers had been drastically reduced through waves of amalgamations, but many Canadian school districts remained quite small in terms of enrolment if not area. In the last 10 years, most provinces have dramatically reduced still further the number of school boards: Ontario from 166 to 72; British Columbia from 75 to 60; Alberta, from 181 to 64; Quebec from 158 to 72; Nova Scotia from 22 to 7; Prince Edward Island from 5 to 3; and Newfoundland from 27 to 11. New Brunswick eliminated school boards entirely in 1996 but reintroduced them as District Education Councils in 2000. Only Saskatchewan still has approximately the same number of school boards as it had 20 years ago, but it is currently taking steps to change that situation. Canada now has a total of about 500 school districts, about one-third the number of districts compared to population as in the United States. Faced with the loss of their ability to tax and with a substantial reduction in their numbers – and consequent increase in the size of their jurisdictions – school boards struggled to redefine their role. With much less autonomy fiscally and often more

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provincial policy direction, school boards still faced much of the local pressure regarding programs and other educational issues. Ontario took the further step of limiting the amount school trustees could be paid to a maximum of $5,000, a particularly negative message to elected representatives who were responsible for organizations with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Provinces have intervened in the decisions of school boards; at least five provinces have taken steps in the last decade or so to remove elected school trustees from office or to place them under direct provincial supervision. The fiscal picture for Canadian provinces has changed in recent years. By the end of the 1990s, all provinces had significantly reduced or eliminated their deficits. Economic growth meant that provinces were in a financial position to increase education spending without increasing taxes. Both absolute and per-pupil spending began to increase again around 2000. By that year, school boards across Canada spent 3.5% more than they had in 1999, the largest annual increase since 1991 (Statistics Canada, 2004). Alberta, which had cut spending significantly in 1994, made significant increases in spending after 2000. Ontario began to increase spending again in 2001 and, between 2003 and 2005, the provincial government reversed many of the reductions of the previous regime.

Confidence, Choice, and Competition Finance and governance were not the only arenas in which educational change occurred. During this time, Canadian education faced declining public confidence and declining respect for authority (Nevitte, 1996). A better educated and informed citizenry had become increasingly disenchanted with hierarchical institutions and were demanding that school systems be streamlined and made more responsive. Some critics sought greater direct involvement in public education. Others questioned the options available and sought other routes to secure positional advantage for themselves and their children. Individuals and groups began to raise questions about the opportunities available to their children, about the role of teachers in fostering achievement, and even about the part that schools played as sites for learning. School systems were not alone in facing a more difficult climate of public opinion. Canadian polling evidence shows a decline in confidence for all institutions – perhaps, ironically, a result of a better educated and therefore more challenging citizenry, although there is some debate about how serious the decline in public confidence in education has been (Davies & Guppy, 1997; Livingstone & Hart, 1998). Nonetheless, it is clear that public education can no longer depend on a citizenry that will accept its approach and actions without question. The reasons for such shifts in opinion and policy are rarely simple. One can reasonably surmise that a combination of economic change, its effect on the public mood, and deliberate efforts by political actors to reshape policy all were part of the move toward what has often been called neo-conservative (or sometimes, just to illustrate the complexities of political positioning, neo-liberal) policy (Levin, 2001). Regardless of its label, the principal tenets of this viewpoint are:

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●

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The economic interests of individuals should not be fettered by considerations of social equity. Choice, as a manifestation of freedom, is a virtue in its own right and the means by which individuals are able to express approval or disapproval in the market. People are better served through private entrepreneurialism than by public regulation or provision of services. Productive efficiency is the primary – perhaps singular – criterion by which any public policy should be judged (Ungerleider, 2006).

The demand for alternatives within and among schools paralleled the transition from the mass production of the immediate post-war period to the production of customized or niche models and brands. The public came to expect that, like the products they used at home, schooling could be tailored to their needs. Although uneven across jurisdictions, there was discernible growth in public and private educational alternatives, including growth across the country in public funding for private schools of various kinds. During the turbulence of the late 1990s, private school enrolment in Ontario grew rapidly, although across Canada as a whole, even with increased public funding, private school enrolments increased fairly slowly. Figure 2 depicts enrolments in private elementary and secondary schools during the period 1990–1999. Within the public education system, individual schools began to promote their advantages to parents and to develop specialized programs to attract more – and more academically capable – students. Reluctant to accept existing public programs, the public demand for educational choice increased. Canadian provinces and territories have exercised significant control over the growth and conduct of alternatives. Where choice in the United States is often seen as an expression of individual rights, the Canadian view – albeit influenced by views prevalent in the United States – is that choice ought to be accommodated within a 120,000 Quebec 100,000

Ontario BC

Students

80,000

Alberta Saskatchewan

60,000

Manitoba

40,000

NFLD PEI

20,000

NS NB

0 90–91 91–92 92–93 93–94 94–95 95–96 96–97 97–98 98–99 Years

Figure 2. Enrolment in private elementary and secondary schools in Canada from 1990–1991 to 1998–1999 Source: Acquired from statistics Canada through the data liberation initiative from Advance statistics of education; Catalogue 81–220 Annual.

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framework of regulatory and financial control designed primarily to ensure equality among alternatives (Ungerleider, 2005a). In 1985, Canada already had a substantial degree of diversity in the public education system. Several provinces, including the largest ones, supported more than one public school system. For example, Quebec had separate systems of English and French language school boards across the province, while Ontario, Alberta, and Saskatchewan supported both “public” and Roman Catholic school systems. During the 1990s, in response to a series of decisions by the Supreme Court, all provinces also created selfgoverning Francophone school systems for minority language pupils; Ontario has both “public” and Catholic francophone systems, giving it four public education systems. Further, many local school boards have long supported a range of alternative schools (Riffel, Levin, & Young, 1996). Many Canadian school districts have a variety of programs such as multi-graded alternative elementary schools, French Immersion (in which non-francophone children are taught in French), International Baccalaureate, and others. In response to a growing recognition of ethnic diversity in the 1970s and 1980s, schools across Canada began to teach or even specialize in a range of languages including German, Chinese, Hebrew, and others. Schools with a focus on Aboriginal culture and heritage, or on black culture and heritage, were created. The Edmonton Public School District was one of the most aggressive in creating a wide range of alternative schools, with extensive parental choice, within the ambit of the public school system. Most provinces also made official efforts to increase parental choice of schools, and parental involvement in education generally. Legislation was changed in most provinces to provide parents with the right to choose schools, although typically with limitations that effectively gave schools as much choice over students as vice versa. As a further step to increase the role of parents – often seen as consumers – parent advisory bodies or other forms of school councils were mandated in all provinces, but with advisory powers only. For various reasons, neither choice nor parental involvement had very much impact on schools. In urban areas, where school districts tend to be larger, there had already been competition for some time among high schools, and even, to some extent, among elementary schools. Alberta introduced charter schools in 1994 – the only Canadian province to do so – but a decade later there were still only a handful of those schools in the province. The legislative introduction of choice did not seem to have very much effect on patterns of attendance (Bosetti, 2004). Nor have parent advisory bodies exerted very much influence on the nature of schools across the country.

School Improvement and Student Success Concern about access to educational opportunities characterized the 1950s and 1960s. By the late 1970s and early 1980s, concern about increased accountability for results along with fiscal controls and school choice had become dominant themes associated with public schooling (Stein, 2002). The same growing scrutiny was also being experienced by groups like doctors and police officers (Bottery, 1998). Nonetheless, for an institution that had been used to broad public support without much formal accountability, the change to public education was wrenching.

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Worries about the outcomes of schooling were part of, and even substantially inspired by, a broader discussion of the importance of educational outcomes for economic competitiveness, as well as for a range of other important outcomes like employment, health, and proactive social behavior. The growing importance accorded to formal education, often at the behest of the profession, inevitably had the result of increasing the demand for outcomes. It was also an inevitable consequence of the significant increase in public expenditures for education. The prospect of unbridled economic growth to stimulate the transition from a wartime to peacetime economy that was touted in the aftermath of World War II was diminished by economic realities. Parents who had heeded the advice of their forebears to stay in school in order to get a good job were now seeking positional advantage for their own children and demanding that schools comply with their promise to produce numerate, literate, and – above all – employable graduates. It is, of course, legitimate for the public to want to know what benefits it derives for its significant investment in education. The growing interest in the outcomes of schooling was propitious for politicians trying to slow the growth in expenditures. Some politicians used concern among the general public about outcomes as a shield against the charges from parents, teachers, and others that governments were being miserly in their support for education. Finding ways to provide accountability for educational outcomes has proved difficult. This is in large part because education is not a “production” enterprise in the usual sense (Levin, 1994). Children’s learning and skill development are greatly – even primarily – affected by factors over which schools have little or no control, such as family background. Canada’s high level of poverty among families with young children likely has more influence on educational outcomes than any single educational policy (for a striking illustration, see Brownell et al., 2004). So the seemingly simple step of comparing schools in terms of students’ achievement levels is of doubtful validity. On the other hand, attempts to adjust school outcome measures to take into account the very different starting points children bring to school turn into complex procedures that are very difficult to explain to the public. All of this is further complicated because, although almost all reports on school outcomes rely on relatively narrow and short-term academic measures such as test scores or marks, people actually expect and want a much broader set of outcomes from schools, and value equally highly several quite different kinds of outcomes – such as the ability to work independently as well as in teams, or the desire to continue to learn. There are regular attempts to rank schools on performance by some external lobby groups, but these have less currency than do similar efforts in the United States or the United Kingdom. Some provinces have required schools and districts to report publicly on outcomes on a regular basis, but this is still a relatively unusual procedure. Even national reporting of outcomes remains difficult in Canada because each province has different requirements for a common event such as high school graduation. Canada has conducted, through the Council of Ministers of Education (a collaborative of the provincial education ministers) a national assessment of student outcomes in some key curriculum areas, but this program (which was funded for years by the federal government) has not been given much public salience. Canada has also participated in international assessments such as

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the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), with results that are quite good. The development of performance reporting by schools and school districts has not progressed very far in Canada, and it is here that we might expect to see some further development in the next few years as provinces press schools and boards to report more clearly to their constituencies on outcomes. An analogous process is taking place at the national level in Canada as part of federal-provincial agreements in areas like health and early childhood development. These agreements require provinces to report locally on their use of funds and the outcomes obtained. In education, the equivalent would be for schools and districts to report regularly on a series of outcomes, some of which would be common across the province and others set in response to local priorities. This model preserves some local autonomy as to what is reported, but also takes more seriously each jurisdiction’s responsibility to engage in some dialogue with its citizens about its achievements and challenges.

Curriculum and Testing Another common element of change during the 1980s and 1990s was the tendency to standardize curriculum requirements and increase provincial testing. Most provinces conducted major revisions of curricula aimed at more stringent standards, especially in secondary schools. Mathematics was a particular area of emphasis, with a general move to teach more advanced mathematics in earlier grades. Several collaborative efforts saw groups of provinces developing common curricula, or at least common frameworks for local development. In regard to testing, most Canadian provinces had moved away from provincial certification examinations toward the end of the 1960s toward curriculum assessments – tests to determine whether the curriculum was being mastered as intended. But in the 1970s and 1980s, several provinces introduced testing of all students at various grade levels and subjects and, in those provinces where they had been eliminated, high school certification examinations were re-introduced. Provincial examinations for younger students were also introduced. Such assessments were typically administered in at least one grade in elementary school and another in the middle grades. The assessments emphasized language arts (English or French) and mathematics, but no two provinces had the same testing scheme (Taylor & Tubianosa, 2001). By 2005, the degree of jurisdiction-wide testing in Canada was extensive compared to Europe, but relatively modest compared to the United States. Provincial testing has been controversial in Canada, as elsewhere. Teachers are strongly opposed. Parents have mixed views. However, on the whole, the Canadian public supports some degree of large-scale testing (Guppy, Crocker, Davies, LaPointe, & Sackney, 2005) which is why the practice has remained firmly in place. Although testing increased, there was no direct movement from more testing to more “accountability” and choice. Testing did not immediately translate into good information for schools on the challenges they faced, and even less into support for using data to guide school improvement. With the exception of British Columbia, which began to use assessment data to shape instruction in 1998, it is only in the last

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5 years or so, as part of a broader effort to change teaching practice and in keeping with wider trends in education to more use of data, that most provinces have begun to work on this issue. Indeed, most provinces lack the kinds of information systems that would provide high-quality data on student outcomes. Still, the increasing emphasis on using data to guide both instructional and policy decisions at all levels of education is a welcome development that has the potential to improve performance.

Impacts on School Improvement Two things can be said about the policy changes of the 1980s and 1990s and about the political parties that implemented them. First, similar changes were implemented by parties of quite different political stripes, indicating that no political party can go entirely against the grain of prevailing public opinion. All provinces, no matter which party had formed the government, restrained spending on education in the 1990s. Similarly, stricter curricula and more testing were introduced in provinces with quite ideologically divergent governments at more or less the same time. Second, judging by the extent of education policy and funding changes, it seems that who is in power does count. The deepest cuts in spending were made by conservative governments (though not all of them use that title officially) in several provinces, as were the strictest changes in curriculum and graduation requirements. Liberal and New Democratic governments tended to be less oppositional toward teachers and less willing to make substantial reductions in funding. In many provinces, governments were publicly hostile to schools and teachers. This public criticism, coupled with very difficult collective bargaining relationships due to reduced funding, created significant acrimony in many systems with negative consequences for students, not just through strikes but also through reduced teacher participation in extracurricular activities. Education, like other human services, depends on the skill and commitment of its practitioners; it is not a system in which improvement can be commanded from above. Although provincial governments in the 1990s framed their policy changes in terms of school quality, very little of what was done translated into better outcomes for students or could be linked in any meaningful way to a strategy of school improvement (Hopkins & Levin, 2000). Much of the focus of governments was really on reducing or controlling expenditures, which is an entirely different objective from improving outcomes. The inevitable pressure on political actors to propose quick (short-term) solutions to complex (long-term) problems runs against our understanding of what is actually required to improve public services.

Recent Developments In the last few years, some Canadian provinces have adopted a softer approach and given greater attention to factors that might lead to real changes in school policies and instructional practices. Although the emphasis on student outcomes has, if anything, increased, more provinces appear willing to see this task as requiring substantial direct

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effort and investment rather than being a matter of just having to put the right incentives in place. A growing body of knowledge about school reform and school improvement (e.g., Fullan, 2004) has pointed to the steps that are necessary for improving instruction and student outcomes, including: strong leadership, clear goals and plans to achieve them, support for teachers to learn and use better practices; the use of evidence and data to guide improvement, and effective outreach to parents and communities. Ungerleider (2003b) drew on his experience as deputy minister in an article in the International Journal of Testing in which he provides suggestions for ensuring that the benefits of using large-scale student assessments are achieved in the face of a number of challenges to their effective use. A number of Canadian researchers have contributed to this area in significant ways. Michael Fullan’s work (2001, 2004) has already been mentioned. Fullan and Andy Hargreaves wrote a series of books together (the most recent is Hargreaves & Fullan, 1998) that have influenced thinking across Canada, and Hargreaves has made important independent contributions (e.g., Hargreaves, 2003). Several writers, such as Leithwood (e.g., Leithwood & Duke, 1999) and Fink (2000) have been influential in the area of leadership. Another team (Mitchell & Sackney, 2000) has written about professional learning communities. Lorna Earl (2003) has been an influential commentator on assessment for learning. Another group of writers (e.g., Joshee, 2004; Ryan, 2003) has addressed the challenges of creating school improvement for Canada’s very diverse population. Several of these elements have been established as policy objectives. British Columbia, as noted, is working on data-based improvement strategies. Alberta has supported a program of school- and district-based instructional change with careful evaluation of impact. Saskatchewan’s SchoolPLUS model emphasizes helping schools work more closely with their local communities. Ontario has implemented large-scale change programs in both elementary and secondary schools that involve very significant amounts of training and support for teachers and principals. These are all, in our view, promising developments that are much closer to what we know about creating real and lasting improvement. However implementation of these programs remains uneven, and it is not clear that governments are willing or able to provide the scale of support for improvement in terms of technical assistance that may be required.

Conclusion Although we recognize the limitations and contradictions of policies at any given time, as well as the real potential for negative developments, we are somewhat more optimistic about the future of Canadian public education than we were even 3 or 4 years ago. Canada continues to enjoy a system of public schools that performs well. The most recent results from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) confirm Canada’s place among the top-performing nations in reading, science, and mathematics. The number of students who leave secondary school prior to graduation has diminished significantly over the course of the past 10 years, and the number of students who return to complete unfinished programs continues to be significant.

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To realize fully the promise of public schooling, Canada will need to address some problems. Canada’s schools are struggling to respond to an increasingly individualistic and instrumental approach to schooling that threatens what is already a fragile social structure. Significant gaps in school outcomes between groups identifiable on the basis of culture and language compound the problems of individualism and social fragmentation. Closing the gaps in student outcomes should be as important a goal as raising the overall level of achievement. If the more recent trends – respectful treatment of teachers, better attention to their continuing professional education, more thoughtful use of information to inform decisions and more resources – continue, Canada’s public school are likely to improve, providing a strong foundation for personal and social well-being. If they do not, Canada’s public schools are likely to falter, threatening the well-being of individual Canadians and Canada as a whole.

Note Neither author approaches these issues entirely from an academic perspective. Although both of us held professorial positions for most of the period under discussion, each of us also held senior government positions for part of this time. As such, we were directly involved in a number of the events and issues described in this chapter. Charles Ungerleider served as deputy minister (chief civil servant) for the British Columbia Ministry of Education, and Ben Levin was deputy minister of education in Manitoba and, more recently, in Ontario. Each of us has written a book on education policy (Levin, 2005; Ungerleider, 2003a) drawing in large part – though with quite different intentions – on those experiences. Our purpose is to describe, with as much objectivity as we can muster, Canadian educational policy devoted to school improvement.

References Bosetti, L. (2004). Determinants of school choice: Understanding how parents choose elementary schools in Alberta. Journal of Educational Policy, 19(4), 387–405. Bottery, M. (1998). Professionals and policy: Management strategy in a competitive world. London: Cassell. Brownell, M., Roos, N., Fransoo, R., Guevremont, A., MacWilliam, L., Derksen, S., et al. (2004, June). How do educational outcomes vary with socioeconomic status? Key findings from the Manitoba Child Health Atlas 2004. Winnipeg: Manitoba Centre for Health Policy. Accessed on April 17, 2006, Retrieved from http://www.umanitoba.ca/centres/mchp/reports/reports_04/child.ed.htm Davies, S., & Guppy, N. (1997). Globalization and educational reforms in Anglo-American democracies. Comparative Education Review, 41(4), 435–459. Earl, L. (2003). Assessment as learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. Fink, D. (2000). Good schools/real schools: Why school reform doesn’t last. New York: Teachers College Press. Fullan, M. (2001). The new meaning of educational change (3rd ed.). New York: Teachers College. Fullan, M. (2004). Leadership and sustainability: System thinkers in action. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. Gidney, R. D. (1999). From hope to Harris: The reshaping of Ontario’s schools. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Inc. Guppy, N., Crocker, R., Davies, S., LaPointe, C., & Sackney, L. (2005). Parent and teacher views on education: A policymaker’s guide. Kelowna, BC: Society for the Advancement of Excellence in Education.

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Hargreaves, A. (2003). Teaching in the knowledge society. New York: Teachers College. Hargreaves, A., & Fullan, M. (1998). What’s worth fighting for out there? New York: Teachers College. Hopkins, D., & Levin, B. (2000). Government policy and school improvement. School Leadership and Management, 20(1), 15–30. Joshee, R. (2004). Citizenship and multicultural education in Canada: From assimilation to social cohesion. In J. A. Banks (Ed.), Diversity and citizenship education: Global perspectives (pp. 127–156). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Leithwood, K., & Duke, D. (1999). A century’s quest to understand school leadership. In J. Murphy, & K. Seashore Louis (Eds.), Handbook of research on educational administration (pp. 45–72). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Levin, B. (1994). Students and educational productivity. Phi Delta Kappan, 75(10), 758–760. Levin, B. (2001). Reforming education: From origins to outcomes. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Levin, B. (2005). Governing education. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Inc. Livingstone, D., & Hart, D. (1998). Where the buck stops: Class differences in support for education. Journal of Education Policy, 13(3), 351–377. Mitchell, C., & Sackney, L. (2000). Profound improvement: Building capacity for a learning community. Lisse, Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger. Nevitte, N. (1996). The decline of deference: Canadian value change in comparative perspective 1981–1990. Toronto: Broadview Press. Riffel, J., Levin, B., & Young, J. (1996). Diversity in Canadian education. Journal of Education Policy, 11(1), 113–123. Ryan, J. (2003). Leading diverse schools. Dordrecht, NL: Kluwer. Statistics Canada. (2004, July). School board revenues and expenditures. Accessed on April 17, 2006, Retrieved from http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/040705/d040705a.htm Stein, J. (2002). The cult of efficiency. Toronto: Anansi. Taylor, A., & Tubianosa, T. (2001). Student assessment in Canada. Kelowna, BC: Society for Advancement of Excellence in Education. Accessed on April 17, 2006, Retrieved from http://wwwhttp://www.saee.ca/ publications/A_007_CCC_MID.php Ungerleider, C. (2003a). Failing our kids: How we are ruining our public schools. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart LTD. Ungerleider, C. (2003b). Large-scale student assessment: Guidelines for policymakers. International Journal of Testing, 3(2), 119–128. Ungerleider, C. (2005a, April). Market-based initiatives in elementary and secondary education: Why Canada is different. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal, PQ. Ungerleider, C. (2005b, April). Understanding educational policy in Canada: The policy contexts in Canada and the United States. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal, PQ. Ungerleider, C. S. (2006). Government, neo-liberal media and education in Canada. Canadian Journal of Education, 29(1), 1–21.

24 COST AND FINANCING OF EDUCATION AND ITS IMPACT ON COVERAGE AND QUALITY OF SERVICES AND EFFICIENCY AND EQUITY IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN COUNTRIES Alain Mingat

Introduction In education, two very popular (but not necessarily true) statements are (1) “if you think that education is expensive, try ignorance,” and (2) “people say that money is the problem, while in fact it is the solution.” We will not examine right away the validity of these statements; however, right, dangerous or wrong they may be. However, they manifest that the amount of financial resources a system of education can mobilize is a crucial element of any education policy. Sometimes the relationship starts from the policies that have been identified as desirable but they also need to pass the test of their financing; but more often, the relationship goes the other way round with the identification of the “best” tradeoffs that need to made between desirable objectives and inputs within a given and exogenous financial constraint. In this chapter, we take mostly an international comparative perspective limited to Sub-Saharan African countries. First, we analyze first the macro picture and the public finance dimension, analyzing the systemic choices made in the distribution of public resources across levels and types of education. Second, we move to unit cost estimates and the factors accounting for their level in a given country and to their variation across the different countries of the region. Finally, we examine the implication of the choices made in the financial dimension upon outcomes (coverage and quality of educational services), bringing issues of efficiency and equity into the analysis.1

The Macro Picture The resources that can be mobilized for a system of schooling in these countries come generally from three sources: domestic resources that are split between public and private origins, and external aid resources, as loans (generally soft loans for low income – IDA – countries) and grants. Information is generally available for both domestic public 425 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 425–450. © 2007 Springer.

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resources and external aid,2 but private spending (households’ contribution to the financing of educational services) is less well documented. We analyze mostly the domestic public resources which in all cases represent a large share of total resources for the sector, but we will also touch on briefly the other two sources of funding.

Domestic Public Resources for Education It is clear that all domestic resources for the sector come from the national product (GNP) of the country. The route goes (1) from the GNP to the amount of resources appropriated by the State to finance public action through various types of taxes (TPRES) and (2) from that global amount of public resources to those that are allocated to the sector as a whole (EDRES) (to finance, or to contribute to the financing of, recurrent and capital expenditure at all levels of schooling during a given year). Therefore, the larger the GDP of a country, the larger its capacity to levy taxes and the larger the public finance priority given to the sector within its different claims, and the larger are the public resources that can be used to finance educational services. This pattern can be represented as follows3:

TPRES EDRES

=
. GDP = . TPRES

[EDRES =
. . GDP].

We focus first on the amount of public spending on education as a share of GDP. According to the most recent UNESCO data, this is on average 3.7% in low income Sub-Saharan African countries, a figure very close to that observed in low income countries elsewhere in the world. This figure is considerably smaller than that reported average for middle income countries which stands at 4.8% (5.0% for such countries in Sub-Saharan Africa), and even smaller than that for OECD countries (5.7%). This statistic (EDRES) is sometimes named the “national public effort” of a country for education. The name is in fact inappropriate, or misleading, since it conveys the idea that its numerical value is essentially a matter of choice; with the possible judgment that countries that are lagging behind on this count are possibly making less effort for the education of their youth. The reason why the term is inappropriate lies in the fact that if  (in the relationship above) is effectively a matter of choice (describing a public finance priority of the country for the sector), this is much less the case for
which describes mostly an economic constraint. The reason, why low income countries spend on average a proportion of their GDP on education which is less than that of countries at a higher level of economic development is not because they give a lesser priority to the sector; it is because their fiscal capacity is on average much lower.4 In fact low income countries allocate about 18.5% of their national public resources to education, a figure higher than that observed in middle income countries (17.1%) while the figure for OECD countries is on average only 13.5%.5 In this context low income countries of the region give an even larger priority to education than their counterparts elsewhere in the world. To sum up, it can be said that low income countries in Sub-Saharan Africa give on average a high priority to education, but that the narrowness of the fiscal basis

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constrains them to reach relatively low levels of public financing of their system of education. The picture using regional averages is useful to bring a global perspective; but this regional perspective is inadequate to describe the case of the countries of the region given the wide variance that exists among them on these counts. This is true of the fiscal capacity of Sub-Saharan African countries (excluding those in specific circumstances such as conflict or post-conflict countries) since the amount of resources collected with the various instruments at hand (fiscal and others) varies across countries from 7 to 26% of the Gross Domestic Product. Generally speaking, there is some tendency for countries with a higher level of economic development to be able to collect a larger amount of taxes (because they both have a more developed modern sector of their economy and better administrative structures), but the country specific conditions, in particular the availability of natural resources (oil, iron, diamonds, fish) and the existence of an agricultural export sector, is an important aspect of the variability across Sub-Saharan African countries. However, beyond the level of economic development and endowment in natural resources, there remains a variability in the capacity of the countries to effectively collect (the issue may be of administrative structures and often times of governance). Obviously, the consequence of this relatively wide variability in macro conditions puts the individual countries of the region in relatively easy or difficult circumstances vis-`a-vis the mobilization of public resources in general, and of those for education in particular. But this is also true of the degree of public finance priority given to the sector. With no surprise, the governments of all countries declare unambiguously that education is one of their first priorities. But beyond the words, the reality may still be quite at variance from one country to another. The average figure for the region is 18.9% (19.3 for the low income countries) but, again without taking into account the countries under specific circumstances, the range remains from about 9% to about 30%, implying that similar public statements may results in quite different concrete actions. No specific patterns are identified to account for this wide variability, with the exception that countries that do not succeed to collect a large amount of taxes (the value of
is on the low side) tend (somehow as a compensation mechanism) to allocate a larger proportion of their public resources to education. Compounding the influence of these two aspects, the share of public spending on education in GDP differs quite substantially across countries on both sides of the regional average of 4.0% (3.7% in low income countries and 5.0% in middle income countries of the region). This statistic varies from 1.6 to 9% in low income countries and from 2.2 to 7.2% in the middle income group. These variations are quite substantial (much larger that what is observed in other regions of the world), making it difficult to make generic statements on the financing of education in Africa. The amount of public resources (in relative terms, as a ratio to GDP) mobilized in Sub-Saharan Africa is on average of the same order of magnitude as that observed in other regions of the world, but the circumstances of individual countries of the region on this count vary considerably. While UNESCO suggested some years ago that public spending on education should amount to about 6% of GDP to enable countries to build a decent system of education, most of the low income countries of the region are well below this normative yardstick.

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The Magnitude and Pattern of Distribution of External Funding for Education From the preceding point, it follows that, for many countries of the region, the mobilization of external funding is not an option. Based on DAC-OECD data, it appears that the total annual amount of external aid to Sub-Saharan countries, in constant terms, has remained more or less the same between 1990 and 2003 at a bit less than USD 20 billion in 2003 equivalent dollars. An analysis of these data shows that the larger the population of a country, the larger the amount of ODA resources it gets, and that countries that are able to exports goods and services receive, on average, less ODA resources. But countries with higher prevalence of poverty do not get more ODA allocations than countries that are in better circumstances. When the analysis is based on a per population basis, the analysis shows that small countries get much more than larger ones; for example a country with a population of 5 million gets on average USD 63 per inhabitant per year while this figure declines to USD 36 per capita if the size of population is 10 million and to USD 22 for a 20 million population. Globally in 2003, ODA allocations to all low income countries of the region represent about 10% of their GDP. But an aspect very important to note is that beyond the factors identified to account for the variability in ODA allocations to Sub-Saharan African countries, there exists a wide variability across individual countries, controlling for population, export capacity and poverty incidence. For example, based on these criteria, it is estimated that countries like Mozambique, Niger and Zambia should have relatively similar levels of ODA allocation; the reality shows that Niger gets about USD 341 billion, while Zambia gets 669 billion and Mozambique 1.4 billion. This suggests that other criteria are used by individual donors that result in a concentration of external aid in some countries, while others are de facto left behind. It suggests also the low level of coordination among the different agencies. When it comes to education, data show that the sector has gained recognition over the last 15 years since we observe a significant increase in the ODA allocation for education in real terms (USD of 2003) from USD 805 million on average over the years 1990–1993, to USD 1.4 billion on average over the years 2000–2003. While education represented about 4% of total ODA allocations in the early 90s, it represented almost 8% in the early 2000s. As an aggregate figure for low income countries of the region, it is estimated that ODA allocations for the sector represent a bit less than 20% of the amount of public resources mobilized for it at the national level. When dividing total ODA allocation for education by the number of primary education age children, we get a regional average of about 12 USD in 2003; but the wide variability identified above for general ODA allocations still holds for education. For example, Mauritania receives about six times more than the Central African Republic. Similarly, countries such as Mali, Mozambique, Zambia or Malawi receive between three and four times more than that of Chad, Burundi or Zimbabwe. This variability is also accounted by the fact that some countries benefit from the assistance of 16 donors (with obvious problems of coordination and of competition) while other countries are “donor orphans.” It is also to be noted that external aid was traditionally focused on the financing of capital expenditure (in particular classroom construction) and capacity building activities;

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this has evolved over the last 10 years with increasing financing of recurrent expenditure, mostly in primary education. This evolution has taken place in a context where a stronger priority has been given by donors to primary education towards attainment of the Education For All objectives and the Millennium Development Goals (in particular that of universal completion of primary education). This evolution is also accompanied by a change in the instruments used to transfer external aid (more budget support and fewer projects).

Private Resources for Education Direct private contributions from parents are also a major source of financing of education in the Africa region. This source is often neglected, probably because it is less well documented than public or donor financing, and because the funding is not centralized in books, but spread in small amounts over large numbers of individuals. A household survey is the main instrument by which private financing can be estimated; but most household surveys do not have a module of expenditure. Another difficulty with private financing of education is to identify which expenditure is to be taken into account. Some items such as school fees, parents’ associations, textbooks or school uniforms, seem to belong clearly to school expenditure because they are both directly connected to schooling and mandatory. But the case is less clear with spending on school meals (since it is not an option for the child to be fed should he or she be in school or not) or private tuition (since this is not mandatory). For these reasons, there is inconsistency across different analyses of private spending on schooling, making their comparability unreliable. Despite these difficulties, it would be unwise to neglect the private contribution of parents to the schooling of their children. Table 1, below, provides examples of what has been found in recent World Bank publications (Country Status Reports) in selected countries of the region. It should be borne in mind that, although this sample of countries is not representative of the region, this does not mean that these data have no interest. A first observation is that (in spite of the uncertain degree of comparability of the data) the amount of private financing on education is both always substantial (representing 10% or more of

Table 1.

Amount of private financing of education in selected SSA countries

Countries

Spending for the sector (billion LCU)

Mauritania, 2004 Mali, 2003 Cameroon, 2002 Togo, 1999

Spending for primary education (billion LCU)

Private

Public

Private/ total (%)

Private

3.9 9.2 185 10.7

12.4 82.0 207 26.4

24 10 47 29

2.2 6.1 49.0 8.4

LCU
Local Currency Units. Source: World Bank Education Country Status Report for the four countries.

Public

6.3 29.0 66.0 16.0

Private/ total (%) 26 17 43 34

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domestic financing) and variable across countries; in Cameroon, private financing reaches 47% of total domestic financing of the sector, a very high figure. A second observation is that private financing is quite substantial in primary education. Furthermore, private financing tends to be larger for better off parents, in particular for children whose parents reside in urban settings and belong to the highest income quintiles. However, private spending is often substantial (both in absolute and relative terms) for poor parents residing in rural areas when they need to finance community schools or teachers, in an attempt to make up for the failure of the State to provide an adequate supply of public educational services.

The Tradeoffs Both Across and Within Levels of Education In the previous section, we pointed out that education financing was subject to a tradeoff across sectors in the competition for public financing. Once the budget (recurrent and capital) for the sector has been identified, a new tradeoff has to be made. It concerns the distribution of that budget across the different levels of education.6

The Distribution of Resources Across Levels of Schooling Within the global budget allocated to the sector, there is competition for public resources between levels of education. Given the general context of financial scarcity, each level of education has reasonable arguments to put forward to get more resources, but in face of the global scarcity of resources choices have to be made. In principle, these are dealt at the margin and the policy maker has to compare across levels of schooling the respective benefits (in social and economic terms) associated to a one dollar variation in the funding of each these levels; the structure of the allocation of resources is then modified up to the point were marginal benefits for the different levels of education are the same. This is essentially a theoretical exercise both because of the paucity of empirical documentation, and because political considerations and pressures tend to play a significant role in this process. However, whatever the process and its validity, a decision is made (at least implicit) and the budget is distributed across levels of schooling. This is essentially a national process and it is therefore likely that the outcome differs across the different countries of the region. Thus, it is not easy to conduct an international comparative analysis on this aspect given the wide variations in the structure of the systems across the different countries. In particular, the use of common labels, such as primary education or lower secondary education may not be comparable across different countries. For example, if “primary education” gets 40% of total spending in country A and 55% in country B, it may not be valid to conclude that country B gives a higher degree of priority than country A to primary education. If we assume now that the duration of the primary cycle is 5 years in country A and 7 years in country B, it follows that the straightforward comparison of 40 and 55 is not appropriate. A better idea could be to divide the share of budget for primary education by the corresponding duration of the

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cycle in the two countries; the result of this calculation gives 8% in country A and 7.9% in country B. We are then led to conclude that in fact the two countries grant more or less the same degree of priority to primary education, since they give approximately the same share of their budget per year of primary education; but here again, this conclusion may not be perfect since the Grades 6 and 7 in country B are located in lower secondary education in country A, possibly characterized by much higher unit costs than primary education. The point is that comparing the pattern of allocation of resources across levels of schooling in countries with different patterns of enrolments cannot be robust and conclusive. Given this discussion, three postures can be taken: (1) this is too complex and not really amenable to international comparative analysis; (2) it is safe to limit the analysis to countries that share the same pattern of enrolments and (3) it is nevertheless possible to carry a large international comparison provided that all allocations by level of schooling are controlled for the length of studies of each cycle in each country (that is evaluating the allocation per year of education in each cycle). We take in sequence the third and second perspectives. When estimating the distribution of spending for the sector across the different levels of schooling, strong differences emerge across the different categories of country (see Table 2). On average, the lower the level of development, the larger the proportion of resources allocated to primary education; close to 50% in low income countries (with no difference whether it they are in Africa or elsewhere), but only close to 40% in middle income countries, the figure being slightly below 30% in OECD countries. This pattern is in line with the level of development of the systems of education and the distribution of enrolments across levels of schooling. Primary education is first to be expanded and given priority in low income countries; and, as coverage and quality of primary schooling progress, additional resources flow naturally towards secondary education both because the number of primary education graduates is large (demand side) and because it is reasonable to expand secondary education to respond to the growing demand of graduates in the labor markets with economic expansion (supply side). Table 2. Estimated distribution of the budget of the sector by level of schooling for a similar (average) pattern of enrolments across levels of education Primary education

Secondary education

Higher education

% of budget per year

% of budget for a 6.2 year cycle

% of budget per year

% of budget for a 6.2 year cycle

% of budget

Low income countries African

7.8 7.7

48.0 47.4

4.5 4.3

27.9 26.6

21.1 23.0

Middle income countries African OECD countries

6.2 6.3 4.7

38.2 38.8 29.0

5.5 5.7 6.2

34.0 34.9 38.3

23.3 20.8 25.8

Source: UIS and World Bank and calculations by the author.

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This pattern is consistent with the fact that secondary education, and later higher education, is gradually given more importance in budget allocations, the higher the level of economic development; while secondary education gets on average about 28% of budget in low income countries, the figure rising to 34% in middle income countries and to 38% is OECD countries. The average regional pattern of the allocation of resources by levels of education seems therefore to be consistent with a basic economic argument. It is however to be stressed that regional averages hide a very wide variance across individual countries; this variance is larger in low income countries, in particular within those in Sub-Saharan Africa, while OECD countries are rather uniform on this count. When it comes to the allocation of resources and after controlling for the duration of cycles of study (putting it at 6.2 years for all countries in both primary and secondary education), striking differences appear across countries. Focusing on low income countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, the range for the allocation to primary education is from less than 30% to almost 60% in 2003. Countries such as Cameroon, Congo, Eritrea, the Gambia, Ghana, Malawi and Senegal being those that give the lowest level of priority for primary education while countries such as Benin, Chad, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Zambia being at the other side of the spectrum with a relatively large share (more than 50%) of their budget given to primary education. All the countries in the first group are well below the value suggested by the indicative framework of the Fast-Track Initiative (50%) while those in the second group are above this reference benchmark. The observations made above should not be taken as normative judgments since it is a priori expected that countries that exhibit high levels of primary completion spend more on secondary education, while countries with low rates of primary completion give higher financial priority to primary schooling. To test the validity of this assumption, we contrast the allocation of resources given to primary schooling with the numerical value of the Primary Completion Rate in 2003. The result is the absence of statistical relationship between the two figures; the reason is probably that there are two conflicting patterns at work, compounding a stock (static) and a flow (dynamic) dimension: (1) according to the dynamic aspect, countries far below universal completion of primary education could give a stronger priority to the first cycle of studies, but (2) according to the static aspect, countries that are far below universal probably have a lighter burden to finance the services offered (and it is probably also because they give a lesser priority to primary education and, other things being equal, they achieve less in terms of primary completion). If we limit the comparison of the pattern of allocation of public resources to countries sharing a similar structure of enrolments (6 years for primary and 7 years for secondary education), the same relatively wide variability across countries is observed, as Table 3 shows. The average allocations for the 14 countries of the sample are: 49% of total recurrent spending is given to primary education, 31% is allocated to secondary education and 20% to higher education. The figures exhibit a range from 40 to 60% in primary education, suggesting significant variations in the priority given to that level of education. In secondary and higher education, the respective ranges are much wider, from

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Table 3. Distribution of public resources by level of education in a sample of countries sharing the same structure for their system of schooling, early 2000s Countries

% Primary education

% Secondary education

% Higher education

Benin Burkina Faso Burundi Cameroon* Chad C oˆ te d’Ivoire Guinea Mali* Mauritania* Niger Rwanda* Senegal Sierra Leone Togo

55 60 56 45 51 43 44 40 52 58 48 42 50 45

27 21 28 43 29 34 31 45 35 27 19 29 27 36

17 19 17 12 20 22 25 15 13 14 33 28 22 19

Sample average

49.2

30.8

19.7

*Data have been adjusted to take into account the duration of studies in secondary education. Source: World Bank Education Country Status Reports for the various countries of the sample.

19 to 43% at the secondary level, and from 12 to 33% of total recurrent spending at the higher level. The above discussion indicates that, even though individual countries find it difficult to modify the distribution of public resources across levels of education, the international comparative approach suggests that it is de facto possible, even though significant change may take a few years to be implemented.

The Use of Resources Within Levels of Schooling Once the distribution of public resources by level of education has been set, many decisions are still to be made, implying at least two levels of tradeoffs: (1) the first tradeoff is between the number of children enrolled (i.e., coverage of the system) and the unit cost of the services offered; (2) the second is between the different inputs that can be purchased for a given level of per pupil spending. We examine these two aspects in turn.

The tradeoff between coverage and per pupil spending Generally speaking, at a given level of education, policy makers are willing both (1) to be able to offer the best conditions of schooling to each student, implying a high level of unit cost (UC) of the services offered, and (2) to be able to provide these quality services to the largest number of children (NC). However, it is obviously difficult for a country to pursue the two objectives at the same time given the budgetary

434

Mingat

constraint (B) every country has to cope with. This tradeoff is well described by the following identity:

B = NC * UC

or

NC = B/UC

Number of children enrolled

Therefore, B being exogenous, the larger (smaller) is UC, the smaller (larger) is the number of children that can be enrolled. Each country is consequently led to find some balance between the two objectives, some countries placing probably more emphasis on coverage while some other may put a greater emphasis on the conditions of schooling and per pupil spending. Figure 1 below illustrates the tradeoff involved. Let us assume that the school age population of our hypothetical country at that level of schooling is 80,000 and that the resources have been set at one million LCU (local currency units). If the country puts the emphasis on the conditions of schooling and targets 70 LCU per student, only 14,285 children can be enrolled. However, if it is thought that reducing unit spending to 30 LCU remains acceptable, it is now 33,333 children that can be accommodated. If a strong emphasis is placed on coverage and if the country wants all children of the relevant school age to be enrolled, per pupil spending would need to be brought down to LCU 12.5. The pattern described above for a hypothetical country has been established while keeping constant the amount of public resources mobilized for the level of education under consideration (B
B*). Every individual country is exposed to this type of tradeoff and, as suggested above, it is likely that the countries do not make identical choices on this count. It follows that countries, at a given level of schooling, may differ both on the amount of resources mobilized and on the choice they make between per pupil spending and coverage. First they effectively make quite different “choices” in terms of unit costs of educational services with figures that range from 5 to 20% of per capita GDP at the primary Graph 1: Number of children enrolled according to the level of per pupil spending within a budget constraint

90,000 80,000 70,000 60,000 50,000 40,000 30,000 20,000 10,000 0 0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Per pupil spending (LCU) Figure 1. Number of children enrolled according to the level of per pupil spending within a budget constraint

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level among African countries, in 2003 (for a regional average standing around 12% of per capita GDP). In lower secondary education, per pupil spending ranges between 13 and 64% of per capita GDP (with a regional average of 31% of a country’s per capita GDP), while at the upper secondary level, the range is from 22 to 150% of per capita GDP (the average standing at 63 per of per capita GDP). Second, the countries that “choose” (it may be an implicit choice) a relatively high level of public spending per pupil (probably on the argument that it helps to provide better conditions of schooling and later on better level of student learning) offer fewer places in schools (lower coverage) to their population, as Figure 2, below, shows. With a unit cost of primary education representing 20% of a country’s GDP per capita, countries achieve on average in 2003 a gross enrolment rate of about 60%, while those that have opted for a level of unit cost representing only 10% of their per capita GDP, succeed on average to reach a GER of about 95%.

The tradeoff between school inputs for a given level of per pupil spending Once countries have made their tradeoff between per unit cost and coverage and chosen a given level of per pupil spending at a given level of schooling, there remains a large variety of ways in which these resources can be used. According to the micro perspective, the unit cost is an aggregate figure for the cost of the mix of school inputs that are purchased to organize the provision of the educational services.7 To examine how the different elements of the schooling context affect the unit cost, it may be useful to go through some decomposition of the recurrent budget allocated to a given level of schooling. (1) B
SB  NSB (2) B
TSB  NTSB  GSS  SS (3) B
NT  ATS  NNT  ANTS  GSS  SS (4) B/NS
(NT/NS)  ATS  (NNT/NS)  ANTS  GSS/NS  SS/NS (5) UC
ATS/PTR  ANTS/PNTR  UGSS  USS (6) UC
[(ATS/CS)  (ST/TT)]  ANTS/PNTR  UGSS  PSSS  ASSES

GER (%)

Graph 2: Unit spending and GER at the primary level in low income African countries 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20

y = 287.54 x–0.492 R2 = 0.38

5

10 15 Per pupil spending (% pc GDP)

Figure 2. Unit spending and GER at the primary level in low income African countries Source: UIS and World Bank ECSR.

20

436

Mingat

In which, B is the recurrent budget for the level of schooling under consideration; SB is the salary bill; NSB is the non-salary bill; TSB is the teacher salary bill; NTSB is the non-teacher salary bill; GSS is the spending on goods and services (textbooks, maintenance, in-service training, pedagogical support, ..); SS is the spending on social activities; NT is the number of teachers; ATS is the average salary of teachers; NNT is the number of non-teaching personnel; ANTS is the average salary of non-teaching staff; NS is the number of students enrolled at that level of schooling; UC is the average recurrent unit cost; PTR is the pupil teacher ratio; PNTR is the pupil non-teaching staff ratio; UGSS is the spending per student on goods and services; USS is average spending per student for social activities (school meals, scholarships, ..); CS is the class size (average number of students per class); ST is the time of instruction of students (hours per week); TT is the average effective teaching time of teachers (hours per week); PSSS is the percentage of students that are eligible to the social subsidies; ASSES is the amount of social subsidy obtained per eligible student. The idea behind this type of decomposition is to help identify the impact on the unit cost of the various characteristics of the schooling context which are the instruments of the educational policy of a country. In the final decomposition of the example above, it is seen that unit costs are higher if teachers are better paid, teach smaller classes during a limited number of hours and if students are offered longer hours of instruction; similarly unit cost will be higher if the process uses a large number of well paid non-teaching staff, provides large amounts of goods and services per student, provides large subsidies for social purpose and provides these subsidies to a large proportion of the population in schools. The expression above helps to evaluate the unit cost associated with any mix of the different variables that characterize the provision of the service. It also helps to document the tradeoffs to be considered across school inputs, in a context where the unit cost would have been exogenously fixed at a previous step of policy formulation. To illustrate the point, consider a simplified unit cost function in which the number of hours of instruction of teachers is the same as the teaching duty of the teacher (common case in primary education) and in which there is neither non-teaching staff nor social subsidy. In such circumstances, the unit cost function is simplified as follows:

UC = ATS/PTR + UGSS. We assume then that the expenditure per pupil is set at 500 Monetary Units (MU); within this unit expenditure, schooling can be organized in many very different ways by combing the use of more or less well-trained teachers, bigger or smaller class sizes and a larger or smaller amount allocated to goods and services per student. Table 4 below suggests a small number of these possible combinations. The factors analyzed here are the teachers [3 categories, A, B and C with respective annual compensation of 12,000, 16,000 and 24,000 MU], the expenses for goods and services varying between 50 and 300 MU; the class size is determined once the two other parameters are defined and the unit expenditure has been set. These choices can vary: in case (1), the class size is at an attractive level (26.7 pupils) but the teachers are from the least-qualified category (A) and the amount of goods and services is minimal. If it were to be decided to use better qualified teachers (category C)

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Table 4. Teacher category, current resources on goods and services and class size for expenditure per pupil of 500 MU (hypothetical country) Average expenditure per pupil (MU)

500

Teacher category

A

B

C

Teacher’s annual salary (MU)

12,000

16,000

24,000

26.7 (1) 30.0 40.0 60.0

35.6 40.0 53.3 (4) 80.0

53.3 (2) 60.0 80.00 (3) 120.0

Expenditure per pupil for goods and services (MU)

50 100 200 300

it must be accepted (situation 2 in the table) that class size increases to 53 pupils while expenditure on goods and services remains low (50 MU per pupil). Situation (3), where the teachers are well qualified and the operational resources are adequate can then be considered, but in that case there would be an average of 80 pupils per class. If it is decided that this figure is too high, an option would be using category B rather than category C teachers, which leads to case (4), where class size is reduced to 53 pupils. It should be stressed that the possible options do not stop there, as the “goods and services” item also has to be broken down into several components: text books, pedagogical material, in-service training for teachers, assessment of pupils and pedagogical support for teachers and administration. If it is assumed that 100 MU will be allocated to the “goods and services” heading, this figure can be reached by allocating very little to text books and pedagogical support, none to in-service training or assessment of pupils and a lot to administration; but obviously, this amount can also be distributed in a completely different way. The calculations presented above are indeed made from a theoretical perspective; they represent the tradeoffs which each country has to make in the formulation of its educational policy. In reality, countries do not make similar choices as far as the mix of school inputs is concerned. School inputs are indeed quite different at any level of schooling across African countries: this derives both from the fact that the amount of public resources per student varies quite substantially and from the fact that for a given level of unit cost they also distribute the resources in quite different ways. To separate out the two components and to illustrate the magnitude of the second one, we focus on a subset of countries sharing a similar level of per pupil spending. For example, countries like Eritrea, Mali, Mozambique Sudan and Swaziland share a unit cost of primary education standing at about 12% of their GDP per capita but Mozambique has a pupil teacher ratio of 67 while it is only 29 in Sudan and 47 in Eritrea. However, Sudan has opted for a low level of remuneration of their teachers (2.2 times the per capita GDP of the country), contrasting with Mozambique and Eritrea in which the remuneration of teachers exceeds five times the per capita GDP. Also Mali or Eritrea allocates more than 30% of total spending to non-teacher’s salary costs, while Chad or Mozambique allocate only 20% of total recurrent spending to these items. The same type of observations can be made in either secondary or higher education.

438

Mingat

These figures are national averages and suggest that countries with a similar level of unit cost do not necessarily buy similar mixes of school inputs with the resources they allocate on average to a pupil. In addition, substantial variations in the mix of school inputs exist within countries, that is across the different schools that constitute the national system of education. For example, in Chad or Malawi (but also in most countries of the region), resources, in particular teachers and textbooks, are not deployed in a consistent way to individual schools, with some schools being well endowed (relatively low pupil teacher ratio and good availability of textbooks) while some other are lacking the most basic inputs to operate (very large classes with virtually no textbooks). While the variations across countries may correspond to different educational policies, the variations within countries are the outcome of bad performance in the internal management and deployment of resources. To sum up, the analyses conducted so far lead to the conclusion that a wide diversity exists in the choices made by the different countries of the region at the different steps of the process going from the overall mobilization of resources to the sector to the buying of school inputs at the individual school level. This denotes both (1) that in fact wide spaces do exist for educational policies in these various components and (2) that countries, positively or by default, do use these spaces in quite different ways leading to a very diverse picture of education in Sub-Saharan Africa. This in turn suggests that a certain caution should be used when making statements along generic lines for the region; but this variability is also a kind of natural experiment creating favorable conditions for assessing the consequences of the choices made in the cost and financing sphere upon efficiency and equity or more tangible outcomes such as coverage and the quality of the services offered.

The Impact on Coverage and Quality of Service as Well as on Efficiency and Equity We will focus on three main dimensions: coverage, quality of services and equity, the question being to determine on a factual basis to what extent global funding and the choices made in using it impact on these three dimensions. The question is indeed of some importance since resources are often seen as the main constraint to achieving better educational outcomes and since it is the main vehicle through which external assistance can play a part.

Quantitative Coverage of the System We start by contrasting the amount of recurrent resources mobilized with the coverage that is achieved. This analysis can be conducted either for the sector as a whole or for any particular level of education (with the restriction that the duration of the cycle has to be controlled for as discussed above). Concerning the sector as a whole we compare an estimate of the amount of resources mobilized as a percentage of GDP with an estimate of the global coverage of the young

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population by the system, through the school life expectancy statistics (the average number of years of schooling of a cohort). The documentation is available for a large number of countries of the region. Figure 3 illustrates the relationship between the two statistics for the year 2003. The graph is very explicit: (1) there is a relatively wide variance in both dimensions (countries differ widely in terms of the share of their GDP allocated to the sector (from 2 to 9% of GDP) as well as in terms of the overall coverage of the system (SLE ranging from 3 to 12 years); (2) on average, a positive trend does exist between the two statistics (more resources on average imply better coverage); but (3) the points representing the different countries of the region are widely scattered and the overall relationship is relative weak with an R2 of only 0.27. For example, we find that school life expectancy can range from 3 to 8 years across the different countries sharing a similar amount of public resources of about 3% of GDP. Similarly countries with a school life expectancy of 6 years can mobilize between 2–5% of their GDP for the sector. This pattern suggests that if resources do play a role to facilitate a good coverage of education to a country’s young population, the way these resources are used makes very substantial differences. Countries like the Gambia, Togo or Zambia, that are closer to the pseudo frontier of efficiency (represented by the dotted curve in Figure 3), are clearly more efficient than countries like Burkina Faso, Burundi or Lesotho standing well inside the frontier. If we focus now on primary education, the pattern is essentially the same with (1) the resources ranging from less than 1% of GDP (Guinea, the Gambia) to more than 3% of GDP (Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique), (2) while GER ranges from 50% to over 100%; but (3) a relationship between the two dimensions characterized by a R2 below 30%. The results suggest that the parameters of service delivery are elements that enter the discussion when a country envisages increasing coverage and that the resources are not the single lever that can be activated.8 Obviously, this would require further analysis in particular since coverage is not the single objective of an education policy.

School Life Expectancy (years)

Graph 3 : School life expectancy and public resources for the sector 14

y = 0.68 x + 3.88 R2 = 0.27

12 10 8 6 4 2 0 0

2

4

6

8

Public resources (% GDP) Figure 3. School life expectancy and public resources for the sector Source: UIS and World Bank ECSRs.

10

12

440

Mingat

The Quality of Educational Services The quality of educational services can be approached in different ways, one of which is to investigate the relationship between inputs and outputs. Concerning the output side, two complementary perspectives can be used depending on the unit of observation we use to conduct the analysis: (1) if we take a macro perspective, international comparisons can require that we have in hand some common measure of student learning in a sample of countries; (2) a more micro perspective can also be used with data on student achievement in a number of schools within a given country. In this context, student achievement can take the form of standardized test scores or of marks given in national exams. In principle, standardized test scores in well designed and well implemented studies (control over the conditions of administration of the instruments, objectivity in marking) are probably preferred. The comparability of marks and pass rates may not be as good as that of test scores, but since they carry both a better legitimacy9 and concern the whole system of schooling10; they cannot therefore be ignored. At the end, we are somehow supply driven and led to use what is available, keeping in mind the limitation of the different instruments. For the international comparative perspective, it may be noted that quite a number of student learning assessment surveys have been conducted in the region at the primary level of education by three agencies.11 The results however are not directly comparable since these three agencies use different instruments. Nonetheless, since there are some countries with both an MLA score and either a PASEC or a SACMEQ assessment, all the existing assessments can be adjusted to fit onto a single scale (that of MLA). As a consequence a reasonable comparison between the average scores of pupils in a fairly large number (22) of countries of the region can be obtained. From a descriptive point of view, two pieces of information emerge from that exercise. The score interpreted as the percentage of the target content effectively showed: (1) there is a wide dispersion in the national average score, from about 40 (in countries like Mali or Zanzibar) to more than 65 (in countries like Mauritius or Kenya), and (2) the average figure is only 50.6 indicating that only half of the targeted content is effectively acquired in a typical country of Sub-Saharan Africa.12 For our purpose, we focus more on the variability of the score across countries than on their absolute level. We have seen above that African countries spend very different amounts per pupil in primary education, and it is tempting to contrast the variability in per pupil spending across countries with that in the student learning score. A graph plotting the case of the 22 countries in the two dimensions depicts a very scattered picture: some countries with a relatively low (high) unit cost have also relatively low (high) learning score (this is the case of Zambia and Kenya) but countries like Niger have both a high unit cost and a low level of student learning, while the contrary is observed in Guinea. A regression between the two dimensions gives a coefficient that is positive but not statistically different from zero (the R2 is only 0.018). This result is obviously not encouraging for those who want to use financial resources to boost educational quality. We now move to analyzing student achievement data in individual countries. Concerning national exams, the data are available in about 20 countries. For student

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assessments based on test scores, the sample of countries for which the design is appropriate to conduct such analysis and for which the data are available (PASEC data for Francophone countries) is limited to ten countries. We can first duplicate the approach used in the international comparison above using the school as the unit of observation. For the national exams, we contrast the pass rate at the school level with an estimate of the recurrent spending per pupil based on the costing of the conditions of schooling prevailing in each school. For the test scores, we use a more sophisticated measure of student learning, estimating the average test score at the end of the school year in Grades 2 and 5, controlling for both the score of students at the beginning of the same school year and the social characteristics of the students. This procedure effectively evaluates, within each school, the progress made over the school year by students of similar social and academic characteristics. This measure is then compared with the unit cost corresponding to the detailed conditions of schooling in Grades 2 and 5 in the schools of the sample. For both the pass rate at a national exam and the score reflecting the progress of students of similar (average) social and academic characteristics, we find a wide variance across the schools of any given country. We find also that the schooling conditions (and the unit cost) tend to vary widely across the different schools within countries given the low degree of consistency in resource allocation to individual schools in most African countries. When plotting individual schools in a graph crossing the two dimensions, we get exactly the same result as that found at the international level: the points are essentially scattered and there is virtually no statistical relationship between resources and learning outcomes. But there is a possibility that resources globally do not matter because the input mix purchased with these resources is inadequate. To address this point, the analysis of the PASEC data has been placed at the individual student level; and regressions have been estimated of the year-end score against (1) the score at the beginning of the school year, (2) a vector of student characteristics and (3) a vector of school and class characteristics, allowing (4) for students to learn differently according to the particular class they are in or the particular teacher by whom they were taught during that year. This type of analysis, replicated in all of the ten countries for which the data are available, provides results that are quite similar in the different countries. The results are useful in that they help identify the impact of individual inputs upon student learning.13 But in our perspective, they are all the more useful as they help to sort out the impact of the different groups of factors upon learning outcomes. Table 5 presents the average pattern for the ten countries of the sample. According to the figures in Table 5, individual and logistic factors characterizing the schooling context together account for 45.1% of the variance of the dependant variable (year-end test score), implying that what is not accounted for by these factors represents 54.9% of that variance. Within this residual, two components can be distinguished: (1) one which is systematically linked to the fact that students taught in a given class (by a given teacher) tend to look alike in terms of learning at the end of the school year; (2) the second component is distributed randomly both across and within classes. Econometric estimates show that the first component accounts for 24.2% of total variance, while the second accounts for 34.9%. Leaving aside the latter component

442

Mingat Table 5. Decomposition of the variance of learning score, PASEC– Average of 10 countries % Variance Pupils Initial score Personal and social characteristics Schools inputs and characteristics Classes Schools Teachers Total individual and logistic factors Teacher/Class Effect Total accounted Residual Total

38.6 36.1 2.5

55.7 52.1 3.6

6.5 1.7 1.6 3.2

9.4 2.5 2.3 4.6

45.1 24.2 67.3 32.7 100.0

65.1 34.9 100.0 -

Source: From PASEC data and calculations by the author.

to focus on what is explained by individual and contextual factors (both logistical and class/teacher effects), the last column in Table 5 provides a useful decomposition in particular between (1) the individual pupil characteristics, (2) the logistical and formal aspects of the schooling context and (3) the class/teacher systematic component. The pupil-level factor is by far the most important since they account for as much as 55.7% of accounted variance; the descriptive dimensions such as gender, socio-economic status of parents, number of siblings or geographical location, altogether account for only 3.6%, the component with the largest impact (52% of accounted variance) being the score at the beginning of the school year. This score is assumed to embody the personal and cognitive dimensions of the individual pupil that are not directly observable, as well as the outcome of previous school and social experiences. For the schooling process under consideration, these aspects are largely exogenous. It is therefore on the 44.3% of the variance that education policies can play a role (this remains however substantial). The decomposition of the variance helps to separate out (1) the impact of the variability in the formal inputs14 (teacher’s academic credentials and training, class size, modality of student grouping, characteristics of the school building, availability of textbooks and pedagogical materials) that together constitute the logistic schooling context, from (2) the impact of the variability across classes and schools that arises from the capacity of the actors to use the resources and transform them into student outcomes. This latter capacity is not directly observed but its existence and impact are inferred from the variability in student learning, after controlling for the formal characteristics of the schooling context. Empirical results show that the impact of the capacity of the actors to use the inputs exceeds by far that of the inputs themselves. The variability in the amount and mix of inputs across classes accounts for only 9% of total accounted variance,15 while that of teachers’ capacity and behaviors accounts for as much as 35% (about four times that

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of inputs). Errors in measurement in the school inputs variables may produce an underestimation of their statistical impact and inflate that of the capacity variable (since the latter is not directly observed and absorbs all factors at the class level that are not accounted in the inputs variable) but these errors in measurements are probably limited in size and unlikely to alter substantially the estimated pattern. In the current circumstances prevailing in the systems of primary education in low income African countries, the use of resources clearly carries a much stronger impact than that of formal inputs and resources per se. Inputs make the budget but they are relatively weak in producing student learning. The transformation of resources into student learning, which proves to be so important, refers probably to a large number of aspects that interplay at the local level; they can be grouped under the generic umbrella of pedagogic management. We have neither the space nor enough empirical results to identify and discuss the factors that play a role in the transformation of formal inputs into student learning and outcomes; let us just suggest that it might be useful to distinguish (1) the amount of time provided for effective contact between the teacher and his (her) students over a given school year16 and (2) how the time available is used, implying both global pedagogic style and dayto-day interactive behaviors of teachers and students.

Equity in the Provision of Educational Services The relationships between financing patterns and equity can be approached along two complementary perspectives. The argument starts on the cost side and suggests that a high cost of services may lead (1) to lower coverage of the population (this point has been documented above) with the possibility that this may be associated with larger social inequalities, or (2) to a larger recourse to private financing that may itself result in social inequities.

Negative impact of private financing on school participation, especially for the poor The impact of private financing upon access to schooling in Africa has not been studied in any detail, but all estimates indicate that it is substantial and generally much larger than initially thought. Natural experiments involving the abolition of school fees (representing often small amounts – e.g., 4 dollars a year or less than 10% of unit cost to the government) show that such decisions may entail a huge increase in school participation. The case of Cameroon is instructive in this regard: in 2000 fees were abolished and enrolment increased by as much as 57% in primary Grade 1, bringing to school most of the 6 year old children but also most of those 7 or 8 years of age that did not get enrolled in previous years. In Mali, for the community schools it has been estimated that as much as 50% of the children of families in the lowest two quintiles of income did not have access to a school even though it was located less than 1 km from home, this proportion being reduced to less than 20% for children from families in the highest 2 quintiles of income. Similar results have been found in Mozambique.

444

Mingat

Negative impact of high cost of schooling upon social disparities Education systems, as is the case with other social services, tend to expand outward from the centre, starting with what is easiest to do, and moving progressively towards what is more difficult. This means that urban areas (and in particular the capital city) are served first, where the high density of population, political pressure and a strong demand for education motivate for the production of services. Then, when these populations have been served, the expansion of the system concerns smaller locations and the rural areas that are relatively easy to reach. It is only then that the process of expansion includes the populations difficult to reach. To add to the difficulty, teachers are often times reluctant to be deployed in these zones. Even in countries with a very low global coverage, enrolment rates in urban areas are usually very high.17 Under these circumstances, one should anticipate that social disparities are likely to be large in systems offering a low coverage and tend to diminish as coverage increases. To illustrate, we focus on gender disparities existing at the end of the primary cycle of education. On the basis on the argument above, it could be expected that the differences in gender disparities reported across countries may be linked to differences in coverage; but they may also be associated with other factors. Figure 4 below shows the case of the different countries of the region both in terms of the proportion of the age group that completes primary education and the magnitude of gender disparities at this point in the system. The pattern that emerges from the graph is relatively clear. On the one hand, there exists a trend according to which gender disparities are more intense when coverage is lower (as shown by the curve in the graph) and on the other hand, we identify strong differences in gender disparities between countries standing at similar levels of coverage.18 One can therefore identify the existence of a general factor relating lower coverage to larger gender disparities (and probably other disparities, compounded by the existence of country specific factors. Since coverage is significantly (negatively) linked to the level of unit cost of the services, it follows that the higher the unit cost of services, the lower the coverage offered to the population and therefore the larger the social disparities in school participation.

Girls to boys ratio (%)

140

y = 28.08Ln(x) – 25.22 R2 = 0.39

120 100 80 60 40 20 0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Primary completion rate (%) Figure 4. Gender equity vs. global coverage at the end of primary education, 2002 Source: UIS and World Bank ECSRs.

140

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Conclusion and Directions for Further Research and Action Larger Room for Maneuver than Spontaneously Anticipated In this text, we have described (1) a wide variance in the amount of public resources mobilized by the different countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, but also (2) a substantial addition both from private domestic sources and from external sources. We have also observed that countries are free to make choices and tradeoffs in (3) the distribution of these resources across the different levels of education, in the relative weight given (4) to coverage and per-pupil spending at each level of schooling and (5) in the mix of school inputs when per-pupil spending has been identified. For each of these five dimensions, factual data show a wide variability across and within the different countries of the region. Many constraints do exist but, beyond the fiscal capacity of country that to a large extent constitutes a real constraint, a number of aspects labeled as constraints are de facto a matter a choice.

The Financial Dimension Constitutes an Important Aspect of an Educational Policy but Other Considerations Play a Significant Role Resources are to be considered as means to reach goals. In education, some of main goals can be described in terms of coverage, quality of services and equity. Policy makers aim at producing a system of schooling that (1) imparts individuals with learning in the short term and capacities to contribute to the social and economic development of the country in the medium term, (2) provides these services to a large proportion of each cohort, and (3) distributes the services as equitably as possible. It is therefore of crucial importance to assess the extent to which money is the effective currency to buy these outcomes. Empirical analysis shows that the answer is much less clear cut than expected.

Impact of resources on coverage There is a general assumption that the expansion of services can only be achieved through the allocation of additional resources. However, this is only true where current service delivery is optimal and that the country is close to efficiency in resource use. Reality tells that it is not the case for most countries and that coverage can be expanded through efficiency gains within the sector. A careful assessment is required to determine how to make service delivery more efficient (is it that repetitions are too frequent, classrooms too costly, teacher salaries too high or non-teaching staff in excessive numbers . . . ?). It is simply not acceptable that the mobilization of additional resources (should they be from domestic or external sources19) be a substitute for inefficiency in resource use. Impact of resources on student learning Concerning student learning, the conclusions of our empirical analysis basically mirrors those obtained for coverage. If we take the general conditions as they currently

446

Mingat

exist in the systems of education in most countries of the region, there is virtually no relationship between the amount of resources mobilized per student and the level of student learning; this statement holds when comparing between countries or between individual schools within countries. What is purchased with the resources matters marginally more and some mixes of inputs are clearly better than others in boosting student learning for a given level of per pupil spending. However, when analyzing the variability in student outcomes, it is unambiguously clear that the use of resources at the school level matters much more that the amount and mix of inputs. The transformation of inputs into student outcomes is a process that is in fact left to the local actors to perform. Actors are in a principal-agent type of relationship with a distant government in which (1) the contract is fuzzy, (2) what local actors do is crucial for the production of the outcomes, but (3) actors know that no sanction is likely to be taken if the outcome is not good, since the latter is often not measured. In virtually all systems of education in the countries of the region,20 this relationship is either not adequately managed, or not managed at all.

Impact of resources on equity The impact of the choices made in the cost and financing of educational services are twofold. First, it has been estimated that the choice of good schooling conditions characterized by a high unit cost have a negative impact on equity through (1) the negative impact of per pupil spending on coverage and (2) the negative impact of a low coverage on social disparities. Second, since high unit costs of services carry a negative impact on coverage, this tends to lead to a larger private contribution to the financing of education. And private financing, obviously a good idea if it concerns the children of parents who have the ability to pay, thus freeing up public funding to target the schooling of those who cannot pay, hurts equity in particular when the rich urban children have access to public services while poor urban would have to pay to get access to the service. Unfortunately, in most countries of the region, it is more the second scenario that prevails. In the final analysis, cost and financing issues are effectively at the heart of educational policy but our analysis shows that the issues are clearly not as simple as they may appear. Money is at best a necessary but not sufficient condition: (1) for coverage, it becomes a necessary condition only when the delivery of services is efficient, and most countries currently are far away from this state of affairs; (2) for student learning, experience indicates that there is a minimum threshold below which it not possible to get to a decent level of learning, but beyond which there is not much to gain by simply increasing resources; managing the transformation of school inputs into student outcomes (pedagogical management and incentives of actors) is what really matters. Directions for Further Research and Action The above results bring questions for the research community and call as well for new reflections to guide action towards better efficiency.

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On the research side, it is clear that it would be important on the one hand to better identify the formal parameters characterizing what are efficient services vis-`a-vis coverage, and to understand better the process of transformation of inputs into student outcomes at the classroom level. On the action side, one could think that our results are disappointing from a Ministry of Finance or donor point of view. In short, what they want is to help the countries to get better results (coverage, student learning and equity) and what they have to contribute is money; but money alone has relatively limited impact on outcomes. Two types of behavior from the supplier of resources are to be avoided: Since money does not have the expected impact on outcomes, there is no justification to mobilize additional amounts from a tax payer’s point of view (should it be from the South or from the North); Money is what we have (even in restricted amounts) and education cannot be ignored; but education is a difficult business and there is not much to be done to improve the situation.

The first behavior is totally unrealistic and inappropriate, and the second corresponds more or less to what is currently done. A third type of behavior is obviously to be preferred. It would amount first to get the domestic and external financing actors to better understand the nature of the issues at stake; and second, to work with the ministry of education to improve efficiency of resource use both through better policies vis-`a-vis coverage and better management of the transformation of resources into student outcomes at the local level. Ministries of education are in general keener to get more resources than to introduce measures that would boost efficiency in their use. They are probably geared by short term objectives and easy gains while improvements in efficiency is both difficult (it implies often times a cultural change) and takes time. It is unlikely that this move it will come spontaneously from the ministries of education. The financing partners have a responsibility to push the necessary agenda; but for that, they need both a better analytical capacity and even more the courage to become development agencies and not merely a Bank or political institution.

Notes 1. The analyses reported in this paper are based on two major sources (often adapted) of data : (1) UNESCO Institute of Statistics, administrative data and (2) World Education Country Status Reports conducted in more than 20 countries of the region since 2000. 2. It is not necessarily easy to sort out domestic public resources and external funding since many countries get general budget support either as adjustment or “poverty reduction” funding. 3. In the expressions, GDP is for Gross Domestic Product; TPRES for Total Public Resources; and EDRES for Public Resources on Education. 4. It is often much lower given the structure of their economy in which the non-formal sector and self consumption is predominant and difficult to tax. 5. There is no value judgement behind this quantitative statement; the context of the different countries is obviously different both on the side of resource mobilization and on that of public claims. 6. This sequence assumes a single Ministry for the sector. When there is more than one ministry (e.g., one for primary or basic education, another for secondary education and for higher education), some of these tradeoffs between levels of schooling are dealt at the global budget level.

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7. According to the macro perspective, the unit cost for a given level of education is simply the ratio of total recurrent spending for that cycle of study and of the number of students enrolled in that cycle during a given year. 8. External agencies are obviously concerned since if they have resources to offer, it is assumed that they are also interested in the efficiency with which the resources (theirs and those of the country as well) are used. 9. They are what teachers are supposed to prepare the students for, and it is what parents are expecting the teachers to do. 10. With test scores, we have to rely on relatively small samples of schools. This may not have negative consequences if we want to get an assessment of the system; but it is a limitation for the system if the measure of outcomes is to be used as a management instrument. 11. Assessments have been conducted in the context of (1) MLA (Measurement or Learning Achievement) by UNESCO, (2) PASEC (Program d’Analyse des Syst`emes Educatifs de la CONFEMEN) and (3) SACMEQ (Southern African Consortium for the Measurement of Educational Quality). 12. In the same scale, countries like Morocco or Tunisia get relatively high scores (respectively 63 and 71). However by comparison with OECD countries, the score of these two countries is relatively low, suggesting that student learning in Sub-Saharan Africa is on average probably well below that of OECD countries. 13. For example, the quality of the school building matters little but textbooks do; or grade repeat does not help the student to progress; or teachers’ academic credentials matter if they are low, but do not carry much better learning in their students beyond 10–11 years of initial general education. 14. Schooling conditions currently vary widely across individual schools in most African countries, due to low levels of efficiency in resource management. 15. We do not enter here into the discussion between “what works” and “what does not”; but it may be of interest to note that the characteristics of the school building have no impact, while they may carry a high cost, or that teachers’ academic credentials have virtually no impact (but a high cost) after 12 years of general education. 16. There is descriptive data which suggests that both across and within countries, there is a wide variance in the effective time of contact between teachers and students due to the fact that the official number of hours of instruction may vary from one country to another, the use of double shifting or inadequate implementation of multigrade teaching, a late start and/or early ending of the school year, and absenteeism and lack of punctuality of teachers and students. 17. For example, in Niger in 1998, the gross enrolment ratio of primary education was about 30%; but it was 75% in urban setting (100% in Niamey) and only 20% in rural areas as a whole, and much less in rural deprived zones. 18. This suggests the existence of country specificities given the analysis conducted. For example, countries such as Ethiopia, Guinea, Madagascar, Mali and Rwanda have all completion rates around 40% in 2002, but they differ strongly on the magnitude of gender disparities: for example, while Ethiopia, Guinea and Mali have a gender ratio around 60%, it stands at almost 100% in Madagascar and Rwanda. 19. Sometimes, external financing agencies are so keen to make projects, and thereafter to disburse, that they tend to bypass this necessary step of efficiency improvement. In fact, external funding is often warranted, but it should pursue the two complementary objectives (1) of being catalytic to promote efficiency in resource use, and (2) of easing the constraint to help the country achieve more of its social goals. The second aspect based on a short term perspective, generally prevails, while the first, which holds the potential of medium term, sustainable gains, is often not taken seriously. 20. This does not mean that the management of this type of relationship could not be improved in other countries.

Bibliography Bernard, J. M., Kouak, B. T., & Vianou, K. (2004). Profils enseignants et qualité de l’éducation primaire en Afrique subsaharienne francophone: Bilan et perspectives de dix années de recherche du PASEC; PASEC/CONFEMEN. Bruns, B., Mingat, A., & Rakotomalala, R. (2003). A chance for every child; achieving universal primary education by 2015. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

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Burtless, G. (Ed.). (1996). Does money matter? The link between schools, student achievement, and adult success. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute. Dakar  5. (2005); EFA: Paving the way for action. UNESCO-BREDA. Jarousse, J. P., Rasera, J. B., & Noumon, C.R. (2005). Le Financement dans les syst e` mes éducatifs d’Afrique Sub-Saharienne. Paris: ADEA. Lassibille, G., & Rasera, J. B. (1998). Statistical information systems on education expenditure. Paris: UNESCO. Mingat, A. (2004). “Teacher Salary Issues in African Countries.” World Bank, AFTHD, Processed. Mingat, A., & Suchaut, B. (2000). Les Syst`emes Educatifs Africains, une Analyse Comparative. Bruxelles: De Boeck Université. Mingat, A., Tan, J. P., & Sosale, S. (2003). Tools for education policy analysis. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Verspoor, A. (Ed.). (2006). The challenge of learning: Improving the quality of basic education in Sub-Saharan Africa, L’Harmattan, Paris for ADEA. World Bank. (2006). Education country status report for Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Congo Democratic Republic, Cˆote-d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Guinea, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, Togo, Zambia; 2000–2006. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

25 RESOURCES AND SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT

Jim Spinks

A major educational reform of this first decade of the twenty-first century has been to recognise and acknowledge the moral, social and economic imperatives to ensure that all students optimise learning potential and that no students fail to achieve the minimum standards required for successful and positive participation in society. Unlike many drivers for change, this focus on outcomes continues to intensify and will also be the key driver for reform for the next decade and beyond. The pre-eminence of learning outcomes is in the best interests of both the individual student and the nation. Research continues to highlight the increased life chances for students successfully completing Year 12 of secondary education in comparison with their peers who either disengage from secondary education prior to Year 12 or who fail to gain an acknowledged standard of outcomes. In the Australian states of Victoria and South Australia, the unrelenting pursuit of learning outcomes is encapsulated in a statement that “90% of students will successfully complete Year 12 or its equivalent.” In Victoria this target was established by the Bracks Labor government on winning office in 2000 and is strongly reiterated in The Blueprint for Government Schools (Department for Education and Training, Victoria, 2003). Subsequently this target statement has been expanded to encompass “all students achieving improved outcomes and the diminution of the disparity in achievement between students.” In essence this expansion introduces the concept that it is unacceptable for a significant proportion of students to fail. The targeting of reduction of disparity between student achievement has significant consequences for educational reform in Victoria and perhaps elsewhere. The Statement of Directions 2005–2010 developed by the Department of Education and Children’s Services for the Government of South Australia highlights the many outcome targets expected to be achieved. Not only is there an expectation to increase the percentage of students completing Year 12 to 90% but also to “significantly and sustainably lift the learning outcomes for disadvantaged groups.” 451 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 451–468. © 2007 Springer.

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In England education reform is driven by the need for “all pupils to perform to the maximum of their potential.” Initially this has resulted in a tendency to focus improvement on those students predicted to perform just below the 5 GSCE A*–C level. However, increasing attention is now being given to those pupils most at risk. In a speech about “Education Improvement Partnerships” on November 3, 2005, Jacqui Smith, Minister of State for Schools, emphasised that “one of our most ambitious targets over the next 10 years is to increase the number of sixteen year olds participating in learning from 75 to 90%.” In essence, leading-edge education reform in the UK and Australia seeks not only to improve the learning outcomes for all students but also to ensure that our most vulnerable children receive appropriate provision through education and can take their place as successful participants in society to the common good. As illustrated by the The Blueprint for Government Schools (2003) in Victoria, the Statement of Directions 2005–2010 in South Australia and the Department for Education and Skills : Five Year Strategy for Children and Learners in England, the educational reform agenda is a high priority and is being vigorously pursued through comprehensive sets of strategies encompassing all factors known to affect school improvement. These include: ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

Leadership Quality teaching Relevant curriculum Flexible pedagogies Quality infrastructure High levels of public trust Resources

Within these factors there is a strong realisation that the transformation of education sought requires a personalisation of learning to a degree never before attempted, if all students are to remain effectively and successfully engaged until at least the end of Year 12. This personalisation of target setting, curriculum and modes of learning is especially important for those students who are currently being failed by their respective educational systems.

Relationships Between Educational Resource Models and the Pursuit of Best Possible Learning Outcomes for all Students The future universally envisaged by political leaders, educators and the public in general, is focused on improving learning outcomes for all students and diminishing the disparity of outcomes between students. This future is also described as encompassing “high excellence” and “high equity.” “High excellence” is achieved by an educational system when all students maximise their potential to learn and “high equity” is achieved when the environmental circumstances of any child do not detract in any way from all children maximising their potential for learning, backed by the belief that all children have the capacity for learning. That both “high excellence” and “high equity” can be achieved is well illustrated by Finland in the OECD PISA studies (2000, 2003).

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Seeking to align future school resourcing with these changing expectations means that alignment must be sought not only with number and nature of students (stages of learning) but also importantly with the learning needs of students, particularly with those needs that act as impediments to learning. In past development of funding models for self-managing schools, learning needs were not ignored. Major attention has been particularly given to the needs of children with impairments and disabilities. As well, funding has been directed on the basis of socio-economic circumstances, language background, indigenous culture and isolated location. However, children from these environments, particularly when they occur in combinations, still predominate among those disengaging too early from schooling and/or failing to attain sufficient standards prior to exiting school. The relationship between these issues is illustrated by reference to Figure 1 showing current student outcome achievement with respect to increasing student affluence in family socio-economic circumstances, or diminishing student need. Lamb (2004) identifies that it is family circumstances, as expressed by the occupation of the main income earner, that are becoming recognised as the best predictor of students most at risk of failing to benefit from educational opportunity and thus failing to maximise their learning potential. The red line typically illustrates the learning need–outcome relation for Year 12 outcomes in educational jurisdictions not only throughout Australia but also in like countries. The blue line represents the relation required if the commonly expressed target of “90% of students to successfully complete Year 12” is to be achieved. A similar pattern emerges from the recent PISA studies of outcomes and the relation to student socioeconomic circumstances. “Improving outcomes for all students and decreasing (removing) disparity” will require an incredible effort not only in curriculum, pedagogy and leadership but also in system-level approaches to resourcing. It is readily apparent that the major endeavour will have to be with respect to the first three quintiles. It is also recognised that the Outcomes–Needs relation 100

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effort and endeavour required increase exponentially as need increases. This relationship is illustrated in Figure 2. The current and expected outcome lines have been retained in Figure 2 as illustrative only. A further dimension currently being explored in several jurisdictions is to address the issue of alignment of resourcing with student aspirations. Planning is now underway in Victoria for research into this area. The view held there is that student aspiration encompasses what is to be learnt and how learning is to occur. It is closely allied with the concepts of personalising learning and school specialisation where it is envisaged that new curriculum as well as changed pedagogy could be the outcome. This differs in some ways from personalising learning and specialisation in England where the emphasis is more strongly on establishing personal learning targets and changing pedagogy but within the confines of existing curriculum structure. Both approaches have strengths and it is very likely that “next practice” will reflect the best features of each. This paper proposes a strategy for educational systems to review the allocation of resources to schools in order to enable the maximisation of student potential to achieve expectations for learning. A key feature of the proposed strategy is that evidence is gathered from those schools that are not only highly effective and efficient in significantly, systematically and sustainably adding value to student learning outcomes, but which also exhibit the characteristics of the future. For instance, selection seeks to involve identification of schools that exhibit the characteristics of emerging best practices in teaching and learning and in the nature of schooling as well as a culture of continually and avidly seeking even better practices. It is proposed that patterns of resource deployment in these schools provide the exemplars on which to design resource allocation models for other schools within the same system. The proposal is based on recent developments in Victoria and South Australia to review school funding practices and to develop new models that are supported by evidence and guided by agreed principles. This review and redesign of school resource

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allocation practices is in both cases part of a broad agenda of reform to achieve improved learning outcomes for all students. At the onset it was acknowledged that past allocation practices were mostly historically based with many embedded unfair and unsustainable practices. Even with the development of systems of self-managing schools and related approaches to school global budgets, history had been a major factor in deriving allocation formulae. For instance, mythology had insisted that the age of the student should be a major driver of resourcing and that resource provision needed to increase with age. Although to some degree this myth had been busted in relation to the early years of learning through research and emerging best practice, it persists in the middle years and governs differentiation within the senior years. In the UK context, a quick perusal of the AWPUs of most LEAs reveals parallels with this historical occurrence, with early years typically around 1.3 decreasing to 1.0 in late primary but accelerating from 1.3 up to 1.6 or more in senior secondary. The question needs to be asked whether this pattern reflects best practice in the expenditure of resources in schools achieving high excellence. Of course some would ask, “does it matter?” if the school is free to deploy resources as it determines is in the best interests of students. The answer is “yes,” especially if there is a significant funding differential across the stages of learning or age-grades and the proportional mix of students across these categories differs from school to school. This was very evident in Victoria where historically Years 11–12 students were funded at a higher level but schools spread this resource across all secondary year groups. This meant that schools with higher proportions of students in Years 11–12 were advantaged and yet it was the schools with the lower proportions of students in Years 11–12 that desperately needed more resources to address the root causes of students disengaging and not continuing to the final years. It was evident that disengagement did not just occur at the end of Year 10 but over the period in Years 9–10. A similar situation was evident in South Australia where again funding favoured the more senior years and yet research demonstrated that school expenditure was relatively flat across secondary classes and in some large high schools with high proportions of students in Years 11–12, expenditure on Year 12 was the lowest on a per student basis. These examples illustrate the desirability of reviewing funding models and redesigning on the basis of evidence. In the past it has been difficult to obtain evidence on the relative costs of education across year groups. This problem has been solved by analysis of expenditure patterns in representative samples of leading-edge schools known to add value to student learning. Central to this analysis has been a consideration of how learning and teaching is delivered and supported as the start point, rather than a focus on financial analysis. In essence, data is obtained about learning and teaching which can then be translated into time proportions and costs. The outcome is the cost per student in relation to year groups (or other groups of choice) that accurately expresses how the school has chosen to deploy the resources available to it. Any educational system with self-managing schools tends to allocate resources to schools in the categories shown in Figure 3. This figure also acknowledges that an increasingly important source of funding for schools, even those within government systems, is sponsorship by business and philanthropic organisations and parental contributions. The former is perhaps more prevalent in England while the latter is a significant

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factor in Victoria. These developments are not without controversies, particularly in relation to fairness between students and between schools which need to be addressed. The following key points are given in explanation of the table content and the variations in proportions of the overall school allocation. ●

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The majority of resources are allocated by governments but with a growing importance for revenue streams from business, philanthropic organisations and parents. Student Focused Funding relates to the achievement of high excellence and high equity on an ongoing basis. It is about the design, delivery and support of high quality learning and teaching programs.

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Core Student Learning relates to the number and nature of the students (stages of learning) to ensure the achievement of high excellence. It should enable all students from supportive environments to maximise their learning potential. Equity relates to the extraordinary needs of the students, that is, those factors that can impede students in maximising their learning potential. Its allocation is usually linked to overcoming the identified impediments and derived from the degree and density of occurrence of the impeding factor. Allocation is usually formulae driven as practice demonstrates that allocation through bids or submissions is no guarantee that the resource will end up in the schools with the students of greatest need. In fact the opposite can be observed. School Based Funding relates to the provision of buildings and grounds and targeted funding that is not specific to all schools and/or may be allocated for a limited time only. Sources of school based funding include governments, parents, sponsorship by business, and philanthropic organisations. The latter two sources are increasing in importance particularly in England with the growing development of partnerships between schools and other entities. For some systems, infrastructure operation and maintenance are included in the per student rates. This is not favoured in Australia with huge variations in climate and geography within any one state or territory. Infrastructure may also extend to building and grounds ownership through trusts and partnerships with an increased requirement for consideration of longer term maintenance and development. This is particularly an increasing development in England, and there is a growing interest in its possibilities in some Australian states. Targeted Initiatives through government resourcing are usually accessed through bids or submissions. They may be related to equity issues or innovation. There is a concern when related to equity issues as in these instances ongoing funding should be guaranteed, with funding related to the degree and density of the occurrence of the need in question. Innovation to identify better practices including overcoming an equity issue may well be resourced as a targeted initiative with funding allocated through bidding. Systems often endeavour to transfer government funds from Targeted Initiatives to Equity although the retention of Targeted Initiatives can be politically attractive. Non-government revenue streams are becoming increasingly important in the transformation of education. They not only include parent contributions but very importantly, sponsorship from business and philanthropic organisations “in cash and in kind” to support specific initiatives for improved learning outcomes. It is also recognised that “groupings” of schools are a developing phenomenon with varying degrees of sharing of resource pools to the mutual benefit of all. Similarly groups of schools are benefiting from shared leadership and operation through an “executive head.” These developments may enhance the educational value of resources.

The possible redesign of any school resource allocation system does raise the spectre of resource redistribution between schools, particularly as resource reform invariably proceeds in a cost neutral environment. It is interesting that it is easy to gain unanimous

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agreement from stakeholders that reform is necessary due to inherent problems and unfairness in the current system but the unanimity of agreement then disappears if an outcome is adjustment both upwards and downwards. Some systems have addressed the problem by a guarantee that no school will be “worse off ” but this invariably produces unacceptable cost escalations. The current reforms in Victoria have demonstrated that redistribution is possible with acceptance by the vast majority of stakeholders by careful attention to the design and management of the project. Potential redistribution is only possible if an agreed set of principles are developed at the onset, including giving preeminence to educational considerations. A typical set of guiding principles is detailed in Figure 4. Particular attention is drawn to the principles of fairness and equity as being the key to acceptance of possible resource redistribution. It is difficult to promote rational opposition to them in a government funded educational system based on current values. As an outcome, when research identifies instances of unfairness or inequity, then acceptance of the necessary change is more readily gained. Impeccable leadership was exercised by the Victorian Minister for Education and Training, Lynne Kosky MP, in gaining acceptance of recent school funding reforms. Her consistency and persistence in applying the principles of equity and fairness to remove historical anomalies from school funding gained her universal admiration.

Principle

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Within the purposes of researching and redesigning a school resource allocation model, pre-eminence will be given to educational considerations for students. Fairness Students with the same level of need will attract the same level of resourcing. Equity Students with higher levels of learning need will attract higher levels of resourcing. Effectiveness Resourcing levels will allow and encourage the systems goals and targets for education. Efficiency Resourcing levels will promote cost effective use of scarce public funding. Flexibility The capacity to reflect local needs and changes and to encourage innovation and initiative will be included. Simplicity Any model will be simple and easily understood by all stakeholders. Predictability Schools will have the capacity to plan long term with assurance and confidence. Transparency Information will be available to all interested parties, open to evaluation and difficult to manipulate. Accountability Reconciliation of resource allocation and deployment will be possible in relation to student learning outcomes. Sustainability Resource levels will be designed to be sustainable in the longer term. Subsidiarity Resources provided in school budgets in relation to activities where schools have a significant influence and management responsibility. Figure 4. A set of possible principles to guide the research and development of a school resource allocation model

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Student focused funding reform in Victoria during the period 2003–2006 is gaining considerable national and international attention not only in relation to the underpinning research but also to the associated strategies for successful model development and implementation. Throughout the process, consideration of the issues discussed in this paper, among others, has enabled the derivation of a set of guidelines to describe the overall strategy to align the allocation of core student learning resources in a student focused funding model with the number and nature of students, using evidence gained from leading-edge schools which are systematically and sustainably adding significant value to student learning. The ongoing development of funding models that address student needs equitably, and the “next practice” challenge of addressing the resourcing of student aspiration through personalised approaches to resourcing and planning, are exciting developments that can also be pursued within the strategy guidelines suggested below.

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Design to be based on evidence from schools as it is at the school level that the impact of the evolving educational and socio-political environments expressed through ever increasing expectations has implications for student funding. School principals are the critical participants in gaining data and evidence as they are best positioned to be knowledgeable about the implications of changing expectations for student funding. (The pre-eminent leadership position in education is the principalship). Evidence of resource deployment should be sought through a focus on how people/ programs contribute to learning and teaching or the support of learning and teaching, and not through restricted financial analysis. Schools included should be representative of type, size, location and socioeconomic circumstance and be known to significantly, systematically and sustainably add value to student learning outcomes. Schools included should exhibit best practice in learning and teaching strategies and in those characteristics related to the nature of schooling identified as exemplary responses to student learning for the future. Schools included should exhibit a culture of continually and avidly seeking better practices. Evidence sought should include analysis of all activities that enhance or support learning irrespective of the source of the related funding. There may be a need to consider compensation for diseconomies of scale for some schools through the application of variable base allocations. Parallel evidence should be sought from a random sample of schools to ascertain whether there is a relationship between school nature, student performance and school resource deployment patterns. Resource provision should be driven by the recipients of schooling and this should be reflected in allocation models. Models should maintain maximum flexibility for schools to deploy resources as expectations and the educational environment change.

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Any resource allocation model can only reflect the expectations and environment of the “near” future. There is a need to update data and refine models on at least a triennial basis.

We cannot ignore also that while increasing expectations may be the key driver for educational change, they work in unison with other change factors within the overall education environment, including emerging better practices in teaching and learning, the nature of schooling, and technology. As well, this evolving educational environment is itself just part of the similarly evolving social, political and economic environment. These environments are not separate but relate together through symbiotic evolution as a highly complex organism as depicted in Figure 5. It is within this organism, driven by expectations for learning, that systems must continually seek to correctly align the resourcing of student learning with the aspirations, needs, nature and numbers of students. Failure to do so will diminish the achievement of expectations and perpetuate a climate in which failure for some students is an acceptable inevitability.

Resource Deployment at School Level: A Model for Student-Focused Planning It is acknowledged that resourcing is but one of the factors affecting school improvement and does not alone guarantee improved outcomes. However, in the improvement matrix, it is a critical element, particularly in underpinning change to achieve ever

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increasing expectations for all students. Most importantly, it is the ways in which schools deploy their resources of knowledge, time, technology and finances in the best interests of student learning that make the difference. Planning and management models of the past as detailed by Caldwell and Spinks (1988, 1992, & 1998) have served us well but were too focused on the school and insufficiently on the student. The student and his/her learning should be the key focus … both the start point for planning and the basis on which to evaluate and review. The re-imagined self-managing school places this critical focus at the top of any set of parameters for identifying the nature of the model sought. In essence, a model for school planning and management identifies the key activities within a school and the relationships between them. These activities range from setting individual learning targets for students, to monitoring target achievement and student wellbeing, to creating strategic alliances, to designing and delivering curriculum, to creating school budgets, to celebrating success and everything in between. The design parameters and the range of probable major activities have been brought together in a possible model in Figure 6 below. This model for the student focused school is the outcome of many endeavours to re-imagine the self-managing school, as we have been challenged to do by Caldwell (2004a, 2004b), with the student at the centre. Perhaps this re-imagining is the student focused school where curriculum, pedagogy,

Implementation Values and purposes

Support programs School specialisation

STUDENT PERSONALISED PLANNING

Interdisciplinary learning Implementation Discipline-based learning Physical, personal and social learning

THE STUDENT Implementation

Expectations for learning

SCHOOL STRATEGIC PLANNING

LEARNING STRANDS and DOMAINS plus SUPPORT PROGRAMS

THE STUDENT’S OUTCOMES

DESIGN and ACCESS

A student-focused planning model for the future

Figure 6.

A student-focused planning model for the future

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learning targets and outcomes are personalised to the needs and aspirations of each individual student. The student, as an individual, is the focus of the model both at the beginning of the planning and management processes and the point at which the student’s outcomes are reviewed and used as the basis for learning and teaching and support program evaluation. The student and his/her characteristics are also considered in relation to the school and governing body statements of values, purposes and expectations for learning. This relation is desirably one of congruence but if there are divergences, then at least they need to be known, understood and accepted by all parties. The student is then viewed as central to not only school strategic planning but more importantly to a process of student personalised planning to ensure relevance of curriculum and pedagogy to the characteristics and expectations for learning of the student and including planned monitoring and possible related actions. School strategic planning remains a necessary major activity to effectively plan future changes and solve long term problems. This planning needs to be strongly related to trends identified in relation to developing patterns of student expectations for learning and student performance in relation to those expectations. Student personalised planning and school strategic planning provide the basis for designing curriculum and planning for student access to curriculum of relevance to their learning targets. This may well involve the construction of new curriculum in the school to meet the specific requirements for learning for a specific student. Perhaps this could be interpreted as a test for whether a school considers student personal learning as being at the highest priority level. The model illustrated in Figure 6 divides the curriculum design and access planning into three learning strands with the possibility of further division into sub-categories or domains. This example is drawn from Victoria where the “VELs” (Victorian Essential Learnings) describe an innovative approach to reconstructing the curriculum to remove over-crowding and ensure relevance. For England, these would currently be replaced with the ten KLAs from the national curriculum. The model also includes a program of specialisation and a group of support programs which could include ICT, library, administration, buildings and grounds, etc. Planning for each program would include targets, content, delivery, resources and performance evaluation. The student’s outcomes provide the basis for monitoring progress and performance of the individual students and collectively, the basis for the review and evaluation of learning and teaching programs and programs to support these processes. These processes provide the data to refine or redevelop all programs and processes to ensure effectiveness, efficiency and relevance. It should be noted that student personalised planning, school strategic planning, and the student’s outcomes are backed by “implementation” indicators. Similarly, “implementation” becomes a key aspect for the programs identified in learning and support planning. The requirement for resources to implement each program includes consideration of student learning time, learning space and the financial implications for human resources and material support. Planning would emphasise the relationship of the resource requirements to learning targets and priorities. The sum of the program implementation plans would form the proposed school budget. If the sum

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exceeds availability, then the relationships to targets and priorities inform the balancing process. This overview of the illustrated model is intentionally brief to develop understanding of the concept of the model as student-focused and different from past models with their focus on the school as a group of students rather than as individual students. Further papers by the author outline in detail the underpinning layers which deconstruct the model’s full content and methodology for implementation. A set of possible strategic intentions to guide planning for student-focused learning is discussed in the following section of this paper, referenced to an example of student focused planning and management in action. This set is not intended to be exhaustive. Schools will certainly want to add their own relating to background and vision for a preferred future.

The Model in Action: “Putting the Jigsaw Together” Bringing together the processes outlined in this paper, in pursuit of best possible outcomes for all students through personalising their learning, can be likened to constructing a complex and multi-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. The benefit of undertaking such a challenge is that the completed jigsaw, the individual student’s learning plan, has the potential to become greater than the sum of its parts in terms of the value it adds to an individual student’s learning. As a brief example, consider the planning undertaken by a hypothetical Victorian school for “Kyle,” seen through the lens of 12 Strategic Intentions related to developing the student-focused planning model which has been explored in this paper.

Strategic Intention 1 The nature, needs, attainments and aspirations of the student together provide the basis for setting outcome targets that are realistic and achievable and ensure the optimisation of learning, growth and development potential. Kyle entered Year 7 in April, 2004 when he was 13 and is now about to commence Year 9. Most of his life has been spent in care with a multiplicity of care homes. His father’s whereabouts are unknown and his mother is frequently incarcerated for substance abuse and related offences. Prior to high school, Kyle had a very poor record of school attendance and a history of substance abuse and petty crime. He suffers from poor health and low self-esteem. Surprisingly, Kyle has a positive outlook on life and sees his future as possibly related to the automotive industry. Kyle’s attainment levels at the end of Year 6 were well below benchmarks. His highest rating was C (at the expected standard) for ICT but in every other area of learning he was rated at either D or E (below or well below expected standards). Setting of Kyle’s Learning Targets is a cooperative exercise involving Kyle, his Year 7–8 Essential Learnings Coordinator, Sub-school Coordinator and home group teacher, his carers, and representatives from the Department of Children’s Welfare as his legal guardians.

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Strategic Intention 2 It is an expectation that all students will achieve a minimum standard of outcomes sufficient to ensure their positive and successful participation in society. Based on predictions at the end of Year 6, Kyle’s learning targets would not have included any C level awards at the end of Year 10. However, to meet his aspirations of an automotive industry apprenticeship these must be gained, with a consequent intensification of resource deployment (particularly time spent on learning, support in the form of rigorous and regular monitoring of his progress, and mentoring support). Thus Kyle’s targets were set as follows: ● ● ● ●

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Fortnightly attendance target of 90%. Nil suspensions. 100% participation in monitoring. Five subject awards at D level (below benchmark standard) by the end of Year 7 including English, Maths, Science and ICT. Five subject awards at C level (benchmark standard) by the end of Year 8 including English, Maths, Science and ICT. Five subject awards at C level (benchmark standard) by the end of Year 10 including English, Maths, Science and ICT.

The school is undertaking to add value to Kyle’s learning to a very high degree. Kyle is undertaking to modify his behaviour and value base and aim to achieve the higher set of expectations placed upon him.

Strategic Intention 3 Although the student’s outcomes are central to the operation of the school, there still needs to be an agreed set of values, purposes and expectations with application to all students and ensuring harmony and respect. Kyle’s school has a very high density of high need students, and its expressed values, purposes and expectations acknowledge the impediments these students have faced. The education system’s resource modelling ensures that the school is supported by a funding model which allows for the development of creative strategies to address student needs and to maximise attainment of learning outcomes for all students and particularly for those at risk of disengaging from school.

Strategic Intention 4 The setting of outcome targets for each student should be paralleled by capacities to continually monitor progress and provide supportive counselling, mentoring and coaching. Kyle’s progress in all learning areas was closely monitored on a weekly basis by the Essential Learning Coordinator for Years 7–8. The initial emphasis was on encouraging and rewarding any measurable progress, including gains from his before school acceleration program. Reports were provided at fortnightly intervals. Personal growth and development progress was closely monitored by Kyle’s home group teacher and his Sub-School Coordinator. Counselling occurred on at least a

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weekly basis. Close contact was maintained with Kyle’s mentor to gain further insights that might assist his development and to alert school staff to any known out of school factors that might impede his development. The fortnightly progress report finalisation was the responsibility of the Sub-School Coordinator assisted by the Year 7–8 Essential Learning Coordinator. If progress did not occur or dropped unexpectedly, then immediate action was initiated to identify problems and provide Kyle with care and support. Carers and legal guardians (DCW) received fortnightly reports on Kyle’s progress.

Strategic Intention 5 Although the student as an individual is central to school planning and management, there is a need to strategically plan for overall school development, particularly in relation to where significant gaps are identified between outcome targets and achievement and where new trends are identified in desired targets. Kyle’s school has developed a flexible approach to the way in which curriculum is delivered. For instance, the school day may be lengthened, as it is in Kyle’s case by a one hour per day small group “breakfast program” focusing on nutrition, personal presentation, literacy and numeracy. The school has also developed effective networks with industry and Kyle was provided with a place in an automotive industry outreach program which gives him three hours per week of after school mentoring support.

Strategic Intention 6 School priorities should be set to close unacceptable gaps between student outcome targets and achievement in specific areas of study. Kyle’s school’s strategic planning processes take account of the broader picture of national expectations and benchmarks, and ensure congruence between these and the achievement targets that are set for individual students. An inclusive ethos prevails within the school, with acceptance of collective responsibility for best possible learning outcomes for all students.

Strategic Intention 7 Curriculum and pedagogy need to be designed and planned to ensure that the outcome targets for each student are matched by relevant learning activities and processes. Although this provision may be made through a number of elements, they should “jigsaw” together with the whole possibly exceeding the sum of its parts in relation to essential learnings for the future.

Strategic Intention 8 A school may need to design new curriculum to optimise the learning potential of specific students. Sharing the overall provision for a student with other learning and teaching entities may be an option.

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Strategic Intention 9 Meeting the future outcome targets for students requires schools to avidly seek to identify and encompass emerging better practices. Forming strategic alliances or networks with other schools or entities may assist in these processes by sharing expertise, experience and cost. Kyle’s Personalised Curriculum enhances the Essential Learnings framework with support programs that address his needs and aspirations (Figure 7).

Strategic Intention 10 The deployment of resources (learning time, student focused funding and learning space) in the best interests of students achieving their outcome targets is central to creating school budgets. Budget planning should include demonstration of the links between planned student learning and the deployment of all resources. The student-focused funding model provides $11,050 AUD per annum to support Kyle’s learning. Core student learning (Years 7–8) Student in a high needs school Year 7–9 student in a very high needs school Year 7–8 student identified at exceptional risk

Breakfast Program: nutrition, presentation, literacy and numeracy Mentor Program: Linking personal aspiration to real life experience and support

Interdisciplinary learning

$5,800 $500 $1,750 $3,000

Communication Design, Creativity & Technology ICT Thinking

Support programs

Discipline-based learning

Physical, personal and social learning

The Arts English Mathematics Science

Health & PE

Society & the Environment

Interpersonal development Personal learning management Civics & Citizenship

Figure 7.

A personalised curriculum for Kyle

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Although his learning acceleration to date has been superb it was successfully argued at the end of Year 8 that he is still a “student at high risk.” He qualifies for continued funding to retain his participation in the mentoring program with expansion to include onsite workplace experience in an automotive plant for the Friday of each school week. Flexibility in diminishing learning time for Kyle in some areas to accommodate this variation was demonstrated in the planning processes.

Strategic Intention 11 The capacity of the school to value-add to student learning is the measure of the degree to which each student exceeds his/her predicted outcomes in relation to nature, needs attainments and aspirations. Kyle’s school analysed his attainments at the end of primary school. According to norms his predicted outcomes were well below average. The school set out to significantly raise the expectations in line with his potential and aspirations and, most importantly, put in place significantly higher than average levels of support to help close the gaps. His achievement at Year 8 of the targets set (as outlined under Strategic Intention 2) reflects the incredible value that was added to learning in his case.

Strategic Intention 12 The monitoring, evaluation and review of all school programs and processes should be focused on the degree of achievement of related student outcome targets. There was a continual process of adjustment as Kyle’s progress towards outcome targets was monitored. Review, evaluation, re-design of personalised programs where necessary, and celebration of success were all part of this component of the studentfocused planning model Kyle is now ready to proceed to Year 9 with his end of Year 10 targets well in sight. Monitoring and progress reporting is being retained at previous levels, with provision for a return to before school tutoring should Kyle begin to falter on the way to achieving his subject target levels. His personalised learning plan has succeeded in adding value to the learning outcomes of a highly at risk student. The possibility of Kyle proceeding to positively participate in society is greatly increased.

Bibliography Caldwell, B. (2003). “School-based management and its potential to enhance decentralisation in education.” Paper presented as an invited Inaugural Keynote address at the Third International Forum on Education Reform hosted by the National Education Council of Thailand, August 2003. Caldwell, B. (2004a). Re-imagining the Self-Managing School. England: Specialist School Trust. Caldwell, B. (2004b). “The transformation of education through networking.” Paper presented in Hong Kong in association with the Education and Manpower Bureau, Education Technology Connection (HK) Ltd. and Hong Kong Education City. Available: http://www.educationaltransformations.com.au

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Caldwell, B., & Spinks, J. (1988). The self-managing school. London: Falmer Press. Caldwell, B., & Spinks, J. (1992). Leading the self-manging school. London: Falmer Press. Caldwell, B., & Spinks, J. (1998). Beyond the self-managing school. London: Falmer Press. DECS Statement of Directions 2005–2010. Department of education and children’s services, South Australia. Available: http://www.decs.sa.gov.au Department for Education and Training, Victoria. (November 2003). The blueprint for government schools: Future directions for education in the Victorian government school system. Available at http://www. sofweb.vic.edu.au/blueprint Department of Education, Tasmania. (2002). Essential learnings, DoE, Tasmania. Available: http://www. education.tas.gov.au/ocll/publications DfES (Department for Education and Skills) (England). (2004). Five year strategy for children and learners. Presented to Parliament by the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, July 2004. London: DfES. “Guide to the 2005 Indicative student resource package,” Department of Education and Training, Victoria. Available: http://www.sofweb.vic.edu.au/sgb/pdfs/2005IndicativeGuide.pdf “Guide to the 2006 Indicative Student Resource Package,” Department of Education and Training, Victoria, Australia. Available: http://www.sofweb.vic.edu.au/srp Hargreaves, D. (2004a). Personalised learning: Next steps in working laterally. England: Specialist School Trust. Hargreaves, D. (2004b). Personalised learning – 2: Student voice and assessment for learning. England: Specialist School Trust. Hopkins, D. (2005). System Leadership and School Transformation. Keynote presentation to the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust 13th National Conference, November 2004, Birmingham. Lamb, S. (2004). Student and school characteristics: Equity funding for RAM. Research report prepared for the Department of Education and Training, Victoria. (unpublished) Lamb, S., Walstab, A., Teese, R., Vickers, M., & Rumberger, R. (2004) Staying on at school: Improving student retention in Australia. Prepared for MCEETYA. Available: http://www.education. qld.au/publication New Student Report Cards. (2005). Pamphlet published by the Department of Education and Training, Victoria. Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Available: http://www.pisa.oecd.org Spinks, J. (2004). “The Pursuit of Equity through Schooling.” Paper presented in Ontario, Canada at the Small High School Summit of the Upper Canada District School Board, November 2004. Spinks, J. (2005a). “Resourcing Student Learning for the Future.” Paper presented at the British Specialist Schools Trust International Conference, June 2005, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Spinks, J. (2005b). Resourcing Student Learning for the Future. Research report prepared for the South Australian Secondary Schools Principals Association. Taylor, C., & Ryan, C. (2005). Excellence in education: The making of great schools. London: David Fulton Publishers. Teese, R. (2003). “Ending failure in our schools: the challenges for public sector management and higher education.” Paper presented as an Inaugural Professorial Lecture, Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne, November 2003. TIMSS, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. Available: http://isc.bc.edu/timss2003.html Victorian Essential Learning Standards (VELS). (2005). Introduction to the Standards. Available: http://vels.vcaa.vic.edu.au/about/

Section 4 ACCOUNTABILITY AND DIVERSITY, SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT

26 SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT (SESI): LINKS WITH THE INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS/ ACCOUNTABILITY AGENDA David Reynolds

Introduction The two disciplines of school effectiveness and school improvement (SESI) represent perhaps the most successful disciplinary invention in education that there has been for 20 or 30 years, as the chapters in this volume make clear. If one were looking only at the scale of the quantity of research produced over this time, the two disciplines might have generated perhaps 500 journal articles or other outputs by the late 1980s, but 2,000 by the time of the literature review in the late 1990s conducted by Teddlie and Reynolds (2000). A corresponding review now would probably generate 3,000, or more, with perhaps 40–50 countries now having some research that can be labelled as from within the SESI paradigm. It is not just the sheer quantity of research that is impressive – it has begun to show considerable intellectual progress in such areas as its enhanced focus upon teaching and learning within school classrooms (Muijs & Reynolds, 2005), a focus upon contextual variation in “what works” in accordance with different kinds of catchment areas (Gray et al., 1999) and a focus upon a sophisticated merger of effectiveness and improvement findings (Hopkins & Reynolds, 2001) to generate “third age” improvement programs that are instructionally focussed, context relevant, reliable in implementation, focussed upon building capacity and evaluated by the use of both “hard” and more “soft” qualitative data. It is perhaps a measure of our importance and progress that there has been a considerable volume of criticisms of the field (e.g., Thrupp, 2001, 2002) as well as robust defence (Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000), since there is no point in critics concerning themselves with fields that are unimportant. But, overall, the impact on policy and practice of the bodies of knowledge that have been generated, the methodological approaches utilised and the conceptualisations of school education that have been produced have been patchy across the world and have probably overall been no more than marginal in size. The international achievement surveys from the IEA or the OECD, such as the Program for International Student 471 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 471–484. © 2007 Springer.

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Achievement (PISA) or the seminal Third International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS), have been increasingly part of the national educational discourse in different countries, but the effectiveness and improvement knowledge bases have been raided selectively and partially by politicians and policymakers as a result. In some countries, such as the United Kingdom there have been major links with policy and, to a lesser extent, practice. In the Netherlands, which has a research community of similar size to that of the UK, the links are tenuous. The purpose of this chapter is to examine these paradoxical findings – of substantial impact within some societies, yet of limited impact across the world. The purpose is also to assess what may be the problems within the knowledge bases that have restricted take up and to assess what kinds of educational policies are suggested by rational assessment of the quality and quantity of the SESI evidence produced.

The International Surveys of Educational Achievement These surveys have had an increasingly wide reach into the educational discourses of countries and indeed the world since they began with the IEA Mathematics and Science studies in the early 1970s (see review in Reynolds & Farrell, 1996). The publication of the 2001 PISA study was especially significant, given the number of findings that were controversial. Germany, noted for a strong performance in the IEA studies historically, performed poorly, probably because of the tendency for the third tier of their system to be adversely affected by economic difficulties in the country such as unemployment and possibly by the tendency of this sector to be over supplied with the children of Turkish and North African guest workers, thereby further affecting the “balance” of the schools. A major national debate ensued, very little of which related to instructional or teaching issues, where Germany has historically been very strong in its research underpinnings. In the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, the more favourable PISA rankings gave cause for considerable satisfaction that educational policies were seen to be working, although interestingly the policies pursued in the three countries were very different in the degree of autonomy permitted to the regional/local level (little in the UK – substantial in the other two countries) and the degree of central specification of curriculum content and teaching methods (substantial in the UK – less in the other two countries). However, the interest of the international surveys lies in what they, firstly, cannot say: ●

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Their absence of measures of home background and related factors means that they are unable to say whether national differences in achievement scores relate to the operation of the educational system and its processes, or the influence of broader cultural, social and economic factors (the most likely explanation for the strong Finnish performance); The absence of actual real time observations of classroom teaching and learning processes makes it impossible to assess whether it is “micro” or “macro” level, classroom or school processes that may be responsible for educational effects

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(limited research funding is clearly responsible for this absence of classroom observations). Two major substantive intellectual findings, apart from the international “horse race” results, came out of the study. Firstly, the thesis expounded in The Learning Gap (Stigler & Heibert, 1999) concerning how Japanese education facilitated the professional development of its teachers through lesson observation at the classroom level, allied to subsequent group based activity, had an international audience in multiple countries although whether this generated policy changes is unclear. Since this particular study was produced by only limited analysis of the video tapes of classroom lessons that were only partially collected internationally, it is easy to see the potential benefits of “classroom” based research approaches to the improvement of practice, a subject we will return to later. Secondly, the presence within the high achieving group of countries of those countries with selective tri-partite systems (the Netherlands) as well as those with comprehensive systems (Finland) encourages a view that sees effective educational processes as “contingent” upon the national and local contexts that schools are in. Australia’s similar positive performance (in a nation with approximately 30% of pupils being educated in private or private Church institutions) to that of Canada (in a nation with very little of either provision) reinforces the point. In spite of the likely importance of “teaching” and the apparent unimportance of the system-level organisational factors, it is on system level factors that discussion in most societies is centred upon. Whether this is due to the conceptual difficulty of policy makers and politicians relating to those aspects of schools that they are not directly responsible for (i.e., classrooms) is unclear. Whether this state of affairs would be improved if international comparative work concentrated upon more sensitive description of classroom processes is unclear, but possible.

The Impact of SESI upon Different Countries Research and practice in the SESI paradigm has many characteristics from which one would have predicted high levels of take up across the countries of the world. Generally, although effectiveness and improvement have had very different intellectual histories (Reynolds, Hopkins, & Stoll, 1993) in the 1990s, with improvement taking a more “appreciative” stance towards the efforts of schools and teachers and effectiveness being more judgemental as to whether standards have been attained, by 2000 both SE and SI were united in (Hopkins & Reynolds, 2001): ● ●

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Focussing upon student outcomes; Building capacity amongst practitioners to act on the contents of the knowledge bases; Ensuring that attempts to help schools are “reliable” in that they are true to the designs of the implementers.

Both SE and SI related to what has been called “international performance orientated reform,” in which there are explicit goals for student performance, standards for judging

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the success or not of students in reaching the goals, information about “success” or “failure” that is circulated among the constituent parts of the system and interventions that attempt to rectify any system shortcomings, using the “contingencies” of financial rewards and coercive central and/or local state involvement. Given the closeness of the SESI paradigm and the needs of policy makers, it is therefore surprising not to see more direct effects. Most accounts of SESI from advocates (Reynolds, Sammons, Stoll, Barber, & Hillman, 1996) and critics (Thrupp, 2001, 2002) do grant that the field has had influence in the following ways, indirectly, through influencing the climate of educational opinion by: ●

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Encouraging a focus upon factors within the educational system, rather than the broader social and environmental factors, that can affect pupils; Exposing variability in student achievement in different schools, and in different social contexts within countries, thereby contributing to the accountability culture and systems now in evidence in many societies; Developing a knowledge base about “what works” that can aid the generation of effective practices by practitioners, through initial education and subsequent training; Combating pessimism that had resulted in an international trend towards reduced levels of educational expenditure; Aiding the development of performance indicators to measure educational outcomes and processes.

However, direct influences of the knowledge bases of SESI are more difficult to discern. The United States had a flourishing and high profile phase of development for school effectiveness in the early 1980s, but the simplicity, and “one size fits all” nature of the models being proposed, made long term impact rare. The American restructuring movement drew from SESI insights, merged with a “cultural” emphasis taken from the sociology of education, but not until the context specific work into different effectiveness models of Teddlie and Stringfield (1993), and the Federally funded Special Strategies, could SESI be said to have been more than a minor influence again on policy and practice. In the case of the Special Strategies, indeed, it is clear that instructional effectiveness, accelerated learning, IT-related bodies of knowledge and psychological approaches were at least as powerful determinants of program content as SESI. Australia showed an early influence, again, and indeed, the Federal government sponsored a national effort across all States to disseminate the literature on “what worked” as it existed, plus a national survey of educational producers (teachers) and consumers (parents and students). But, as in the United States, enthusiasm turned to improvement approaches that owed more to “cultural” notions from the sociology of education than to SESI. Within Europe, the impact of SESI has been highly variable. In Scandinavia, the international achievement surveys have had impact, but only the school improvement part of the SESI discipline seems to have resonated with practitioners in terms of use. Influence in the policy making community seems highly limited. Most of continental Europe has not had a major presence of the SESI research community, so impact has been correspondingly minimal. In the Netherlands, by contrast,

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there has been a very large research orientated SESI community, with major contributions in the areas of teacher effectiveness (Creemers, 1994), theoretical modelling (Scheerens, 1992; Scheerens & Bosker, 1997) and more recently, in the merger of the improvement “vehicle” with the “effectiveness” contents. However, a recent review (Reezigt, Creemers & De Jong, 2003, p. 78) noted that “there are no strong relationships in the Netherlands between teacher evaluation, staff development, teacher improvement and school improvement. Unfortunately, strong links between effectiveness research and improvement are also absent in the Netherlands.” Only in the influence of research upon the evaluation system used by the central Inspectorate is there any seen SESI impact. It is undoubtedly in the United Kingdom, and particularly within England within the four nations of the United Kingdom, that SESI has had the most apparent impact. This has included: ●

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The communication of SESI findings direct to schools from 1997, and the presence of a core unit within the Education Ministry (with the title interestingly of “Standards and Effectiveness Unit”) that translated SESI findings into national policies; The use of SESI findings to inform the Inspection Framework of OFSTED (Sammons, Hillman, & Mortimore, 1994), and inform the basic skills strategy in schools (DfEE, 1998), and to develop the school performance management system (DfEE, 2000); The use of SESI insights to understand the particular problems of ineffective schools (Reynolds, 1996; Stoll & Fink, 1996); The use of SESI by Higher Education institutions to offer continuing professional development opportunities for teachers, often involving the use of specially developed networks [such as the School Improvement Network (SIN) at the London Institute of Education].

Further details of United Kingdom SESI research are to be found in Reynolds et al. (1996), Gray, Reynolds, Fitz-Gibbon, & Jesson (1996), Reynolds, Hopkins, Potter, & Chapman (2001) and Reynolds (1999). It is possible, indeed likely, that part of the reason for the limited effect of SESI across the countries of the world is due to its somewhat simplistic historical nature. We now move on to three specific areas where the SESI paradigm has been simplistic in its understandings, and been used to generate educational levers of perhaps less than optimum power.

The Importance of Contextual Variation It is clear that, historically, whilst there is considerable variation between schools in the contexts that they exist within, national educational policies and school improvement programs across the world have tended towards universal programs which treat all schools the same. Our need to move intellectually and practically in this area has been highlighted by a number of things. Firstly, a comprehensive analysis of the experience of schools

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enjoying different improvement trajectories over time (Gray et al., 1999) revealed interesting differences between the “rapid improver” schools in terms of the precise improvement designs being followed, differences that were related to the nature of their catchment areas. One school in a relatively affluent catchment area generated improvement through a sophisticated program involving the generation of a discourse concerning “effective teaching” at Department level, whilst another school in a more disadvantaged area achieved equally impressive improvement over time through an approach involving simple “muscularity” in the enforcement of core school rules concerning school uniform, freedom in leaving the school site and behaviour within lessons. The second body of evidence which suggests a need for context specificity in educational policies is that which shows context specificity in school effectiveness factors [see Teddlie & Reynolds (2000) for a review]. As an example, the American research of Teddlie and Stringfield (1993) suggests that effective schools in middle socio-economic status (SES) areas differed from equally effective schools in low socio-economic areas in the following ways: ● ●

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External academic rewards were emphasised more in low SES schools; Parental involvement was encouraged in middle SES schools but many low SES schools created boundaries to “buffer” their schools from their parents; Headteachers in middle SES schools were effective managers, whilst those in low SES schools tended to be initiators; Curriculum focused on the basic skills in low SES schools, whilst effective middle SES schools had an expanded curriculum.

The teacher effectiveness literature also contains evidence of context specificity in terms of what is appropriate to generate optimum teaching and learning. Whilst some factors apply across all school contexts (such as having high expectations of what children can achieve or “lesson structure”), certain factors apply only in certain environmental contexts. At classroom level, an example might be that the factor of “proceeding in small steps with consolidation if necessary” is important for all children who are learning to read for the first time in all contexts, whilst in the contexts inhabited by lower social class or lower attaining children, it seems to be necessary to ensure high learning gain through the use of small “steps” for teaching all knowledge and not just knowledge that is new, before moving on to other approaches. Borich (1996) gives the following summary of teacher factors that may be necessary to achieve high achievement gains in classrooms in two different social settings, those of low SES and those of middle/high SES. Effective practices within low SES contexts involve the teacher behaviours of: ● ● ● ● ●

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Generating a warm and supportive affect by letting children know help is available; Getting a response, any response, before moving on to the next bit of material; Presenting material in small bits, with a chance to practice before moving on; Showing how bits of the lesson fit together before moving on; Emphasising knowledge and application before abstraction, putting the concrete first; Giving immediate help (through the help of peers perhaps);

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Generating strong structure, ground flow and well planned transitions; The use of individually differentiated material; The use of the experiences of pupils.

Effective practices within middle SES contexts involve the teacher behaviours of: ● ● ● ●

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Requiring extended reasoning; Posing questions that require associations and generalisations; Giving difficult material; The use of projects that require independent judgement, discovery, problem solving and the use of original information; Encouraging learners to take responsibility for their own learning; Very rich verbalising.

Other hints of context specificity in what it is necessary to do to generate effective schools relate to urbanicity, the age phase of the pupils in schools, the governance structure of schools and the district/local education authorities that schools are located in. A final important contextual factor is the level of effectiveness of a school. Speculation on what is necessary has been more prevalent than original research evidence (see Hopkins, Harris, & Jackson (1997) and Reynolds (1996) for early speculations on this theme) but experience suggests the following picture. Ineffective schools by definition cannot improve themselves and are likely to be “stuck” schools (Stoll & Fink, 1996) that need a high level of external support to improve. Foundational, basic interventions need to be made that address core curricular and organisational issues, in order to build the confidence and competence to continue. These include: ● ● ●

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Change at leadership level, often involving the Headteacher and senior management; Provision of early, intensive, outside support; A short term focus on things that are relatively easy to change (e.g., the environment, attendance, uniform); A focus on managing learning behaviour, not on behaviour management; Intensive work on reskilling teams of teachers in a limited specific repertoire of teaching/learning styles; Progressive restructuring to generate new opportunities for leadership, collaboration and planning; Withdrawal of external pressure/inspection in order to remove fear and give space to grow.

Averagely effective schools need to simplify and refine their developmental priorities, focus upon specific teaching and learning issues and build capacity within the school to support this work. This would usually involve a moderate level of external support, but it is possible for some of these schools to some degree to improve themselves. Developmental strategies for this type of school include: ● ● ●

Change in leadership strategies, rather than personnel; Improving the educational quality of the school environment; Targeting particular students at certain thresholds (across the ability range);

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Talking to pupils about their aspirations; Charting the internal variation within the school utilising systems to measure academic achievement/performance and surveys of student/staff opinion; Benchmarking against the school’s internal best practice, given that such typical schools are likely to have within them individual teachers and departments that are unusually effective.

Effective schools need to adopt specific strategies that ensure the school remains a “moving” school that continues to enhance pupil performance. In these schools, external support, although often welcomed, is not necessary, as the school will have the competence to search out and create its own support networks. Exposure to new ideas and practices, and collaboration through consortia or “pairing” type arrangements, seem to be most common in these situations. Also, these schools are likely to have the levels of professional competence that would permit within school “buddying” and learning by teachers from others within the school. Strategies likely to prove effective in these kinds of schools are: ●

●

●

●

Giving teachers intellectual and practical space to experiment with novel forms of curriculum, teaching and learning; Restructuring of the learning level, and its relationship to the other levels within schools; The articulation and discussion of educational values and the practices associated with different value positions; The empowerment of students in learning situations, utilising the students to drive forward educational change.

We should note that differentiated policies are to be applied in different contexts, and if the different contexts are to be established in terms of a number of dimensions such as catchment area, effectiveness level and improvement trajectory, to name but three, then the “audit” of where schools are in terms of their existing “states” becomes of considerable importance. Such an audit of schools would need to cover: ● ● ●

●

● ●

Multiple levels of the school (parents, students, teachers, schools/headteachers); Behavioural variables, particularly the existing behaviour of students and teachers; Cognitive variables, particularly the educational understandings that individuals exhibit; Attitudinal variables, particularly the emotions and feelings of individuals associated with a school; Contextual variables, as noted earlier; Relational variables, particularly the nature of friendship and professional associations.

The Importance of the Learning Level Educational policies historically have been poorly linked – conceptually and practically – with the classroom or “learning level.” The great majority of the “levers” that have been pulled are at the school level, such as through development planning or whole school

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improvement planning, and although there is a clear intention in most of these initiatives for classroom teaching and student learning to be impacted upon, the links in policies between the school “level” and the “level” of the classroom are poorly conceptualised, rarely explicit and, even more rarely, practically drawn in the fine print. Whilst it is clearly important to maximise school level factors in their effectiveness, it is important to note that the most powerful intervention strategies, such as the “Success for All” program of Slavin (1996), have a pronounced focus upon pulling the lever of the “instructional” level, as well as ensuring school level conditions conducive to instruction. Indeed, in this program, which generates both the highest levels of achievement gain ever seen in educational research and achievement gains that are (most unusually) higher amongst initially lower achieving students, the school level part of the program is only seen as a potentiator of classroom level change and is not seen as possessing power in its own right. The difficulty of focussing on classrooms is that research and scholarship in this area has been notably less frequent in recent years than that on the school level factors which influence learning and school level improvement, although there are now more contributors than before from the United Kingdom, and Australia, the United States and the Netherlands are sites of continuing interest in this field. Further difficulty is caused by the concentration in the existing literature upon academic achievement outcomes, rather than the broader social and affective outcomes which are likely to be of considerable importance in a world where the individual attributes of learners are likely to be of considerable importance in affecting their capacity to learn. Also, new perspectives on the process of learning itself have reconceptualised teaching as an active process in which students construct knowledge and skills by working with the content, which differs from the passive role of students as to be “instructed” that is in evidence in some teacher effectiveness research. Whereas older models of instruction aim at direct transfer, the new models consider learning as an active part of knowledge construction, in which the student plays the active part. Ideas about active learning also change the role of the teacher in that the student is responsible for learning. The teacher is seen as a manager, an orchestrator of that learning process and is no longer seen as a person who delivers the content and the instruction, but as a supervisor and a counsellor. The new views on learning, especially the new views on the responsibilities of teachers and students in the learning process, have resulted in new models for instruction. The new models put more emphasis on the students as active, responsible learners in cooperation with their teachers and with other students in cooperative learning, classroom discourse and interactive instruction. However, the precise strength of these new technologies of instruction in achieving their goals remains somewhat unclear, as is the precise utility of these methods for educational policies. Nevertheless, the power of a “classroom level” based approach is shown by the experience of Japan, reported in The Teaching Gap (Stigler & Heibert, 1999) mentioned earlier. Much is made in this study of the professional development activities of Japanese teachers, who adopt a “problem solving” orientation to their teaching, with the dominant form of in-service training being the lesson study. In lesson study, groups of teachers meet regularly over long periods of time (ranging from several months to a year) to work on the design, implementation, testing and improvement of one or

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several “research lessons.” By all indications, report Stigler and Heibert (1999, p. 110), lesson study is extremely popular and highly valued by Japanese teachers, especially at the elementary school level. It is the linchpin of the improvement process, and the premise behind lesson study is simple: If you want to improve teaching, the most effective place to do so is in the context of a classroom lesson. If you start with lessons, the problem of how to apply research findings in the classroom disappears. The improvements are devised within the classroom in the first place. The challenge now becomes that of identifying the kinds of changes that will improve student learning in the classroom and, once the changes are identified, of sharing this knowledge with other teachers who face similar problems, or share similar goals in the classroom.

The Importance of Within School Variation Variation in the achievements of pupils within their schools, rather than variation between schools, has come into focus recently in the United Kingdom because of two factors: ●

●

The PISA results showing 80% of student achievement variation being within schools, a high figure by international standards; The accumulation of evidence that “teacher effects” on pupils are greater than school effects.

There are two factors to look at: ● ●

Variation by teacher in the primary school; Variation by Department in the secondary school.

On the first of these, Table 1 shows results from some UK studies of mathematics achievement in primary schools, with multi-level modelling being used to attribute results to individual factors, to school factors and to class factors (i.e., the individual teacher). Of the approximately 20% of variance that is due to educational factors in these data (a pretty standard finding), approximately four times as much is due to the effects of the teacher than that of the school (Muijs & Reynolds, 2000, 2002). Moving on to look at Departmental variation, this is large too. In the 65–75% of schools in which progress from KS2 to KS3 is roughly in line with expectations, if one

Table 1.

Year 1 Year 2 Year 3

Percentage of variance at the school, classroom and pupil levels School

Class

Individual

3.5 3.7 5.1

11.2 14.5 21.8

85.3 81.6 73.1

Year above is the year of the study itself.

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takes six groups (boys and girls in the three core subjects of English, Maths and Science): ●

●

80% of schools show value added significantly higher or lower than might be expected in at least one group; over a three year period, 50% of schools have at least one subject in which progress would put them in the top 20% nationally in the subject concerned (Fischer Trust, 2006).

There is some evidence that the unreliability or variability of the UK educational system is more marked than that of many other societies (see the extreme right hand column of Table 2 and compare the variance at school level of the UK and Taiwan, for example). The factors responsible for this within school variation in performance would seem to be the following: ●

●

●

individual variation in teacher competence that is not sufficiently reduced by initial training or subsequent continuing professional development; unreliable implementation of national strategies, school improvement programs and the like in which the gap between the “floor” of less competent teachers and the “ceiling” of more competent teachers widens as the programs maximise preexisting variation; the effects of recent increased pressures in education leading to enhanced difficulties in “coping” for the less competent teachers, whilst the more competent “thrive on chaos,” generating enhanced differentiation between professionals.

Interestingly, the school effectiveness knowledge base suggests that the schools that are consistent outperformers are intolerant of large negatives, reduce variation in teacher performance and are reliable and consistent. It is more ineffective schools which show the largest range of within school variation. Interestingly also, the school

Table 2. Percentages of variance to be explained at school level before and after correction for student background variables

USA UK Taiwan Norway Hong Kong Netherlands Ireland Australia

Intake to end Year 1 A1 unconditional model

Intake to end Year 1 B1 with background covariates

End Year 1 to end Year 2 A2 unconditional model

End Year 1 to end Year 2 B2 with background covariates

Intake to end Year 2C

0.35 0.21 0.03 0.13 0.18 0.16 0.09 0.18

0.29 0.11 0.02 0.04 0.10 0.08 0.00 0.13

0.37 0.22 0.07 0.11 0.02 0.17 0.11 0.22

0.20 0.07 0.04 0.06 0.02 0.04 0.01 0.16

0.25 0.10 0.04 0.08 0.05 0.15 0.12 0.04

Source: Reynolds et al., 2005.

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improvement knowledge base suggests that gains vary more within improvement projects than between them, and that schools achieve greater gain by pursuing any project thoroughly rather than by choosing one project rather than another, the “fidelity of implementation” issue. Barriers to dealing with within school variation may be the following: ●

●

●

●

●

●

●

●

weak school management that finds it hard to confront the issue and to develop mechanisms to learn from best practice; false modesty on the part of effective teachers/Departments, perhaps associated with a misplaced egalitarianism that does not recognise helping other practitioners who are less effective because this would mean marking the less effective out and labelling them; small schools in which the range may be less and therefore more difficult to use, and the one/two person Departments that may make performance evaluation by subject a highly personal activity; the absence of systems to “buddy” the less good with the better, because of the intense micro-political issues in this area; budget/time constraints that make it difficult to create skill sharing systems since they require time, space and buy out of teaching for observation/debriefing etc; the difficulty of separating out the personal reasons for some teachers/ Departments more effective practice from the methods that are being used, since all factors appear confounded with each other; the difficulty in secondary schools of getting Departments to see any utility in swapping practice when the subject cultures of Departments are so strong (“it’s not like that in art”); the practice of using exceptional individuals to be the models for others when the exceptional may often be idiosyncratic and utilising their character as much as any distinctive methods. The exceptional may be so far in advance of the remainder of the staff in a school that they cannot be imitated.

But the advantage to educational policies of a “within school variation informed” set of thinking is as follows: ●

●

●

While it might not be possible to have policies for what happens in individual classrooms, this might be feasible at the subject Departmental level in a secondary school or the “year” level in a primary school. Targeting these means that policy can get far closer to what ought to be the real focus, the classroom level, than if it only addresses the school level; While not every school is effective, most schools will have within themselves some practice that is relatively more effective than elsewhere in the school. Every school can therefore look for generally applicable good practice from within its own internal conditions; It might well be that one limitation to whole-school self-evaluation and improvement is that Headteachers are often overloaded, because of having to deal with problems that should fall to middle managers, and so lack the time to think strategically. Targeting sub-groups within the school could get round that;

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Within-school units of policy intervention such as years or subjects are smaller and, therefore, potentially more open to being changed than those at “whole school” level; Teachers in general, and those teachers in less effective schools in particular, seem to be more influenced by classroom-based policies that are close to their focal concerns of teaching and curriculum and less by policies that are ‘managerial’ and orientated to the school level.

Conclusion What seems to have happened with SESI is that a somewhat unsophisticated, undeveloped knowledge base which reflected the discipline in the mid to late 1990s either was used by politicians and policymakers to generate or support policies that were unsophisticated, or more likely was ignored in those many countries that wanted more sophisticated policies in the first place. Where countries used SESI directly, the blunt lever of policies that were “one size fits all,” were school rather than classroom based and which were whole school rather than within school orientated inevitably generated policies that failed, since these levers lacked power. The tragedy of the situation is that SESI, in the last 5 or 6 years, has probably now been able to conceptualise and generate much more powerful levers that may now stand a chance of improving outcomes, yet the SESI enterprise has been discredited in the minds of the policy makers and practitioners because of its historic association with policies that have failed. It would be ironic if SESI had succeeded in having an effect in generating an “accountability and control” culture, and associated policies, but was now unable to influence that culture at precisely the time when its paradigm was most relevant, most powerful and most valid. The generation of contextually varied improvement, the focus on the teaching and learning level rather than the school level and the concern with using within school variation as an engine of improvement are all sophisticated, powerful strategies. Whether it is possible to reach policy makers and practitioners with these new sets of policies in the way that, indirectly or directly, they were influenced in many settings by the old policies, remains unclear.

References Borich, G. (1996). Effective teaching methods (3rd ed.). New York: Macmillan. Creemers, B. (1994). The effective classroom. London: Cassell. DfEE. (1998). The implementation of the national numeracy strategy (The final report of the numeracy task force). London: DfEE. DfEE. (2000). Performance management framework in schools – April 2000. Available: http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/docbank/index.cfm/id
1204 (Accessed: 24 January 2003). Fischer Trust. (2006). Departmental variation in secondary schools. Cowbridge: Fischer Trust. Gray, J., Hopkins, D., Reynolds, D., Wilcox, B., Farell, S., & Jesson, D. (1999). Improving Schools: Performance and potential. Buckingham: Open University Press.

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Gray, J., Reynolds, D., Fitz-Gibbon, C., & Jesson, D. (Eds.). (1996). Merging traditions: The future of research on school effectiveness and school improvement. London: Cassell. Hopkins, D., Harris, A., & Jackson, D. (1997). Understanding the school’s capacity for development: Growth states and strategies. School Leadership and Management, 17, 401–411. Hopkins, D., & Reynolds, D. (2001). The past, present and future of school improvement: Towards the third age. British Educational Research Journal, 27(4), 459–475. Muijs, D., & Reynolds, D. (2000). School effectiveness and teacher effectiveness in mathematics: Some preliminary findings from the evaluation of the Mathematics Enhancement Program (Primary). School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 11(3), 273–303. Muijs, D., & Reynolds, D. (2002). Teachers’ beliefs and behaviours: What really matters? Journal of Classroom Interaction, 37(2), 3–15. Muijs, D., & Reynolds, D. (2005). Effective teaching: Evidence and practice (2nd ed.). London: Sage. Reezigt, G. J., Creemers, B. P. M., & DeJong, R. (2003). Teacher evaluation in the Netherlands and its relationship to educational Effectiveness research. Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education, 17(1), 67–81. Reynolds, D. (1996). Turning around ineffective schools: Some evidence and some speculations. In J. Gray, D. Reynolds, C. Fitz-Gibbon, & D. Jesson (Eds.), Merging traditions: The future of research on school effectiveness and school improvement (pp. 150–162). London: Cassell. Reynolds, D. (1999). School effectiveness, school improvement and contemporary educational policies. In J. Demaine (Ed.), Contemporary Educational Policy and Politics (pp. 65–81). London: Macmillan. Reynolds, D., Creemers, B. P. M., Stringfield, S., Teddlie, C., & Schaffer, G. (2005). World class schools: International perspectives on school effectiveness. London: Routledge. Reynolds, D., & Farrell, S. (1996). Worlds apart? London: OFSTED. Reynolds, D., Hopkins, D., Potter, D., & Chapman, C. (2001). School improvement for schools facing challenging circumstances: A review of the literature, (paper prepared for the Regional Conferences for Schools Facing Challenging Circumstances), May. London: Department for Education and Employment. Reynolds, D., Hopkins, D., & Stoll, L. (1993). Linking school effectiveness knowledge and school improvement practice: Towards a synergy. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 4, 37–58. Reynolds, D., Sammons, P., Stoll, L., Barber, M., & Hillman, J. (1996). School effectiveness and school improvement in the United Kingdom. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 7(2), 133–158. Sammons, P., Hillman, J., & Mortimore, P. (1994). Key characteristics of effective schools: A review of school effectiveness research. London: OFSTED. Scheerens, J. (1992). Effective schooling: Research, theory and practice. London: Cassell. Scheerens, J., & Bosker, R. (1997). The foundations of educational effectiveness. Oxford: Pergamon. Slavin, R. E. (1996). Education for all. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger. Stigler, J. W., & Heibert, J. (1999). The teaching gap. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Stoll, L., & Fink, D. (1996). Changing our schools. Buckingham: Open University Press. Teddlie, C., & Reynolds, D. (2000). The international handbook of school effectiveness research. London: Falmer Press. Teddlie, C., & Stringfield, S. (1993). Schools make a difference: Lessons learned from a ten year study of school effects. New York: Teachers College Press. Thrupp, M. (2001). School effectiveness research: Time for a new research agenda. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12, 7–40. Thrupp, M. (2002). Why “Meddling” is necessary: A response to Teddlie, Reynolds, Townsend, Scheerens, Bosker, & Creemers. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 13(1), 1–14.

27 EVOLUTION OF SCHOOL PERFORMANCE RESEARCH IN THE USA: FROM SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS TO SCHOOL ACCOUNTABILITY AND BACK Susan Kochan

Few Congressional actions have had so dramatic an impact on American pubic education as the 2001 reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, otherwise known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Among its many mandates are stringent new requirements for state accountability systems as a condition of federal aid for disadvantaged children. NCLB is so towering a milestone that it is easy to forget that modern education performance monitoring in the United States began during the Civil Rights era, and the measurement problems that appear so confounding today have challenged researchers for nearly half a century. To put today’s issues into perspective, we trace the development of school performance monitoring down the parallel paths of school effectiveness and school indicator research. We also describe the evolution of school performance monitoring systems into school accountability systems, and discuss the promise that school effectiveness research models hold for testing the validity of high-stakes accountability decisions that result in school sanctions.

Introduction A decade after Brown vs. Board of Education, the U.S. Congress authorized a landmark study to measure the educational opportunities available to Americans of all races, religions, and income levels. The authors of the Equality of Education Opportunity Survey (EEOS) – which is better known today as the “Coleman Report” – found what thenPresident Lyndon Baines Johnson expected to find: that educational opportunities in 1964 were “largely unequal in most regions of the country” (Coleman et al., 1966, p. 3). The EEOS findings helped fuel Johnson’s Great Society agenda. More pertinent to this chapter are three features of the EEOS itself. First, the EEOS was the first large-scale effort to measure what American children actually learn at school and marked the beginning of modern education performance 485 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 485–502. © 2007 Springer.

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monitoring in the United States. Second, the Coleman team based its conclusions upon the analysis of input and output variables that already were being collected. The selection of indicators therefore was shaped as much by what data were available as by the intuitive importance of the measures themselves. The dilemma that the EEOS researchers confronted – how to reduce the complex inputs, processes, and outcomes of schooling to a parsimonious set of insightful indicators that are relevant across diverse settings – is a challenge that still confronts analysts today. The third memorable feature of the Coleman Report is its authors’ conclusion that family background accounts for most of the between-school variance in student performance, with only “a small fraction of differences in student achievement” apparently attributable to the schools themselves (Coleman et al., 1966, p. 22). Researchers who questioned the validity of the study’s “schools don’t make a difference” conclusion tended to drift into one of two research tracks: the first focusing on the identification and description of differentially effective schools (i.e., school effectiveness

Equality of Educational Opportunity Survey (EEOS) (The Coleman Report)

School performance monitoring School indicators

School accountability

School improvement activities

School effectiveness

Figure 1. Evolution of school effectiveness, school indicators, and school accountability in pursuit of school improvement

Table 1.

Purpose

Comparison of school indicators, school accountability, and school effectiveness research School effectiveness

School indicators

School accountability

1. To test the theory that schools “cannot make a difference” in student learning outcomes already shaped by family background.

To report summary measures of school performance on an annual basis in order to: 1. drive policy decisions, 2. inform school improvement activities, and/or 3. build competition to improve.

To measure the progress that schools make toward performance standards and trigger consequences for schools whose progress exceeds or falls short of expectations.

2. To develop models of “effective schooling.”

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research), the other advancing the field of school performance monitoring (i.e., school indicator research) by improving data collection and analysis techniques. These two lines of research are illustrated in Figure 1. Although school effectiveness and school performance monitoring have a common origin (the EEOS) and function (advancing school improvement), their scope and purposes are very different, and there is little overlap in their research literatures. The research methods that the two employ reflect the differences in the purpose and scope of the work, and are distinctly different, as well (see Table 1).

Historical Context for Changes in School Effectiveness, Performance Monitoring, and Accountability in the United States School Effectiveness Research The Coleman team’s controversial “no difference” conclusion prompted some researchers to demonstrate that schools can make a difference by finding and describing low-income, inner-city schools whose students achieved at higher than expected levels (e.g., Edmonds, 1979; Lezotte & Bancroft, 1985; Weber, 1971). Early school effectiveness researchers consistently identified a cluster of organizational and contextual variables that typified effective schools and were eventually labeled “the correlates of effective schooling.”1 Because early school effectiveness studies focused on low-income, inner-city elementary schools, the generalizability of their findings was widely questioned. The argument that schools can make a substantive, independent contribution to student outcomes was strengthened by Brookover, Beady, Flood, Schweitzer, and Wisenhaber (1979), Rutter Maugham, Mortimore, and Ouston (1979), and others, who found evidence of school effects at other school levels and within other settings. Teddlie and Stringfield (1993) followed up in the 1980s with further evidence that school effects are contextually sensitive and can endure over time. Education decision-makers and school improvers eagerly embraced the best practice models that emerged from effective schools research, and began crafting school vision statements around the correlates of effective schooling. Despite this, the statistical methods that school effectiveness researchers use to identify differentially effective schools have not been as popular with policymakers for political and philosophical reasons, as I will describe. School effectiveness researchers have traditionally used statistical procedures such as regression or hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to isolate a school’s “effect” by identifying the amount of between-school variance in student achievement that is not attributable to student intake characteristics or to other factors outside the school’s control. The residual, unexplained variance is presumed to include the “school effect” – that is, the peculiar contribution that individual schools make to their students’ achievement. Though the procedure is useful in targeting under-performing schools, its potential political fall-out outweighs its utility in the minds of many policymakers for three reasons. First, policymakers prefer school performance measures they can understand, and many contend that regressed scores are unnecessarily complicated to interpret or to

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explain to the public. Second, statistical analyses that take intake characteristics into consideration usually result in lower levels of predicted performance for schools that serve high-risk populations than they do for schools that serve more advantaged groups. Some policymakers interpret this to mean that disadvantaged groups are being held to lower standards of performance, or that they themselves will be criticized for having lower expectations for historically disadvantaged groups (including ethnic minorities). Finally, some stakeholders find it disconcerting that schools whose unadjusted performance is low can be classified “effective” if their student outcomes are much better than expected. Though the statistical techniques that researchers have traditionally used to measure school effectiveness have not been embraced by decision-makers, the qualitative methods they use to gather school process information have been adopted for school improvement purposes. The Louisiana Department of Education (LDE), for example, adapted school visit protocols that were developed for the Louisiana School Effectiveness Study (Teddlie & Stringfield, 1993) for the purpose of conducting technical assistance visits to schools targeted for corrective action by the state’s school accountability system (Teddlie, Kochan, & Taylor, 2002).

School Performance Monitoring: From School Indicators to School Accountability U.S. policymakers were already concerned about the quality and international competitiveness of American schools when the Coleman Report was issued. In retrospect, the study’s greatest contribution to American education research was not so much its exposé of education inequalities in the United States, but its illumination of inadequacies in the collection and analysis of education data. Corporate America was heavily invested in the development of economic indicators in the 1960s, and Congress followed its lead by authorizing the creation of America’s first educational performance indicator: the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). NAEP was intended to monitor national trends in the knowledge and skills that Americans acquire both within and outside school, and therefore was based on a national sample of U.S. residents aged 9, 13, and 17, as well as “young adults” in the 25–35 age range. The content coverage was broad (10 subject areas ranging from reading, writing, and mathematics to citizenship and career/occupational development), and there initially was a strict prohibition against publishing state comparison data (Jones, 1996).2 Although the assessment represented a major step forward in American education performance monitoring, it functioned as a simple indicator, not as an indicator system.3 Pressure for deeper school performance data escalated after the publication in 1983 of A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education), whose authors chastised policymakers for a general lack of progress in improving educational opportunities since the EEOS. The report was largely responsible for triggering a decadelong wave of education reform activity and creating a policy climate within which decision-makers could finally justify expensive initiatives to design and collect more detailed performance information.

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The task of developing comprehensive education performance monitoring systems capable of informing school reform fell to national education organizations, including the USDE’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI, 1988) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). NSF should be credited for supporting perhaps the most intensive scholarship in the field by funding the development of indicators of mathematics and science instruction. The designs that emerged from this pioneering work called for comprehensive arrays of input, output, and process indicators (Oakes, 1989; Porter, 1991; Shavelson, McDonnell, Oakes, & Carey, 1987). As noted in Table 2, the American designs were very similar to models developed about the same time in Canada (Willms, 1992) and the United Kingdom (Fitz-Gibbon, 1996). All three models were designed to capture essentially the same information that school effectiveness researchers already were gathering, using a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods. The primary difference between the school indicator and school effectiveness research conducted in the United States in the 1980s was that school effectiveness

Table 2.

Three models for comprehensive indicator systems

United States Porter (1991) Inputs Student background (general) Teacher quality (general) Fiscal and other resources Parent, community norms

Processes Organizational characteristics of: • Schooling • National quality • State quality • District quality • School quality Curriculum quality (Content) Teaching quality (Pedagogy) • Student non-academic activities • Teacher quality, course-specific • Resources, course-specific

Canada/Scotland Willms (1992)

United Kingdom Fitz-Gibbon (1996)

Age at entry Sex SES • Mother’s/father’s occupation • Mother’s/father’s education • Family composition • Number of siblings Race/Ethnicity EL Status

Prior achievement Prior attitudes Gender Ethnicity ELS status SES

Ecology and milieu: • Class/school/district size • Per-pupil expenditures Segregation Disciplinary climate Academic press Student attitudes: • Academic futility • Satisfaction with school • Attendance and truancy Teacher commitment/morale: • Efficacy • Meaningfulness • Acceptance of goals • Values • Working conditions

Alterable classroom variables Alterable school management variables

(Continued)

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Table 2.

(Continued )

United States Porter (1991)

Canada/Scotland Willms (1992)

United Kingdom Fitz-Gibbon (1996)

Instructional leadership of principals: • Shaping attitudes • Behaviors • Establishing policies • Procedures Outputs/outcomes Achievement Participation Attitudes, aspiration

Academic achievement: • Math • Reading • Language arts • Science Personal and social: • Self-concept • Focus of control • Participation in sports • Physical fitness • Participation in extracurricular activities Vocational: • Work experience • Skills in vocational subjects • Attitudes toward work • Post-school destinations

Achievement Attitudes toward school Attitudes toward school subjects Aspirations Quality of life indicators

Note. This table is based on Kochan (1998). SES
socioeconomic status; EL Status
English Language Status.

researchers used mixed methods to study samples of schools, while school indicator analysts relied on quantitative methods to gauge the performance of much larger samples – often entire populations – of schools. Unfortunately, indicator researchers soon found that the most important and insightful measures of instructional quality are difficult to capture with the precision and brevity that indicators demand. They also create heavy data collection burdens when study populations are large. For these and other reasons, indicator scientists still struggle – more than 20 years after the pioneering NSF studies – to develop quantitative measures of such key instructional constructs as quality of instruction and opportunity to learn. No one has come up with a more practicable tool than the teacher self-report information suggested by Porter (1991) and Willms (1992). Even so, both data collection strategies would be cumbersome to administer across an entire population of schools, and the responses they generate would be vulnerable to validity challenges, as well. The challenges that indicator researchers faced in developing school process measures did not slow the development of outcomes-based performance monitoring systems. The press to improve American education mounted steadily throughout the

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1980s as stakeholders pressured states and districts to prove that expensive school improvement activities were working. In 1986, the National Governors Association (Fuhrman, 2004) joined other influential policy groups in challenging state agencies to implement indicator systems for performance monitoring purposes. That same year, the United States Department of Education (USDE) published State Education Statistics (USDE, 1994), a compilation of state summary statistics reported by the 50 states. The obvious incomparability of the statistics created such a backlash from states that the two most prominent national education policy associations – the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and the Education Commission of the States (ECS) – joined with the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) in a campaign to standardize education performance reporting nationwide. While policymakers collaborated at the national level to develop standard indicator definitions and formulas, state and local agencies pressed ahead with their own performance monitoring systems. Local capacity to collect, analyze, and report education statistics varied widely across the nation. Nonetheless, by the end of the 1980s, most states and large school districts were publishing “school report cards,” having subscribed to the popular theory that (1) schools and districts were insufficiently motivated to improve, and (2) the public dissemination of school performance information would provide the needed incentive to improve. State and local performance reports were not nearly as comprehensive as the models developed for NSF. With rare exceptions, states published annual snapshots of student achievement, with perhaps some attention to dropout and attendance rates. Stakeholders decided whether schools were making sufficient progress by comparing one annual snapshot to the next. Many of the measurement issues that plague today’s accountability systems surfaced early in the school report card era. In the days before standards and benchmarks, stakeholders judged how a school “stacked up” by comparing it to other schools. Equity was an immediate issue, because the effectiveness of schools that served predominantly low-income or otherwise at-risk communities was easily masked by the effect of family background. Some states borrowed from school effectiveness research by statistically controlling for student intake characteristics and other factors outside the control of schools in order to hone in on the school’s peculiar contribution to student learning and to make comparisons more equitable. Arizona and Pennsylvania were among a group of states that used regression analysis to measure school performance, while Connecticut and Virginia used cluster analysis to achieve the same end (Salganik, 1994). Elsewhere, some policymakers opposed the practice of adjusting scores statistically, contending that regressed school scores were too difficult to interpret. Several states therefore adopted the more transparent reporting strategy of similar schools comparison grouping. In comparison grouping, schools are grouped on one or more variables that have a demonstrated relationship with student achievement, such as the percentage of low-income children they serve. Each school’s performance is compared to the group’s mean performance and to the district and/or state mean(s). Grouping methods varied, with some states rank ordering schools on the grouping variable(s), then using arbitrary cut points to determine which sites would be grouped together. This approach

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had its limitations, however, because schools that were situated at the very top of the group’s range could have a clear comparison advantage over schools at the bottom end of the range when performance was compared to the group mean. California was one of several states that attempted to make comparison groups more equitable by basing school comparisons on “floating bands,” with each school centered in its own unique comparison group of 20 schools (Salganik, 1994).4 In Louisiana, state officials attempted to satisfy both camps (the policymakers who typically opposed comparison grouping and the schools and districts who typically wanted it). The agency published only unadjusted achievement data, but also created a web-based tool that stakeholders could use to create their own comparison groupings, based on whatever combination of up to three variables they chose. Eventually, the advent of the standards movement brought U.S. policymakers what they hoped would prove the ultimate reporting alternative. Under standards-based accountability, decision-makers set high, long-term goals for what students should know and be able to do.5 Student goals are then translated into school performance targets that typically are expressed as the percentage of students enrolled at the school who meet or exceed the proficiency target. The entire accountability apparatus is based on the assumption that all children can reach the same high level of performance; it therefore naturally follows that all schools can be expected to reach the same high standards. School performance reporting becomes a matter of calculating school status in relation to the standard as well as progress toward the standard – both of which theoretically can be accomplished without statistical adjustments. Unadjusted outcome measures are still reported annually, but the policy emphasis shifts to the progress (growth) that schools are making toward long-term goals. In the United States, there is no clear delineation between the school indicator era and the higher stakes school accountability era. Fuhrman (2003) offered the best advice for distinguishing school indicator systems from school accountability systems: Accountability systems are school indicator systems with sanctions. Even so, the line between performance monitoring and accountability is a fine one because many states enacted legislation that provided for school rewards and corrective actions, long before the first sanctions were set in motion.6 Regardless of when the so-called “new accountability era” began in the United States, today’s state accountability systems bear little resemblance to the comprehensive indicator systems recommended by Shavelson et al. (1987), Porter (1991), the Special Study Panel on Education Indicators (1991), Willms (1992), or Fitz-Gibbon (1996). Like the school report card systems they replaced, accountability systems are assessment-driven. They are not “systems” because they simultaneously address the context, function, and outcomes of schooling, but because they tie consequences to performance in order to drive education improvement. The consequences can be positive (recognition and/or rewards for high-performing, high-growth schools) or corrective (technical assistance for schools that miss their growth target). They can also be perceived as punitive, particularly in those instances where a school’s long-term unacceptable performance and inadequate growth results in school reconstitution or take-over. Before the passage of NCLB, school accountability was a state or district issue. Not surprisingly, accountability systems varied widely, depending on the policy preferences

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of decision-makers and the governing agency’s capacity for funding and managing the program. Two sources of variation relate to (1) the selection of assessments for accountability purposes and (2) the measurement strategy used for calculating school progress.

Assessment Selection In regard to assessment selection, Maryland, Kentucky, and Tennessee were among the first states to implement vertically-equated, criterion-referenced tests in Grades 3–8 that tied student and school performance to state standards. Other states attached sanctions to assessments they already were using while they began the lengthy and costly process of developing criterion-referenced tests tied to new state standards. Some state policy boards included norm-referenced assessments in their state testing programs out of concern that state-commissioned tests would be perceived as less rigorous than nationally-normed ones. Alabama, for example, initially based its accountability program entirely on norm-referenced tests (NRTs), to the dismay of practitioners who protested that the assessments were not aligned with the sequence of content taught in Alabama. From 1998–1999 to 2005–2006, Louisiana’s revamped accountability system was based on a mixture of high-stakes criterion-referenced exams in Grades 4, 8, 10, and 11, and NRTs in the intervening grades.

Growth Modeling Linn (2004) identified three distinct models that states have used to measure school growth. The successive groups model (sometimes referred to as the “status model” Goldschmidt et al., 2005) is the most basic of the three. Improvement is measured by comparing the achievement of successive cohorts of students (e.g., comparing the performance of fourth graders in 2004–2005 with that of fourth graders in 2005–2006). According to Linn, the successive groups model is the least reliable of the three because the population of students tested can vary markedly from 1 year to the next on non-persistent factors that influence scores in one year but not another. When performance is measured at a very high level (as in state-level reporting), the large sample size can mediate cohort effects. When the level of analysis is the school, however, the influence of random sampling error and non-persistent factors can create unacceptably high volatility in scores. The threat to reliability is particularly high in small schools, where only one or two classes of children may be assessed at any given grade level. Kane and Staiger (2002) demonstrated the potential volatility of school scores when the successive groups approach is used when they studied the effect of small group sizes on the reliability of school assessment results in North Carolina. Focusing on the smallest quintile of North Carolina schools, they found that 58% of the between-school variance in fourth-grade reading and math scores was attributable to a combination of sampling variability and other non-persistent factors related to the schools. The longitudinal model for measuring school performance is more reliable than the successive groups model because growth is based on the performance of a single

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group of children in successive years (e.g., the performance of students assessed as third graders in 2004–2005 might be compared with the same students’ performance as fourth graders in 2005–2006.) According to Linn (2004), the model’s primarily limitation is that performance measures reflect only the achievement of students who are assessed in both years; the model excludes mobile students who were assessed in 1 year or the other, but not both. In very stable or homogeneous schools, the effect may be negligible. In the case of high-mobility schools, however, the longitudinal model may provide an incomplete picture of school performance. The quasi-longitudinal model offers a third alternative. Linn described this model as identical to the longitudinal model, with the exception that every student with at least one score is included in the growth analysis. States that adopt a longitudinal model may still differ greatly in the methods they use for measuring performance. Value-added models are one variation on the longitudinal models; they separate the effect of factors within and outside the control of schools by accounting for student intake characteristics and/or prior achievement. The Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS) goes so far as to attribute changes in student performance to teachers and schools (Goldschmidt et al., 2005). The measurement approach that states adopt for monitoring change over time is but one of the many complex ways that school accountability systems vary from state to state. Other sources of variation: include (1) the composition of the accountability outcome measure (e.g., whether school scores are based on achievement alone or a composite of cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes); (2) the accountability measure used to trigger rewards versus corrective actions (e.g., whether sanctions are triggered by school status, growth, or a combination of the two); and (3) the choice of sanctions to inspire and support growth (e.g., school closure or takeover are options in some states, not others). The task of cataloguing the many types of school accountability models in the United States is clearly beyond the scope of this chapter. Moreover, what states choose to do within their own jurisdictions is becoming less important over time as state programs are aligned with what has become the over-arching accountability program in the United States: NCLB.

NCLB: “New Accountability” or More of the Same? NCLB is the centerpiece of President George W. Bush’s education reform agenda and borrows heavily from the school accountability model used in Texas during the administration of then-Governor Bush. NCLB’s name relates to the Bush administration’s goal of promoting educational excellence and equity by requiring that states lift all students to a high level of academic achievement. In the interest of excellence, NCLB mandates that states assess student learning in reading and mathematics annually in Grades 3 through 8 and once in high school.7 States are required to adopt performance targets and timelines to ensure that all schools make “adequate yearly progress” (AYP), with the ultimate goal that all students meet state proficiency standards by the 2013–2014 school year. In the interest of equity, NCLB mandates that states narrow

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the achievement gap between their highest and lowest performing students by specifying that all subgroups make AYP. The subgroup provision applies to students who are economically disadvantaged, are members of major racial or ethnic minorities, are disabled, or are Limited English Proficient (LEP). Like all accountability systems, NCLB ties performance to sanctions. If schools fail to make AYP for two consecutive years, their districts must identify them for improvement and give their students the opportunity to transfer to other schools. The law further mandates corrective actions for schools that fail to make AYP for a third consecutive year. Corrective actions can include (1) reconstituting faculties, (2) restructuring schools by converting them to charter schools or turning them over to private management, (3) state take-over, or (4) school closure. Though few educators or policymakers find fault with NCLB’s goal of improving learning opportunities and outcomes for all children, some provisions of the law have been widely criticized, and several states filed suit in 2005 to be excluded from its provisions entirely. Perhaps the most widely held criticism is that federal expectations for student performance have been set so unrealistically high that virtually all U.S. schools will fall short of NCLB requirements (Linn, 2004). State and local policymakers also complain that meeting federal mandates will require enormous expenditures of money – money that is not forthcoming from the federal government. The equity and comparability of school performance measures were troublesome issues in the school report card era; they became critical issues when states added sanctions to their performance monitoring systems; and they remain critical issues under NCLB. Three years into NCLB accountability – as the first wave of chronically lowperforming schools are becoming eligible for sanctions – the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Testing (CRESST) identified “a large variation in the proportion of schools that are failing to make AYP using a state’s own assessments and proficiency levels” (CRESST, 2005, p. 1). The following factors have been suggested as sources of variation from one state to the next. ●

●

Differences in the rigor of proficiency standards from one state to the next. As previously mentioned, AYP under NCLB is based on the percentage of schools that make AYP toward state proficiency standards; however, there is some indication that the rigor of state standards varies. As an illustration, CRESST contrasted the state-level percentage of schools that made AYP in 2004 with the percentage of students scoring proficient or above on the 2005 NAEP. In some instances, the two state-level statistics were relatively comparable; in others, the percentage of schools making AYP was far higher than might have been expected, based on the 2005 NAEP results (see Table 3). Though the authors acknowledged that the AYP and NAEP statistics are very different measures, the apparent discrepancy in state performance on the two measures tends to re-enforce suspicions already voiced in research circles that students are not held to consistent achievement standards around the nation. Differences in the growth trajectories that states expect schools to follow en route to the goal of 100% proficiency by 2014. AYP under NCLB is based on the

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Kochan Table 3. Comparison of percentages of schools making AYP in 2004 to states’ 2005 NAEP Grade 4 reading percent proficient or above State

Schools making AYP in 2004 (%)

2005 NAEP Grade 4 Reading scores proficient or above (%)

Alabama Florida North Carolina Mississippi Louisiana Texas

23 23 71 76 92 94

22 30 30 18 20 29

Note. This table is reprinted from CRESST (2005). AYP
Annual Yearly Progress; NAEP
National Assessment of Education Progress.

●

●

●

percentage of schools that progress toward state proficiency standards, and states determine how progress will be measured. Some states expect schools to make linear progress toward long-term goals, while others take a “stair-step” approach (CRESST, 2005; Goldschmidt et al., 2005). Differences in the demographic make-up of public school enrollments around the country. As previously mentioned, schools can make AYP under NCLB only if they simultaneously demonstrate both aggregate and subgroup progress. The more heterogeneous a school population, the more subgroups whose growth must be reported, and the more subgroup scores, the more opportunities for a school to fall short of AYP (CRESST, 2003; Linn, 2004). The smaller the subgroup size,8 the more vulnerable subgroup scores are to sampling or measurement error. Differences in the rules that states adopt for establishing minimum subgroup size. Again, federal AYP is shaped by reporting protocols established by states, and state regulations vary in the minimum number of students that constitute a subgroup (CRESST, 2003). Differences in the observance of confidence intervals from one state to the next. (CRESST, 2005).

To guide states in revising their accountability systems, CRESST, the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE), and the Education Commission of the States (ECS) collaborated in the development of the Standards for Educational Accountability Systems (Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing [CRESST], 2002). The standards (see Table 4) cover the principal measurement, policy, and ethical issues that should be addressed when designing or re-designing accountability systems, and are aligned with the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, & National Council on Measurement in Education, 1999). CCSSO, the national professional association of state education superintendents, also began an ongoing series of technical reports on topics that include the consistency of state achievement standards under NCLB (Mitzel, 2005), threats to validity posed by various growth models (Forte-Fast & Hebbler, 2004), and even suggestions for improving the graphic design of accountability reports (Forte-Fast, 2002).

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Standards for educational accountability systems

Standard on system components 1. Accountability expectations should be made public and understandable for all participants in the system. 2. Accountability systems should employ different types of data from multiple sources. 3. Accountability systems should include data elements that allow for interpretation of student, institution, and administrative performance. 4. Accountability systems should include the performance of all students, including subgroups that historically have been difficult to assess. 5. The weighting of elements in the system, including different types of test content, and different information sources, should be made explicit. 6. Rules for determining adequate progress of schools and individuals should be developed to avoid erroneous judgments attributable to fluctuations of the student population or errors in measurement. Testing standards 7. Decisions about individual students should not be made on the basis of a single test. 8. Multiple test forms should be used when there are repeated administrations of the assessment. 9. The validity of measures that have been administered as part of an accountability system should be documented for the various purposes of the system. 10. If tests are to help improve the system, there should be information provided to document that test results are modifiable by quality of instruction and student effort. 11. If test data are used as a basis of rewards or sanctions, evidence of technical quality of the measures and error rates associated with misclassification of individuals or students should be published. 12. Evidence of test validity for students with different language backgrounds should be made publicly available. 13. Evidence of test validity for children with disabilities should be made publicly available. 14. If tests are claimed to measure content and performance standards, analyses should document the relationship between the items and specific standards or sets of standards. Stakes 15. Stakes for accountability systems should apply to adults and students and should be coordinated to support system goals. 16. Appeals procedures should be available to contest rewards and sanctions. 17. Stakes for results and their phase-in schedule should be made explicit at the outset of the implementation of the system. 18. Accountability systems should begin with broad, diffuse stakes and move to specific consequences for individuals and institutions as the system aligns. Public reporting formats 19. System results should be made broadly available to the press, with sufficient time for reasonable analysis and with clear explanations of legitimate and potential illegitimate interpretations of results. 20. Reports to districts and schools should promote appropriate interpretations and use of results by including multiple indicators of performance, error estimates, and performance by subgroups. Evaluation 21. Longitudinal studies should be planned, implemented, and reported, evaluating the effects of the accountability program. Minimally, questions should determine the degree to which the system: a. builds capacity of staff; b. affects resource allocation; c. supports high-quality instruction; d. promotes equity of student access to education; e. minimizes corruption; f. affects teacher quality, recruitment, and retention; and g. produces unanticipated outcomes. Note. These standards represent a summary of those reported in CRESST (2002).

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The Cycle Continues: From School Effectiveness to School Accountability and Back In 1966, the Coleman Report motivated researchers to establish two parallel lines of research, each designed in its own way to demonstrate the unique contribution that schools make to student learning. In one discipline (school effectiveness), researchers used a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to provide detailed descriptions of small samples of differentially effective schools; in the other (school indicators cum school accountability), analysts collected data from many more schools, using purely quantitative methods to measure mostly schooling outcomes. Once school effectiveness researchers made their case that schools “can make a difference” and imparted their vision of effective schooling, much of the impetus for the research ebbed away. In fact, the so-called correlates of effective schooling have become so widely embraced, that today’s school improvers rarely cite the studies whose findings shape their vision statements. The wave of school effectiveness research may already have crested in the United States, but school performance monitoring, like the fabled “Old Man River,” “just keeps rolling along.” Forty years after the Coleman Report, school indicator researchers still labor to refine the indicators and systems that drive bureaucratic reforms to make them more insightful, valid, and reliable. Early in the era of school performance monitoring, policymakers were constantly reminded that performance indicators are high-level statistics that focus attention on critical issues, but should not be treated as ends in themselves (Elliott, Ralph, & Turnbull, 1993; Special Study Panel on Education Indicators, 1991). Measurement error and indicator incomparability were not major concerns because indicators informed policy actions rather than triggering them. In today’s high-stakes accountability climate, however, policy decisions to transfer teachers or students, restructure programs, or close schools can be triggered by indicators that are vulnerable to measurement error and are governed by reporting rules that can have a differential impact on school communities of varying size or demographic make-up. It is highly unlikely that the measurement problems that have plagued school performance monitoring for the past 40 years – issues such as overly narrow outcome measures and indicator volatility attributable to factors outside the control of schools – will be resolved any time soon. It is equally unlikely that high-stakes accountability will simply go away. Under the circumstances, the most practicable strategy for protecting schools from sanctions based on faulty statistics may lie in a resurrection of school effectiveness research designs as models for validating accountability decisions. Site-based, mixed-method studies can provide critical insights into instructional processes, leader effectiveness, and the organizational function of schools before they are sanctioned. High-level, quantitative measures (i.e., indicators) of a school’s status in relation to a global benchmark are useful for focusing attention on schools that do not appear to be progressing as intended; but rigorous field-based research that combines quantitative and qualitative methods is better suited to helping policymakers judge whether apparently failing or “stuck” schools actually are making substantive but incremental progress that indicators cannot detect. Such a discovery could forestall well-meaning

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corrective actions that have the effect of impeding rather than stimulating improvement. On a more philosophical note, collaboration between school effectiveness and school indicator specialists could – like the reunion of two old acquaintances who have not spoken in years – initiate an on-going dialogue between the two disciplines, to the benefit of all concerned.

Notes 1. There are subtle differences in the way that various researchers operationally defined the characteristics of effective schools. Generally speaking, however, effective schools were described as having strong principal leadership, a pervasive and broadly shared instructional focus, a safe and orderly environment, high expectations for student achievement, and a commitment to analyzing student achievement data for decision-making purposes. See Sackney, in this volume, for a brief history and summary of the school effects correlates. 2. NAEP has undergone a major transformation over time; for example, the out-of-school population was dropped from the sampling scheme in the mid-1970s, and state comparison reporting was added in 1987. The NAEP now targets public and non-public school students in Grades 4, 8, and 12 (USDE, 2006). 3. An indicator system has been likened to the control panel on an airplane: a collection of gauges (statistics) that the pilot (policymakers) monitor to determine if the airplane (enterprise) is functioning as intended. On a metaphorical control panel, NAEP was education’s altimeter: useful in determining if the airplane is cruising at the desired height, but useless at diagnosing malfunctions if the altitude is too low. 4. In California, for example, adjustments were made for those schools at the extreme bottom and top of the distribution of schools if there were too few schools above or below to constitute a comparison group. 5. For example, when Louisiana replaced its school accountability system in 1997, policymakers set a 10-year goal that all students demonstrate at least “basic” competency on the state criterion-referenced test. The longer term goal was that all students reach the level of “proficient” at the end of 20 years. 6. The Louisiana Legislature, for example, passed the Children First Act in 1987, which authorized the creation of a school accountability unit within the state department of education, a school report card program, and a School Incentive Program to provide rewards and recognition to high-performing schools (Louisiana Revised Status [La RS.] 17.39, 1988). The rewards program was funded for only 1 year. Children First was ultimately repealed and replaced in 1997 by a new high-stakes accountability system that has been approved by the USDE for NCLB reporting purposes (La RS. 17.391.3, 1997). 7. Science assessments will be added at three grade levels in 2007–2008. 8. In some states, the minimum subgroup size is 10.

References American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, & National Council on Measurement in Education. (1999). Standards for educational and psychological testing. Washington, DC: AERA. Brookover, W., Beady, D., Flood, P., Schweitzer, J., & Wisenhaber, J. (1979). School social systems and student achievement: Schools can make a difference. New York: Praeger. Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST). (2002, Winter). Standards for educational accountability systems (Policy Brief No. 5). Los Angeles: Author. Coleman, J. S., Campbell, E. Q., Hobson, C. J., McPartland, J., Mood, A. M., Weinfeld, F. D., et al. (1966). Equality of educational opportunity. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of Education. CRESST. (2003, Winter). Requirements for measuring Adequate Yearly Progress (Policy Brief No. 6). Los Angeles: Author.

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CRESST. (2005, Fall). Chickens come home to roost. CRESST Line: Newsletter of the national center for research on evaluation, standards, and student testing. Los Angeles: Author. Edmonds, R. (1979). Effective schools for the urban poor. Educational Leadership, 37, 15–24. Elliott, E., Ralph, J., & Turnbull, B. (1993). Monitoring the nation’s educational health. Phi Delta Kappan, 14(7), 520–522. Fitz-Gibbon, C. (1996). Monitoring education: Indicators, quality, and effectiveness. London: Cassell. Forte-Fast, E. (2002, December). A guide to effective accountability reporting. Washington, DC: Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). Forte-Fast, E., & Hebbler, S. (2004, February). A framework for examining validity in state accountability systems. Washington, DC: CCSSO. Fuhrman, S. (2003, September). Redesigning accountability systems for education (CPRE Policy Briefs). Philadelphia, PA: Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE). Fuhrman, S. (2004). Introduction. In S. H. Fuhrman, & R. F. Elmore (Eds.), Redesigning accountability systems for education (pp. 1–14). New York: Teachers College Press. Goldschmidt, P., Roschewski, P., Choi, K., Augy, W., Hebbler, S., Blank, R., et al. (2005, October). Policymakers guide to growth models for school accountability: How do accountability models differ? Washington, DC: CCSSO. Jones, L. V. (1996). A history of the national assessment of educational progress and some questions about its future. Educational Researcher, 25(7), 15–22. Kane, T. J., & Staiger, D. O. (2002). Volatility in school test scores: Implications for test-based accountability systems. In D. Ravitch (Ed.), Brookings papers on education policy, 2002 (pp. 235–283). Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Kochan, S. (1998). Considering outcomes beyond achievement: Student participation as an indicator of high school performance. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA. Lezotte, L. W., & Bancroft, B. (1985). Growing use of effective schools model for school improvement. Educational Leadership, 42(3), 23–27. Linn, R. (2004). Accountability models. In S. H. Fuhrman, & R. F. Elmore (Eds.), Redesigning accountability systems for education (pp. 73–95). New York: Teachers College Press. Louisiana Revised Statutes. (1988). The children first act. Accessed on June 14, 2006, Retrieved from http://www.legis.state.la.us/lss/lss.asp?doc
80907 Louisiana Revised Statutes. (1997). Program for educational accountability. Accessed on June 14, 2006, Retrieved from http://www.legis.state.la.us/lss/lss.asp?doc
80931 Mitzel, H. C. (2005, June). Consistency for state achievement standards under NCLB. Washington, DC: CCSSO. Accessed on June 14, 2006, Retrieved from http://www.ccsso.org/content/pdfs/CAS% 20Series%202.Final.pdf National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk: The imperative for education reform. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Oakes, J. (1989, Summer). What educational indicators? The case for assessing the school context. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 11(2), 181–199. Office of Educational Research and Improvement. (1988). Creating responsive and responsible indicator systems. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education. Porter, A. (1991, Spring). Creating a system of school process indicators. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 13(1), 13–29. Rutter, M., Maugham, B., Mortimore, P., & Ouston, J. (1979). Fifteen thousand hours: Secondary schools and their effects on children. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Salganik, L. H. (1994). Apples to apples: Comparing performance indicators for places with similar demographic characteristics. Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 16(2), 125–141. Shavelson, R., McDonnel, L., Oakes, J., & Carey, N. (1987). Indicator systems for monitoring mathematics and science education. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation. Special Study Panel on Education Indicators. (1991, September). Education counts: An indicator system to monitor the nation’s educational health. Washington, DC: United States Department of Education. Teddlie, C., Kochan, S., & Taylor, D. (2002). The ABC model for school diagnosis, feedback, and improvement. In A. J. Visscher, & R. Coe (Eds.), School improvement through performance feedback (pp. 75–114). Lisse, Netherlands: Swets and Zeitlinger.

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Teddlie, C., & Stringfield, S. (1993). Schools make a difference: Lessons learned from a 10-year study of school effects. New York: Teachers College Press. USDE. (1994). State education statistics. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. USDE. (2006). The national assessment of education progress: Overview. Accessed on June 14, 2006, Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/about Weber, G. (1971). Inner-city children can be taught to read: Four successful schools. Washington, DC: Council for Basic Education. Willms, D. (1992). Monitoring school performance: A guide for educators. London: Falmer.

28 EDUCATION DECENTRALISATION AND ACCOUNTABILITY RELATIONSHIPS IN LATIN AMERICAN AND THE CARIBBEAN REGION

Emanuela Di Gropello

Introduction This chapter aims at analyzing decentralization reforms in the education sector in Latin America (their status, impact and on-going challenges), by making use of the accountability framework recently developed by the 2004 World Development Report (WDR) (World Bank, 2004). This framework focuses on accountability mechanisms between policymakers, providers and citizens/clients to explain why service delivery works or fails. In the first section, the chapter provides a characterization of alternative decentralization reforms. It then reviews the impact of these reforms and explores determinants of this impact, very much related to the implementation and use of the accountability mechanisms, extracting lessons which should be useful to the design of future reforms. It is generally assumed that services will be provided more efficiently by subnational units because they have a better knowledge of local conditions, characteristics and preferences than the central actor (asymmetric information argument).1 Adopting a principal and agent terminology, it is clear, however, that decentralizing decision making autonomy will not by itself be enough to ensure better provision if the new agent is not given the incentive to use its superior information to provide a better service. This is where the accountability dimension comes in. A decentralized framework of service delivery will work only if the agent is made accountable for its actions to the central actor, which decided to decentralize (and which we could see as principal number one) and to the community, which is the ultimate beneficiary of the services (and can be seen as principal number two or client).2 Following the WDR, we detect four main types of accountability relationships: (1) the “compact” relationship, defined as the broad, long-term relationship of accountability connecting policymakers to organizational providers; (2) the “voice” relationship, defined as the complex accountability relationship which connects citizens and politicians; 503 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 503–522. © 2007 Springer.

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Di Gropello The state

Politicians

Policymakers

Voice politics

Coalition/ inclusion Non-poor

Compact

Management Client power

Poor

Teachers

Community students parents

Schools

Providers Schooling

Figure 1.

The framework of accountability relationships, according to the WDR

(3) the “client power” relationship defined as the relationship of accountability connecting clients to the frontline service providers, usually at the point of service delivery; (4) and the “management” relationship, defined as the relationship connecting organizational providers and frontline professionals. These accountability relationships can in turn be grouped under the “long route” to accountability or the “short route.” Through the “long route,” clients as citizens (or community) influence policy-makers and policy-makers, in turn, influence providers (i.e., both the “compact” and “voice” relationships are part of the “long route”). Through the “short route,” citizens, acting as final users/clients of the service, influence more directly the providers (this is the “client power” relationship). Figure 1 illustrates this accountability framework. When the policy-makers do not respond to the citizens, and neither they nor the final users of the services can exert control over the providers, service delivery is very likely to fail.

Status of the Decentralization Process in Education in Latin American Countries (LAC): Three Main Groups of Models Latin America presents a variety of experiences in the decentralization of education. Practically all countries have undertaken some form of decentralization of their education system which involved the transfer of decision making autonomy to actors

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within (“deconcentrated” bodies) or, more likely, outside (intermediate or local governments, schools, etc.) the ministry of education’s bureaucratic structure, with the main purpose of delivering the service more efficiently. This variety of models is centered on different accountability relationships. It is very difficult to categorize all the different existing models, but, simplifying substantially, we can detect three main groups of models according to the sub-national actors involved, the pattern adopted in the distribution of functions across sub-national actors and the accountability system central to the model. These three groups of models are illustrated below in Figures 2–4 (where the most important accountability relationships for each model have been shadowed). Only the most representative countries for each of the groups are mentioned. Some countries whose education sectors are still highly centralized (like Uruguay, Paraguay, Costa Rica) would not be part of any of these typologies, while others whose decentralization efforts are incipient would start falling under one of the three categories. It is worth reviewing briefly the main characteristics of each of the groups.

The “Sub-National Government” Model A first type of model implemented in LAC, and illustrated in Figure 2, places an intermediate political actor at the center of the decentralization process. This is the case in Argentina which decentralized all education delivery functions to the provincial level (in two main stages, 1978 and 1992), Mexico, which did the same to the

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state level (gradually from 1992), Brazil, where education delivery is provided by both the states and the municipalities, since 1930, but where the role of municipalities was increased with the Constitution of 1988 and, above all, the recent 1996 financing reform,3 and Chile, which transferred service delivery to the municipal level (gradually from 1981). Brazil is included in this type of model because, even if there are two political actors which have the responsibility of education delivery, the state and the municipality, the education delivery systems that have developed around each of these actors are to a large extent independent one from another (parallel systems), also within the same state, allowing us to identify the working of each of them with Figure 2. A simplification is made by putting these countries together because it is clear that the decentralization processes for each of them was to a large extent different. In particular, some countries like Argentina and Brazil have transferred many more responsibilities to the sub-national level (virtually all responsibilities on the administration of personnel and non-personnel costs, extensive responsibilities in financing and some responsibilities in planning the educational process and setting-up curricula) than Chile and Mexico, which have maintained fairly centralized personnel and financing policies. In any case, the driving force in this type of model is often the center (at least in the cases of Chile and Argentina in 1978) which decentralizes the main responsibility for the delivery of the service to an intermediate political actor which becomes the center of the decentralization process and around which a specific set of accountability relationships needs to be built. Central to the working of this model are two main accountability relationships: the “compact” relationship between the center and the regional/local political actor and the “voice” relationship between the citizens and the regional/local political actor.4 In fact, the relative importance or importance tout-court of these two relationships varies across countries and time, becoming, as we will see, an important determinant of the results of the reform. In Argentina and Brazil, for instance, the “compact” relationship between the center and the provinces, states or municipalities has been traditionally maintained as very flexible, with little or no specification of national and sub-national responsibilities, targets and objectives (and this in spite of the two recent Education Laws that were approved in both countries)5 and the use of general transfers which are not tied to any particular efficiency indicator (this is still the case in Argentina and was the case in Brazil up to 1996). At least since the democratic election of the provincial governors in Argentina in 1983 and the one of the state governors and mayors in Brazil, respectively, in 1982 and 1985, both models have tended to rely more on the “voice” of the citizens inside each of the provinces, states or municipalities to produce a quality output. On the other hand, in Chile, since the beginning, the responsibility for the delivery of education was transferred to the municipalities through specific agreements that defined explicitly the responsibilities, rights and obligations of the new providers and there was a clear attempt to reward municipal performance by tying central resources to the number of students attending class (implementation of a “quasi-voucher” system), while “voice” was only developed much later since mayors have been elected only since 1992 (11 years after the start of the reform). As we will see, Chile

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is a somewhat more complex model where another accountability relationship (the “client power” one) was directly developed within the same “municipalization” process by introducing a public subsidy for private schools.

The “Sub-National Shared Responsibility” Model A second type of model, illustrated in Figure 3, can be well exemplified by the cases of Colombia (up to 2001/2002) and Bolivia. Colombia gave a clear impulse to the decentralization of education in 1986 by encouraging a “municipalization” process of service delivery followed by another clear signal in 1991, with the new Constitution, giving more emphasis to regional elected levels (“departments”). Bolivia started its own decentralization process in 1994 and 1995, with, respectively, the “Popular Participation Law” (“Ley de Participacion Popular”) and the “Administrative Decentralization Law” (“Ley de Descentralizacion Administrativa”), which led to the transfer of education services to municipalities and, more gradually, to “departments.” The common feature of these models, which has generally been the product of more extensive country consultation (i.e., less center driven), is that they put two different political actors at the center of the decentralization process and distribute the main responsibility for service delivery among them in a complementary way.6 As the three levels, the central, the regional and the local, are organized hierarchically and are seen

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as having mostly a complementary role in service delivery, this type of model, which should have the merit of taking advantage of the skills and specificities of each level, is highly dependent on the “compact” relationship between the center and the regional level, on the one hand, and the regional level and the local level, on the other; as well as on the “voice” relationship between citizens and the local level, on the one hand, and citizens and the regional level on the other. As above, the relative weight of these relationships varies between the two countries. Colombia, for instance, put emphasis on all four relationships (both the departmental and municipal governments are elected), with particular emphasis, however, on the “compact” relationships. In particular, the country put in place an original accreditation process (“proceso de certificacion”) through which the departments would be authorized by the center to manage all human resources and the funds that go with this responsibility (the so-called “Situado Fiscal”) only after they have fulfilled a number of pre-conditions, including the establishment of an adequate institutional setting, development plan and information system; and the same accreditation process was put in place for municipalities larger than 100,000 habitants that, under a similar set of conditions, could in turn be authorized by the departments to go beyond the management of school infrastructure and also manage directly their human resources and related funds. The structure of transfers put in place across levels would also tie the resources to several indicators, including measures of fiscal effort, in an attempt to induce efficiency in the use of funds. In Bolivia, particular emphasis was put on the “voice” relationship between citizens and the local governments: in 1994 all the local governments were elected and local associations (“juntas distritales”) were set up everywhere, with an important role in the identification of school needs and the monitoring and evaluation of the educational process. The role of the “compact” relationship is less clear: in particular the role of the departments was still not fully established in 2002.

The “School Autonomization” Model A third type of model, illustrated in Figure 4, is well illustrated by the countries of Nicaragua and El Salvador in Central America (but other Central American countries are tending in the same direction, like Honduras and Guatemala, and a state like Minas Gerais in Brazil would also fall under this category). In 1990, borrowing on community school management models developed during the civil war, El Salvador launched the EDUCO program, aimed at promoting a model of school autonomy with extensive community participation in the rural areas. Several features of the EDUCO model would then be applied to traditional schools. In 1993, the Government of Nicaragua also started to implement a process of school autonomy with community participation (“centros autonomos”), which, in 1996, already covered more than 400 primary and secondary schools and, in 1998, was covering 81% of the secondary school age students and almost half of the primary students. In both countries, “school autonomization” consisted in a transfer of broad administrative responsibilities (teacher management, school maintenance, etc.) and to, a much lesser extent, some pedagogical responsibilities to schools.

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The “school autonomization” model

These two models started after a civil war and, therefore, were also part of a pacification and democratization attempt, and were initially implemented on a sub-national scale to be then, to different extents, extended. Their main characterizing feature is that, in contrast, to the other ones, they put the school at the center of the decentralization process and, therefore, central to their functioning are the two following accountability relationships: the “compact” relationship between the center and the school and the “client power” relationship between the service users or community and the school. In both countries, these two relationships have been substantially developed, with particular emphasis on the second one. In both countries, each school is required to establish an elected council, composed only of parents in EDUCO7 and of parents, teachers and the school director in the “centros autonomos,” 8 and to sign a special agreement (or “convenio”) with the Ministry of Education (MOE) which would decentralize to the councils the management of all funds, allowing them to manage all teachers, take care of operating and maintenance costs and take academic decisions (this last aspect, in particular in Nicaragua). “Client power” can therefore be expressed through active participation in the management of the school and, additionally, in Nicaragua, also finds a way through the system of National, Departmental and Local Education Councils set up to ensure broad participation at all levels. The “compact” relationship between the MOE and the school, on the other hand, is made explicit in two or three main ways: (1) through the signature of the autonomy agreement, which specifies a number of technical requirements; (2) through school supervision, ensured through the establishment of a “deconcentrated” structure (regional and district offices of the MOE)9 and/or strengthened central auditing functions; and (3) through the implementation of monthly transfers which include an efficiency element being allocated

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according to ranges of students enrolled. Finally, the on-going effort in the testing of student achievement, admittedly more advanced in El Salvador, would enhance both relationships of accountability. To conclude this section it is important to point out that this simple characterization does not fully give justice to the complexity, diversity and innovatory contents of the approaches adopted in LAC. To start with, we should highlight that the differences among models are not always so clear-cut. Elements of school “autonomization” are, for instance, also being increasingly applied in countries included in the first two groups of models.10 Secondly, while we have focused our analysis of the three types of models on a few central accountability relationships, in each of the groups there were often innovations concerning other accountability relationships as well. Innovations in the “client power” relationship occurred for instance in several countries, not only in the countries of the third group. In many cases, they were related to the development of school autonomy highlighted above, that is, they were implemented through increased participation of the communities/users in school management; in other cases, they consisted in changes in the public financing of education which aimed at empowering the users either by giving them the resources and allowing them to make a choice between providers (demand-side subsidies), or, by making provider resources highly dependent on their choice (“quasi-vouchers,” capitation grants). In both Chile and Colombia, “choice” was particularly developed within the decentralized education delivery system put in place, although with different objectives and on a different scale.11 Finally, in several countries there were also innovations in the “management” relationship (taken broadly as the relationship between the different education actors – the Ministry of Education, local governments, schools, etc – and teachers).

Assessment and Main Lessons Summary of the Assessment Assessing the impact of decentralization reforms on the efficiency, quality, coverage or equity of education delivery is a difficult task for a number of reasons. First, these are typically complex reforms which, as we have seen, can be designed very differently and be based on different accountability relationships: this makes it particularly difficult to assess their effects. Second, in most cases in Latin America (with the noticeable exceptions of Central American countries like Nicaragua and El Salvador), the reforms were implemented nation-wide making it difficult to establish a counter-factual since we do not have a control group. Third, most of the reforms were started for reasons exogenous to the education sector (fiscal or macroeconomic reasons, broad efficiency objectives, democratization, etc.) and, as such, made any subsequent assessment of the impact of the reform on educational outcomes in any case difficult because no attention was paid from the outset to baselines, identification of possible control groups and information and monitoring systems which would help assess the impact of reforms in time (no “built-in” evaluation mechanisms). As more systematic and rigorous information on educational outcomes became available (in particular, all countries in LAC have now introduced some form of standardized testing, either on a national or sample basis), the quality of the assessments

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improved in time. Still, however, for the above mentioned reasons, there are very few thorough evaluations on the impact of decentralization on the quality, coverage and equity of education of the first two groups of models; while, on average, more formal evaluations have been undertaken, often as a World Bank’s initiative, of the “school autonomization” model. For this type of model, evaluations were upfront made more pertinent and easier by the fact that most experiences of “school autonomization” were implemented with specific educational objectives in mind (increase in coverage, educational quality or efficiency improvements, etc.), beyond other more general objectives (such as democratization, political motivations, etc.). Overall, a number of more or less formal assessments of several countries’ decentralization experiences was put together and allowed us to find some evidence on the impact of each group of models on the quality, coverage and equity of provision, with emphasis, when possible, on the performance of the poor. Di Gropello (2004) presents an assessment of the studies per group of models and country, which points to the key role of the accountability mechanisms put in place and highlights some other possible factors in determining the achievements of the reforms. Table 1, below, summarizes Table 1.

Summary of assessments

Models: “Sub-national government” model Argentina (Carciofi, Cetrangolo, & Larranaga, 1996) (Galiani & Schargrodsky, 2002)

Chile (Carciofi et al., 1996; McEwan & Carnoy, 1999; Gauri, 1996; Espinola, 1994; Schiefelbein & Schiefelbein, 2000; Rounds, 1997; Hsieh & Urquiola, 2003; Sapelli & Vial, 2002; Gallego, 2002)

Summary of findings with interpretation

In the absence of a clear “compact” between the Ministry of Education and the provinces, which was only slightly strengthened with the approval of the “Ley Federal de Educacion” in 1993, the effects of decentralization on the quality and coverage of education are found to vary a lot across provinces depending on provincial management. Quality, as measured by test scores, is shown to improve after the 1992 negotiated decentralization reform, possibly for a more effective use of “voice.” The available evidence generally suggests that overall enrolment and quality (admittedly difficult to measure in the 1980s because of the absence of comparable test scores) did not improve over the 1980s (and divergence among schools increased), largely because of the poor results of the municipal sector. These poor results were mostly due to a gap between responsibility and authority to act, the presence of soft budget constraints for the operation of the municipal education sector, the lack of citizen participation mechanisms at the local level and the “missed opportunity” of exploiting the potential of the “client power” relationship as instrument to improve competition between public and private schools. Overall, the enrolment rate improves during the 1990s, average test scores improve for all school categories and there is increasing convergence among all these school categories, following the application of some competition-enhancing measures (although not all measures were consistent with competition), as well as “voice” and quality-enhancing measures (including new teachers’ incentives mechanisms). (Continued)

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Table 1.

(Continued )

Models: Brazil (World Bank, 2003)

“Sub-national shared responsibility” model Colombia (Gomez & Vargas, 1997) (Borjas & Acosta, 2000)

Bolivia (Ruiz & Giussani, 1997) (Faguet, 2000)

“School autonomization” model Nicaragua and El Salvador (King & Ozler, 1998) (Jiménez & Sawada,1998; Sawada & Ragatz, 2004)

Other cases (Argentina: Eskeland & Filmer, 2002) (Brazil: Paes de Barros & Mendonca, 1998) (Chile: Di Gropello, 2002) (Honduras: Di Gropello & Marshall, 2004)

Summary of findings with interpretation The lack of a clear compact mechanism between the center and the states/municipalities is shown to have led to a variety of experiences with different outcomes. Educational achievement outcomes and enrollment [in particular in poor areas] have substantially improved after the 1996 FUNDEF reform, largely due to an effective use of the “compact,” within a framework of extensive authority decentralized to states and municipalities, and to an effective use of teacher management. Spending efficiency varies, however, among municipalities depending on local skills and the working of “voice.” Poor implementation of the compact relationship and the same shared nature of responsibilities for the provision of the services hampered the effectiveness of the decentralization process in Colombia. In spite of increasing spending, enrollment and its distribution across socio-economic classes stagnated during the 1990s. Reform changed with 2001 law following a “learning by doing” type of process: a full “municipalization” model will prevail. The shared responsibility model led municipalities to overinvest and the role of the departments is still unclear. However, following the decentralization reform, investment in education became more progressively distributed [favoured poor areas] and more responsive to local needs, due to an effective use of “voice.” “Voice” effectiveness varies across municipalities. In Nicaragua, school-based decisions on teacher management are shown to have a positive impact on test scores. In El Salvador, enrollment in the rural areas increased massively following EDUCO. It is also shown that school-based decisions on teacher management have a positive impact on class attendance and even, according to the most recent assessment, educational achievement. In both models, these positive results are the product of a well designed and effectively implemented “client power” relationship,* accompanied by a solid “compact.” Other evidence suggests that school autonomy in several areas (financing and/or administrative and/or pedagogical, etc) increases test scores and other educational achievement indicators and that the impact of autonomy is strengthened by the use of “client power.” It is also shown in some of the studies that “client power” only has an impact combined with school autonomy . Finally, school autonomy, or increased school decision-making in local decisions, can promote convergence among rich and poor schools and its impact is likely to depend on surrounding institutional characteristics.

Source: Di Gropello (2004). * Although this is somewhat less true in Nicaragua where directors are often said to have too much power within the school councils.

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this evidence, which makes it possible to extract some lessons on the accountability side and the possible advantages/disadvantages of the different models.

Main Lessons and Challenges Ahead Some Determinants of the Success or Failure of Each Group of Models The assessments presented in Table 1 show that the single most important factor in ensuring the success or failure of a reform is the way the accountability relationships are set to work within each of the models. At least one “core” set of accountability relationships should work well in each of the models (e.g., “compact(s)” or “voice(s)” in the first and second groups of models, and “client power” or “compact” in the third group) and it is even better if all “core” relationships work well, in a complementary way. For example, cases like Nicaragua and El Salvador appear to have had some positive achievements because all accountability relationships were given the right importance and effectively used, and this also appears to have been the case with the 1996 reform in Brazil. In Argentina, on the other hand, too little weight was given to the “compact” relationship in a framework were “voice” was not always satisfactory, and, in Chile, too little emphasis was put on “voice” and low authority hampered the “compact.” This result is not surprising. Going back to the principal-agent model, the agent, or sub-national level, once given decision-making autonomy will often have the temptation to use it opportunistically, that is, putting its own interests (or the particularized interests of a local elite) before the achievement of the national objective for which decentralization was undertaken in the first place (i.e., improving student learning). In this scenario, mechanisms will need to be found to have the agent acting in the national interest and, typically, these mechanisms will consist of interventions aimed at establishing clear lines of accountability between the central level and the agent (compact) and/or clear lines of accountability between the agent and the community (voice and/or client power). These different lines of accountability will generally have the capacity of complementing each other (for instance, when it comes to monitoring education delivery, local residents or school users will often be able to monitor the attendance of teachers to classes, while the centre will be more likely to have the tools and knowledge to monitor general academic standards). In the absence of any working accountability line, it is unlikely that decentralization will lead to any positive result. How to get accountability relationships working effectively within each of the models becomes then the key question. This is difficult to establish, but a number of lessons can be extracted from our case studies: (1) there needs to be a certain level of consistency between the model selected and the relationships of accountability on which the emphasis is put: in Chile, the achievements of the reform were hampered by the fact that the special emphasis put on the “client power/choice” relationship was not accompanied by measures to increase autonomy and accountability of municipal schools (too protected

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from competition), while, at the same time, the “municipalization” model was developed with no focus on the “voice” relationship; (2) there needs to be real transfer of authority to the sub-national units: the gap between responsibility and authority to act hampered the good functioning of all accountability relationships in Chile and some existing evidence suggests that the same is also valid for Mexico. In both countries, centralized teacher management practices represent the stronger management constraint for the sub-national level; (3) consensual reforms are more likely to be conducive to strong “voice” and/or “client power” relationships (in a positive sense, this is illustrated by the 1992 “provincialization” in Argentina and the “municipalization” process in Bolivia) and to a sustainable transfer of authority necessary for the good working of all the relationships (in Chile, the creation of a broader-based consensus on the reform in the 1980s would have probably avoided the partial reversal of the reform in 1991 with the approval of a very rigid teacher statute); (4) how to design and implement effective “compact” relationships. This is a particularly difficult challenge because, going back to the principal-agent model, there will typically be significant information asymmetries between the center and the agent (i.e., the effort and ability of the agent is unobserved) which will complicate the design and implementation of contracts between the parts. There are no clearcut solutions to this challenge which has been widely debated in the literature. Our case studies do not probably provide “best practices” in this area, but allow us to identify practices that work/are necessary to develop effective accountability lines between the center and the agent, divided in two main groups: Practices aimed at inducing efficient and equitable behaviors include: (a) clear definition of all actors’ responsibilities, through well-designed legal and/or administrative instruments (Education Laws, Transfer Agreements, etc.): Chile and Nicaragua have been successful in defining relative responsibilities through administrative transfer agreements, while Colombia, where responsibilities became quickly blurred across actors, recently introduced a comprehensive Education Law which establishes quite clearly relative responsibilities; (b) use of simple fund allocation formulae, such as per-student fund allocations (capitation grants): Chile and Brazil have been successful in applying this fund allocation mechanism, which is particularly useful to increase enrollment, Colombia will adopt it after the failure of its overly complicated formulae; (c) use of hard budget constraints for local governments (and schools): the efficiency of the municipal sector and its capacity to compete against the private sector was weakened by the existence of soft budget constraints for municipalities (and schools) in Chile. Soft budget constraints for municipalities also encouraged Colombian municipalities to hire teachers and run deficits. The importance of sound local fiscal behavior is also confirmed by the recent evidence on Argentina (the positive impact of decentralization on test outcomes decreases as the provincial deficit increases);

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(d) use of per-capita spending targets instead of formulae attempting to measure basic needs, poverty, etc, which are indicators too subject to “adverse selection” problems. Brazil obtained equitable results by fixing national floors in per student educational spending, while Colombia did not using complicated equity-adjusted formulae. Practices aimed at improving information include: (a) development of monitoring/supervisory systems through: (1) the strengthening of central auditing functions, including the capacity of keeping track of public resources: Nicaragua, for instance, added a new central department in the Ministry of Education, whose main function was the one of auditing the finance and handle the fiscal administration of the new decentralized system; while Mexico failed to really improve central auditing practices; and (2) the effective use and/or establishment of a regional deconcentrated monitoring structure, such as in Chile with the role of provinces in the monitoring of student attendance or in El Salvador with the establishment of EDUCO central and regional offices with specific coordination, supervision and support tasks; (b) development of evaluation systems through the introduction and systematization of standardized testing: Chile was, for instance, successful in introducing at the end of the 1980s a national standardized testing system, called SIMCE, which allowed the government and all other actors involved in education (teachers, parents, etc.) to have objective information on municipal and school performance; most other countries have by now introduced some form of standardized testing, although not necessarily on a national scale. (5) how to implement effective “voice” relationships. In a setting where asymmetries of information between the centre and the sub-national level are pervasive, the role of the community (either through the long route to accountability, i.e., voice, or through the short route, i.e., client power) will be all the more important to help provide the incentives for effective service delivery. Our case studies indicate that to create an effective accountability relationship between the community and the sub-national government, a first necessary step will be the organization of local/regional elections: in all countries, these elections were, at least to some extent, used as a tool to express preferences on education (which does not necessarily happen in national elections, dominated by other topics). To provide more strength and continuity in this accountability relationship, the cases studies also show, however, that the establishment of well-functioning and truly representative civic organizations with extended reporting and monitoring responsibilities will be necessary.12 Still, regarding civic organization, our evidence also shows that, although these arrangements might coordinate and convey voice effectively, often they lack the means of enforcing change, raising an issue of “voice” effectiveness. (6) how to implement effective “client power” relationships based on a strategy of parent participation. Our case studies show that this accountability relationship

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will be strengthened by the introduction of elected school councils with substantial responsibilities in service delivery (responsibilities in the hiring, firing and monitoring of teachers will be particularly important), also implying substantial school decision-making autonomy: Nicaragua and El Salvador were both successful in empowering parents through the creation of generally well functioning elected school councils.

Is There a Model Better than Another? What are the Common Challenges? Our analysis also allows us to go beyond the analysis of each group of models to make some comparisons across groups and countries and detect more general challenges and future directions in selecting “successful” models. Five main points can be made here. ●

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Avoid complicated models: The experiences of Colombia and, to a minor extent, Bolivia seem to indicate that the second group of models, involving more than one political sub-national actor in service delivery with complementary functions, makes the creation of an effective accountability system particularly difficult. The difficulty of this challenge might advise for a simpler delivery model (and this is the trend currently pursued by the Colombian reform); Increase school autonomy and the scope for “client power”: Several case studies that we have reviewed indicate a positive impact of school decision-making autonomy in some areas on the quality and even equity of education. This seems to suggest that decentralizing responsibilities to the school in some areas, and particularly in the teacher management area, makes it possible to maximize the use of local information and accountability mechanisms. It seems that in Nicaragua and El Salvador, for instance, decentralized teacher management was made particularly effective by parents’ enhanced control of teachers, that is by the expression of “client power.” Does, therefore, the relative success of school autonomy suggest that an education delivery model which enhances the “client power” relationship is more likely to succeed than models which emphasize “voice” (such as the sub-national government models) and/or “compact?” This is an interesting question to which it is difficult to give a reply. It is likely that, given the peculiarities of the educational process (proximity to the final users, continuity in the provision of the service, limited teachers’ informational advantages), the scope for user participation is particularly important in education and needs to be fully exploited. This does not mean that “client power” alone is sufficient to ensure that all the benefits of decentralization materialize: a solid “compact” will also be needed to ensure the fulfillment of coverage, efficiency and equity targets.13 Similarly, “voice,” that is, the so-called “long route” of accountability, still has a role to play insofar as local communities through their influence on national and/or sub-national governments will have, at a minimum,

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an impact on the establishment of the overall legislative, administrative and financial framework of education delivery. To sum up, within an education delivery model, there seems to be ground for maximizing the scope for “client power” through an increase in school decision making autonomy, at least in certain areas, without, however, losing the contribution that can be given by the other accountability relationships. In practice, what this conclusion implies for the models of the first two groups, where intermediate political actors are the main actors responsible for the delivery, is that these models need to increase the role of schools as decision making actors. As we have seen above, this is essentially happening in most Latin American countries. This new trend introduces new challenges in these models. Should the school directly be put at the center of the delivery model (like in the “school autonomization” model) and all other actors, which have an established institutional history in the country, be simply used as “support” actors with a monitoring/supervisory role? Or should these actors still have a number of responsibilities, for instance, in infrastructure and teacher management, and, therefore, an efficient way of sharing responsibilities across multiple actors should be found? This second type of model would have the advantage of exploiting all accountability relationships (since, for an issue of size, “voice” will be more effective at the sub-national than at the national level), but might be difficult to manage for the reasons highlighted above (see “avoiding complicated models”). This challenge is or will be particularly difficult for non federal countries like Chile, Colombia and Bolivia, which are trying, to different extents, to increase school autonomy in the context of systems where the Ministry of Education still has a lot of authority and the sub-national governments are generally middle sized, with the consequence of having three or even four levels of delivery. Essentially, more evidence would be needed on the type of institutional setting that would create the best environment for increased school autonomy in the countries where schools have not been at the center of the process up to now (i.e., countries of the first two groups). Putting more emphasis on the “management” accountability relationship and sustainability issues: as countries increase school autonomy there will also be more scope for acting on the “management” relationship, which is essential given that teachers are the most crucial actor in the educational process and improving teachers’ incentives to provide quality education should therefore be part of each reform attempt. In Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras, for instance, teachers’ incentives to perform effectively have been enhanced through higher school decision-making and higher parental participation (and in fact, the focus on teacher management can partly explain the effectiveness of these decentralization reforms). An improvement of teachers’ incentives, if we see that as the ultimate objective, could, however, also take place through the implementation of other decentralization models14 or even separately from decentralization,15 illustrating cases of improved teacher management which do not necessarily involve decisions at the school level. In any case, the empirical evidence shows that the “management” accountability relationship, interpreted in a broader sense to include all

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cases of improved teacher management, needs to be given special emphasis in education delivery models. This is all the more important giving the strength of teacher unions in Latin America. Teacher unions can be said to constitute another main component of each of the models, with their own relationships towards each of the main actors of the models (the national and sub-national governments, schools, etc.). As decentralized teacher management to the sub-national or school level is generally part of a decentralization reform, teachers unions are directly concerned about the reform. There is hardly any empirical evidence on how teacher unions’ behavior influenced the outcomes of the reforms, but they can block reforms (Mexico), make them less extensive (Chile) or lead countries to circumvent them by establishing a parallel teacher hiring and firing system at the school level (as was the case in Central America). In all cases, the same sustainability of the reform is at stake. In a scenario where teacher unions are worried that decentralization will mean losing a number of privileges associated with the teacher profession, measures will need to be found to bring them on board (applying, for instance, special pecuniary rewards and new possibilities of professional development, through well-designed teachers’ incentive policies), instead of excluding them from any debate and decision. Learning from the “best performers” within the country, “learning from other countries” and “learning by doing”: We should also add that there is evidence of substantial heterogeneity in the performance of the education delivery model within the same country. This suggests that, in some cases, before trying to modify the model (or as we modify it), it would be worth trying to improve our understanding of why some sub-national governments do better than others and find effective ways of sharing these “good practices.” An important challenge ahead would be the one of identifying the “best performers,” establish why they are “best performers” and find ways to move the sub-national governments whose performance is not as good to learn from these “best performers.” Finally, identifying the “right” model and institutional set-up for each country is not an easy task and the main issue here is how to proceed to make this happen. A first way of proceeding would be through an effective sharing of international experiences in decentralization reforms, so as to “learn from the mistakes” of other countries and avoid wasting time and funds in badly designed reforms. Another way of proceeding is simply by “learning by doing.” Overall, another challenge ahead is the design of strategies which would make it possible to maximize the impact of “learning from others” and “learning by doing” (for instance, how to design a “learning by doing” strategy not too costly but which can provide timely feed-back).

Notes 1. This argument is, for instance, highlighted in Ugaz (1997) who considers “the improvement in the flow of information” to be the first channel through which decentralization can improve the quality of the services. It is also developed by Wossmann (2000) and Klugman (1994, 1997).

Decentralisation and Accountability Relationships

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2. The opportunity that decentralization provides to enhance this second accountability relationship is often seen as another major argument for decentralization. As Wolman (1988) mentions: “Decentralization fosters greater responsiveness of the decision-makers to the will and needs of the citizens because they are more knowledgeable about and attuned to the needs of their area than are centralized decision makers and because decentralization permits these decision-makers to be held directly accountable to the local citizens (through local elections or other means).” 3. In 1996, there was a particularly innovatory reform which introduced a new financing mechanism (the so-called FUNDEF) which collects resources from state and municipal governments in a single fund and re-distributes them to the state and municipal systems according to the number of students enrolled in each system to address the divergence between resource needs and availability. 4. The “compact” relationship would ensure that the services are produced efficiently and in accordance with national objectives while the “voice” relationship would help ensure efficiency, through monitoring of local authorities, and the fine-tuning of the objectives to the local reality. 5. The “Ley Federal de Educacion” in 1994 in Argentina and the “Lei de Diretrizes e Bases da Educacao Nacional” (LDB) in 1996 in Brazil. The first law was approved only about 14 years after the first wave of decentralization and, while it did specify the relative responsibilities of the federal government and the provinces in education, it did not quite provide the instruments for the center to change provincial behaviours. The second law, while it laid out roles and responsibilities of the various levels, assigned a joint responsibility in primary to the state and municipal level, which is currently open to many interpretations. 6. More specifically, in the case of both countries, the management of human resources was attributed primarily to the departmental level and the management of school infrastructure primarily to the municipal level, with the responsibility for the planning, pedagogical and curricular aspects of the educational process shared mostly across the central/regional/local level. 7. The so-called “Association for Community Education” (ACE). 8. The so-called “Local School Councils” (or “Consejos Directivos Escolares”) and there is also a Parent Council in each school which can propose changes and adjustments to the Local School Council. 9. In the case of El Salvador, supervision is facilitated by the establishment of EDUCO central and regional offices with specific coordination, supervision and support tasks. 10. This is particularly the case of Brazil where in most states there is a current trend towards increased school autonomy in financial and administrative aspects and the “client power” relationship is increasingly used to improve education delivery through participatory management of schools. The most well known case is the one of Minas Gerais since the early 1990s where enhanced school autonomy in the administrative, financing and pedagogical areas was accompanied by a major democratization of school administration (through the establishment of elected school councils, or “colegiado escolar”) and the establishment of a public school assessment program aimed at measuring school performance in a transparent and systematic way. 11. Colombia introduced in 1992 a secondary education targeted voucher program which, in 1996, involved more than one-fifth of the municipalities and close to 2,000 private schools with the main objective of increasing the transition from primary to secondary education for poor students. Participation of municipalities and private schools in the voucher program was voluntary. Chile, while decentralizing the management of schools to municipalities, also introduced, in 1981, a system of “quasi-vouchers” directed to all municipal schools and non-fee-charging private schools, with the main objective of promoting competition among schools to lead to higher quality and enrollment. 12. In Bolivia, for instance, special oversight committees were created in all municipalities to oversee municipal spending and propose new projects with, on average, satisfactory results; while in Brazil, the establishment of local social councils led to rational/ efficient behavior in several municipalities. 13. In Nicaragua and El Salvador, for instance, parents have been particularly effective in monitoring teacher behavior and the allocation of school funds, ensuring the achievement of efficiency and quality targets, but it is the Ministry of Education that, through its financial transfers tied to the number of students and continuous monitoring, ensures minimum levels of coverage, equity and efficiency.

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14. This is the case of Brazil, for instance, where the FUNDEF reform was accompanied by the explicit target of improving the salaries, qualifications, career prospects and performance of teachers, in particular in the municipal system. 15. This is the case of Chile where the school-based monetary rewards to be distributed to teachers are decided by the center.

References Borjas, G., & Acosta, O. L. (2000). Education reform in Colombia. Working Paper Series N.19-FEDESARROLLO, Colombia. Carciofi, R., Cetrangolo, O., & Larranaga, O. (1996). Desafios de la descentralizacion de la educacion y la salud en Argentina y Chile. Santiago de Chile: ECLAC. Di Gropello, E. (2002). An assessment of the impact of decentralization on the quality of education in Chile. World Bank’s Economist’s Forum, Washington DC. Di Gropello, E. (2004). Education decentralization and accountability relationships in Latin America, in The World Bank, Policy Research Working Paper N.3453. Di Gropello, E., & Marshall, J. (2004). Teacher effort and schooling outcomes in rural honduras. Washington DC: The World Bank, (mimeo). Eskeland, G., & Filmer, D. (2002). Autonomy, participation and learning in Argentine schools: Findings and their implications for decentralization. Washington DC: The World Bank (mimeo). Espinola, V. (1994). La descentralizacion de la educacion en Chile: Continuidad y cambio de un proceso de modernizacion. Santiago de Chile: CIDE, Serie Gestion Escolar, N.2. Faguet, J. P. (2000). Does decentralization increase responsiveness to local needs? Evidence from Bolivia. Washington DC: The World Bank (mimeo). Galiani, S., & Schargrodsky, E. (2002). Evaluating the impact of school decentralization on educational quality. Economía, 2(2), 275–324. Gallego, F. (2002). Competencia y resultados educativos: teoria y evidencia para Chile. Cuadernos de Economia, 39(118), 309–352. Gauri, V. (1996). Market forces in the public sector: Chilean educational reform, 1980–1994. Princeton University Ph.D. Dissertation. Princeton, New Jersey, USA. Gomez, A., & Vargas, J. E. (1997). La Descentralizacion de los Servicios de Educacion en Colombia, Serie Reformas de Politicas Publicas N.50. Santiago de Chile: ECLAC. Hsieh, C. T., & Urquiola, M. (2003). When schools compete, how do they compete? An assessment of Chile’s nationwide school voucher program. NBRT Working Paper 10008. Cambridge, MA: NBER. Jiménez, E., & Sawada, Y. (1998). “Do community school managed schools work? An evaluation of El Salvador’s EDUCO Program”. World Bank Economic Review, 13(3), 415–441. King, E., & Ozler, B. (1998). What’s decentralization got to do with learning? The case of Nicaragua’s school autonomy reform. Washington DC: The World Bank Working Paper Series on Impact Evaluation of Education Reforms, N.9. Klugman, J. (1994). Decentralization: A survey of literature from a human development perspective. New York: UNDP Human Development Report Office Occasional Papers. Klugman, J. (1997). “Decentralization: A Survey from a Child Welfare Perspective”. UNICEF Economic and Social Policy Series No. 61, Florence, Italy. McEwan, P., & Carnoy, M. (1999). The impact of competition on public school quality: Longitudinal evidence from Chile’s voucher system. Stanford University, (mimeo). Paes de Barros, R., & Silva Pinto de Mendonca, R. (1998). The impact of three institutional innovations in Brazilian education. In W. D. Savedoff (Ed.), Organization matters: Agency problems in health and education (pp. 75–130). Washington DC: Inter-American Development Bank. Rounds, T. (1997). Achieving balance in decentralization: A case study of education decentralization in Chile. World Development, 25(2), 211–225. Ruiz, F., & Giussani, B. (1997). El Proceso de Descentralizacion y el Financiamento de los Servicios de educacion y Salud en Bolivia. Serie Reformas de Politicas Publicas N.48, Santiago de Chile: ECLAC.

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Sapelli, C., & Vial, B. (2002). The performance of private and public schools in the Chilean voucher system. Cuadernos de Economia, 39(118), 423–454. Sawada, Y., & Ragatz, A. (2004). Decentralization of education, teacher behavior, and outcome: The case of El Salvador’s EDUCO program. Washington DC: The World Bank, (mimeo). Schiefelbein, E., & Schiefelbein, P. (2000). Three decentralization strategies in two decades: Chile 1981–2000. Journal of Educational Administration, 38(5), 412–425. The World Bank. (2003). Brazil municipal education: Resources, incentives and results. Washington DC: The World Bank. The World Bank. (2004). Making services work for poor people. Washington DC: The World Bank and Oxford University Press. Ugaz, C. (1997). Decentralization and the provision and financing of social services: Concepts and issues. Helsinski: UNU/WIDER Working Paper (not numbered). Wolman, H. (1988). Decentralization: What is it and Why should we care? Paper given at International Conference on Intergovernmental Decentralization, Washington, D.C., February 22, 1988. Wossmann, L. (2000). Schooling resources, educational institutions and student performance: The international evidence. Kiel, Germany: Kiel Institute of World Economics Working Paper N. 983.

29 EQUITY, EFFICIENCY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF SOUTH AFRICAN SCHOOLS

Nick Taylor

Introduction Prior to the institution of South Africa’s first democratic government in 1994, school improvement in the country was dominated by NGO projects, generally small in scale and focusing largely on teacher development; research was mainly qualitative, and funding supplied by corporate and international donors. Since 1994, the field of school improvement and effectiveness has become pluralized, with government entering the fray, and the introduction of a variety of programs, including systemic and standardsbased approaches. A range of research methods also appeared in the 1990s, with production-function analyses of the system, mixed method evaluations of intervention programs and school effectiveness studies joining the small scale qualitative research which continued to accompany teacher development projects. As a result, research began to contribute significantly to the shaping of policy, and the delineation of two or more distinct subsystems comprising South Africa’s school sector has spawned a differentiated approach to school improvement on the part of government and donors. If schooling under apartheid was deliberately inequitable, and the first decade of democracy characterised by an undifferentiated drive for equity, then current developments can be said to be searching for more efficient ways of improving quality, particularly for poor children. Increasing the production of the school sector has been identified as a national priority in the fight against the twin problems of high and stubborn levels of social inequality, and the braking effect of an acute skills shortage on economic growth.

Apartheid Schooling, Pre-1994: Opposition Teacher- and School-Focused Programs Before the end of apartheid rule in 1994 school improvement was pre-eminently the domain of NGO activity, with non-government bodies setting themselves in opposition 523 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 523–540. © 2007 Springer.

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to the apartheid state and striving to counter the ruling ideology by means of teacher in-service programs. Pupil-centred classrooms1 were seen as a route to democracy and liberation, and their promotion became the prime focus of NGO activity in the education sector. These programs have a long history in South Africa and many continue to exist alongside a host of interventions which have developed in the last two decades. For many years research on these programs was dominated by small-scale qualitative investigations into classroom processes, with impact evaluations being a recent development. Thus, in a survey conducted in 1995, 99 teacher in-service projects were recorded: one-third of the projects were found to have been the subject of evaluations of one or other kind, but only one used objective measures of learning outcomes to assess impact (where small but significant positive learning gains were noted in science) (Taylor, 1995). Until the fall of apartheid, these programs were generally small in scale, and more often than not consisted of subject-focused training for selected teachers in target schools. The Imbewu project (1998–2001), was the first large-scale initiative of this type in the country. Working in 523 rural schools in the Eastern Cape province, training for teachers and principals concentrated on the principles and methods of child-centred teaching and outcomes-based education, as defined in the Curriculum 20052 documents. Perold (1999) found an enthusiastic response to the program on the part of parents, principals and teachers. In a 3 year longitudinal study, Schollar (2001) concluded that changes in school management and classroom teaching practices were effected by the program, while pupil tests revealed no learning gains in reading, writing and mathematics.

The First Decade of Democracy, 1994–2003: Plurality Standards-Based Accountability Standards-based accountability (SBA), as exemplified by the No Child Left Behind program in the US, has been adopted by many governments around the world (see, e.g., Carnoy, Elmore, & Siskin, 2003). The assumptions underlying this approach to school reform are: clearly defined standards, in the form of a common curriculum, set out what is to be learned; state-wide or national tests assess the extent to which schools and pupils are achieving the standards; and rewards and sanctions accompany the results of the tests. SBA methods were applied by the South Africa government in the period 1999–2003. The Grade 12 examination (Senior Certificate or matric) is the only system-level indicator of the school sector in South Africa. The intense public interest which accompanies publication of the results in December each year indicates both the high stakes involved, and the high levels of legitimacy accorded the Senior Certificate (SC) results by candidates, their parents and both the higher education sector and the labour market. Small wonder, then, that the steady decline in both the pass rate and the proportion of pupils attaining university exemption3 was greeted with great concern by the new government. While the number of candidates fluctuated between 450,000 and 550,000 over the period 1994–1999, the pass rate declined from the 58 to 49%, and the exemption rate dropped from 18 to 12% (see Table 1). This decline should not be surprising,

Development of South African Schools Table 1.

1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

525

Senior Certificate examination results, 1994–2005 Candidates

Total passes

Pass rate (%)

University exemption

Exemption rate (%)

495, 408 531, 453 518, 032 555, 267 552, 384 511, 159 489, 941 449, 371 471, 309 440, 267 467, 985 508, 363

287, 343 283, 742 278, 958 261, 400 272, 488 249, 831 283, 294 277, 206 324, 752 322, 492 330, 717 347, 184

58 53 54 47 49 49 58 62 69 73 71 68

88, 497 78, 821 79, 768 69, 007 69, 856 63, 725 68, 626 67, 707 75, 048 82, 010 85, 117 86, 531

18 15 15 12 13 12 14 15 16 19 18 17

Source: DoE (2004, 2005a, 2005b, 2005c).

given the thorough-going reorganisation of the entire school system following the change in government in 1994 and the inevitable destabilizing effect this had on schools. After the second general election of 1999 government began to pay serious attention to the problem of declining SC results. The Minister of Education established a National Monitoring Forum, the aim of which was to co-ordinate improvement in the SC examination results (MoE, 2001, 2002). Each province was required to institute a SC improvement plan with a special focus on underperforming schools, defined as those which achieved pass rates in the 0–20% category. Collectively these measures constituted an SBA reform initiative. The results of these efforts were immediate, with pass and exemption rates showing a dramatic turnaround in 2000. The effects of these SBA measures were not felt equally in all schools, although they did affect schools in all pass rate categories. However, it is not possible to tell to what extent these changes reflect quality improvements across the system as a whole, since it was subsequently established that not only did the standard of examination papers become easier over this period, but that procedures adopted during the moderation process further contributed to increasing pass rates (Umalusi, 2004). Nevertheless, the results of the Education Action Zone (EAZ) program in the province of Gauteng are instructive. The EAZ was adopted by the Gauteng Department of Education in 2000, as part of the province’s response to the national SC improvement program. Seventy schools in the province which exhibited pass rates below 20% were targeted for a package of interventions. The EAZ was designed as a systemic initiative intended to include the monitoring of schools and the provision of support and training to principals, teachers and pupils. However, in reality, the program did not fully meet its systemic intentions, focusing largely on accountability measures (Fleisch, 2006). The EAZ achieved an impressive rise in SC results in targeted schools on a range of indicators: numbers of candidates passing at both higher and standard grades (HG, SG), overall pass rate, university exemption rate, and the numbers of A symbols achieved by

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pupils (80% or more on aggregate across all subjects). Not only were these results very impressive on their own, but the results of EAZ schools also increased relative to those of other schools in the province: thus, in the first 2 years the aggregate pass rate for project schools increased by an average of 14.5%, which exceeded the improvements shown by both other former DET4 schools in the province (up 10.1%), and all public schools in Gauteng (5.3%) (Fleisch, op cit). Changes to standards of the SC examination make it impossible to estimate the size of the overall effect of SBA on the school system during the period 1999–2003. Nevertheless, the fact that the improvements shown by EAZ schools exceeded those of comparable sub-categories of schools in the province, suggests that the pressure on schools created by standards-based approaches do result in more effective teaching and learning, and that the greater the pressure, the greater the gains.

Systemic5 School Reform The main aim of comprehensive school reform is to link the macro and micro levels of educational practice so that they reinforce each other. This involves aligning curriculum, teaching and assessment through the co-ordination of activity at the levels of the classroom, the school, and the bureaucracy: in effect, this means combining the pressures characteristic of SBA approaches with the training and support offered by teacher- and school-focused programs. The District Development and Support Project (DDSP) (2000–2002) was the first initiative in South Africa based on a systemic design. Working in 453 primary schools in the four poorest provinces, interventions were directed at improving the functionality of districts and schools and improving classroom teaching in language and mathematics. Objective tests of pupil performance in literacy and numeracy at Grade 3 level were conducted during each year of the program, and again 1 year later. Significant changes were recorded, and these were holding steady a year after the closure of the DDSP, as shown in Table 2. While the gains exhibited by DDSP schools appear to be impressive, in the absence of control scores, the significance of these results is unclear. However, an analysis by Schollar (2006) concludes that, against the backdrop of training in mathematics and literacy provided to project schools throughout the life of the project, the gains were associated with two measures adopted in 2002: increased pressure, in the form of demands that test results improve, and the introduction of targeted support measures in the form of detailed specifications of the curriculum, pupil workbooks and item banks of exercises.6 Table 2.

DDSP scores for numeracy and literacy (HSRC, 2003)

Subject

Numeracy Literacy

Mean % 2000

2001

2002

2003

25.84 52.58

26.78 50.23

38.04 57.22

37.32 56.01

Development of South African Schools

527

The Quality Learning Project (QLP) (2000–2004) was an example of a systemic program at the high school level. Working in 524 high schools selected by the nine provincial departments of education, the QLP delivered training and support programs aimed at achieving better management of districts and schools and improved classroom teaching. A longitudinal evaluation (Kanjee & Prinsloo, 2005) found that QLP schools achieved significantly better results in the SC examination than both the national mean and a set of comparable control schools (Table 3). QLP schools showed improvement relative to control schools in a number of areas: ●

●

●

In terms of school leadership and administration, planning and financial management improved in project schools, although the general level of management remained low. Two components of curriculum leadership at the school level also stood out: monitoring curriculum delivery and support to teachers. At the classroom level significant improvements were noted in the degree of curriculum coverage completed by QLP classes, teaching to the appropriate level of cognitive demand, and the quantities of reading, writing and homework undertaken.

Path analysis modelling revealed that QLP interventions affected the functioning of the system in districts, schools and classrooms, improving indices of functionality relative to those for control schools at all three levels. These improvements, in turn, were associated with improved learner performance. Most notable was the effect of languageacross-the-curriculum interventions on the SC pass rate: the implication is that good reading and writing skills are a prerequisite for good performance in all subjects and that intervening in this area can effect significant improvements in pupil performance. The evaluation also noted that 13 of the 17 QLP districts were restructured during the life of the project, and that some of these experienced repeated restructuring events, one of them up to 5 times. These findings reflect a major problem inhibiting the full implementation of systemic reform initiatives in South Africa. Not only are the provincial and district level bureaucracies extremely weak – characterized by large numbers of vacant posts, poorly developed management systems and a paucity of essential resources, such as vehicles to visit schools – but many are in a more or less constant state of instability due to frequent restructuring and personnel changes. Restructuring invariably follows a

Table 3.

Comparison of QLP SC results with the national mean, 2000–2004 (Kanjee & Prinsloo, 2005) Increase 2000–2004 Passes

Total QLP Total SA Difference*

Exemptions

HG maths

SG maths

No

%

No

%

No

%

No

%

% Pass change

4167 47314

18.3 16.7 1.6

1182 16493

34.8 24.0 10.8

585 8466

152.3 47.0 105.0

8741 46512

137.5 58.0 79.0

14.0 12.8 1.2

* Computed by subtracting the percentage gains on baseline scores exhibited by the national mean over the life of the project from those exhibited by QLP schools.

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change of senior management, with the new leader ordering a reshuffling of roles and responsibilities, along new lines of patronage. Under these circumstances, programs such as the DDSP and the QLP are systemic in design only: in reality schools are essentially on their own, with virtually no support or monitoring from districts. The point is emphasized by another finding of the QLP evaluation study: no learning gains were discernible in maths at Grade 9 or 11 levels. The most likely explanation for this result, in the light of the very impressive improvements at SC level, is that, whereas intense pressure is put on schools to perform in the SC examinations, no monitoring is applied at lower levels of the system. The Dinaledi project, working in 102 poor high schools across the country was also structured as a systemic initiative, driven from the national Department of Education. It appears that at least some provincial departments did intervene at the school level, but by and large there seems to have been little participation by the relevant district offices. Training was provided and materials were supplied to teachers and principals (Human, 2003). Although no objective evaluation was conducted on Dinaledi, comparison with the national results show that project schools performed very much better than the mean on most indices (Table 4). While both were designed in broad outline as systemic initiatives, Dinaledi and QLP were very different in the details of their initial school profiles, and are therefore not strictly comparable. However, it is important to note that both, on average, showed impressive overall gains compared with the national mean, while at the same time a high proportion of schools in each program benefited nothing from the respective intervention. The latter feature is shown in Figure 1, the most notable aspect of which is that in both cases a significant number of schools failed to produce a single pass in mathematics at the Higher Grade level after 4 or 5 years of intense intervention: such schools are impervious to the kinds of interventions applied to date by both the government and non-government sectors.

Teacher-and School-Focused Programs In the meantime, the earlier generation of teacher development programs continued, although systemic elements and a more structured approach to curriculum, pedagogy Table 4.

Comparison of Dinaledi SC results with the national mean, 2001–2004

Schools

Increase 2001–2004 Passes No

%

Exemptions

HG Maths

No

%

No

%

No

%

29.7 25.6 4.1

476 180

94.6 0.7 93.9

484 25691

14.6 467 64.4 44 1.8 3.6 26.3 –6063 –16.6 –6462 –7.8 9 11.7 81.0 9.8 –5.4

Total Dinaledi 876 10.4 613 Total SA 53511 19.3 16797 Difference* –8.9

SG Maths

HG Science No

%

SG Science No

%

% Pass change

* Computed by subtracting the percentage gains on baseline scores exhibited by the national mean over the life of the project from those exhibited by Dinaledi schools.

Development of South African Schools Dinaledi Schools (N = 102)

QLP Schools (N = 513)

45

500

40

450

35

400

30 25

2001

20

2004

15 10

Number of Schools

350 300

2000

2004

250 200 150

Pass intervals

Figure 1.

+ 46

0 36

–4

0 –3 26

0 –2 16

6– 1

0 0 1– 5 6– 10 11 –1 5 16 –2 0 21 –2 5 26 –3 0 31 –3 5 36 –4 0 41 –4 5 46 +

50

0

0

100

5

0

Number of Schools

529

Pass intervals

Frequency distribution of schools by maths HG passes, Dinaledi and QLP

and assessment began to enter their designs. Thus Imbewu embarked on a second phase, where it was more closely embedded within the Eastern Cape Department of Education. The Learning for Living project (2000–2004), working in 898 primary schools across the 9 provinces was aimed at improving reading performance. The program trained principals and teachers in the use of a cyclical set of reading and writing activities, visited classrooms to support and monitor the work of teachers, and saturated target schools with books and other reading materials. The first cohort of schools, which experienced the full 5 years of intervention, showed learning gains of 8.4% points in reading and 5.3 points in writing when compared with a set of control schools. The evaluation concluded that these gains could be attributed to the intervention with a 95% level of confidence (Schollar, 2005).

Production-Function Analyses In addition to the kinds of impact evaluations which accompanied programs like Imbewu, and the Quality Learning and Learning for Living projects, a number of production-function studies also appeared during the first decade of democratic government. In the first instance, these confirmed what had been known in all other countries in which such studies had been undertaken since Coleman et al. (1966): socio-economic factors have the largest influence on educational opportunity (Table 5). On the question of resources outside the family, early South African productionfunction studies identified a number of generally weaker and sometimes contradictory relationships (Table 6), indicating that these factors are of less importance than socioeconomic conditions in the home, but also suggesting that it is not only the presence of school resources but how these are used which contribute to learning differentials.

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Taylor

Table 5.

Social factors associated with improved learning (Taylor, Muller, & Vinjevold, 2003)

Factor

Thomas (1996)

Race Parental education Parental income Settlement type Family structure Gender Language

Crouch & Mabogoane (2001)

Anderson, Case, & Lam (2001)

Simkins & Patterson (2003)

Van der Berg & Burger (2002)

++

++ ++

++

++ ++ ++

++ ++

+ 0

Howie (2002)

++ +

0 ++

++

Key: ++ denotes strong positive correlation, + relatively weak positive correlation, 0 no significant difference; blank cells indicate that the study in question did not examine this factor.

Table 6.

Resource factors associated with improved learning (Taylor et al., 2003)

Factor

Crouch & Mabogoane (2001)

Teacher qualifications Facilities Pupil: teacher ratios Learning materials

+ 0 +

Case & Deaton (1999)

++

Case & Yogo (1999)

Bot, Wilson, & Dove (2001)

Van der Berg & Burger (2002)

+

+ +

++

Key: ++ denotes strong positive correlation, + relatively weak positive correlation, 0 no significant difference; blank cells indicate that the study in question did not examine this factor.

Post-2003: Differentiation During the second decade of democracy the types of programs and research studies evident during the previous decade continue to exist. But the most significant development during this period is that research findings have begun to provide policy lessons for both government and private sector initiatives, giving shape to new models of school improvement. Most importantly, the new approaches start from the assumption that different kinds of intervention programs are applicable to different categories of schools. Production-function studies are best at illustrating the broad patterns evident in the system. Thus, Van der Berg (2005) has shown that the South African school system is effectively composed of two sub-populations which behave quite differently (Figure 2). For the bottom 70% of the range of socio-economic status (SES), the gradient of SACMEQ maths scores to SES is flat; at higher SES levels the curve assumes a quadratic shape, with increasing value added to the scores at higher levels of socioeconomic advantage. Van der Berg (2005) speculates that this pattern, shown by both the reading and maths scores, indicates that below a certain SES threshold schools are

Development of South African Schools

531

Average maths score

800 700 600 500 400 300 –4

–2

0 School’s average SES score

2

4

Figure 2. Relationship between SES and SACMEQ II maths scores (Van der Berg, 2005) Notes: SACMEQ is the Southern and Eastern African Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality, a UNESCO initiative involving 14 African countries. SACMEQ II, conducted in 2003, administered maths and literacy tests to a sample of Grade 3 pupils in 13 participating countries.

unable to convert additional resources into educational advantage. Gustafsson (2005) notes that the inter-school inequalities, relative to overall inequalities, are greater with regard to performance than they are with regard to SES. The implication of these features is that the majority of schools, through below par performance, have negligible effects on reducing inequality. Oosthuizen and Bhorat (2006) have identified very similar patterns to the one illustrated in Figure 2 between school performance in the SC examinations and a wide range of resources (classrooms, desks, electricity, ceilings, teaching equipment), with a weak relationship existing over the first 8 performance deciles, and a steep positive change of slope for deciles 9 and 10. These patterns strongly reflect the imprint of inequitable apartheid policies, but at the same time, a significant number of schools defy historical trends. Simkins has categorised South African high schools into three types according to their performance in mathematics at SC level. The proportions of the three categories are shown in Table 7. Four features of Table 7 are worth noting: ●

●

●

79% of the country’s high schools fall into the poorly performing category, producing only 15% of all HG passes in mathematics. The overwhelming majority of children attending these schools are poor and African. Two-thirds of HG mathematics passes are produced by a small minority (7%) of schools. The majority of these were privileged under apartheid, although 34 of them have a history of disadvantage. 600 formerly privileged schools fall into the poorly performing category. These are underperforming relative to their history of privilege.

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Taylor

Table 7.

Distribution of high schools by performance in SC mathematics,1 2004 (Simkins, 2005) Privileged* schools

Top performing** Moderately performing Poor performing Total

380 254 600 1,234

African schools

Subtotal

Prop of total %

Prop of HG math passes %

34 573 4,277 4,884

414 827 4,877 6,118

7 14 79

66 19 15

* Under apartheid these schools were administered by the House of Assembly (for whites), House of Representatives (“coloured”) or House of Delegates (Asian); they were relatively more privileged than those for Africans, with white schools significantly more privileged than those for any other group. ** Top performers produce at least 30 maths passes in the SC examination, with at least 20% at the higher grade (HG); moderately performing schools produce at least 30 maths passes, mostly at standard grade, while poorly performing schools fail to achieve 30 passes in maths. 1. Measuring quality through performance in mathematics in no way implies that the production of good mathematics passes should constitute the main goal of schools. Mathematics is merely used as a proxy for quality, and it is assumed that good language, reading and writing skills underlie performance in mathematics.

●

Over 600 African schools are classified as top or moderately performing. These schools are the country’s star performers, producing excellent results despite their disadvantaged history and the fact that they continue to serve poor to very poor communities.

Although there is no indicator comparable to the SC examination at the primary level, all indications are that the performance of South Africa’s 23,000 primary schools is distributed similarly to the pattern shown in Table 7. The three sets of actors in the field of school improvement – the state, the private sector and international donors – are beginning to tailor their programs in response to the respective challenges of the school categories shown in Table 7, while school effectiveness studies are turning their attention to investigating the characteristics of each category.

Moderately Performing Schools In April 2006 the national Department of Education re-launched the Dinaledi project under a new design. Whereas the first phase of Dinaledi (see Figure 1) focused on 102 mainly poorly functioning high schools, Dinaledi II has selected 400 moderately performing schools across the nine provinces which produce at least 35 SC maths passes amongst African candidates. The aim is to double the number of maths passes for African pupils in the next 5 years, and to increase the HG:SG ratio. It is intended to achieve this goal by training teachers, incentivising teachers and schools, and improving infrastructure, facilities and equipment. The training model adopted for Dinaledi II differs markedly from the majority of programs in operation over the last two decades, and which have been marginally effective, at best, in improving student performance. Whereas most training to date has concentrated

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on the principles of child-centred pedagogy and outcomes-based education, Dinaledi II will emphasise the content knowledge required to teach specific subjects. Furthermore, teachers will receive a cash payment for attending the full 100-hour program, and a further sum if they perform adequately in a post-training test. Similarly, a number of school improvement initiatives supported by corporate donors are targeting high schools with minimum levels of productive capacity. In part, companies are teaming up with government in supporting Dinaledi II schools, and in part they are searching for non-Dinaledi moderately performing schools, or for schools at the upper end of the poorly performing category. While production-function analyses offer the best method for delineating gross patterns in the system, they are unable to penetrate the “black box” of schooling to identify the processes which enable schools to utilise whatever resources they have with greater or lesser degrees of effectiveness. In response to this problem, mixed-method school effectiveness studies are beginning to develop a more detailed understanding of educational practices in homes, schools and classrooms, and in the bureaucracy at national, provincial and district levels. The effectiveness of such practices can be gauged on five factors: language, time management, curriculum coverage, reading and writing, and assessment. The current state of knowledge about these factors is shown in Table 8. Table 8.

Factors which influence learning at different levels of the school system

Factors

Language of instruction

Time management

Curriculum coverage

Effective Practices Home

District and higher

School

Classroom

Speak LOI *PPP, Simkins and Patterson (2003), Khanyisa Sign homework *PPP, SACMEQ, Khanyisa Assist with homework *PPP

Clear policy guidelines Monitor

Policy for the school Plans for developing proficiency in LOI Regulate time use *PPP, SACMEQ

Develop proficiency

Monitor time management in schools Construct and distribute curriculum standards. *QLP

Reading & Writing

Read *PPP, Khanyisa

Distribute books and stationery

Assessment

Monitor results

Quality assure and monitor results

Monitor and support planning and delivery. *PPP, QLP, SACMEQ

Procure and manage books & stationery *PPP, SACMEQ, QLP Quality assure tests. Monitor results. *QLP

Adjusting pace to pupil ability *PPP, Reeves Teacher knowledge. Plan and complete curriculum coverage. *PPP, Reeves, SACMEQ, QLP Read and write *QLP

Assess. Provide feedback. *Reeves, QLP

* Significant association found between improved learning and this factor in the project named: PPP (van der Berg et al., 2005), QLP (Kanjee & Prinsloo, 2005; Taylor & Prinsloo, 2005), SACMEQ (Gustafsson, 2005), Simkins and Patterson (2003), Reeves (2005), Khanyisa (Simkins & Perreira, 2006).

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Most prominent are language and home-related factors, which is not surprising given the strong co-linearity between these variables and poverty in South Africa. African children, which not only constitute the overwhelming majority but also fall predominantly into the poorest fractions of society, are largely schooled in English, which is a second or third language for almost all of them. Current government policy recommends mother-tongue instruction for at least the first three grades, but this may be overturned by the parent body of any school and there is evidence that this is frequently done (Taylor & Moyana, 2005). As a result many of the poorest children are schooled in an unfamiliar language, many from the first grade. The evidence summarised in Table 8 supports findings which have been well established in South Africa and elsewhere for some time: learning is greatly enhanced when the language of the home and that of the school coincide in the early years (Alidou et al. 2006). Furthermore, where there is a dissonance between the two, children do better at school the more their parents speak to them in the language of instruction (Simkins & Patterson, 2003). Other home level practices which stand out strongly are reading and the performance of homework. A simplified PPP regression model showed a strong step-wise improvement in learning: Grade 6 children who read once a week at home have an advantage of about 5% points in a literacy test over those who do no reading at home; when reading is done 3 times a week the advantage is increased to 10 points, and those who read more than 3 times a week are likely to be about 12 points ahead. In the full regression models the effects of reading at home are more muted (around 3.5 points), but remain strongly significant (Van der Berg, Burger, & Yu, 2005); similarly, regular homework adds around 2% points to performance. A number of school level management practices are associated with better than expected learning. Time regulation is chief amongst these. Gustafsson (2005) notes that teacher late coming is a factor in 85% of South African schools, and estimates that if all schools were brought up to the level of the best schools in this regard then overall scores on the SACMEQ tests would improve by around 15% across the system, and around 20% in the poorest schools. This factor has long been identified as a problem (Taylor & Vinjevold, 1999), and the latest studies (Chisholm et al., 2005) indicate that it continues to exert a strong inhibiting influence on the time available for learning, and consequently on the quality of schooling. Curriculum leadership and management is a second school level factor associated with better than expected learning. Co-ordinating the construction of teacher plans for curriculum coverage, and monitoring the implementation of the plans was found by the PPP to have positive effects (van der Berg et al., op cit). These results are supported by the findings of the QLP evaluation (Kanjee & Prinsloo, 2005; Taylor & Prinsloo, 2005). Gustafsson (op cit) concurs with the QLP conclusion that providing advice to teachers by management is beneficial, and adds that fewer, well structured sessions are better than more frequent, less formal interactions. In the domain of classroom practice, Reeves (2005) and the QLP evaluation agree that learning gains are proportional to the degree of curriculum coverage, and the extent to which the level of cognitive demand at which the material is presented approaches the level specified by the official curriculum. In addition, the QLP study found greater quantities of reading, writing and homework enhance learning, while

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Reeves concluded that pupils perform better in maths when the teacher is responsive to the stage of development of individual children, gives explicit feedback in response to pupil knowledge displays and makes clear the criteria for judging a good display. Table 8 also reveals three areas in which knowledge about South African schools is relatively poorly developed: two of these occur at the levels of the district and classroom, respectively, while the third, assessment, is a factor which cuts across all levels of the system. The paucity of knowledge about factors at the district level most probably arises because of the very low functionality of the majority of district offices. The silence around assessment is enigmatic. Expectations are that school-level practices – such as setting high expectations, quality assuring test papers, and monitoring results – would produce positive effects on learning. The lack of such findings in our research projects may derive from contradictory or uniformly poor assessment practices on the part of school management. The relative lack of conclusive research findings at the classroom level probably derives from the paucity of longitudinal designs to date: because of the accumulated effects of many different teachers on the performance of any child, the effects of particular teaching practices are best investigated by means of cohort studies which measure learning gains in individual students annually and correlate these against the styles of their teachers during the same period.

Top Performing Schools As we have noted, a growing number of relatively poorly resourced African schools are providing education of high quality. However, the majority of the country’s top schools are privileged institutions, formerly reserved for white and, to a lesser extent, “coloured” or Asian children. Top African schools, together with those formerly privileged schools which have a majority African roll, are being served by the Dinaledi II project. The remaining top performing schools fall into two groups: English-speaking schools which enroll African learners in numbers which vary from 25 to 75%, and Afrikans-speaking schools containing minimal numbers of African pupils. In their search for non-Dinaledi schools which have high levels of capacity, some private sector school improvement initiatives are investigating ways of providing incentives to these schools to increase their output of high quality SC graduates, particularly among poor African children.

Poorly Performing Schools International donors, in the meantime, continue to sponsor earlier models of school improvement, targeting the poorest primary schools. For example, second phases of the Imbewu Project and the District Development and Support Project (now called the Integrated Education Program) continue, while a major new initiative, the Khanyisa Education Support Program, was launched in 2003. Government has announced two new initiatives for this sector, aimed at complementing the 5-year old policy of allocating the non-personnel component of the budget to schools, in proportion to the relative poverty of the school community. Thus, in May 2006 the Minister announced the introduction of “no fee schools” whereby the poorest

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quintile of schools may not charge any fees: in compensation they will receive an additional grant from the state. Further, the Quality Improvement and Development Strategy Upgrading Program (QIDS UP) will aim to provide resources to 5,000 low performing schools (DoE, 2006). However, key to the success of achieving any meaningful change in the quality of schooling for the majority of poor children is finding ways of enabling these schools to use their resources more efficiently. This is a central problem in South African schooling and one which we know least about. What we do know about the poorly performing sector is that it is not made up of an homogenous collection of dysfunctional schools. It is itself differentiated, with a top end which differs only marginally from the moderately performing schools included in Dinaledi II, and exhibits the full spectrum of performance down to the most severely dysfunctional schools. As we know from the experience of the QLP and the first phase of Dinaledi (see Figure 1), dysfunctional schools constitute somewhere between oneand two-thirds of the poorly performing sector (a total of between 1,600 and 3,200 schools). This is a very large margin of uncertainty and an important research priority must be to identify the relative fractions of those schools which are amenable to current intervention programs and those which require stronger medicine. Those schools at the top end are being targeted by new private sector initiatives, and evaluations of these efforts are bound to produce important school improvement lessons. However, the greatest area of uncertainty lies in what to do about the bottom end of the poorly performing sector. Nothing that has been tried to date has had any effect on a large group of schools. We do know that these schools do not exhibit the factors identified in Table 8. First and foremost, they have poor time management practices, with many hours each week and many days over the year not being used for teaching and learning. Second, curriculum leadership is poorly developed in these schools, with little or no planning and monitoring coverage of the curriculum, or managing textbooks and stationery. At the classroom level it is clear that the teaching of reading and writing in the majority of schools is rudimentary in the extreme (Pretorius & Machet, 2004; Taylor & Moyana, 2005). But we don’t know how to promote more effective management and teaching practices in dysfunctional schools. According to Hopkins, Harris, and Jackson (1997), rewards and sanctions have no bite in these schools, as they are unable to help themselves: they require a high level of external intervention and support, and there should be a clear and concerted focus on a specific, limited number of factors. In many schools in this state the first thing to be done is to remove the principal, and strong mediation may be required to break situations of conflict between factions in the school. Only government has the authority to intervene here. But, as we have seen, provincial and district offices, by and large, are incapable of doing this, certainly on the kind of scale required to turn around the large numbers of failing schools in all provinces. The problem seems insurmountable, given the very weak state of large parts of all provincial departments of education. Central government and the private sector are embarking on a number of strategic experiments, attempting to establish workable models of capacity building in those parts of the civil service which exhibit some functionality, and it is anticipated that these programs will provide lessons for the rest of the system.

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Conclusion The South African school system consists of very small top and moderately performing sectors and a large poor to very poorly functioning rump. Interventions in poorly performing schools, which probably constitute around 80% of the total, have realised some impact, but proved to be highly inefficient. Research information about the characteristics of the three sectors is guiding the formulation of a differentiated set of responses to the problem of school quality. Urgency is given to this quest by an acute skills shortage which is placing a ceiling on economic growth. Although the economy picked up encouragingly during the first decade of democracy, the 5% benchmark now seems to be presenting a bridge too far. Efforts to increase production of high level skills has caused government and corporate donors to target those schools which exhibit at least moderate levels of functionality. If current goals of doubling the number of SC passes in HG mathematics succeed, then the ratio of SC candidates to HG maths passes will improve from 20:1 to 10:1. This will provide the foundation for a very significant increase in high- to intermediate level skills for the second growth spurt required to enable the economy to make serious inroads into the problem of unemployment. Focusing attention on high- and moderately-performing schools would seem to present the most efficient way of addressing supply-side constraints to economic growth in the short term. In addition, this strategy will begin to address South Africa’s glaring between-school inequalities, which stand at almost twice that of any other SACMEQ country, except for that of the country’s former colony Namibia. Should this strategy be effective, most of the growth in educational opportunities will be among African pupils, many of whom will be from very poor families. But, to give only passing attention to the poorest 80% of the system is an inefficient route to reducing social inequality. Furthermore, this strategy will reach a limit, at which point any further growth will need to come from the poorly performing sector. Whichever way the problem is approached, strategies for improving the poorest schools must be developed sooner rather than later. Apart from incontrovertible moral reasons, social pressure, in the form of rising levels of crime and the growing incidence of other forms of social unrest, make this unavoidable.

Notes 1. Pupil-centred methods are associated with what Bernstein (1996) called competence pedagogies, which assume a universal democracy of acquisition (all children are inherently competent and there are no deficits, only differences), are based on constructivist learning theories, and insist on high levels of professional discretion in matters of curriculum and assessment on the part of the teacher. 2. This was the new outcomes-based education curriculum adopted in 1996, which sought to implement a strong form of competence pedagogy in all public schools. 3. Candidates who meet certain requirements qualify to apply to study at one of South Africa’s universities. 4. Prior to 1994 the Department of Education and Training (DET) administered schools for African children in those parts of South Africa officially reserved for whites. 5. Although the terms “systemic” and “standards-based accountability” have been used synonymously (Supovitz & Taylor, 2005), we use the former in the sense defined by Smith and O’Day (1990), where systemic programs

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are taken to include both accountability and support elements. Following Carnoy et al. (2003) we use the term standards-based accountability to refer to programs which include only accountability measures. 6. In contrast to the competence approach (pupil-centred) which prevailed prior to 1994 and which lay at the heart of the new curriculum, these features are characteristic of what Bernstein (1996) termed performance pedagogies, which assume that learning is enhanced if teachers are allowed less autonomy with respect to curriculum matters and are required to follow a common, structured program.

References Alidou, H., Boly, A., Brock-Utne, B., Satina Diallo, Y., Heugh, K., & Wolff, H. E. (2006). Optimizing learning and education in Africa – The language factor: A stock-taking research on mother tongue and bilingual education in Sub-Saharan Africa. ADEA, 2006. Available at: http://www.adeanet.org/biennial-2006/ document/B3_1_MTBLE_en.pdf Anderson, K., Case, A., & Lam, D. (2001). Causes and consequences of schooling outcomes in South Africa: Evidence from survey data. Social Dynamics, 27(1), 37–59. Bernstein, B. (1996). Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research, critique. London: Taylor & Francis. Bot, M., Wilson, D., & Dove, S. (2001). The education atlas of South Africa. Johannesburg: The Education Foundation. Carnoy, M., Elmore, R., & Siskin, L. (Eds.). (2003). The new accountability: High schools and high-stakes testing. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Case, A., & Deaton, A. (1999). School inputs and educational outcomes in South Africa. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114, 1047–1084. Case, A., & Yogo, M. (1999). Does school quality matter? Returns to education and the characteristics of South African schools. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No 7399, October. Coleman, J. S., Campbell, E. Q., Hobson, C. F., McPartland, J., Mood, A. M., Weinfeld, F. D., et al. (1966). Equality of educational opportunity. Washington: US Government Printing Office. Chisholm, L., Hoadley, U., wa Kivilu, M., Brookes, H., Prinsloo, C., Kgobe, A., et al. (2005). Educator workload in South Africa. Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council. Crouch, L., & Mabogoane, T. (2001). No magic bullets, just tracer bullets: The role of learning resources, social advantage, and education management in improving the performance of South African schools. Social Dynamics, 27(1), 60–78. DoE. (2004). Education statistics in South Africa at a Glance 2002. Pretoria: Department of Education. DoE. (2005a). Education statistics in South Africa at a Glance 2003. Pretoria: Department of Education. DoE. (2005b). Education statistics in South Africa at a Glance 2004. Pretoria: Department of Education. DoE. (2005c). Senior certificate: Report on the 2005 examination results. Pretoria: Department of Education. DoE. (2006). Speech by Naledi Pandor, MP, Minister of Education, introducing the debate on the Education Budget Vote 15, National Assembly. Pretoria: Department of Education. Fleisch, B. (2006). Bureaucratic accountability in the education action zones of South Africa. South African Journal of Education, 26(3), 369–382. Gustafsson, M. (2005). The relationships between schooling inputs and outputs in South Africa: Methodologies and policy recommendations based on the 2000SACMEQ dataset. Downloaded at http://www.sacmeq.org/links.htm Hopkins, D., Harris, A., & Jackson, D. (1997). “Understanding the school’s capacity for development: Growth states and strategies.” School Leadership and Management, 17(3), 401–411. Howie, S. (2002). English language proficiency and contextual factors influencing mathematics achievement of secondary school pupils in South Africa. Ph.D. Thesis. Enschede: University of Twente. HSRC. (2003). Report on DDSP grade 3 learner assessment 2003, in district development support program: Improving the quality of primary education. Pretoria: RTI. Human, P. (2003). The 102 schools project, also referred to as the Dinaledi Project: A brief survey of project activities in the period May 2002–January 2003. Mimeo. Kanjee, A., & Prinsloo, C. H. (2005). Improving learning in South African schools: The quality learning project (QLP) summative evaluation (2000 to 2004). Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council.

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MoE. (2001). Fourth report to the president from the Minister of Education. Pretoria: Ministry of Education. MoE. (2002). Fifth report to the president from the Minister of Education. Pretoria: Ministry of Education. Oosthuizen, M., & Bhorat, H. (2006). Final Report II: School performance in the 2000 Senior Certificate examinations. mimeo: University of Cape Town, Development Policy Research Unit. Available at: http://www.commerce.uct.ac.za/dpru Perold, H. (1999). Reflections on the Imbewu Project. Mimeo. Available at:: http://www.jet.org.za Pretorius, E. J., & Machet, M. P. (2004). The socio-educational context of literacy accomplishments in disadvantaged schools: Lessons for reading in the early primary school years. Journal for Language Teaching, 38(1), 45–62. Reeves, C. (2005). Can schools reverse social disadvantage by pedagogy or Opportunity-to-Learn? Paper presented at the Second Meeting of the Consortium for Research on School Quality, April 2006. Available at: http://www.jet.org.za Schollar, E. (2001). Final report of the evaluation of the school-level impact of Imbewu. Mimeo, Available at: http://www.jet.org.za Schollar, E. (2005). Final report of the evaluation of the learning for living project, 2000–2004. Paper presented at the Second Meeting of the Consortium for Research on School Quality, April 2006. Available at: http://www.jet.org.za Schollar, E. (2006). Analysis of the impact on pupil performance of the District Development Support Program (DDSP). Available at: http://www.jet.org.za Simkins, C. (2005). The determinants of mathematics and science performance in the 2002 and 2004 Senior Certificate examinations. Paper written for the Centre for Development and Enterprise. Available at: http://www.jet.org.za Simkins, C., & Patterson, A. (2003). The social and economic determinants of performance in the language of instruction and mathematics in Quality Learning Project schools. Pretoria: Human Sciences Research Council. Simkins, C., & Perreira, C. (2006). Factors influencing learning in the Khanyisa Program. Paper presented at the Second Meeting of the Consortium for Research on School Quality, April 2006. Available at: http://www.jet.org.za Smith, M. S., & O’Day, J. (1990). Systemic school reform. In S. H. Furman, & B. Malen (Eds.), The politics of curriculum and testing: The 1990 yearbook of the politics of education association. New York: Falmer. Supovitz, J. A., & Taylor, B. S. (2005). Systemic education evaluation. American Journal of Evaluation, 26(2), 204–230. Taylor, N. C. (1995). Inset, NGOs and evaluation: A review, paper presented at the Kenton-at-Settlers conference, 27–30 October 1995. Taylor, N. C., & Moyana, J. (2005). Khanyisa education support program. Baseline study Part I: Communities, schools and classrooms. Mimeo. Available at: www.jet.org.za Taylor, N. C., Muller, J. P., & Vinjevold, P. (2003). Getting schools working: Research and systemic school reform in South Africa. Cape Town: Pearson Education Publishers. Taylor, N. C., & Prinsloo, C. (2005). The quality learning project: Lessons for high school improvement in South Africa. Mimeo. Available at: www.jet.org.za Taylor, N. C., & Vinjevold, P. (1999). Getting learning right. Cape Town: Pearson Education Publishers. Thomas, D. (1996). Education across generations in South Africa. American Economic Review, 86, 330–334. Umalusi. (2004). Have the standards of the senior certificate examination declined? Summary report on the evaluation of the senior certificate examination. Pretoria: Umalusi. Van der Berg, S. (2005). How effective are poor schools? Poverty and educational outcomes in South Africa. Available at: www.sacmeq.org/ images/mapsml.gif Van der Berg, S., & Burger, R. (2002). Education and socio-economic differentials: A study of school performances in the Western Cape. Paper to the Conference Labour Markets and Poverty in South Africa, DPRU/FES, Johannesburg, October. Van der Berg, S., Burger, R., & Yu, D. (2005). Determinants of education quality: A report on the Western Cape primary school pupil survey 2003. Paper presented at the Second Meeting of the Consortium for Research on School Quality, April 2006. Available at: http://www.jet.org.za

30 POLICY PERSPECTIVE ON SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT AT THE STATE LEVEL: THE CASE OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Steve Marshall

Introduction The South Australian education system has rightly been held in high esteem nationally and internationally for many years. It has been at the forefront of the social and cultural development of the state and its work in areas such as early childhood, literacy and middle schooling has been recognised as leading edge. Like all organisations, however, it has progressed through a cycle of growth that at the beginning of the millennium was showing a downward trend, particularly in terms of vital indicators such as student retention in the secondary years, literacy and numeracy results in the primary years and workforce morale in general. My appointment as Chief Executive enabled me to pursue a reform agenda aimed not only at lifting standards of student achievement and wellbeing, but providing a trajectory for system development that would better match the pace of change in the social, economic, technological and cultural spheres of the state and more globally. In this chapter, I will outline the key factors of system reform that enabled improvement in culture, student performance and organisational health. In doing so I will focus my attention on factors outside the school and classroom that contributed to improvements. While the quality of teaching is the major factor in student performance, my role as Chief Executive was to align the factors outside of the classroom to best support school leaders and teachers in their work. While space does not allow me to discuss all the important reform factors such as policy and planning reform, professional development, industrial relations, budget reform and the like I have discussed the factors that had a significant impact on the organization as a whole. First, I will outline the context of the Department before making brief comments about how I viewed the role of Chief Executive and the manner in which I carried out that role. Second, I will illustrate how the task of aligning the Department was undertaken in a way that positioned student learning and wellbeing at the centre of action. 541 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 541–556. © 2007 Springer.

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In doing so I will make comments about the importance of systems theory and how inquiry in the Department of Education and Children’s Services (DECS) complimented organisational values. Third, I will emphasis the importance of support structures to schools. Finally I will outline a key organization development strategy.

The Context of DECS The Department of Education and Children’s Services has undergone a number of organisational changes in recent decades. In 1997, for example, Education and Children’s Services was amalgamated by the Liberal government of the day with Employment and Training to form the Department for Education, Training and Employment (DETE). In mid-2002, the newly elected Labour government re-established the DECS by moving the employment and training components to another government agency. After 8 years of a Liberal government, 2002 was a year of major reorientation for the South Australian public sector. DECS had had a number of Chief Executives during that time and the whole of the executive structure of the department had undergone a period of uncertainty. In light of the policy platform of the new government, school and Children’s Services leaders were looking to the department for direction, particularly as major changes to the state’s system of local site management were being foreshadowed.

The Role of the CE In October 2002, I was appointed as the Chief Executive of DECS, with responsibility for educational reform in South Australia. My aim in leading DECS was to position the department as an innovative, high performing and service oriented organization that was connected or joined up both within and across the public sector. As a strong believer in complex adaptive systems, I focussed my role on building alignment, designing and building culture, deepening the organizations strategic leadership and capacity to learn. Two key priorities were to build a single model of local management and to place the learner at the centre of the reform. Upon arrival, I initiated a functional realignment, the key deliverable of which was to improve learning outcomes for all children and students. The realignment was designed to ensure that as an organisation, DECS would become: ● ● ●

Highly connected, networked and interdependent Driven by explicit values Learning-centred at all levels

It was my vision that the culture of DECS support collaboration, problem solving and value adding. As a public enterprise at the heart of the state’s social and economic development, it was essential that Education and Children’s Services model and deliver responsiveness, ethical standards and a clear valuing of people and their contribution to the goals of the organisation.

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Some Results Three years on, DECS has attained significant success in a number of areas identified as priorities by the government: ●

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● ●

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Rising retention rates, with over 70% of students staying at school from Year 8 to Year 12 (2005 figures). Increased literacy achievement, with the 2005 mean scores for Years 3, 5 and 7 literacy, the highest ever-recorded in South Australia. The number of students in Year 3 performing above national benchmark in reading increased from 87.7% in 2001 to 90.9% in 2004, while in writing the figure increased from 88.4% in 2001 to 90% in 2004. Introduction of specific curriculum programs to support literacy, numeracy, crime prevention, drug education, early childhood and solar panel schools. Providing a blue print for Secondary Education Reform. Significant increase in Organisation Health and Injury Prevention Standards as measured by independent agencies. Significant increases of vocational pathways for students.

These statistics are among a substantial data set that indicated clear improvement in student outcomes and futures pathways. In addition: ● ● ●

●

●

a new model of District operations was successfully introduced. a single funding model for sites was introduced. every site and unit leader in DECS was involved in a “leaders’ convention” – this was the first such gathering in the history of the department and the establishment of a leaders’ convention to deepen strategic decision making and unity of purpose. DECS received an increased international profile through its close working links with high level professionals, including Professor Michael Fullan, Dr Fraser Mustard, Baroness Susan Greenfield and Tony Buzan to name but a few. positive connections were successfully promoted with associations, unions and key stakeholder groups.

These achievements came about, I believe, through a relentless focus on four key organisational elements: ●

●

●

Putting in place governance arrangements that enable educational decisions to be made at the local level – in this way, individual sites were able to more effectively utilise resources to improve learning outcomes and enhance the wellbeing of children and students. Developing a culture within the organisation that emphasised and supported continuous improvement in relation to the engagement and wellbeing of learners and staff. Putting in place strategies to enhance the capability of the workforce – in particular, ensuring that educators had access to the most up-to-date knowledge and skill sets regarding how the human brain learns, how wellbeing influences engagement and how learners can be supported to built thinking toolkits for the future. In this

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way, those with responsibility for ensuring all children and students reach their full potential had the support to continually build the expertise to make it happen. Establishing business systems and infrastructure focused on supporting sites to deliver high quality curriculum experiences for all learners.

Alignment Prior to my arrival, DECS had traditionally been organised around a number of operational units in the Central Office with responsibilities ranging from resource allocation to appointment of school staff to policy development. There were 24 districts across the state, each headed by a District Superintendent. The chief responsibility of these people was to provide line management for school leaders and to be a system representative and problem solver in the field, as well as a key conduit for policy implementation and procedural outcomes. Local school management had been introduced in 1999, with schools invited to nominate for involvement. The Partnerships 21 scheme, as it was titled, was reviewed and a report delivered to the government in August 2002, recommending that local management be expanded to take in all government schools and preschools. The emphasis on widening the areas of responsibility for schools and sites in order to achieve better decisions in local contexts was most definitely on the right track. What needed to happen was for DECS to be viewed from a perspective of systems thinking so that whole system reform would become the catalyst for change in individual schools and preschools. My plan was to introduce a four-tiered governance framework whereby all schools and preschools would be managed locally and supported by education districts that had a stronger infrastructure than at any time before. In my view, the key to raising the standards of learning achievement and wellbeing of children and students was to align the whole system towards the common goal of continuous improvement and the reform of practice to reflect the needs of learners in the twenty-first century. With this in mind, the Centre of DECS was re-aligned to consist of three offices – Learning and Service Delivery, People and Culture, and Business Improvement and Strategic Financial Management. Flattening the management structure at the top of the organisation would mean that Central Office would have reduced responsibility in terms of providing direct services to schools. New districts were introduced, led in each case by a District Director and with enhanced infrastructure to provide more responsive support to schools. Much of this support was previously available only through the Central Office. For example, where the Curriculum group in Central Office had been providing a state-wide service, each district would now have three “Learning Band Coordinators,” whose role would be to provide direct consultancy to schools and preschools around planning and implementing quality pedagogy and curriculum for learners (Figure 1). Whereas many previous educational reforms had focused on the school as the unit of change, the reform of DECS in South Australia was based on the notion that systemwide transformation requires new capacities to be built at each level of the system and across their relationships (Fullan, 2004, p. 8).

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Whole of government DECS central office District Classroom/Centre and School/Preschool Learner

Figure 1.

The Four-tiered model of school local management

The Influence of Systems Thinking Systems thinking was a new approach to policy and planning for DECS. It was clear, from my experiences in Victoria and my background in educational administration, that if I could successfully introduce people in DECS to systems theory, we would better position ourselves to achieve authentic reform in line with the state government’s vision of becoming the “clever state.” Viewing DECS not as a linear organisation (with a Central Office providing services and resources to sites and districts) but as “a set of elements joined together to make a complex whole” (Chapman, 2002, p. 38) necessarily requires a different approach to communication, problem solving, resource allocation, decision-making and indeed, policy development and implementation. Scholtes (1998, cited by the Australian Quality Council, 2001, p. 3) argues that: Systems thinking is seeing reality in terms of interdependencies, interactions and sequences. It is a way of thinking at the broadest macro level (galaxies) and the smallest micro level (DNA)! In this view, the role of teachers and the essential goals of education had to be considered as the core of any reform. Reid (2004, p. 9), represents the traditional model of educational organisation, one that positions teachers as the implementers of plans, policies and products of others, as follows in Figure 2. DECS has always been a strongly consultative system. Plans, products and priorities have always been well canvassed with teacher unions and key interest groups and many policies have been developed in collaboration with these “industry partners.” Constructing teachers as implementers of decisions made well away from the classroom has the advantage, some might argue, of ensuring consistency of delivery – if not outcome – across the system. It does not motivate them, however, to seek to learn deeply about their craft. The intent of having teachers belong to networks of professional inquirers is just that – to ensure that they change the world of the school (and the outcomes achieved by learners) by understanding it and its systemic characteristics.

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External factors

Plans, products, policies

DISTRICTS & SITES CENTRAL OFFICE Inquiry

Government priorities Figure 2. A model of organisational change based on systems thinking and inquiry networks (Reid, 2004, p. 9)

External factors

Plans, products, policies

DISTRICTS & SITES CENTRAL OFFICE (Inquiry & evidence based policy) Inquiry

Government priorities Knowledge/Insights & Issues

Figure 3. A model of organisational change based on systems thinking and inquiry networks (Reid, 2004, p. 11)

A model of organisational change based on systems thinking and inquiry networks, therefore, would look like Figure 3 (Reid, 2004, p. 11). Reid (2004, p. 11) explains that the right-hand side of the diagram is based on the assumption that a system-wide culture of inquiry is in place. In schools, teachers are engaged in inquiry and research into issues, problems and dilemmas associated with their pedagogies. The new knowledge that emerges from the process feeds back into classrooms and schools across the system, deepening learning and reinvigorating professional discussion and dialogue. Further, there are structures in place through which these insights and understandings derived through inquiry are harvested and responded to at a district level (e.g., in the form of networks and consultative support for professional learning) and at the state office level (e.g., in the form of policy change or provision of resources to meet emerging demands).

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This model is a good illustration of the benefits of the four-tiered system. Provided that channels of communication are open and information flows freely between different parts of the system, there is the potential that: ●

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State office policy will be driven by inquiry at all levels, and in particular, inquiry generated at the classroom level about what strategies and practices are in the best interests of students and the teachers who support their learning. Districts will be a crucial conduit of communication between the state office and school-based leaders and practitioners. Problems experienced by schools will be responded to in a timely and appropriate way by the district in the first instance, with support from the state office (in the form of resources and operational expediencies) where required. In this way, no students will have their learning outcomes put at risk by unresolved issues. The government will continue to outline priorities, although the knowledge that is being produced and the issues that are being identified by schools will influence these. Much of the work undertaken by state office and the districts will involve responding to the issues that are emerging from school-level inquiry into the system priorities – in particular, meeting the needs of schools regarding professional development, networks for the sharing of best practice and altering policies to reflect new insights.

For this model to be effective the skills and dispositions for inquiry and research must be encouraged, structures and processes that model and support inquiry and research must be established and an environment that nurtures the conditions for inquiry and research must be promoted. In South Australia, districts have begun the process of inculcating a culture of inquiry. At the Central Office level, there is growing awareness that all policies must be based on inquiry and a solid evidence base and have built in a process of regular review and reflection. The reform in this area is in its early and exciting stages and while a strong foothold and commitment exists much more needs to be done to build capacity. The mechanisms are in place for this to occur.

Creating a Culture for Continuous Improvement An integral part of culture building within an organisation is to make explicit the values that drive the essential work and to identify the key foundations for any change envisioned. In the DECS Statement of Directions – a blueprint for action by people at all levels of the system – the organisational values and guiding behaviours were outlined as a precursor to the actual directions to be taken over the next 5 years by the department. As was stated in the document: These organisational values are the tenets, which guide adult and student behaviours within state office, schools and children’s services. They are the foundation stone for our work and practice, providing focused and direction for all our

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interpersonal relationships. These values are inextricably interconnected and espoused in the strongest terms, DECS aim is that we live and learn by them. Department of Education and Children’s Services [DECS] Statement of Directions 2005–2010, p. 2. It was determined, through consultation with districts and sites, that DECS values would be: ●

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Fairness – we show fairness by acting without bias and recognising that the causes of inequity are socially constructed and can be changed by behaving in a way that leads to equitable outcomes. Integrity – we show integrity by consistently applying moral and principled behaviour that reflects trust and honesty. Excellence – we show excellence by being innovative, creative and responsive in the way we think, act and learn. In meeting and overcoming challenges, we expand capabilities to achieve appropriate quality outcomes and success. Respect – we show respect by honouring and considering others and treating them with dignity, empathy, esteem and courtesy. Cooperation – we show cooperation by constructively thinking and working together, by valuing the uniqueness of each individual and by being capable of uniting cohesively as a group and community. We recognise our local and global interconnectedness. Responsibility – we show responsibility through accountability and strategically leading, planning and managing for today, with tomorrow in mind. DECS Statement of Directions 2005–2010, p. 2.

Having these values in place made clear what the culture of DECS would look and feel like, whether it be in a work unit in central office, in a district team or in a school or preschool. While I knew that people in the organisation would continue to be committed to doing their jobs effectively, it was the ability of everyone at each level to work interdependently and to improve the overall synergy of the organisation that I pursued unremittingly. Some key foundations for change were also crucial. Without an explicit focus on these, our maturity as a system would remain at its previous level, at best. The six strands that have become the foundations for change in DECS are: ●

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Leadership – it was my goal that every employee of DECS be empowered to take charge of their personal and professional development and to exercise their responsibility and initiative in improving the processes and outcomes of their work. Professional learning programs aimed at promoting the leadership capacities of people have become a strong feature of the DECS calendar. One particularly successful program was Stephen Covey’s “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” course, which has been accessed by a high percentage of staff from Central Office and District teams. Networking – interdependence describes a working relationship of mutual responsibility, sharing of resources and collegial support with problem solving and the

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development of best practice. Networks of sites within and across districts and including work units in DECS offices are essential for the harvesting and dissemination of information vital to the improvement of educational outcomes for children and students. I established a Chief Executive’s Leaders Forum through which the views of leaders from the field could be heard and important policy and development information taken back and “road tested.” Inquiry – it is both a challenge and a responsibility of employees in DECS to continually reflect on the effectiveness of their work in terms of the impact it has on the wellbeing and learning achievement of our children and students. Rigorous, evidence-based processes of inquiry, applied on a regular basis within all sites and work units, helps to ensure that we are doing the right thing, that we are doing it as well as we can and that we are able to assure others that outcomes are continually improving. Service standards – declaring and then providing agreed standards of service is a catalyst for improving responsiveness and better deploying resources in schools and preschools. Deepening strategic capacity – to achieve our vision and goals as an organisation, it is important that we have in place clear planning and implementation processes. These provide focus, direction and motivation and enable the flexibility to adapt and respond to issues and opportunities as they emerge. Futures scenario planning and innovation are two particularly important elements of this foundation for change. Strengthening ownership – to ensure that all employees feel connected to the organisation, DECS encourages greater collaboration between all sites and work units and in particular, has a focus on assisting people to build the skills, knowledge and experience necessary for career development.

In terms of creating an organisational culture of continuous improvement, the DECS Statement of Directions was a roadmap for collective action – all the while promoting the crucial emphasis on the core business of ensuring learners graduate from DECS soundly equipped for their role in the future.

The Vital Role of the District in Fostering School Effectiveness and Improvement If there was to be an authentic and dramatic improvement to standards of student achievement and the levels of student wellbeing to support this, reform had to occur at the local level, with strong support and input from the district. In turn, the role of the Central Office had to be shaped so that a high level of interdependence between each of the levels of the organisation was achieved. Plans for change had to be made closer to the point of action – the classroom – if we were to achieve the kind of system-wide reform that had eluded so many education jurisdictions worldwide. Fullan (2004, p. 8) warns, however, that one cannot accomplish changes in school culture on any scale without dramatically improving the role of the district. For districts to operate effectively and to successfully support pedagogical and curriculum change in schools and preschools, two key processes were necessary – networking for collecting and developing well-theorised and tested practices and inquiry

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as a means of interrogating practice and uncovering new and better ways of enhancing learner development. Districts were encouraged to develop these processes in a relentless drive towards meeting the needs of all learners in all sites. The Directors in each district obviously have a hugely important role to play in all of this. In an address to District Directors in 2004, I outlined six essential components of their work that I believed would make a difference to learners, to schools and preschools and to the education system as a whole: (1) The exercise of bold leadership – DECS needs the District Directors to be strong advocates of the system and the direction the system is taking. They are also a vital conduit for two-way information about policy and progress. Central Office needs to know about things that are working and things that are problematic. The District Director is the key to this happening effectively. Further, as important system leaders, District Directors must get into the “too hard basket” when needs be. This means that unacceptable or unsuccessful behaviour or practices (as opposed to people and personalities) in the field must be confronted so that congruence with DECS principles and goals can be restored. The provision of support to sites to re-establish direction and good practice goes hand in hand with such challenge – I term this a “goad to action.” (2) A focus on achievement – Effective districts are characterised by people who understand their role in the system and who leave no stone unturned to perform at their best regarding the services they provide to others. It is the responsibility of the District Director to: ●

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ensure that all staff across the district have a clear role statement that focuses on how their work will ultimately contribute to learner achievement and wellbeing, as well as to the performance and morale of the team. Role statements done well galvanise people and build ownership within the team and the organisation. ensure that the clear focus on learner engagement, wellbeing and achievement is reflected in site learning plans, all related performance plans and in the district learning support plan. People in district teams and sites should be able to point automatically to the key outcomes they have achieved that contribute to our collective goals. know the data – who are the high achieving learners and who needs intervention in order to have success? What is the data saying about learning and wellbeing as it relates to gender and to equity target groups? The answers to these questions will govern how strategies for improvement are framed in the District Learning Support Plan and will also determine how the district team can operate most effectively.

(3) Build capacity through interdependence – districts must have the capacity to ensure that all schools and preschools are engaged in effective and innovative practices that ensure learners have the necessary skills, knowledge and dispositions for successful citizenship in the future. Collegiality in the form of interdependence is the key – not contrived collegiality, but a form of collaboration where the district is the vehicle for the sharing of intellectual capital and

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aligning joint resources. For districts to operate in a truly interdependent way, it is imperative that peer relations between staff in sites be strengthened through involvement in networked learning opportunities. The role of the district team in driving this cannot be understated. One sign of a mature and interdependent system is when all sites take collective responsibility for each other’s performance. If one site is under-performing, support from colleagues across the district can make an incredible difference. (4) Create a thirst for learning – one of the hallmarks of a learning organisation is that staff are continually challenged and refreshed by new experiences, building new capacities and gaining new insights into what could and should be happening. This all starts when people feel a sense of belonging and a level of ownership that leads to a commitment to the moral purpose of making a difference. District Directors have the vital task of creating a sense within their team and within leadership across the district that great things can be achieved. The District Learning Support Plan is the tool through which this commitment is galvanised because people see the level of thinking and planning that has gone into mapping out a blueprint for the future. (5) Create conditions for innovation – establishing the conditions for creativity and innovation means that District Directors must model a drive to new understanding and practice. Their ability to question and challenge team members and district leaders to think outside the existing paradigm is key to this. It is important that they provide encouragement and recognition to those who develop practices and processes that lead to improved student outcomes. Similarly, setting up systems for peer sharing across the district and with other districts and acting as the architects of connection to best practice is a crucial part of their role. (6) Build sustainability – leaders who understand the importance of their people achieving a balance between the important priorities of work and their overall health and wellbeing build sustainable organisations. Fullan (2004, p. 13) refers to pushing the limits of practice, taking time for recovery and engaging in positive energy rituals as “cyclical energising.” The idea of positive energy rituals relates to people finding the time to look after their physical needs (through exercise, diet and the like) as well as their emotional, spiritual and mental needs. Operating from a strong ethical framework, where treating people with demanding respect (i.e., caring within a construct of high expectations) is a central tenet. It contributes strongly to the sustainability and growth of the organisation. The other key aspect of sustainability in which District Directors play a fundamental role is in the area of leadership succession. Fullan (2004, p. 13) calls the nurturing of future leaders by current leaders the “long lever of leadership.” He maintains that the main mark of a (District Director) at the end of their tenure is not just the impact on the bottom line of student achievement, but equally how many good leaders he or she leaves behind who can go even further. For an education system to most effectively meet the needs of learners in increasingly complex times, the role of the district in driving school improvement for effectiveness

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is clear. Michael Fullan (2005) talks about the importance of public service with a moral purpose as a key element of leadership across the system. In particular, he points to the need to “raise the bar and lower the gap” in achievement between learners. For districts, this requires a deep, collective understanding of how learners develop, how social context affects this development, what forms of intervention are most effective in accelerating learning and ways that education can better support learner wellbeing. Lowering the gap does not imply lowering standards and expectations for those learners who are currently successful in our system. Rather, it is about utilising inquiry to ensure that what we do maximises our effectiveness with all learners and building networks to enable these understandings to spread and build. In South Australia, it was my goal that everyone involved in the system keep their eye on enhancing learner achievement and wellbeing as the purpose of their work. I made the point continuously that learners graduating from our public education system in the future would need to have developed a range of capabilities that enable them to exercise personal power in their lives beyond school. These capabilities have to be built on a solid foundation of literacy, numeracy and social proficiency. It is therefore critical for the wellbeing of individuals and of the state in general that learners: ●

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become highly technologically competent, particularly in the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). ICT is now part and parcel of young people’s lives. A key part of South Australia’s Strategic Plan is to ensure that education builds in young people the skills and dispositions to be innovative and to make the best use of technology to contribute to our collective prosperity and quality of life. develop their understanding of democracy and the responsibilities that go with being a citizen in any community. This can only happen if learners have participated in the decision-making processes of centres, preschools, schools and districts. see themselves as global citizens. The key to this is having a strong sense of identity, resilience and emotional maturity, leading to the ability to empathise with others and to act in a socially responsible way. Through our curriculum and school practices, learners must be supported in developing a reliable, enabling belief system that builds their capacity to contribute to a socially just society. understand the need for environmental sustainability. The environment is a significant legacy for the young people in our districts. Working with learners to identify ways in which the physical and social environment can be managed more sustainably enables them to assume custodianship and through their action has the potential to reverse the damage our planet has suffered in the past few centuries. be adept at problem posing and solving. As DECS further develops a system-wide culture of inquiry, the success of this will be reflected in how well our children and students are able to use inquiry as a fundamental tool for their learning throughout their education and beyond.

District effectiveness has four central components – leadership is a key, vision is a driver, relationships are the glue that binds teams of people together and learning enables them to work innovatively and interdependently. The role of the District Director in building a learning culture within their district, in providing guidance and support for site leaders

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and in contributing to the mutual accountability and synergy of the entire organisation is fundamental.

Principles Underlying Our Drive for Effectiveness and Improvement The system-wide change undertaken in South Australia was underpinned by some key principles. These included: (1) Having high expectations – I mentioned the concept of “raising the bar and lowering the gap” in relation to the vital work of districts. This was a fundamental principle for change in the organisation. Not only did we seek improvement in student outcomes and wellbeing, but in staff engagement and wellbeing as well. For this to happen, it was essential that deep learning occur in relation to two key areas: teaching and learning and related pedagogy and the learning culture of the organisation. (2) Keeping the focus on learning – for DECS, improvement was and is all about learning. Whether in classrooms, staffrooms or offices, the organisation had to learn its way to the future. Programs were put in place to increase the levels of staff engagement at all levels of the agency. “Learning to Learn,” an initiative aimed at stimulating school improvement and reform at the grassroots level, continues to be a strong vehicle for change in South Australian schools. (3) Modelling change – to ask people in the organisation to move forward, to act and to be different to what went before, it was vital that we, as a leadership team within DECS, outlined a compelling vision and modelled the behaviours and practices expected of people in Central Office, district offices and sites. This was the key to building connected action and trust throughout the agency. (4) Paying close attention to values, beliefs and assumptions – all people develop a view of reality as a result of their experiences and interactions with others. Organisational processes that bring values, beliefs and assumptions to the surface enable people to engage in dialogue and inquiry with greater understanding of the constraints and possibilities involved. Improved communication enhances productive relationships between people and increases the likelihood that individuals and groups can move beyond past practices in favour of innovative approaches. (5) Recognising the need for interdependence – real change cannot occur at the site level without the involvement and support of the wider system. Interdependence is grown through open attitudes and practices around information. Communication between each level of the system should always inform future action. (6) Building the capacity and personal agency of individuals – moving from reactions stemming from questions like, “Why don’t they . . . ?” to proactive and thoughtful responses of “What needs to happen for . . . ?” is the essence of this principle. People must be encouraged to take risks and to think innovatively within an environment that enables such behaviour. Capacity and proactivity are built on a foundation of learning and skill development, moderated by the attitude (in particular the desire to improve) of the individual. Providing learning opportunities through innovation networks, encouraging the use of inquiry processes and

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using data to help people track progress are essential elements of building capacity. (7) Living well with ambiguity – the human brain is inclined to seek and experience order. It is not necessarily a natural tendency of people to want to struggle with ambiguity and change. This is particularly the case when change requires different behaviour. A person’s wellbeing is highly dependent on the feeling that one is competent at what they do and so having to enact new behaviours can be problematic for people, particularly if there is a risk of negative consequences for initial failure. Ambiguity abounds in complex systems, however. They are often part of the natural order when different perspectives are acknowledged. People bring various views to the education table and rather than treat these as polarities, which promotes an adversarial culture, it is important that we utilise a more interdependent approach, one where people “seek first to understand, then to be understood” (Covey, 1990, p. 235). This provides a strategy for living well with ambiguity.

Monitoring Organisational Health Without high levels of staff morale and performance, continuous improvement of organisational practices and student wellbeing and achievement are likely to be rhetorical, at best. At DECS I aimed to build a high performing organisation where individuals and teams knew that they were valued, and supported to succeed in a culture and work environment. One of the strategies I used to focus on the health of the organisation was the Corporate RADAR (Read, Answer, Discuss, Act, and Reflect) Climate Survey. First administered in 2004, the data generated gave an indication not only of where things were healthy, but elements of departmental culture that were in need of change. The RADAR survey, first administered in 2004 enabled the Department as a whole, teams and individuals to benchmark themselves on a host of organisational health variables including elements such as strategy and planning, capacity building and direction. With other public sector organisations across Australia. The comprehensive survey enabled the provision of critical information on DECS culture and practice and provided a sound platform for continuous improvement. Of importance, the RADAR survey is based on the theory that there are four connected elements that work together to create a quality team environment and high performance Figure 4. For each person this means: Empathy Engagement Clarity Learning

You know that your line manager and others understand and value your work and the complex issues that you deal with every day Working with others. You know that your work makes a positive difference and your expertise is needed in your team You know what your job is and how it connects with others and to the whole of DECS You can participate in quality learning to do your work better and achieve outcomes as the context changes for your team.

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Clarity

Empathy

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Engagement Figure 4.

The elements that create a quality team environment and high performance

At DECS we viewed culture as an imperative element of organisational effectiveness and health and key to meeting our educational priorities. By strategic design we asked all corporate and district staff to reflect deeply and to develop team and individual action plans to inquire into practice for development and improvement. After the analysis of the second year DECS had a profile above benchmark on all variables. You can read more about the RADAR Framework and the DECS RADAR Report by clicking on the DECS site http://decs.sa.gov.au.

Summary Education in South Australia has significantly improved its performance in recent years because of the outstanding efforts of educational leaders at both the system, district and school level and because of the quality of teaching that occurs in classrooms. The improvement discussed would not have occurred unless there was a focussed and strategic approach to aligning the out of school factors for the benefit of all learners. While many capacity building actions relating to policy, programs and resources took place to support the this improvement this discussion has emphasised the key elements of alignment, systems, culture and organizational development. A culture of interdependence and continuous improvement will ensure a positive outcome for everyone.

References Australian Quality Council. (2001). Quality and improvement in schools and preschools, Version 1.0, March 2001. Chapman, J. (2002). System failure: Why governments must learn to think differently. London: DEMOS. Covey, S. (1990). The seven habits of highly effective people. New York: Simon and Schuster. Fullan, M. (2004). Leading the way from whole school reform to whole system reform, IARTV Seminar Series, Number 139, December 2004. Fullan, M. (2005). Resiliency and sustainability. The School Administrator (pp. 16–18), February 2005. Government of South Australia: Department of Education and Children’s Services. (2005). DECS Statement of Directions 2005–2010. DECS. Reid, A. (2004). Towards a culture of inquiry in DECS. Occasional Paper Series, No 1, DECS. Scholtes, P. R. (1998). The leader’s handbook: A guide to inspiring your people and managing the daily workflow. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

31 DIVERSE POPULATIONS AND SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT IN THE USA

Sue Lasky, Amanda Datnow, Sam Stringfield, and Kirsten Sundell

Introduction We begin this chapter by setting the stage with a brief review of the literature on effective school practices, primarily focusing on racially and linguistically diverse districts and schools. We then discuss the background of this project, describing how we conducted a review of research on linkages between policy domains in an educational reform context. We next analyze, across the education system, those linkages that enhance the likelihood that these practices can be institutionalized, and close with directions for future research. The research base on school-level reform practices that lead to measurable improvements in student learning in high-poverty, culturally diverse urban settings is quite large (e.g., Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000; Teddlie, Stringfield, & Reynolds, 2000), yet few studies isolate the effects for language minority students (Goldenberg, 1996). We agree with the perspective that findings from the more “generic” effective schools research are probably applicable to English Language Learners (ELLs), even if ELL issues are neither specifically highlighted nor directly addressed. However, “other factors related to language, culture, or immigration experience are also likely to come into play for [Limited English Proficient] students” (Goldenberg, 1996, p. 1). School effects and school improvement research have consistently identified several core elements that result in improved student achievement. These include a pervasive focus on learning; attention to producing a positive school climate; initiatives to involve parents in productive ways; support systems to help students achieve success; specific efforts to achieve equity in learning opportunities and outcomes; multicultural education strategies; challenging academic content; and opportunities for students to use dialogue and ideally develop both their native language and English language skills (e.g., Brophy, 1982; Chrispeels, 1992; Cotton, 1995; Levine, Levine, & Eubanks, 1985; Tharp, Estrada, Dalton, & Yamauchi, 2000). 557 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 557–576. © 2007 Springer.

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Although these practices are key features of effective schools, evidence suggests that low-SES schools face unique challenges when starting and sustaining school improvement reforms (Bascia, 1996). Staff in low-SES schools typically have to spend more time creating baseline components of school success than do their counterparts at middle-SES schools, where the community has often already generated these components (Wimpelberg, Teddlie, & Stringfield, 1989). Outside expertise and other kinds of assistance help develop the skills and conditions to begin school improvement efforts (Bascia, 1996; Hatch, 2000). These include: basic organizational and leadership capabilities; reducing non-productive teacher turnover; creating a safe, orderly school climate; creating a culture of high expectations; developing teacher pedagogic and content knowledge; and cultivating self-monitoring and continual learning capabilities. In some instances, improvement efforts also include repairing the actual physical plant of the school, or building safe, new schools with enough basic equipment for students to learn and teachers to teach (Cotton, 1995; Hallinger & Murphy, 1986; Mac Iver & Farley, 2003; Reynolds & Teddlie, 2000; Reynolds, Creemers, Stringfield, Teddlie, & Schaffer, 2002; Snipes, Doolittle, & Herlihy, 2002; Taylor, 1990; Teddlie & Stringfield, 1985, 1993). If these conditions cannot be met early in a reform effort, it is unlikely that improvement efforts can be sustained over time. Thus, fundamental elements of school reform processes often differ between schools located in middle- and low-SES communities, with schools in the low-SES communities making considerable efforts to create certain baseline conditions that may already exist in more affluent communities. Reform strategies to improve teaching and learning in racially and linguistically diverse urban schools and districts have become more complex as research has continued to shed light on contextual variables that affect improvement efforts. Many of these interventions are systemic (Clune, 1998; Datnow & Kemper, 2002; Knapp, 1997) and include stakeholders from various organizations. In this context, the question of how to study the education system as a whole and systematically analyze linkages across the system becomes important (see Figures 1 and 2 for graphic representations of the key domains of the education system and the types of linkages that connect them). Understanding interdependence between organizations and individuals in a policy system can be achieved by investigating the linkages across the system that connect people, resources, and organizations. It makes it possible to identify interrelationships between elements that might otherwise be perceived as disconnected fragments (Patton, 1990) and to understand patterns of change (Senge, 1990). Informal and semiformal linkages across organizations are a way to manage resource interdependence and reduce uncertainty. Linkages provide a channel for communicating information to another organization upon which a focal organization depends. They are also a key first step in securing commitments from valued elements of the environment (Pfeffer & Salancik, 2003). Actors and their actions across organizations can be viewed as interdependent relational ties, linkages between them are channels for the flow of material and nonmaterial resources across networks (Boissevain & Mitchell, 1973; Knoke & Kuklinski, 1982; Wellman & Berkowitz, 1988). Network structures provide opportunities for or constraints on individual action (Wasserman & Faust, 1999).

Diverse Populations and School Effectiveness

Federal government: title I, perkins/CTE, NCLB, blingual, IDEA (special education), IES, courts

State government: funding formulas, curriculam frameworks, accountability schemes, ELL policies and resources

Intermediary organizations: professional development outside expertise, develop capacity, beliefs, practice

School: principal, goals and beliefs, faculty cohesion, capacity, ELL resources, human and material resources

Local school district: gathering and allocating resources, curricula, HR, R&E, gatekeepers, ELL policies and resources

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Universities: research and evaluation, development, teacher and principal initial training and professional development

Teachers: professional training, professional development, shared planning time, Perceptions of: students, school, district, reform

Students: academic behavior, attendance, attitude, educational history, additional issues

Parent, community, and business involvement

Figure 1. Key domains in the educational policy system, excluding linkages and foregrounding school involvement and connections to school reform Note. CTE = Career and Technical Education; ELL = English Language Learner; IES = Institute for Educational Sciences; HR = Human Resources; NCLB = No Child Left Behind; R&E = Research and Evaluation.

School

Federal

Classroom teachers & students

State District

Community

University

Intermediary organizations Foundations

Legend Structural linkages Formal linkages Informal linkages Relational linkages Ideological linkages Temporal linkages

Figure 2.

Conceptual Framework: Linkages between key educational policy domains

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Background and Rules of Evidence This chapter draws from an extensive review of literature of research on educational reform originating at or being supported by various systemic levels (e.g., school, district, community, design team, state, federal government). It was conducted for the federally funded Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence (CREDE). The goal of the broader review was to gain a better understanding of (1) the factors influencing the improvement of education for racial- and linguistically-minority youth; and (2) linkages between districts, state agencies, federal agencies, external partners, and schools to support and sustain improvement efforts. Our work culminated in a book volume (Datnow, Lasky, Stringfield, & Teddlie, 2006). In this chapter, we summarize the major findings of this project pertaining to linkages with school-level reform efforts, focusing on linkages related to educational policy at the federal level and addressing pertinent state-level examples of the application, implementation, and interpretation of federal policy to the education of diverse populations of students. Our review of research covers studies that have been conducted since 1983; however, the majority of research reviewed was conducted between the mid-1990s to the present. We chose 1983 as the beginning point because that is the year in which A Nation at Risk (National Commission of Excellence in Education, 1983) was published, a report that placed school reform on national, state, and local agendas. We include only research conducted in the United States, and the research we reviewed is both quantitative and qualitative. Given that our focus is on reform in racially or linguistically diverse contexts, we only included research that took place in settings that were racially and/or linguistically diverse. Most urban areas in the United States are at least racially diverse; thus we have not found our criteria for racial diversity to be a limiting factor. However, the research on reform in settings of linguistic diversity is much more limited. We generally limited our review to research that focused on the creation and systemic sustaining of school reform, with the exception of research focused on the school level (this literature identifies effective practices). We also limited our review to studies that deal with at least two levels of the system (e.g., state and district, district and school), because part of this project focused on identifying linkages between levels. In the next section, we provide a conceptual framework for understanding the impetus, implementation, and impact of the reform process within the educational system, beginning with a definition of the concept of linkages and proceeding to descriptions of educational policy domains and the potential kinds of linkages that connect them.

Analysis of Key Systemic Linkages in Educational Reform Overview of Linkage Framework A linkage is in essence a bridge between at least two policy domains. It creates the connection between two otherwise disconnected points. How human or material resources move across a linkage is as important as the linkage itself, as the linkage is merely a

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pathway between two or more policy domains or institutions. That is, the fact that a linkage or pathway is identifiable carries with it no reflection of how that linkage is (or is not) used. Nor does the linkage itself reflect the quality of the resources or communications crossing it. Linkages vary in their permanency, formality, adaptability, robustness, and importance. They are neither static nor homogeneous (Lasky, 2004). Visualizing the various policy domains connected by these linkages is vital to understanding the linkages themselves. Figure 1 provides a graphic depiction of the key domains associated with the school reform process, in this case, specific to a racially and/or linguistically diverse context. Foregrounding the school as the locus of reform, the figure depicts the primary domains that impact reform implementation. These include the federal government, the state, the district, universities, external intermediaries (e.g., product or professional development vendors), the community, and the school itself (with teachers and students here depicted outside the school for clarity). Within each of these domains, we provide several examples of the types of resources and communications (e.g., policies, funds, information, materials, instruments, behaviors, alliances) that may reside in, flow from, be received by, or otherwise impact these domains. In developing the conceptual framework, it became necessary to define the boundaries of the educational policy system. We propose that the educational system can be conceived of as interconnected and interdependent. It is an open system with permeable and malleable boundaries that is embedded within a larger global context. In this system, capacity exists in different ways within discrete policy domains and within individuals. The structure of the educational policy system is typically hierarchical and linkages across the various policy domains exist because of the systemic and relational functions they serve. However, while the system is hierarchical, movement of communication and resources occurs in a multidirectional manner. The “school system” includes schools, districts, or Local Education Agencies (LEAs); communities surrounding schools and districts; universities and other external research and development organizations; other external partners such as professional development vendors; and state (State Education Agencies or SEAs) and federal agencies. Having looked briefly at policy domains, we hypothesize that there are several kinds of linkages that connect them. Structural linkages refer to those linkages from state and federal policy domains that affect education, how education and reform is funded, and the role of accountability systems. Formal linkages refer to official communications sent between policy domains that pertain to reform implementation, as with any notification or document sent from one agency to another to plan meetings or to confirm progress. They also refer to support systems put in place to facilitate implementation of structural linkages. Informal linkages refer to communications that are not official, yet pertain to reform implementation, as with spontaneous conversations between colleagues. Relational linkages refer to the relational ties that exist in efforts to implement or block reform, as occurs when district leaders work with friends or professional colleagues in the community as a way to develop partnerships. Ideological linkages refer to conceptual bridges that make it possible to change an individual’s negative attitude toward reform into one of acceptance and willingness to embrace reform purposes and goals. Temporal linkages refer to continuity over time with reform efforts. Reform

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efforts can go through phases and may have different elements over time, but can remain guided by the same core principles, goals, and values. Using this framework provides a conceptual anchor to investigate the integrity of the linkages across contexts, identifying what linkages need to be created to facilitate implementation of a reform, and determining how reform efforts, information, and material resources move through the system. Figure 2, adapted from Lasky (2004), features most of the key policy domains depicted in Figure 1 (in this case, nesting teachers and students within classrooms within schools) and adds multiple layers of linkages that can exist between those domains based on our review of the literature on school reform in racially and linguistically diverse contexts. Figure 2 provides an exceptionally dense, complex picture of the dynamic linkages that may exist between domains. Given this chapter’s limited space, we cannot examine in the same level of fine-grained detail every kind of potential linkage between every domain. However, in the following sections, we explore each of the linkages from this theoretical framework, connecting them to the literature on school reform in diverse school contexts. We first discuss structural linkages, as these are theorized to be the key linkages driving reform from the federal and state levels. An analysis of formal linkages follows, as these are conceptualized as the primary supports to the implementation of policies and movement of financial resources across policy domains. We then address informal linkages. Analyses of temporal, relational, and ideological linkages follow.

Structural Linkages Several structural linkages exist that begin at the federal level and link to the state, district, and school. These include Supreme Court rulings; policy (e.g., the Secondary Education Act of 1965, No Child Left Behind, or Comprehensive School Reform); and funding such as Title I or Special Education. Likewise, there are policy and funding formulas at the state and district levels that are also important structural linkages. Due to space limitations, we address only structural linkages that originate at the federal level. Court rulings and policy are most certainly drivers of change throughout the education system. With respect to equity and the education of racially diverse student populations, the Supreme Court’s May 17, 1954, decision in the case of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas) stands out as an obvious marker. The courts found that the operation of dual systems of education (one for students whose ancestors were of European extraction, and one for students whose parents were of African origin) that were operated in several states were inherently inequitable. This ruling has led to a series of subsequent court interventions designed to desegregate schools from Boston to California. In the United States, there has been an increased policy emphasis on closing of achievement gaps, and generally increasing measurable student learning outcomes. The purpose of NCLB is to raise all students’ achievement to high levels of proficiency, and more specifically to eliminate all “gaps” in levels of academic achievement between groups of students by poverty level, race/ethnicity, and language minority status, among other indicators, and to do so by the year 2014. NCLB has created a more tightly linked educational system largely through its accountability and data reporting mandates.

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NCLB requires the states to continue in their fiscal oversight of LEAs and SEAs and to develop new student outcome accountability requirements. The important point here is that, through the passage of a new law, the federal level of government is able to apply pressure to raise test scores directly on both local school districts and on individual public schools. NCLB mandates that in all states, test score data in key areas must be analyzed and reported at the school level, and then disaggregated by gender, race, free lunch status, native language, and special education status. The effect of this disaggregation is that an individual school may be accountable for between 10 and 20 separate categories of measurable outcomes. The NCLB requirement is not simply that the overall school or initially low-achieving students make annual academic progress, but that the whole school and each of its 10–20 subgroups all make annual progress. Schools and districts are then required to report measures of the extent to which they have demonstrated Annual Yearly Progress (AYP). To the extent that a school and its various subgroups are able to demonstrate AYP (e.g., produce attendance, graduation, and test score gains that meet or exceed each year’s Annual Measurable Objectives or AMOs), those schools are deemed to have made AYP. However, it is not just the overall school scores that are counted, it is the gains made by each of the previously mentioned 10–20 subpopulations within each school. Should a school, or one or more of its 10–20 subgroups not make AYP for two consecutive years, NCLB requires that the school be formally identified as needing improvement, and the district must offer to all parents the option of transferring their child to another school in the district, regardless of the individual student’s or his or her subgroup’s scores or gains. Should the school not meet AYP for a third year, Year 2 sanctions remain in effect, and the school and district must offer supplemental services (e.g., after-school tutoring services provided by an external vendor) to students attending that school. If a school fails to meet AYP for four consecutive years, then all Year 3 sanctions remain in place; additionally, the district must adopt one or more of the following additional steps: ● ● ● ● ● ●

Locally reconstitute the school, Allow the state to reconstitute the school, Hire an external management group to run the school,1 Offer to allow the school to become a charter school, Engage in “significant” staff restructuring, or Offer public school choice and additional supplemental services. (Yakimowski, 2004)

NCLB has had a profound affect on many aspects of what happens at the state, district, and school levels. Accountability systems are clearly salient linkages between levels in the education system. They are also an expression of existing state and district capacity to develop, interpret, and use data gathered from accountability systems to inform decision-making. Accountability systems can both facilitate and interfere with school improvement efforts. Coordination across accountability systems can help to inform schools what they need to do to increase measurable student learning

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outcomes. Likewise, a lack of coordination across accountability systems can create confusion and misunderstanding for schools and districts, particularly when schools fall under the purview of more than one accountability system (O’Day & Gross, 1999). Financial support for schools from government agencies is another important structural linkage. Funding formulas and structures to support schools vary considerably. Some have adequacy models, which intentionally create structures to channel financial resources to special needs, second language, and high-poverty students, while other models emphasize equity across schools and tend toward lower levels of basic funding for schools and improvement efforts (Berne & Stiefel, 1999; Carr & Fuhrman, 1999; Guthrie & Rothstein, 1999; Ladd & Hansen, 1999; Odden & Clune, 1998). These different funding models have a direct effect on the amount of actual dollars allocated to schools for teaching and learning. Little is known about how much financial support is actually needed for schools to meet the challenge of providing all students with a high-quality education (Finnigan, O’Day, & Wakelyn, 2003; Guthrie & Rothstein, 1999; Ladd & Hansen, 1999). It is, however, clear that the way these resources are organized and structured can facilitate or hinder capacity-building efforts (Anyon, 1997; Christman & Rhodes, 2002; Massell, 1998).

Formal Linkages As their name would suggest, formal linkages both support and reify the reform process. Formal linkages are evidenced in official communications, meetings, and other actions that facilitate implementation of court rulings, policy, or funding allocations. They are also present in the incentives and sanctions used by many states and districts in concert with their accountability policies. No matter where or how a reform originates, a careful initiation process and formal structure for implementing and sustaining it are key to establishing buy-in among those most responsible for carrying it out. So too, a careful process in planning for reform also means that it is more likely that a reform agenda will be well matched to the needs of the particular context. Coordinating the movement of communication and resources (human and material) across linkages is very important. In the early phases of implementing the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA, see Pankratz & Petrosko, 2000), the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) created several policy documents and official notices that were sent to districts and schools. Both district and school personnel reported that these documents from the KDE contained mixed messages concerning the reform and its implementation, thus making difficult the coordinated and clear action necessary to support reform efforts (Lusi, 1997). In this instance, KDE created formal linkages, yet reform implementation was not facilitated because of uncoordinated movement across these linkages. Another important linkage is the kind of incentives states and districts use to motivate school personnel to meet accountability benchmarks and goals. Rewards and sanctions by themselves do not build organizational capacity to support improved teaching and learning. They can be effective as warnings to low-performing schools and function

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as a way to alert both the school and the district that changes need to be made. Rewards and sanctions can also serve to highlight overall deficiencies. Although a school or district may adequately educate a majority population, it may not be adequately serving the needs of a specific minority group. Incentives (e.g., additional funds, materials, staffing, or professional development) are occasionally viewed as effective rewards for successful teachers, schools, or districts, but research demonstrating long-term effects of such rewards is lacking. Maintaining a balance between holding districts and schools accountable for low student performance while developing systemic capacity for reform is a core tension inherent in the current US policy context. In instances where the risk of sanctions is high, teaching and learning can be compromised for several reasons, including narrowing the curriculum by teaching to tests; replacing the regular curriculum with test prep material; losing teaching time to test preparation; or encouraging low-achieving students to drop out of school (Amrein & Berliner, 2002; Hannaway, 2003; Livingston & Livingston, 2002; McNeil, 2000; McNeil & Valenzuela, 2001). The research on state reconstitution or takeover efforts is a growing field of study, as they are a relatively new state intervention strategy. They are, in short, an area that needs much more research attention, as there is much to be learned about their effectiveness or how such intervention efforts can be improved. The results of state takeovers and reconstitution efforts for schools that have been sanctioned are mixed (Mintrop, 2004). On the positive side, they can help to eliminate nepotism within a school district’s decision-making processes; improve a school district’s administrative and financial management practices; or upgrade the condition of rundown school buildings (Anyon, 1997; Rudo, 2001). There is virtually no evidence, however, that state takeovers or reconstitutions actually improve teaching and learning in schools (Cibulka, 2003; Desimone, Porter, Garet, Suk Yoon, & Birman, 2002; Rudo, 2001; Stringfield & Yakimowski-Srebnick, 2005). Which formal linkages actually enhance systemic capacity for improved teaching and learning is a key question many states, districts, and researchers are beginning to address. Kentucky is often viewed as a positive example of a state developing its capacity to more effectively direct reform efforts. It has moved from a system of primarily sanctions and rewards to one of statewide capacity-building for improved classroom teaching (Mintrop, 2004). The state has developed tests that measure more than basic skill development in students; created a relatively well-aligned and consistent accountability system; allocated funding and experts to provide professional development with the goal of reaching all teachers; and invested in university-based research organizations dedicated to assisting “schools, communities, and districts in translating and applying high-quality, scientific research on what works toward improved practices in teacher preparation, classroom practice, and schoolwide leadership and reform” (Felner, 2005, p. 4; see also McIntyre & Kyle, 2002; O’Day & Gross, 1999).

Informal Linkages Informal linkages are evidenced in organic, spontaneous communications focused on implementing aspects of court rulings, policy, or funding. There is little research that

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investigates the presence of informal linkages as they work across the education system. The evidence suggests that when informal conversations and other communications across an education system are improvement-focused, teaching and learning in schools can be improved (Hamann & Lane, 2002). However, when relational ties are strong among locals, and their informal communications reinforce longstanding local beliefs, political arrangements, and practices, educational reform is unlikely to occur (Anyon, 1997; Rich, 1996; Stone, 1998). Although there are challenges common to both urban and rural communities, there are also distinct challenges in geographically isolated rural communities (Horn, 2000a, 2000b; Lasky & Datnow, 2006; Tharp, Lewis, Hilberg, Bird, Epaloose, & Dalton, 1999). The roles that schools play in a local economy are a core element of reform politics, as well as how and why certain community linkages are built or ignored. Along with being a service that students receive, education and education systems create jobs, contracts, and career tracks – all things that represent financial security for people working in the system, particularly in communities that have experienced corporate flight or in rural communities with few opportunities for employment. When job security, employment, or political power comes into question, informal friendship and familial networks in these communities can work to preserve existing arrangements, rather than working toward school reform (Stone, 1998). Strong informal networks can exist between ministers, teachers, school administrators, other school personnel, business owners, and local politicians. In some communities, reform stakeholders attend the same universities, work in the same school systems for years, and can be members of the same social and religious organizations (Henig, Hula, Orr, & Pedescleaux, 1999; Stone, 1998). Whether these networks are concerned with improving learning conditions for students becomes the primary factor in whether stakeholders allocate resources to teaching and learning or to maintaining the status quo (Anyon, 1997; Rich, 1996). When trying to implement school improvement reform, formal structures can be rearranged, such as mandating new funding formulas. Changing status quo practices, however, is unlikely to occur without transforming the basic relationships and linkages that support coalitions built around personal relationships and distributive benefits. How stakeholders relate to each other matters; so, too, do their intentions. Particularly important is whether individuals place primary emphasis on improving teaching and learning in schools, and whether they channel resources into reform efforts (Stone, 1998). Even when reform leaders at the state and district are focused on reform, structures and informal communications within schools may serve to maintain long-held beliefs and practices (Tharp et al., 1999). Lasky and Datnow (2006) found that while the state and federal levels had structural, formal, and temporal linkages that worked in concert with each other, this was not enough to ensure Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) implementation at the local level. Relational ties between personnel in the school system were robust, and there was a general distrust of outsiders. The weak relational linkages between CSR design teams and local educators did little to instill a belief that reform was possible or necessary. Local beliefs and practices in this rural community were also resilient. The external CSR experts did not appear to make ideological linkages between reform principles and enduring ideologies that were rooted in locals’ experiences of inter-generational

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poverty and limited resources. There was also no evidence to suggest that locals strove to create informal links with CSR experts. In this instance, informal networks within the district and school served to preserve long-standing local beliefs and practices. Hamann and Lane (2002) provided evidence of a coordinated, reform-focused effort that was successful because of strong relational ties that allowed for informal communication across the education system. State-level reform leaders and local reform stakeholders had strong relational ties that spanned several years. They worked in concert to develop a plan to reform secondary education in several Maine schools. As a result of these robust relationships, people involved in reform efforts had an array of day-to-day opportunities to discuss reform progress. State-level reform leaders made unplanned calls to colleagues, and school-level personnel freely called CSR experts when they needed assistance. In this instance, several key reform stakeholders across the education system shared a common vision and focused their attention on achieving this goal. Another key element to consider has to do with the origins of reform policy and plans. Reform efforts can be started through formal structures, or they can come about more organically when family members, friends, colleagues and other community members communicate about questions they have or challenges they face in their local schools. The Georgia Project, a bilingual education program, began when a prominent member of a small Georgia town was invited into his granddaughter’s elementary classroom. The young woman was struggling with how to teach increasing numbers of Spanish-only speaking students in her classroom. The visit by her grandfather led him to contact a local business owner who contacted a friend at the Universidad de Monterey in Mexico, and a chain of events began that marked the inception of the first large-scale bilingual education effort in Georgia (Hamann, 2002).

Relational Linkages Robust, trusting professional relationships across policy levels, termed relational linkages, are essential to sustained reform efforts (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Stein, Hubbard, & Mehan, 2002). These relationships matter within particular domains in the education system and across it. The likelihood of improvement efforts going “wide and deep” are increased when individuals across the education system share mutual trust and respect for each other, can disagree over difficult issues, yet still work together with a clear focus on the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Reform efforts can begin or end over casual conversations or serendipitous encounters among reform stakeholders (Datnow, Hubbard, & Mehan, 2002; Hamann, 2002). Relational allegiances are potent linkages as the people who are brought together often share values, sense of purpose, and have common ideas about the direction reforms might take. As we explored in the previous section, people who have known each other for long periods of time can have robust informal networks. In this section, our analysis focuses on the kinds of formal relational linkages that can facilitate improvement efforts. Political alliances are a powerful linkage for coordinating and aligning both human and financial resources across policy domains. Continuity in political will across multiple stakeholders and over time is essential for effective and sustained capacity building

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to improve teaching and learning. Robust and enduring political alliances create a critical mass necessary for determining the direction policy will take; what kinds of reforms and improvement efforts will be emphasized; how resources will be allocated and to whom they will go; how state accountability systems look. Partnerships are another important linkage between states, professional development providers, outside experts, districts, and schools (Clune, 1998; Hamann & Lane, 2002; Lusi, 1997; Oakes, Quartz, Ryan, & Lipton, 2000). Partnerships serve different functions and exist to achieve an array of outcomes. Resource partnerships focus on bringing human or material resources to states, districts, or schools in need of additional resources to support improvement efforts. Improving teaching and learning in schools requires financial resources to hire external partners capable of increasing leadership capacity and teacher content and pedagogical skill and knowledge; technological resources, books, teaching guides and other material resources are often necessary as well. States, districts, and schools that have been more successful in bringing in outside assistance have relied on realigning funding sources and/or finding new sources of money that supported their improvement efforts. These can be partnerships with external partners such as design teams, philanthropic organizations, businesses or other community organizations, or universities. Learning partnerships focus on increasing the knowledge or skills of people in varying levels in the policy system. States and districts that have made the most significant inroads to improving teaching and learning in schools, as measured using results from state or district accountability systems and teacher or principal reports of implementation, have taken seriously their responsibility to learn what needs to be done to achieve improvement goals. In this way, the central office or the state leaders model for employees the kinds of risk-taking and learning that can facilitate reform. Learning opportunities include both formal and informal educational sessions; visiting other states, districts, or schools that have been more successful in their improvement efforts; hiring outside experts or vendors to provide professional development; or oneshot conferences or sessions where people successful in a specific domain or skill share their knowledge or expertise with others with less experience. The most promising professional development models for school personnel have several elements in common. These include: employing highly qualified mentors to provide the service; being site-based and integrated into teachers’ working days while also offering more intensive summer institutes; meeting teachers’ developmental needs; and relating directly to how teachers can better meet the objectives set by state standards while also increasing subject-area knowledge and improving teaching technique (Cohen & Hill, 2001; Elmore & Burney, 1997; Finnigan et al., 2003; Supovitz & Turner, 2000). Problem-solving partnerships focus on developing problem-solving and planning capacity in agencies and organizations. People working in state and district organizations responsible for designing, coordinating, and overseeing the improvement requirements of systemic reform are often faced with having to create infrastructures, funding formulas, and systems they have never before created. States, districts, and schools that have been more effective in developing sustainable improvement efforts have developed partnerships with outside experts to help them envision, plan, and implement improved

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teaching and learning in classrooms. Inherent in what these more successful states and districts have done is creating a habit of mind or orientation towards learning. At the school level, teachers are more likely to be receptive to external intervention when they trust and feel respected by the people providing professional development or introducing intervention strategies (Stein et al., 2002). Collegial trust and collaboration among teachers enhances the likelihood of changed practices (Bryk & Schneider, 2002; Stein et al., 2002). Trusting relationships between teachers and students also appear to be necessary for teachers to willingly risk being vulnerable in front of their students when trying new teaching techniques or strategies (Lasky, 2004). Relational capacity in elementary schools including high levels of “peer collaboration, teacher-teacher trust, and collective responsibility for student learning” (O’Day, as cited in Mintrop, 2004, p. 27) can lead to higher degrees of implementation, although schools with low “relational capacity” appear not to benefit from external pressure (Mintrop, 2004).

Ideological Linkages When reform leaders initiate improvement efforts that challenge individuals’ existing belief systems, one of the most important linkages that people need to make is ideological. Creating shared vision is one of the most commonly cited linkages across reform stakeholders both within schools and more broadly (Elmore & Burney, 1997; Teddlie & Stringfield, 1993; Togneri & Anderson, 2003). Creating a shared vision or sense of purpose can mean that ideological chasms need to be bridged, particularly when working with a broad spectrum of reform stakeholders. If the ideological chasms cannot be bridged, productive change is unlikely to occur. Politics and political struggles are inherent in most educational reform efforts involving financially, racially, and linguistically diverse school systems. Throughout the educational system, people hold an array of beliefs about several core elements of schooling such as the role of the federal government in providing education for all students, the goals of school reform, purposes of schooling, teachers’ roles, and students as learners. These beliefs cannot be separated from the decisions people make concerning how to improve schools. Differences in political beliefs and agendas between state and local reform leaders can inhibit the flow of resources across structural linkages between state governments and districts. Hence, for a reform effort to be successful in such contexts, substantial political capacity and capital and a willingness to create ideological bridges among key players becomes important, as reform is not easy when it calls into question existing power arrangements or comes in conflict with long-held beliefs. Because of chasms that exist between people with ideological differences, educational leaders often fight battles within their communities to achieve real change. At the local level, the ways personnel respond to external performance-based accountability is determined by the degree to which individuals share common values and understandings about such matters as: what they expect of students academically, what constitutes good instructional practice, who is responsible for student learning, and how individual students and teachers account for their own work and learning (Elmore & Fuhrman, 2001). Teachers need to perceive how district initiatives apply to

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their daily work (Massell & Goertz, 2002). Likewise district and school personnel need to perceive that state mandates requiring all students be taught to higher standards are possible to achieve with, and relevant to, their population of students (Spillane, 1999). Individual beliefs are a critical dimension in understanding how educators exercise their agency when responding to educational reform (Datnow et al., 2002). Beliefs about students’ race and socioeconomic status are particularly important in the ways they shape district personnel, school administrator, and teacher willingness to implement improvement efforts that require teaching of a rigorous curriculum to all students (Oakes et al., 2000; Spillane, 1999). Teachers’ beliefs about reform efforts also greatly affect how they understand, interact with, implement, adapt, or ignore them (Datnow et al., 2002). Thus, ideological linkages can be vital for moving improvement efforts forward when reform requirements may be in conflict with belief systems and moral purposes of key stakeholders.

Temporal Linkages Temporal linkages are reflected in the continuity of present reform efforts with those of the past, or in consistency of leadership over time. Elmore and Burney (1998) used the term “continual improvement” in describing reform efforts that have (1) stable core components that endure over time, and (2) internal feedback loops that make it possible for reform leaders to make decisions based on the most current information, then adapt implementation strategies as needed. This kind of stability in the focus of reform requires coordination and planning across multiple policy domains and reform stakeholders (Clune, 2001; Stone, Henig, Jones, & Pierannuzi, 2001). Sustaining federal policy over time is often greatly affected by changes in political parties and leaders, though there are clear links between President Bush’s NCLB policy and Clinton’s move towards standards-based accountability (Cuban, 2003). Sustaining state policies over time can be difficult (Cibulka & Derlin, 1998). Instability of reform at the state level is due in part to state policies being rejected by a new governor, chief state school officer, state board, or legislature before they are adopted or implemented (Cibulka & Derlin, 1998). Continuity in political will and policy goals enhances the likelihood of effective, sustained capacity-building efforts to improve teaching and learning (Clune, 1998; Massell, 1998). In examining nine National Science Foundation (NSF) statewide systemic initiatives, Clune (1998) found that the states that were most successful in creating both depth and breadth of reform implementation built on previous reforms that went back to the 1980s. In these instances, there was continuity, rather than discontinuity, between the earlier reform efforts and the current systemic reform efforts.

Conclusion Overall, educational reform in racially and linguistically diverse settings is a complex enterprise that ideally involves a coordinated effort among stakeholders across levels of the system. There is a dearth of empirical research that has as its primary

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goal identifying or describing such linkages in such contexts. This gap in the reform literature reflects a systemic weakness in understanding why reform efforts have not been more successfully sustained. Clearly, educational reform involves formal structures, such as district offices, state policies, and so on. It also involves both formal and informal linkages among those structures. Yet reform involves a dynamic relationship, not only among structures but also among cultures and people’s actions in many interrelated, intersecting settings. It is this intersection of culture, structure, and individual agency across contexts that helps us better understand how to build positive instances of educational reform. We still need to know much more about exactly which linkages and strategies for improving the movement of resources and communications across them at each level of the education system level are most promising, particularly at those levels beyond the school where the research base is least strong. Although there are not many, there are some recent research studies that attempt to address the intersection of educational reform across contexts, rather than simply focusing on one level of the system. One example is Hubbard, Mehan, and Stein’s (2006) Reform as learning: When school reform collided with organizational culture and community politics in San Diego, which focused on educational reform in San Diego City Schools over several years. The book foregrounds the district’s role in reform, but also includes detailed ethnographic data of how multiple levels of the system (including the community and state contexts) intersected to produce reform at the school level. A second example is Oakes et al.’s (2000) Becoming good American schools: The struggle for civic virtues in educational reform, which drew on longitudinal, comparative case-study research to tell the stories of 16 schools in four states that engaged in detracking and other reforms. These case studies illuminated the connections between school-level efforts, district change, community values regarding equity and excellence, and state policy agendas. More multilevel studies of this type are needed. Conducting systematic studies of linkages across policy levels may provide some insight into understanding why reform efforts have not been more successfully sustained. Well-designed, mixed-method, systematic research studies are needed to examine how capacity can be developed to more effectively move resources and communication across school, district, state, and federal levels in the education system.

Acknowledgements The work reported herein was supported under the Educational Research and Development Centers Program, PR/Award Number R306A60001, as administered by the Institute for Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. However, the contents do not necessarily represent the positions or policies of the National Institute on the Education of At-Risk Students, the Institute for Education Sciences, or the U.S. Department of Education. We wish to thank our advisory board of scholars and practitioners who provided comments on a draft of the monograph from which this chapter was drawn.

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Note 1. See Stringfield and Yakimowski-Srebnick (2005) for a discussion of state reconstitution efforts in the Baltimore City Public School System. The authors addressed the unique conditions that arose when several reconstitution-eligible (RE) BCPSS elementary schools were turned over to the management of a national for-profit corporation. After failing to make that progress within 3 years that would have allowed them to leave RE status, the state was presented with a “fix” for these underperforming schools that can only be described as paradoxical: “Under the new NCLB rules, one of the remedies available to the state to improve student outcomes in such circumstances would be to turn the three managed-for-profit schools over to a management-for-profit corporation to achieve better results” (p. 63).

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Section 5 CHANGING SCHOOLS THROUGH STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP

32 SCHOOL LEADERSHIP, SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT: DEMOCRATIC AND INTEGRATIVE LEADERSHIP

Lejf Moos and Stephan Huber

Why the Increased Focus on Leadership in Schools Today? Sociological and structural analyses of the living conditions in contemporary Western societies and cultures (Giddens, 1991; Kirkeby, 1998) indicate that a basic condition for our lives is the hyper-complexity of societies, which is evident in both an increase in complexity in terms of time (society transforms at a much higher speed than before), in terms of space (the number of actions involving communication has increased dramatically) (Qvortrup, 2001), in the global risks that are increasingly created by humans, rather than by nature (Beck, 1986), and in the resulting contingencies. Another trend is that social relations are being lifted out of their local contexts of interaction into symbolic signs and expert systems as society becomes more differentiated. Yet another trend is the continuous questioning and critique of knowledge that was instituted in the epoch of Modernity in the late eighteenth century (Beck, 1986). As systems have become more and more complex over the past decades, it has become apparent that even if the locus of control is central, steering with an inputoriented system has not worked effectively enough. To reduce complexity (and obviously cost), the idea of decentralizing systems is spreading internationally. For many years governmental institutions were state run and managed according to detailed budgets and strict regulations. Now they have been transformed into self-managed organizations that must take care of their own affairs and are accountable to authorities. The ways in which management and the “production of output” are carried out is up to each individual organization. Site-based management of schools is one of these relatively new initiatives.

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DE-RE-CENTRALIZATION: A Stronger Political and Administrative Wish for Managing and Monitoring the Decentralized Institutions The transformation of societies is partly due to new relations on a global level. Globalization has among other things meant a shift in public management strategies. Globalization has first and foremost meant a restructuring of the public sectors in that an increasing number of sectors and institutions are being drawn into the market logic and nation states have become dependent on the interplay with other states within associations and networks like the EU and the OECD and on the will of the corporate world. A large number of transnational companies plan and act without giving much consideration to what states may want. This is one major reason why a growing number of states opt for neo-liberal and neo-conservative policy strategies. Neo-liberally oriented states show particular consideration for private enterprise and the marketplace, and therefore more features of New Public Management are evident. These kinds of strategies are seen in the decentralization of finances and administration; and at the same time, in re-centralizing the content aspects of public sectors. That is what Ball (2003) means when he writes about performativity: states are demanding more transparency and are focusing on output from the entire public sector, including educational institutions. In short, in contemporary societies leaders are needed because authorities want a person that can be held accountable and also because changes in society make it important for communities like schools to be able to construct their identities in negotiating meaning and reducing complexity and in changing themselves. In this transformation of society and institutions leadership becomes pivotal.

School Leadership and School Effectiveness The pivotal role of the school leader as a factor in effective schools has been corroborated by findings of school effectiveness research in recent decades. Extensive empirical efforts of quantitatively oriented school effectiveness research – mostly in North America, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand, but also in the Netherlands and in the Scandinavian Countries – have shown that leadership is a central factor in school quality (see, e.g., in Great Britain: Mortimore, Sammons, Stoll, Lewis, & Ecob, 1988; Reynolds, 1976; Rutter, Maughan, Mortimore, & Ouston, 1979; Sammons, Hillman, & Mortimore, 1995; in the USA: Brookover, Beady, Flood, Schweitzer, & Wisenbaker,1979; Edmonds, 1979; Levine & Lezotte, 1990; Teddlie & Stringfield, 1993; in the Netherlands: Creemers, 1994; Huber, 1999a; Scheerens & Bosker, 1997; for a critical overview). The research results show that schools classified as successful possess a competent and sound school leadership (this correlates highly significantly). The central importance of educational leadership is therefore one of the clearest messages of school effectiveness research (Gray, 1990). In most of the lists of key factors (or correlates) that school effectiveness research has compiled, “leadership” plays such an important part that the line of argument starting with the message “schools matter, schools do

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make a difference” may legitimately be continued: “school leaders matter, they are educationally significant, school leaders do make a difference” (Huber, 1997). “Professional school leadership” is described as firm and purposeful, sharing leadership responsibilities, involvement in and knowledge about what goes on in the classroom. That means that it is important to have decisive and goal-oriented participation of others in leadership tasks, that there is a real empowerment in terms of true delegation of leadership power (distributed leadership), and that there is a dedicated interest in and knowledge about what happens during lessons (effective and professional school leadership action focuses on teaching and learning and uses the school’s goals as a benchmark).

School Leadership and School Improvement Studies on school development and improvement also emphasise the importance of school leaders, especially from the perspective of the continuous improvement process targeted at an individual school (see Altrichter, Schley, & Schratz, 1998; Bolam, 1993; Bolam, McMahon, Pocklington, & Weindling, 1993; Caldwell & Spinks, 1992; Dalin & Rolff, 1990; Fullan, 1991, 1992, 1993; Hopkins, Ainscow, & West, 1994; Hopkins, West, & Ainscow, 1996; Huber, 1999b; Huberman, 1992; Joyce, 1991; Leithwood, 1992a; Reynolds et al. 1996; Stegö, Gielen, Glatter, & Hord, 1987; Van Velzen, 1979; Van Velzen, Miles, Ekholm, Hameyer, & Robin, 1985, for a critical overview). In many countries, the efforts made to improve schools have illustrated that neither top-down measures alone nor the exclusive use of bottom-up approaches have the effects desired. Instead, a combination and systematic synchronisation of both has proved most effective. Moreover, improvement is viewed as a continuous process with different phases, which follow their individual rules. Innovations also need to be institutionalised after their initiation and implementation at the individual school level, so that they will become a permanent part of the school’s culture, that is, the structures, atmosphere, and daily routines. Hence, the goal is to develop problem-solving, creative, self-renewing schools that have sometimes been described as learning organisations. Therefore, the emphasis is placed on the priorities to be chosen by each school individually, since it is the school that is the centre of the change process. Thereby, the core purpose of school, that is, education and instruction, are at the centre of attention, since the teaching and learning processes play a decisive role for the pupils’ success. Hence, both the individual teacher and the school leadership provided are of great importance. They are the essential change agents who will have significant influence on whether a school will develop into a “learning organisation” or not. For all phases of the school development process, school leadership is considered vital and is held responsible for keeping the school as a whole in mind, and for adequately coordinating the individual activities during the improvement processes (for the decisive role of school leadership in the development of the individual school see, e.g., studies conducted as early as in the 1980s by Hall & Hord, 1987; Leithwood & Montgomery, 1986; Trider & Leithwood, 1988). Furthermore, it is required to create the internal conditions necessary for the continuous development and increasing professionalisation of

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the teachers. It holds the responsibility for developing a cooperative school culture. Regarding this, Barth (1990), Hargreaves (1994) and Southworth (2003), among others, emphasise the “modelling” function of the school leader.

A Complex Range of School Leadership Tasks The managing and leading tasks of school leadership are both complex and interrelated, so that there is no clearly defined, specific “role” of school leadership, but at best a coloured patchwork of many different aspects. Some areas or role segments relate to working with and for people, others to managing resources like the budget. All are part of the complex range of tasks the school leader faces in the twenty-first century (see e.g., Huber, 1997, 1999c). International school leadership research already features a number of different alternatives for classifying school leadership tasks. Various approaches allocate school leadership action within various ranges of duties and assign responsibilities and activities to these (see the analysis of Katz, 1974, as an important “precursor” for classifications of management tasks, but also classifications of school leadership tasks, e.g., by Caldwell & Spinks, 1992; Esp, 1993; Glatter, 1987; Jirasinghe & Lyons, 1996; Jones, 1987; Leithwood & Montgomery, 1986; Morgan, Hall, & Mackay, 1983). Louis and Miles (1990) also distinguish between “management,” referring to activities in the administrative and organisational areas, and “leadership,” referring to educational goals and to inspiring and motivating others. For them, “educational leadership” includes administrative tasks like, for example, managing and distributing resources or planning and coordinating activities as well as tasks concerning the quality of leadership, such as promoting a cooperative school culture in combination with a high degree of collegiality, developing perspectives and promoting a shared school vision, and stimulating creativity and initiatives from others.

Leadership Theories Given the manifold tasks and responsibilities of school leadership, as well as the necessary competences, school leaders might be propagated as a kind of “multifunctional miracle being.” Yet nobody can safely assume that they are or will or should be the “superheroes of school.” What may be deduced, however, is that their role can hardly be filled by persons with “traditional” leadership concepts. The idea of the school leader as a “monarchic,” “autocratic” or “paternal” executive of school has increasingly been seen as inappropriate, but viewing a school leader as a mere “manager” or “administrative executive” is inadequate as well, despite the managerial pressures of the present situation.

Transactional Leadership As long as the school is seen as a stable system where the existing structures need to be administered as well as possible to effectively and efficiently achieve fixed results, a static concept of leadership may work very well, with the school leader first and

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foremost ensuring that the school as an organisation functions well and smoothly. The term “transactional leadership” has been applied to this concept of steady state leadership: the school leader is the manager of the transactions, which are fundamental for an effective and also efficient work flow within the organisation. The daily organisational office proceedings and the administration of buildings, financial and personal resources, the time resources of staff, as well as communication processes within and outside of school are all included in this definition of “transactions” or “interactions.” All this constitutes the daily routines of school leadership and should not be underestimated, since it represents parts of the workload required to create the appropriate conditions for teaching and learning processes to take place.

Transformational Leadership However, once rapid and extensive processes of change demand that “change and improvement” be viewed and performed as a continuing process, different conceptions of leadership are required. Here, “transformational leadership” is considered to point the way (see, e.g., Burns, 1978; Caldwell & Spinks, 1992; Leithwood, 1992b). “Transformational leaders” do not simply administer structures and tasks, but concentrate on the people carrying them out; that is, on their relationships and on making deliberate efforts to win their cooperation and commitment. They try to actively influence the “culture” of the school so that it allows and stimulates more cooperation, coherence and more independent learning and working. Here, “leadership” is emphasised over “management.” School leadership, as it is understood here, is reputed to be particularly successful in school development processes. In addition, leadership concentrates on the results, the success of the teaching and learning processes, and on the relation between these outcomes and the specific processes which led to them.

Integral Leadership In contrast, Imants and de Jong (1999) try to comprehend “management” on the one hand and “leadership” on the other not as contrary poles, but as complementary ones. They regard their leadership concept “integral school leadership” as an integration of management and leadership tasks. This means that steering educational processes and performing management tasks coincide and overlap. The underlying understanding of “leadership” defines it as the deliberate “control” of other people’s behaviour. Therefore, educational leadership means controlling the teachers’ educational actions and the pupils’ learning processes. Consequently, the central issue for a school leader is how to positively influence the teachers’ educational actions and the “learning activities” of the pupils. Thereby, the combination of educational leadership and administrative management, which is often perceived as contrary by school leaders, loses its contradictory character.

Instructional Leadership Studies conducted in North America, especially in the field of school effectiveness, have emphasised the relevance of “instructional leadership” since the 1980s (see, e.g., De Bevoise, 1984; Hallinger & Murphy, 1985). This leadership concept focuses

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mostly on those aspects of school leadership actions that concern the learning progress of the pupils. These include management-oriented as well as leadership-oriented activities like a suitable application of resources for teaching, agreement on goals, the promotion of cooperative relationships between staff (e.g., cooperative lesson preparation), and especially, the evaluation and counselling of teachers during lessons through classroom observation, structured feedback, and coaching.

Distributed Leadership There is near consensus in leadership literature on the need for distributed leadership (Gronn 2002; Spillane, Halverson, & Diamond, 2001, 2004). There is a sense that the principal cannot be sufficiently informed to make all decisions in a school, nor can she/he be present in all places and situations where decisions need to be made. This is eminently the case in classrooms, where teachers have to interpret demands, goals and situations and make decisions many times every lesson. And it is also the case when teacher teams that meet to plan, evaluate their instruction or engage in professional development. If the principal is not present, she/he is excluded from making decisions (of course she/he can construct the frames, within which teams can manoeuvre). However, as Spillane and Orlina (2005) write, distributed leadership can take many forms. At he core of their concept of leadership is the notion that leadership is not the actions of the leaders per se, but the interactions between leaders and other agents. Leadership is therefore “an influencing relation” between leaders and followers that takes place in situations (that can be described by their tools, routines and structures). Leadership is about interactions that influence and that are understood to influence other persons. From another theoretical perspective, a systems theory or social constructivist perspective (Qvortrup 2000; Thyssen 2003a, 2003b), leadership can be understood as “the goal-oriented and specialized communication that aims at stimulating learning at all levels in schools” (Moos, 2003c, p. 19). This communication concept is parallel to Spillane’s and Orlina’s interaction concept in that both focus on the relations between leaders and teachers, and other stakeholders. The actions of the leader are only interesting if they are understood as leadership actions by the followers or co-leaders.

Organisational-Educational Management In the German-speaking context, the notion of “organisational education” (see Rosenbusch, 1997, 2005) refers to the mutual influence of the school as an organisation on the one hand and the educational processes on the other hand. The core question of organisational education raises a two-fold issue: which educational effects do the nature and conditions of school as an organisation have on individuals or groups within the organization – and vice versa, which effects do the conditions and the nature of individuals or groups within the school have on the school as an organisation? Concretely speaking: how does school need to be designed in order to guarantee favourable prerequisites for education and support educational work? Hence, the influence of the organisation on the teaching and learning process needs to be acknowledged. Administrative and organisational structures have to be brought in line with educational goals. This

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does not only concern the structure of the school system or the management of the individual school, but also the leadership style, including aspects of the distribution of tasks and responsibilities among the staff. Hence, empowerment and accountability issues seem to be important and have to be considered seriously in the light of educational aims and goals. In the context of organisational education, school leadership action becomes educational-organisational action, and educational goals become superordinate premises of this action. This means that school leadership action itself must adhere to the four main principles of education in schools – that school leaders themselves assume or encourage maturity when dealing with pupils, teachers and parents, that they practise acceptance of themselves and of others, that they support autonomy, and that they realize cooperation. This adjustment of educational perspectives affects the school culture, the teachers’ behaviour, and the individual pupils, particularly through the teaching and learning process on classroom level. Administrative and structural conditions have to be modified accordingly, and be in compliance with educational principles. Thereby, the unbalanced relationship (which is historically conditioned in many countries) between education on the one hand and organisation and administration on the other hand can be clarified. The leadership concept of “organisational-educational management” assumes a definition of “educational” which not only incorporates teaching and education processes with pupils, but also with adults, as well as organisational learning. Organisationaleducational management is committed to educational values, which are supposed to determine the interaction with pupils and the cooperation with staff as well.

Democratic Leadership – Adjusting School Leadership Action to Democratic Principles, Educational Premises, and the Core Purpose of School To us, the core principle of leadership action is “democracy” and “cooperation,” both as an aim and a method. Due to the complex hierarchy within the school, democracy and cooperation represent an adequate rationale for actions concerning the intrinsic willingness and motivation of staff and the pupils for co-designing the individual school. However, cooperation is not only valuable as a means for reaching goals; it is a decisive educational goal in itself. Implementing these ideas would result in a broad distribution of leadership responsibility to form a “community of leaders” within the school (see Grace, 1995). This view is also taken by Jackson and West (1999) in their depiction of “post-transformational leadership.” If the school is supposed to become a learning organisation, this implies the active, co-determining and collaborative participation of all. The old distinction between the position of the teachers on the one hand and the learners on the other cannot be sustained, nor can the separation between leaders and followers. Therefore, leadership is no longer statically connected to the hierarchical status of an individual person but allows for the participation in different fields by as many persons from staff as possible. This also extends to the active participation of the pupils in leadership tasks.

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The delegation of decision-making power should not occur, however, in order to “bribe” the stakeholders into showing motivation, but for the sake of a real democratisation of school. Therefore, cooperation or “cooperative leadership” is not just a leadership style (like “consultative leadership,” “delegative leadership” or “participative leadership”) but reflects a fundamental leadership conception as a general attitude. This discussion is also important when discussing school leadership, because leadership needs to be designed in accordance with the core purpose of the community that is being led. To us, the main purpose of school leadership is to empower and enable staff and students to assume responsibility for learning, acting and collaborating in school and outside school. The reasons why this is the main purpose are as follows: First, school is an important cultural institution in every society with a special purpose to contribute to the education of the next generation to become active, knowledgeable and caring citizens of their societies. Therefore, the purpose of schools is to provide a comprehensive, liberal education with a responsibility to community – education for democratic citizenship – and learning (also called “Bildung”), so the students can grow or develop into being independent and enlightened adults, who are concerned with equity and social justice. This has been called “action competence”: the individual is able and willing to be a qualified participant (Jensen & Schnack, 1994). This ideal creates a fundamental paradox that has occupied theorists and practitioners for many years, and continues to do so: “How is it possible – through external influence – to bring human beings to a state where they are not controlled by external influences?” (Leonard Nelson, 1970 in Oettingen, 2001, p. 9). We know from experience that children are not able to take care of themselves. They must be educated. Parents educate children and they leave it to schools and other institutions to educate on behalf of themselves. Education is at any rate an external influence (Moos, 2003b). Leadership always implies some influence on others. Educational leaders are to cultivate some awareness for the importance of dealing carefully and responsibly with power. Their educational aim has to be that pupils will develop to become independently thinking, self-responsible and socially responsible, mature citizens who grow beyond being led. Principles such as self-autonomy, respect of oneself and of others, and cooperation play an important part, as they also do in adult learning processes and in leadership in general (Moos, 2003a). Second, as schooling takes place in school communities, it is necessary for students and teachers to behave and to feel like members of these communities. Third, school acts according to the goals and aims set by the society at large and is therefore accountable to it. This leads to a short discussion of democracy, democratic schools and democratic leadership. These notions are in many countries considered to be pivotal societal values: the democratic value is set out explicitly in the acts on schools in some Scandinavian countries. But while most people agree that democratic schools are essential for society and that democratic leadership is good for schools, they do not agree on what that means. For Dewey, who has been a great inspiration for many theorists as well as practitioners, democratic leadership meant that democracy was lived through participation in the everyday practice of school life: What the argument for democracy implies is that the best way to produce initiative and constructive power is to exercise it. Power, as well as interest, comes by

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use and practice … The delicate and difficult task of developing character and good judgement in the young needs every stimulus and inspiration possible … I think, that unless democratic habits and thought and action are part of the fibre of a people, political democracy is insecure. It cannot stand in isolation. It must be buttressed by the presence of democratic methods in all social relationships. (Dewey 1937, p. 345) Dewey (1916, in Mulford & Moreno, 2007) saw “deep” democracy as involving respect for the dignity of individuals and their cultural traditions, reverence for and proactive facilitation of free and open inquiry and critique, recognition of interdependence in working for the common good, the responsibility for individuals to participate in free and open inquiry, and the importance of collective choices and actions in the interest of the common good. Beane and Apple (1999) are very much in line with Dewey in their description of the characteristics of democratic schools: ●

● ● ●

The open flow of ideas, regardless of their popularity, that enables people to be as fully informed as possible. The use of critical reflection and analysis to evaluate ideas, problems, and policies. Concern for the welfare of others and “the common good.” Concern for the dignity and rights of individuals and minorities.

Before we continue looking at democratic leadership it is useful to position the view of democracy that is used by Dewey or Beane & Apple and also by us: the concept of participatory democracy, which is the most appropriate and useful concept in regard to schools and education. There are many views of democracy. This concept is one of the most used and misused concepts in both politics and education. Almost everybody can agree that democracy is based on positive principles but have different opinions on what it means. Seashore Louis (2003) distinguishes between three basic forms of democracy: ●

●

●

Liberal Democracy – the purpose of society is to support the individual in becoming autonomous, tension between perceived societal needs and individual freedom, so liberal democracy argues that educational goals should be determined by the will of the majority; Social Democracy – social rights and equality, group cohesiveness and redistribution of social good including education, equalizing educational attainment and opportunity, social democracy argues that protecting vulnerable classes of students – that is, students of linguistic, religious and racial minorities – requires stable state control over goals; Participatory Democracy – based on the Greek ideal of citizenship, participation and ownership, congregations debate and determine key issues, schools belong to a local community, local responsiveness, so participatory democracy argues that participants in the educational project are best able to determine goals. (Seashore Louis, 2003, p. 101)

Closely linked to the concept of participatory democracy is the ideal/the idea of the “better argument.” The ideal calls on the participants to strive to build communication

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on the ideal of the better argument that prevails without the use of coercion (Habermas, 1984, 1987). This ideal refers to communicative relations among participants that – to the extent possible – seek mutual understanding and aim at minimising the exercise of dominance within institutional relations that must necessarily be asymmetric and embedded within particular organisational structures. Another account of the view is given in a series of portraits of school leaders striving to become democratic leaders. The following orientations are shared (Blase, Anderson, & Dungan, 1995, pp. 132–150): ●

●

● ●

they all tried to encourage teachers’ involvement in decision-making about instruction and are committed to the principle of sharing power with others; they were all child-centred and strongly committed toward improving teaching and learning and supporting teachers; they all had trust in teachers’ motives; they all had the ability to listen and to communicate openly.

Leadership in Communities – Leadership as Communication Classrooms and schools are social fields and education and learning take place in those social fields. Loyalty and commitment to the organisation is not by any means an automatic starting position for any institution; so building and deepening it is a leadership duty and mission. If staff and students are to behave loyally to their organisation, leaders should make an effort to transform the organisation, which is characterised only by a formal structure, into a community, which is characterised by all members being sufficiently committed to the ethos of the community. A prerequisite for this transformation is to focus on the integrity of the organisation: the ability to be both a convincing internal work- and life-frame and the ability to appear reliable in the eyes of all stakeholders. Inspiration for discussing community and membership can be drawn from Wenger’s theory on how learning and identities are constructed within communities of practice (Wenger, 1999). Identity construction is a dual process in a field of tension between our investment in various forms of belonging and our ability to negotiate the meanings that matter in those different contexts. The production is partly identification (investing the self in relations) and partly negotiability (negotiating meaning). We can find different kinds of communities in schools: the classroom as a democratic community, a professional community, a community of learners and a “community of leaders.” This last type of community is based on the notion of shared leadership: “In communities, leadership as power over events and people is redefined to become leadership as the power to accomplish shared goals” (Wenger, 1999, p. 170). This description of communities and leadership applies to the school as a community, the senior management team as a community, teacher teams as communities and classrooms and other student-teacher groups as communities. All of them need to develop a sense of ethos, membership, direction, power sharing and trust building, and distributed and participatory-democratic leadership. And all of them can profit from looking at leadership as communication.

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Power and Trust When describing schools and classrooms as communities one should not forget that they are at the same time social fields with struggles for positions as a key feature (Bourdieu, 1977, 1990). One way of looking at this problem is also discussed by the Norwegian philosopher Tian Sørhaug (1996). To Sørhaug leadership is about: ● ● ●

developing and indicating a direction for the organisation; controlling the relationships between the inner and outer contexts; creating trust through trustworthy use of power.

To him the core concepts are “power” and “trust”: Power is described as “the capacity – in persons and institutions – that makes people do things, they (probably) would not do otherwise” (Sørhaug, 1996, p. 22). Power is described as a floating concept that is in itself empty but when used in actual situations it is filled with meaning. Power creates the conditions and mobilises people to action and collaboration. Trust is dependent on the will and good will of people when new issues are being addressed. The two forces threaten each other and they presuppose each other: power without trust eats up its own basis, and trust without power cannot survive, because there will always be a portion of violence in a group. Members of a group have different interests that sometimes are contrary to the common negotiated norm or the set goal, so they threaten the inner boundaries and they try to destruct norms within the organisation. Therefore, there is a need for somebody to stop the violence. There is need for a leader who is endowed with appropriate means of power, and who can restore the trust through trustworthy use of power. This someone is more often than not the principal. If a teacher is totally opposed to the norms and values, this could be seen as an internal act of violence that has to be taken care of. A very crucial leadership task is to restore the limits of the community. This is the pivotal point for the trust-power interplay, but external pressure begins to alter internal power relations in school communities with consequences for trust. This points to the need for leaders to set the agenda for the professional discussions in schools: what is interesting for our community, and how are we going to resolve those problems? However, leadership must be made legitimate in society and above all to those who are “led.” Power must be handled carefully, and the balance between influence and trust has to be maintained. The main principles of education in schools have to be respected: maturity has to be encouraged when dealing with pupils, teachers, and parents, acceptance of oneself and of others has to be practised, autonomy has to be supported, and cooperation has to be realised. School leadership should be aligned to these beliefs.

The Core Functions of School Leadership As stated above, many authors in our field point to the fact that in the practice of schools there is not only one leader; leadership needs to be distributed and therefore people need to be developed and empowered so they can accept and carry out leadership functions at

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different levels. Furthermore, they claim that organisations must be redesigned in order to accommodate new functions and practices. Even though schools in some systems are managed in some detail, when it comes to outcomes (standards, inspections and tests) they have to find the ways to achieve these outcomes themselves. They have to interpret demands and signals from the outer world and choose means by which they want to respond to them. It is a major challenge to school leadership to interpret signals and engage in communications about differences that form the premises for the next decisions in the community (Thyssen, 2003a). This is about setting directions and making sense. The ways in which leaders at all levels can influence each other, staff and students, is communication (Moos, 2003c). In a social constructivist-perspective, persons are seen as autopoetic systems that can choose to transform their cognitive patterns if they are disturbed or irritated by communication from other agents. In another perspective, a practice theory perspective, it is in the interactions (Spillane & Orlina, 2005) with others that influence is made. This is a mutual/reciprocal action, an interaction involving both parties. This is about communicating and negotiating sense. Schools are organisations, held together by structures, but if they are to be effective and successful, they must also be communities, held together by a shared sense of identity and by sufficiently common norms (Bourdieu, 1990). This is about designing and managing communities.

Integrative Leadership The principle that school has to be a model of what it teaches and preaches (Rosenbusch, 1997, 2005) has consequences for schools and school leadership. It implies that school leadership needs to be based upon certain principles, which are oriented towards the constitutive aspects of a fundamental educational understanding (see Rosenbusch, 1997). School leaders should adjust their educational perspective: educational goals dominate over administrative requirements, administration only serves an instrumental function. They also should take the two levels of their educational work into consideration: first, school leaders have to work with children and promote their learning, and second, as they also have to work with adults, they should promote adult learning as well. Hence, conditions of adult education and adult learning have to be taken into account. This must have an impact on their leadership and management style, particularly in professional dialogues, when knowledge is shared, expanded, and created. School leaders should be more resource-oriented than deficiency-oriented: a new orientation towards promoting strengths instead of counting weaknesses is needed. So far, in many countries bureaucratically determined school administration has concentrated on avoiding mistakes, on controlling, detecting, and eliminating weaknesses instead of – as would be desirable from an educational point of view – concentrating on the positive aspects, reinforcing strengths, and supporting cooperation; it should be about treasure hunting instead of uncovering deficiencies. They should follow the logic of trusting oneself and others (see Rosenbusch, 1997, 2005): it is necessary to have trust in one’s own abilities and as well as in those of the staff and

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others so that empowerment, true delegation, and independent actions can be facilitated; then mistakes can be addressed more openly. Finally, they should act according to the principle of “collegiality in spite of hierarchy”(REF??).: individual and mutual responsibilities have to be respected and appreciated, although special emphasis is placed on a shared collegial obligation regarding the shared goals. If schools are considered learning organisations, this implies that the stakeholders are empowered and work together collaboratively. Leadership is about empowering others as viable partners in leadership. Some colleagues call this “cooperative leadership” or “democratic leadership”; other concepts that have emerged are “organisationaleducational management” (Rosenbusch, 1997a), or “post-transformational leadership” (Jackson & West, 1999). Huber’s (2004a) “integrative approach to leadership” focuses on the core purpose of school and adjusts school leadership to the aims of school, integrating the different roles and expectations, but also emphasising the empowerment of the different stakeholders (Figure 1). As stated above, “integrative leadership” integrates three components: ●

●

●

First, there should be a focus on educational premises as formulated in organisational-educational management. Among those are the acceptance of other stakeholders, the support of their autonomy, and cooperation in terms of an aim and at the same time the method to achieve it. Besides, a more broadly defined understanding of leadership includes moral and political dimensions of leadership in a democracy. Leadership in a democratic society is embedded in democratic values, such as equality, justice, fairness, welfare and a careful and reflective use of power. Second, the individual school leader should integrate the different school leadership roles and functions in her or his personality and actions in such a way that they are adjusted to the overarching aims of education, whether it is the more personoriented (or consideration) role or the more task-oriented (or initiating structure) role; in other terms the more administrative-management focus or an emphasis on leadership. Third, school leadership actions have to integrate all stakeholders in terms of cooperative leadership as described above and focus on the different individuals and

The integrative leadership triangle Focus on aims

Context

Integration of different roles Figure 1.

Integration of all stakeholders

The integrative leadership triangle (Huber, 2004b, 2007)

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groups involved as well as on the collaborative relationships among them. School leaders need to be able to develop appropriate (context-task-person-oriented) professional relationships and foster such relationships among all stakeholders (in order to create a “cooperative and democratic school”). Moreover, the concrete everyday realisation of school leadership has to take the context into account, as leadership is always context-specific. In general, leadership is dependent on and limited by the context. In particular, leadership, on the one hand, takes the context into account when it comes to analyzing, evaluating and deciding how to act. On the other hand, leadership tries to influence the context to create better conditions for improvement (focusing on aims, integrating the different roles, integrating all stakeholders). School leaders have to be able to understand the complexity of the system. They need to be familiar with the potential “stumbling blocks” that may exist and how these obstacles can become challenges that will be overcome. School leadership must shape the school in such a way that the teachers who work there can then ideally be more effective in supporting their pupils to achieve better learning outcomes. Hence, the school leader becomes a facilitator of change and someone who effectively supports teachers in their work with pupils. This requires reflection on the role, function, and goals of the school, and consequently on the role, function, and goals of appropriate leadership and management. Hence, last but utmost important, leadership is about “a multi-stage adjusting of school leadership aims” (Huber, 2004a). A multi-stage adjusting of aims requires putting forward the following questions: first, what are the essential aims of education? From this, the corresponding aims for schools and schooling in general can then be derived: what is the purpose of school and what are the aims of the teaching and learning processes? Considering the perspective of the new field of “organisational education,” one should ask: how does the school organisation need to be designed and developed in order to create the best conditions possible so that the entire school becomes a deliberately designed, educationally meaningful environment? This in turn would enable effective and substantial teaching and learning to take place as well as multi-faceted and holistic educational processes that would lead to achieving the schools’ aims. Consequently, we should ask: how can this aim be realised through teaching and through the communicative everyday practice in schools and the culture of a school? This means that leadership activities like decision making processes, dealing with conflicts, problem solving, interpretations of regulations and instructions, as well as the everyday routines at school have to be brought in line with these fundamental premises.

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Nelson, L. (1970). System der philosophischen Ethik und Pädagogik (1932) Vol. V in Gesammelte Schrifte, Berlin, Felix Meiner Verlag. Oettingen, A. von. (2001). Det pœdagogiske paradoks. Aarhus: Klim. Qvortrup, L. (2000). Det hyperkomplekse samfund. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Qvortrup, L. (2001). Det lœrende samfund. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Reynolds, D. (1976). The delinquent school. In P. Woods (Ed.), The process of schooling (pp. 217–229). London: Routledge & Kegan. Reynolds, D., Bollen, R., Creemers, B., Hopkins, D., Stoll, L., & Lagerweij, N. (Eds.). (1996). Making good schools: Linking school effectiveness and school improvement. London: Routledge. Rosenbusch, H. S. (1997). Organisationspädagogische Perspektiven einer Reform der Schulorganisation. SchulVerwaltung, 10, 329–334. Rutter, M., Maughan, B., Mortimore, P., & Ouston, J. (1979). Fifteen thousand hours. London: Open Books. Sammons, P., Hillman, J., & Mortimore, P. (1995). Key characteristics of effective schools: A review of school effectiveness research. London: OFSTED. Scheerens, J., & Bosker, R. (1997). The foundations of educational effectiveness. Oxford: Pergamon. Southworth, G. (2003). “Learning-centred leadership in schools.” In L. Moos (Ed.), Educational leadership (pp. 33–52). Copenhagen: The Danish University of Education Press. Spillane, J. P., Halverson, R., & Diamond, J. B. (2001). “Investigating school leadership practice: A distributed perspective.” Educational Researcher, 30(3), 23–28. Spillane, J. P., Halverson, R., & Diamond. J. B. (2004). “Towards a theory of leadership practice: A distributed perspective.” Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36(1), 3–34. Spillane, J. P., & Orlina, E. C. (2005). “Investigating leadership practice: Exploring the entailments of taking a distributed persepctive.” in AERA. Stegö, N. E., Gielen, K., Glatter, R., & Hord, S. M. (Eds.). (1987). The role of school leaders in school improvement. Leuven: ACCO. Sørhaug, T. (1996). Om ledelse. Magt og tillid i moderne organisering. Oslo: Universitetsforlaget. Teddlie, C., & Stringfield, S. C. (1993). Schools make a difference: Lessons learned from a 10-year study of school effects. New York: Teachers’ College Press. Thyssen, O. (2003a). “Luhman og ledelsen”. In Holger Hojlund, ⁄ & Morten Knudsen (Eds.), Organiseret kommunikation – systemteoretiske analyser. Frederiksberg: Samfundslitteratur. Thyssen, O. (2003b). “Organisationens usynlighed”. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School. Trider, D., & Leithwood, K. A. (1988). Influences on principal’s practices. Curriculum Inquiry, 18(3), 289–311. Van Velzen, W. G. (1979). Autonomy of the school. S’Hertogenkosch: PKC. Van Velzen, W. G., Miles, M. B., Ekholm, M., Hameyer, U., & Robin, D. (Eds.). (1985). Making school improvement work: A conceptual guide to practice. Leuven: ACCO. Wenger, E. (1999). Communities of practice. Learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

33 LEADERSHIP AND SCHOOL REFORM FACTORS

Robert J. Marzano

In one form or another, school reform has been a focus of K-12 education since the beginning of the twentieth century (Ravitch, 1983). That is, innovations designed to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of schools have been proposed and tried for decades. However, as Cuban (1990) noted, even the best of these innovations have been short-lived. One possible explanation is that most reform efforts have not considered the systemic nature of schools and, consequently, the need for a systemic approach to reform. A school has many constituent groups and many forces acting on it, as evidenced by the conceptual and statistical complexity of the various models of schooling (e.g., Heck, 1992; Heck, Larsen, & Marcoulides, 1990). This case study describes a model that can be used by schools to identify work that has the highest perceived probability of enhancing student achievement. It involves a framework of 11 factors organized in three domains: school-level factors, teacherlevel factors, and student-level factors. Each factor represents an area of potential focus of school reform and each factor is associated with specific actions a school might take. Leadership frames the entire process of selection and implementation of a reform initiative. The school leader must not only guide the selection of the “right work” for a school, but also must manage the implementation of the work in a manner consistent with the magnitude of change it represents for the school. The model presented in this case study is intended to be pragmatic in that it offers specific actions to be taken by school administrators and teachers who seek to improve the effectiveness of their schools by enhancing student achievement. As such, it is most probably overly simplistic. However, it does offer a robust view of critical school variables and their systemic nature. The component parts of the model have been articulated in a series of publications (Marzano, 2003, 2004; Marzano, Waters, & McNulty, 2005). It begins and ends with what is arguably the keystone of effective schooling: leadership.

597 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 597–614. © 2007 Springer.

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Strong Leadership: The Starting Place for Effective Schooling Leadership is considered to be vital to the functioning of many aspects of a school. To illustrate, the list below depicts only a few of the aspects of schooling that have been linked to leadership in a school building: ●

●

●

●

●

●

Whether a school has a clear mission and goals (Bamburg & Andrews, 1990; Duke, 1982). The overall climate of the school and the climate in individual classrooms (Brookover, Schweitzer, Schneider, Beady, Flood, & Wisenbaker, 1978; Brookover, Beady, Flood, Schweitzer, & Wisenbaker, 1979; Brookover & Lezotte, 1979; Griffith, 2000; Villani, 1996). The attitudes of teachers (Brookover & Lezotte, 1979; Oakes, 1989; Purkey & Smith, 1983; Rutter, Maughan, Mortimore, Ouston, & Smith, 1979). The classroom practices of teachers (Brookover et al., 1978; Brookover & Lezotte, 1979; McDill, Rigsby, & Myers, 1969; Miller & Sayre, 1986). The organization of curriculum and instruction (Bossert, Dwyer, Rowan, & Lee, 1982; Cohen & Miller, 1980; Eberts & Stone, 1988; Glasman & Binianimov, 1981; Oakes, 1989). Students’ opportunity to learn (Duke & Canady, 1991; Dwyer, 1986; Murphy & Hallinger, 1989).

Given the perceived importance of leadership, it is no wonder that an effective principal is thought to be a necessary precondition for an effective school. A 1970 U.S. Senate Committee Report on Equal Educational Opportunity (U.S. Congress, 1970) identified the principal as the single most influential person in a school. Regardless of the perceived importance of principal leadership, the research base supporting it has been deemed equivocal. For example, at least one meta-analytic study (Witziers, Bosker, & Kruger, 2003) reported that the relationship between principal leadership and student achievement is nonexistent. As a result of their analyses of 37 studies conducted internationally on the relationship between building leadership and student achievement, Witziers et al. (2003) reported an average correlation of 0.02. Taken at face value, the findings from the Witziers et al. study would lead one to conclude that little effort should be put into developing leaders at the school building level. Even some of those who believe that principal leadership has a causal link with student achievement assert that the research provides little practical guidance. For example, Donmoyer (1985) noted: Recent studies of schools invariably identify the principal’s leadership as a significant factor in school’s success. Unfortunately these studies provide only limited insight into how principals contribute to their school’s achievements. (p. 31) The perspective articulated above is in sharp contrast to that offered by Marzano, Waters, and McNulty (2005). After analyzing 69 studies representing research over the last 35 years, they computed an average correlation of 0.25 between principal leadership behavior and student academic achievement. This finding is quite discrepant from

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that reported by Witziers et al. (2003). There are at least two reasons for this discrepancy, pursued at length in Marzano et al. (2005). The first is that the Witziers et al. study focused on countries other than the United States. Specifically, of the 37 studies in their meta-analysis, 25 were taken from countries other than the United States. When Witziers et al. isolated studies in the United States, they reported an average correlation of 0.11. The second major reason for the discrepancy is that Witziers et al. did not correct for attenuation whereas Marzano et al. did. When no correction is made for attenuation, the average correlation from the Marzano et al. meta-analysis is 0.19, relatively similar to the uncorrected correlation of 0.11 for U.S. schools reported by Witziers et al. In contrast to Donmoyer’s assertion that research provides little guidance as to specific actions important to school leadership, Marzano et al. (2005) found a number of behaviors that have statistically significant ( p  0.05) relationships with student academic achievement. Additionally, they found that two factors in particular mediate the effect principal leadership has on student achievement. The first is the focus of the work selected by a school.

The Focus of the Work In the context of school improvement plans, each year, every school in the country formally or informally identifies something it will work on to maintain or (ideally) improve student achievement. Harvard scholar Richard Elmore (2003) contended that the selection a school makes is directly proportional to the school’s ability to improve student achievement. Specifically, in a study commissioned by the National Governors Association (NGA), Elmore (2003) concluded that school reform efforts in the United States are plagued by a number of falsehoods, one of which being that schools fail because teachers and administrators don’t work hard enough: “These falsehoods include believing that schools fail because the people in them – administrators, teachers, and students – don’t work hard enough and that they are lazy, unmotivated, and self-serving” (p. 9). For Elmore, the downfall of low-performing schools is not their lack of effort and motivation; rather, it is that they fail to select “the right work.” Operationally, the right work for a school at any given point in time is that which has the highest probability of most dramatically enhancing student achievement. By inference, then, a critical leadership task for a school principal is to ensure that the school selects the right work. To do so, one must begin with a model or framework of those factors that can be altered in a school to enhance student achievement. There are a number of such models that have been developed for this purpose. They include those by Levine and Lezotte (1990), Sammons (1999), Teddlie and Reynolds (2000), and others. The model used here is that developed by Marzano (2003). It postulates eleven factors that might be the focus of school reform. These factors are listed in Table 1. The factors in Table 1 are organized into three broad categories – school-level factors, teacher-level factors, and student-level factors. The school-level factors are those that typically are a function of school policy, like safety and order. Stated differently, they represent issues that cannot be addressed comprehensively by individual teachers. Rather, these issues typically involve schoolwide initiatives or operating procedures.

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What works in schools model

School

• Guaranteed and viable curriculum • Challenging goals and effective feedback • Parent and community involvement • Safe and orderly environment • Collegiality and professionalism

Teacher

• Instructional strategies • Classroom management • Classroom curriculum design

Student

• Home environment • Learned intelligence and background knowledge • Motivation

The teacher-level factors involve issues that can be addressed effectively by individual teachers, like instructional strategies and classroom management. Finally, the studentlevel factors involve issues like home environment that are typically not addressed by schools but can be if a school is willing to implement specific types of schoolwide programs. The factors listed in Table 1 are limited to those which can produce substantive changes without access to extraordinary financial resources. By definition, then, some powerful interventions have been excluded, such as increasing the number of days in the school year and providing a tutor for every student who is experiencing difficulty in school. The factors in Table 1 might be considered a pragmatic set in that they can be addressed immediately, without access to extraordinary resources. Each of these factors has specific, defining features and “action steps” that might be identified as the right work in a given school.

Factor 1: Guaranteed and viable curriculum This first factor addresses two interrelated aspects of the curriculum in a school – the extent to which the curriculum is guaranteed and the extent to which it is viable. Since viability is a necessary condition for a guaranteed curriculum, it is addressed first. Viability refers to whether the stated curriculum can be adequately taught in the instructional time available to teachers. Although this issue might sound like a non sequitur, it is one of the most troublesome currently facing K-12 schools primarily because of the standards movement. Although the standards movement is well intended and many state standards documents are well written, it has created a “crisis of coverage.” State standards documents simply identify far more content than can be adequately taught in the instructional time available. To illustrate, in a study of the amount of time it would take to teach the content currently found in national and state-level standards documents, Marzano, Kendall, and Gaddy (1999) concluded that 71% more instructional time than is now available would be required to teach the content in those documents. To be viable, then, a curriculum must fit within the parameters of available instructional time, and this, quite obviously, requires substantial trimming of the content. Once a curriculum is trimmed to the point where it is viable, it can be guaranteed. This means that a school imposes the constraint that classroom teachers must address specific content in specific courses at specific grade levels. The casual observer of

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K-12 education might assume that schools and districts already make such a guarantee. Research does not support this conclusion. For example, Stevenson and Stigler (1992) noted that even when all teachers in a school or district use the same textbook series, different teachers omit different topics. Consequently, a school or district has no way of knowing what students have been taught. Hirsch (1996) addressed the same phenomenon, noting that: “The idea that there exists a coherent plan for teaching content within the local district, or even within the individual school, is a gravely misleading myth” (p. 26). Given the lack of a guaranteed and viable curriculum in many schools and districts, one or more of the following action steps might be identified as the right work in a given school: ●

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Identify and communicate the content considered essential for all students versus that considered supplemental. Ensure that the essential content can be addressed in the amount of time available for instruction. Ensure that teachers address the essential content. Protect the instructional time available to teachers.

Factor 2: Challenging goals and effective feedback One strong generalization from the research literature is that feedback is a robust instructional activity available to teachers and schools. In fact, in a review of almost 8,000 studies, Hattie (1992) concluded that: “The most powerful single modification that enhances achievement is feedback. The simplest prescription for improving education must be ‘dollops of feedback’ ” (p. 9). Marzano (2000, 2003) noted that one way to provide effective feedback in a systematic way is to utilize report cards that report on student progress on specific standards or specific aspects of standards. To provide students with accurate feedback on these standards-based report cards, teachers might employ common assessments designed by the district or school as well as their own formative assessments. With the foundation provided by a guaranteed and viable curriculum (i.e., Factor 1), a school is poised to identify challenging goals for the school as a whole as well as individual students and then provide the systematic, specific feedback that will generate the learning alluded to by Hattie (1992). Consequently, a school might select one or more of the following action steps as the right work: ●

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Implement an assessment and record-keeping system that provides timely feedback on specific areas of knowledge and skills for specific students. Establish and monitor specific, challenging achievement goals for the school as a whole. Establish and monitor specific, challenging achievement goals for each student.

Factor 3: Parent and community involvement Parent and community involvement includes three related elements: communication, participation, and governance. Communication refers to the extent to which a school has developed good reciprocal lines of communication with parents and the community.

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Participation refers to the extent to which parents and the community are involved in the day-to-day running of the school. Governance refers to the extent to which the school has established structures that allow for parents and the community to be involved in decision making relative to school policy. Typically, vehicles for involvement by parents and community in school governance involve the creation of formal teams like the Parent Team within Comer’s School Development Program (Comer, 1984, 1988) and site-based management teams. Relative to this factor, one or more of the following action steps might be selected by a school as the right work: ●

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Establish vehicles for communication between schools and parents and the community. Establish multiple ways for parents and the community to be involved in the dayto-day running of the school. Establish governance vehicles that allow for the involvement of parents and community members.

Factor 4: Safe and orderly environment In a school with a safe and orderly environment, students and teachers alike are safe and perceive that they are safe from both physical and psychological harm. Safety and order as described here have been recognized by many as necessary conditions for effective schooling (Chubb & Moe, 1990; Mayer, Mullens, Moore, & Ralph, 2000). Indeed, national goals have even been established regarding this factor. For example, in 1994, the Goals 2000: Educate America Act (National Education Goals Panel, 1994) stated that by the year 2000, every school “will offer a disciplined environment conducive to learning” (p. 13). To address safety and order, a school must implement rules and procedures at the school level and involve students in their design and implementation. Consequently, a school might select one or more of the following action steps as the right work: ●

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Establish rules and procedures to address behavioral problems that might be caused by the school’s physical characteristics or the school’s routines. Establish schoolwide rules and procedures for general behavior. Establish and enforce appropriate consequences for violations of rules and procedures. Establish a program that teaches self-discipline and responsibility to students. Establish a system that allows for the early detection of students who have high potential for violence and extreme behaviors.

Factor 5: Collegiality and professionalism Collegiality and professionalism deal with the manner in which the staff members in a school interact and approach their duties as professionals (Brookover & Lezotte, 1979). Operationally, collegiality and professionalism are a function of implicit or explicit norms of behavior among staff members. These norms serve to create relationships that are professional in nature while also being cordial and friendly. This factor also includes structures that allow teachers to be an integral aspect of the important

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decisions in a school. Finally, this factor involves professional development that is focused, skill-oriented, and cohesive from session to session and year to year. Three action steps are associated with this factor: ● ●

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Establish norms of conduct and behavior that engender collegiality and cooperation. Establish governance structures that allow for teacher involvement in decisions and policies for the school. Provide teachers with meaningful staff development activities.

Factor 6: Instructional strategies As depicted in Table 1, the five factors described above are school-level factors. As indicated by their associated action steps, they involve schoolwide interventions. This sixth factor – instructional strategies – and the next two (i.e., classroom management and classroom curriculum design) address aspects of the day-to-day life in the classroom. One of the more obvious characteristics of effective teachers is that they have a wide array of instructional strategies at their disposal. A number of lists of effective instructional strategies have been promoted. For example, eight categories of general instructional strategies have been identified based on the review of research jointly reported by Fraser (Fraser, Walberg, Welch, & Hattie 1987) and Hattie (1992). Based on the research by Marzano and his colleagues (Marzano, 1998; Marzano, Gaddy, & Dean, 2000; Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001), nine categories of instructional strategies have been promoted. Regardless of the specific list of instructional strategies that is selected, the action step associated with this factor is the same: ●

Provide teachers with research-based instructional strategies.

Factor 7: Classroom management One can make an argument that classroom management is the foundation of effective teaching. In fact, in a major review of the research literature by Wang, Haertel, and Walberg (1993), classroom management was identified as the factor that has the greatest impact on student achievement out of a list of 228 variables. This makes intuitive sense – a classroom that is chaotic as a result of poor management not only doesn’t enhance achievement, it might even inhibit it. Marzano, Marzano, and Pickering (2003) identified five aspects of effective classroom management. The first is the design and implementation of classroom rules and procedures. The second is the design and implementation of appropriate consequences for violations of rules and procedures. The third element addresses the relationship between teacher and students. The fourth aspect of effective classroom management involves the teacher’s use of strategies that heighten his or her awareness of all activities in the classroom with particular emphasis on identifying and thwarting any potential problems. The final aspect of effective classroom management addresses the extent to which the teacher maintains a healthy emotional objectivity regarding management issues.

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Other comprehensive models of classroom management action have been developed (Emmer, Evertson, & Worsham, 2003). Regardless of the specific model used by a school, the action step for this factor is the same: ●

Provide teachers with research-based classroom management strategies.

Factor 8: Classroom curriculum design Classroom curriculum design refers to those decisions a teacher makes to adapt the content found in textbooks, state standards documents, and district curriculum guides to the needs of their particular students. Curricular decisions by individual classroom teachers are needed because students from school to school and even from classroom to classroom within a single school might vary greatly in their background knowledge and readiness for the topics being taught. Consequently, classroom teachers must adapt the activities and content in the textbooks, standards documents, and curriculum guides assigned to them. When executing their adaptations, one of the first decisions teachers must make is to articulate the information and skills that are to be the focus of a given topic specified in their textbook, standards documents, or curriculum guides. Although instructional topics already might be identified in textbooks, standards documents or curriculum guides, teachers still must consider what their students already know about those topics. Another classroom curricular decision teachers must make is to identify the activities that will be employed to ensure that students are exposed to new content multiple times in a variety of ways. This is necessary because to fully understand and integrate new knowledge, students must have opportunities to process information in a variety of ways from a variety of perspectives. Additionally, these opportunities must be presented multiple times with a well thought-out progression of difficulty from activity to activity. A third curricular decision teachers must make is how to present the information within a topic or how to present a set of topics in such a way as to highlight their similarities. Stated differently, highlighting similarities between knowledge is at the heart of knowledge transfer. Again, such linkages cannot be forged without knowing the background of individual students. A final curricular decision teachers must make is how to provide students with complex tasks that require them to apply their new knowledge in ways that expand their original understanding of the knowledge. Such tasks include: making decisions based on new knowledge, solving problems based on new knowledge, and testing hypotheses based on new knowledge. Whether these or other curricular decisions are deemed critical, an action step a school might take if classroom curriculum design is considered to be the right work is: ●

Provide teachers with a model for classroom curriculum decisions.

Factor 9: Home environment As indicated in Table 1, home environment and the two factors following it are labeled student-level factors. These three factors represent characteristics that are part of the general background students bring with them to school each day. In past decades, it has been assumed that these student background factors are beyond the reach of schools.

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Although the three factors listed in Table 1 are the products of environmental influences outside of the school, there is evidence that each can be significantly impacted by focused schoolwide efforts. The first of the three student-level factors is home environment. This deals with the extent to which the environment in the home is supportive of academic success. One of the more compelling aspects of this factor is that the home environment can be orchestrated to positively impact student academic achievement regardless of the income, occupation, or education level of the parents or guardians in the home (White, 1982). There are at least three aspects of home environment that determine whether it is supportive of academic achievement. The first is the extent to which and manner in which parents and guardians communicate to their children about school. Effective communication is characterized by parents and guardians who have frequent and systematic discussions with children regarding school, during which they encourage their children regarding school, and provide resources to help them with their schoolwork. The second element characteristic of a supportive home environment is supervision. This involves the extent to which parents and guardians monitor activities of their children, including time spent doing homework, when their children return home from school, what they do after school, how much their children watch television, and what type of programs they watch. The third characteristic of this factor is parenting style. Of the three general parenting styles – authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive – the authoritative style has the strongest positive relationship with student academic achievement followed by the authoritarian style. The permissive style provides little to recommend itself as conducive to academic achievement. The action step associated with this factor is: ●

Provide training and support to parents to enhance their communication with their children about school, their supervision of their children, and their ability to communicate expectations to their children within the context of an effective parenting style.

Factor 10: Learned intelligence and background knowledge Learned intelligence and background knowledge is so named because one of the strongest predictors (if not the strongest predictor) of academic achievement is the background knowledge students have regarding the content being taught (Bloom, 1976; Dochy, Segers, & Buehl, 1999). Interestingly, background knowledge – particularly academic background knowledge – is akin to what psychologists refer to as crystallized intelligence or that type of intelligence that is learned as opposed to innate. Techniques for enhancing academic background knowledge can be organized into two basic categories: direct approaches and indirect approaches (Marzano, 2004). Direct approaches are those that involve students in academically oriented out-of-school activities. These experiences include field trips to historical sites, cultural events, plays, museums, and similarly enriching sites. Indirect experiences are those that generate “virtual” experiences for students that enhance their academic background knowledge. Two types of indirect experiences that fit well into the current culture of K-12 education are wide reading and direct vocabulary instruction in terms that are important to the academic subjects students encounter

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in school. The following action steps associated with this factor might be selected by a school as the right work: ●

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Involve students in programs that directly increase the number and quality of life experiences students have. Involve students in a program of wide reading that emphasizes vocabulary development. Provide direct instruction in vocabulary terms and phrases that are important to specific subject-matter content.

Factor 11: Motivation The final student-level factor is motivation. It refers to the extent to which students choose to be engaged in academic tasks as a result of external and internal sources. Drive theory, attribute theory, and self-worth theory provide some guidance regarding ways to motivate students via external sources (e.g., Covington, 1992). One technique is to provide students with feedback regarding their knowledge gain. When students perceive that they have progressed in the acquisition of knowledge or skill, they tend to increase their level of effort and engagement regardless of their relative standing in terms of other students. Another external approach to motivation is to involve students in game-like tasks that focus on academic content because games and game-like activities possess qualities that make them inherently interesting. If academic content is embedded in a game or game-like activity, students tend to be engaged in the task and consequently learn the embedded content even if they are not interested in the content per se. Self-system theory (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi, 1990; Harter, 1999; Markus & Ruvulo, 1990) provides guidance as to techniques for enhancing or capitalizing on students’ internal motivation. One approach is to involve students in long-term projects of their own design. However, to truly tap into sources of internal motivation, students must have the freedom to select the topics of their projects, to establish the specific goals of their projects, and to have the necessary time and resources to complete their projects. This implies setting aside some specific time during the school week for students to work on such open-ended tasks. The time lost to traditional academic subjects due to these student-directed projects might be made up by the halo effect generated by these projects. That is, the energy and engagement created by these tasks might spill over into traditional academic subject areas. A second approach to internal motivation is to provide students with an understanding of the dynamics of human motivation and consequently their own behavior in and out of school. Such an understanding allows students some measure of control over their own levels of motivation in various situations. If student motivation is its focus, a school might select one or more of the following action steps as the right work: ● ● ●

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Provide students with feedback on their knowledge gain. Provide students with tasks and activities that are inherently engaging. Provide opportunities for students to construct and work on long-term projects of their own design. Teach students about the dynamics of motivation and how those dynamics affect them.

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The 29 steps described above represent concrete actions that a school might select as the right work. Although selecting the right work goes a long way to enhancing a school’s effectiveness, it is an initial step only.

Managing the Order of the Change Required by the Focus of the Work As the previous discussion indicates, the first order of business for the school leader is to select the right work for a particular school. This accomplished, the second order of business is to manage the work that has been selected in a manner consistent with the order of change it represents.

First- and Second-Order Change First-order change is incremental in nature. It can be thought of as the next most obvious step to take in a school or a district. Second-order change is anything but incremental. It involves dramatic departures from the expected, both in terms of defining a given problem and finding a solution. By other names and terminology, a great many theorists have discussed this basic dichotomy. For example, Heifetz (1994) discussed the distinction between first- and second-order change in terms of problem types. Well-defined problems for which traditional solutions typically suffice and problems that are fairly well defined but for which no clear-cut solution is available are first order in nature. However, problems for which current ways of thinking do not allow for a solution are second order in nature. Argyris and Schön (1974, 1978) addressed the distinction between first- and secondorder change in their discussion of single-loop learning and double-loop learning. Single-loop learning (which involves first-order change) occurs when an organization approaches a problem from the perspective of strategies that have been successfully employed in the past. When a particular strategy is successful, it reinforces its utility. Double-loop learning (which involves second-order change) occurs when no existing strategy suffices to solve a given problem. In these situations, the problem must be conceptualized differently and/or new strategies must be conceived. Argyris and Schön (1974) provided an interesting perspective on the difficulty of second-order change. They explain that a common human response is to address virtually all problems as though they are first-order change issues. This makes sense in that human beings are prone to approach new problems from the perspective of their past experiences. Argyris and Schön (1974) explained this tendency in terms of “mental maps.” They argued that human beings and organizations have mental maps regarding how to act in situations. When faced with a new situation, we consult one or more of our mental maps. Fritz (1984) explained this tendency in the following way: A common rule of thumb in life is to have a formula about how things should work, so that if you learn the formula, you will always know what to do. From a reactive-responsive orientation, this notion is very appealing, because with such a formula you would hypothetically be prepared to respond appropriately to any

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situation. Unfortunately, at best this would prepare you for situations that are predictable and familiar. Your mastery of those situations would be similar to that of a well-trained mouse in a maze. From the orientation of the creative, on the other hand, the only rule of thumb about process is not to have a rule of thumb. (p. 73) Fullan (2001) added that the tendency to rely on historical answers works against solving modern-day problems: “The big problems of the day are complex, rife with paradoxes and dilemmas. For these problems, there are no once-and-for-all answers” (p. 73). The analyses of Argyris, Schön, Fritz, and Fullan are apropos to schools where persistent problems are approached in the same manner year after year. Witness the decades-old problem of the achievement gap between children from poverty versus children not from poverty. This issue has been a focus of educational reform for decades. Indeed, it was part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty” in the early 1960s. In spite of decades of attention, the problem persists. The differences in first- and second-order change combined with the natural inclination to approach all changes as first order in nature, provides a plausible explanation for the failed innovations chronicled by Cuban (1987). Perhaps these innovations represented second order changes in education but were managed and led in a manner more appropriate to first order change. Consider, for example, open education identified by Cuban as a failed innovation with research supporting it. Indeed, Hedges and Olkin’s (1985) review of the research on open education indicated that it had a positive impact on students’ attitudes and achievement. Yet it was short-lived. On the surface, it might appear that open education represented a simple alteration in the physical structure of schools in that it employed the use of large open spaces where different groups of students might be simultaneously involved in different activities. However, this simple physical change required alterations in scheduling protocols, the way teachers prepared for instruction, the way teachers interacted with one another, the manner in which content was presented and more. In short, open education required second-order change regarding the running of a school. A failure to recognize this fact coupled with the natural inclination to approach all innovations as first-order change might have caused those leading the innovation to employ inappropriate leadership behaviors. Ultimately, this led to the downfall of the innovation. As it relates to the work a school has selected, the discussion of first- and secondorder change indicates that a school leader must correctly identify the order of change required by the work and manage appropriately.

Managing First-Order Change If the work selected by a school is first order in nature, it still requires effective management. Specifically, it requires attention to the day-to-day managing of a school. Table 2 lists some leadership behaviors associated with first-order change identified by Marzano et al. (2005). The list depicted in Table 2 dramatizes the extensive and diverse nature of the leadership behavior necessary to effectively carry out even small changes that have been identified by a school as the right work.

Leadership and School Reform Factors Table 2.

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Leadership behaviors for first-order change

Leadership for first-order change involves: (1) Establishing an effective monitoring system to provide feedback on the effectiveness of the school’s curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices and their impact on student achievement. (2) Building and maintaining a culture where a common language is employed, ideas are shared and staff members operate within the norms of cooperation. (3) Operating from a well-articulated and visible set of ideals and beliefs regarding schooling, teaching, and learning. (4) Seeking out and keeping abreast of research and theory on effective practices in curriculum, instruction, and assessment. (5) Actively helping teachers with issues regarding curriculum, instruction, and assessment in their classrooms. (6) Establishing concrete goals relative to student achievement as well as curriculum, instruction, and assessment practices in the school and keeping these prominent in the day-to-day life of the school. (7) Establishing procedures and routines such that the staff and students have a sense of order and predictability. (8) Recognizing and celebrating the legitimate successes of individuals within the school as well as the school as a whole; additionally, recognizing and acknowledging failures when appropriate. (9) Fostering a knowledge of research and theory on best practices among the staff through reading and discussion. (10) Establishing and fostering clear lines of communication to and from the staff as well as within the staff. (11) Establishing and fostering procedures that ensure that staff members have input into the key decisions and policies. (12) Attending to and fostering personal relationships with the staff. (13) Providing an optimistic view of what the school is doing and what the school can accomplish in the future. (14) Inviting and honoring the expression of a variety of opinions regarding the running of the school and adapting one’s leadership style to the demands of the current situation. (15) Ensuring that the staff has the necessary resources, support, and professional development to effectively execute the teaching/learning process. (16) Expecting and recognizing superior performance from the staff. (17) Being keenly aware of the mechanisms and dynamics that define the day-to-day functioning of the school and using that awareness to forecast potential problems. (18) Being an advocate of the school to all relevant constituents and ensuring that the school complies with all important regulations and requirements. (19) Being highly visible to teachers, students, and parents through frequent visits to classrooms. (20) Protecting the staff from undue interruptions and controversies that might distract them from the teaching/learning process. (21) Being willing to challenge school practices that have been in place for a long time and promoting the value of working at the edge of one’s competence.

Managing Second-Order Change Managing second-order change involves a different set of competencies than does managing first order change. Marzano et al. (2005) identified the following: (1) Being knowledgeable about how the innovation will impact curricular, instructional, and assessment practices and providing conceptual guidance in these areas. (2) Being the driving force behind the new innovation and fostering the belief that it can produce exceptional results if members of the staff are willing to apply themselves.

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(3) Being knowledgeable about the research and theory regarding the innovation and fostering such knowledge among staff through reading and discussion. (4) Challenging the status quo and being willing to move forward on the innovation without a guarantee of success. (5) Continually monitoring the impact of the innovation. (6) Being both directive and nondirective relative to the innovation as the situation warrants. (7) Operating in a manner consistent with his or her ideals and beliefs relative to the innovation. It is important to note that the behaviors listed above are couched in terms of an innovation. This is because second-order change manifests only in the context of a specific issue that is being addressed or problem that is being solved. It is not something abstract or subtle. One does not engage in second-order change by simply talking about it. Fritz (1984) warned of the dangers of grandiose talk that is not followed by concrete action: This strategy is often employed by people who “hold the vision” while ignoring what is going on around them. These are the idle dreamers who give real visionaries a bad name. Not to confuse a creator with a dreamer. Dreamers only dream, but creators bring their dreams into reality. Only an accurate awareness of reality and an accurate awareness of your vision will enable you to form structural tension as an important part of the creative process. (p. 118) In addition to these behaviors, second-order change involves some negative fallout. Specifically, a principal seeking to provide leadership for second-order change might have to: ●

●

●

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Endure the perception that team spirit, cooperation, and common language have deteriorated as a result of the innovation. Endure the perception that communication has deteriorated as a result of the innovation. Endure the perception that order and routine have deteriorated as a result of the innovation. Endure the perception that the level of input from all members of the staff has deteriorated as a result of the innovation.

The generalizations above are all couched in terms of staff perceptions relative to the second-order change innovation being implemented, and all perceptions are negative. This is not to say that a school leader should ignore the negative perceptions of individuals within a school. However, a leader of second-order change must realize that some staff members might perceive things deteriorating as a function of the innovation. This phenomenon has been alluded to in the literature. Fullan (2001) noted that: “The more accustomed one becomes at dealing with the unknown, the more one understands that creative breakthroughs are always preceded by periods of cloudy

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thinking, confusion, exploration, trial and stress; followed by periods of excitement, and growing confidence as one pursues purposeful change, or copes with unwanted change” (p. 17). Heifetz (1994) explained the phenomenon in terms of the expression of competing values: “the inclusion of competing value perspectives may be essential to adaptive success” (p. 23). Fullan (1993) further explained that the process of secondorder change is sometimes quite messy: “Ready, fire, aim” is the more fruitful sequence if we want to take a linear snapshot of an organization undergoing major reform. Ready is important, there has to be some notion of direction, but it is killing to bog down the process with vision, mission and strategic planning, before you know enough about dynamic reality. Fire is action and inquiry where skills, clarity, and learning are fostered. Aim is crystallizing new beliefs, formulating mission and vision statements and focusing strategic planning. Vision and strategic planning come later. (pp. 31–32) Finally, Fullan (1993) added that “those individuals and organizations that are most effective do not experience fewer problems, less stressful situations, and greater fortune, they just deal with them differently” (p. 91). The implications of the generalizations regarding second-order change are far reaching. At the most elementary level, the message is that second-order change is a horse of a different color from a leadership perspective. To successfully implement a second-order change initiative, a school leader must ratchet up his or her idealism, energy, and enthusiasm. Additionally, the school leader must be willing to live through a period of frustration and even anger with some staff members. No doubt this takes a great personal toll on a school leader and might explain why many promising practices in education have not borne fruit in terms of student achievement and ultimately why many have died on the vine.

Conclusion The model presented in this case study is offered as a pragmatic tool for schools to select and manage innovations that have a high probability of enhancing student achievement. Eleven factors are offered as a framework with which a school might select the work “right” for their particular situation. In addition, a view of leadership is presented that identifies the principal’s leadership behavior as central to school reform. Not only must the principal be instrumental in identifying the right work for a school, but he or she must also manage the implementations of the work in a manner consistent with the magnitude of change it represents. To date, some 2,000 schools have used the model presented in this case study in varying degrees to guide their school reform efforts (Marzano, 2006). Specifically, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) and the Mid-Continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) both use this model in their field-work with districts, schools, and individual teachers to guide the design and implementation of reform initiatives.

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References Argyris, C., & Schön, D. (1974). Theory in practice: Increasing professional effectiveness. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Argyris, C., & Schön, D. (1978). Organizational learning: A theory of action perspective. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Bamburg, J., & Andrews, R. (1990). School goals, principals, and achievement. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 2, 175–191. Bloom, B. S. (1976). Human characteristics and school learning. New York: McGraw-Hill. Bossert, S., Dwyer, D., Rowan, B., & Lee, G. (1982). The instructional management role of the principal. Educational Administration Quarterly, 18, 34–64. Brookover, W. B., Beady, C., Flood, P., Schweitzer, J., & Wisenbaker, J. (1979). School social systems and student achievement: Schools can make a difference. New York: Praeger. Brookover, W. B., & Lezotte, L. W. (1979). Changes in school characteristics coincident with changes in student achievement. East Lansing: Institute for Research on Teaching, Michigan State University. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED181005). Brookover, W. B., Schweitzer, J. G., Schneider, J. M., Beady, C. H., Flood, P. K., & Wisenbaker, J. M. (1978). Elementary school social climate and school achievement. American Research Journal, 15, 301–318. Chubb, J. E., & Moe, T. M. (1990). Politics, markets, and America’s schools. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute. Cohen, E., & Miller, R. (1980). Coordination and control of instruction in schools. Pacific Sociological Review, 4, 446–473. Comer, J. P. (1984). Home-school relationships as they affect the academic success of children. Education and Urban Society, 16(3), 323–337. Comer, J. P. (1988). Educating poor minority children. Scientific American, 259(5), 42–48. Covington, M. V. (1992). Making the grade: A self-worth perspective on motivation and school reform. New York: Cambridge University Press. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper & Row. Cuban, L. (1987, July). Constancy and change in schools (1880s to the present). Paper presented at the conference on restructuring education. Keystone, CO. Cuban, L. (1990). Reforming again, again, and again. Educational Researcher, 19(1), 1–13. Dochy, F., Segers, M., & Buehl, M. M. (1999). The relationship between assessment practices and outcomes of studies: The case of research on prior knowledge. Review of Educational Research, 69(2), 145–186. Donmoyer, R. (1985). Cognitive anthropology and research on effective principals. Educational Administration Quarterly, 22, 31–57. Duke, D. (1982). Leadership functions and instructional effectiveness. NASSP Bulletin, 66, 5–9. Duke, D., & Canady. L. (1991). School policy. New York: McGraw Hill. Dwyer, D. (1986). Understanding the principal’s contribution to instruction. Peabody Journal of Education, 63, 3–18. Eberts, R., & Stone, J. (1988). Student achievement in public schools: Do principals make a difference? Economics of Education Review, 7, 291–299. Elmore, R. (2003). Knowing the right thing to do: School improvement and performance-based accountability. Washington, DC: NGA Center for Best Practices. Emmer, E. T., Evertson, C. M., & Worsham, M. E. (2003). Classroom management for secondary teachers (6th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Fraser, B. J., Walberg, H. J., Welch, W. W., & Hattie, J. A. (1987). Synthesis of educational productivity research [Special issue]. International Journal of Educational Research, 11(2), 145–252. Fritz, R. (1984). The path of least resistance: Learning to become the creative force in your own life. New York: Fawcett Columbine. Fullan, M. (1993). Change forces: Probing the depths of educational reform. London, England: The Falmer Press. Fullan, M. (2001). Leading in a culture of change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Glasman, N., & Binianimov, I. (1981). Input–output analyses of schools. Review of Educational Research, 51, 509–539.

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34 THE EMOTIONAL SIDE OF SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT: A LEADERSHIP PERSPECTIVE

Kenneth Leithwood

“If the goal of education or educational reform is improving students’ learning, what is the most important means of achieving that goal?” Ask the average person this question and see what kinds of answers you get. Whether you ask parents, students, businesspeople, politicians, educators, or the proverbial “man in the street,” the answer usually has something to do with teachers and their practices. No one needs a sophisticated body of research to arrive at this common-sense answer. It is justified by the simple logic of association: Interactions between students and their teachers consume by far the bulk of students’ time while they are in the school building. That said, a superficial reading of much of the research and advice aimed at school leaders about how to improve student learning could distract such school leaders from this fundamental understanding. Consider the labels attached to just a few of the most powerful variables explaining variation in student learning and what those labels actually represent. The disembodied label “instructional time” actually refers to teachers’ use of instructional time. The person-free term “collaborative school culture” really refers to the nature and extent of interaction among teachers about their work. And although “class size” is typically described by a straightforward estimate of the number of students in a class, the explanation for its effects on students depends almost entirely on how teachers’ instructional practices change in response to variation in the number of pupils in their classes. So most, if not all, “classroom variables” actually are some form of teacher practice. But there is more. Teachers’ practices – what they do – depend on what they think and feel. When their practices change, it is because their minds have changed. Teacher sense making, both a cognitive and affective process, precedes teacher practice. This chapter is concerned, in particular, with the affective part of that sense-making process, a part largely overlooked by the school improvement literature at this point. Based on a wide-ranging review of empirical evidence, I argue that: ●

a significant handful of teachers’ emotions have a major influence on teaching and learning; 615

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teachers’ working conditions, in turn, have a major influence on these emotions; school leadership, especially the leadership practices of principals, is one of the most powerful direct and indirect sets of working conditions influencing teachers’ emotions; and leadership practices demonstrably nurturing positive teacher emotions are part of several more comprehensive leadership models.

Both the structure of this chapter and the assumptions lying behind my argument reflect a form of backward mapping from improvements in student learning. Such improvements are largely, though certainly not exclusively, a consequence of teachers’ school and classroom practices. These practices are shaped by teachers’ sense making (including their feelings and emotions), which, in turn, is influenced by the conditions in which teachers work; sophisticated theoretical arguments for the importance of such conditions can be found in current accounts of “situated cognition” (e.g., Lave, 1997). At least three sets of these working or organizational conditions influence teachers’ thoughts and feelings. The key set are those which teachers encounter in their classrooms (e.g., instructional resources). But teachers’ work is not confined only to the classroom. Conditions found in the school (e.g., supportive principal leadership) are important influences on their work both inside and outside the classroom. Finally, a significant proportion of teachers’ school and classroom working conditions is a product of policies, practices, and other initiatives arising outside the school – in the district, the state or province, and the wider society. Evidence summarized in this chapter has been reviewed in much more detail in Leithwood (2005). This evidence included a large sample of original empirical studies (91), supplemented with systematic reviews of relevant evidence (26) published in reputable refereed journals. Also included in the review was a large handful of recent studies on working conditions and teacher turnover conducted primarily in Canada and the United States by, or for, teachers’ federations or unions.

Teachers’ Emotions Evidence points to seven teacher emotions with significant consequences for school improvement. These include both individual and collective sense of professional efficacy as well as organizational commitment, job satisfaction, stress and/or burnout, morale, and engagement in the profession. In this section, I clarify the nature of these emotions and summarize the evidence of their effects on teaching and learning.

Individual Teacher Efficacy Individual teacher efficacy has been defined as the extent to which teachers believe they have the capacity to improve student learning (Tschannen-Moran, Woolfolk Hoy, & Hoy, 1998). It is a belief about one’s ability to perform a task or achieve a goal. Such efficacy may be relatively general, as in the teacher’s belief about her instructional capacities with all children and all curricula, or more specific, as in the teacher’s belief

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about her ability to teach a specific concept (e.g., evolution) to a specific type of student (e.g., Grade 6 students). To be clear, it is a belief about one’s ability or capacity, not one’s actual ability or capacity. Individual self-efficacy beliefs are associated with other thoughts and feelings. For example, Mathieu and Zajac’s (1990) meta-analysis of research on organizational commitment in non-school contexts found strong positive relationships between self-efficacy beliefs and employees’ organizational commitment. Similar results have been found among teachers (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998). Low levels of teacher self-efficacy are also associated with feelings of stress. Bandura (1996) has argued that beliefs in one’s ability to perform either a specific task or a more general domain of tasks has a strong influence on the amount of effort one expends, how long one persists in trying to accomplish a task, how resilient one is in the face of failure, and how well one is likely to cope with stress under demanding circumstances. This theoretical argument has received considerable support from empirical research with teachers. High levels of individual teacher self-efficacy have been associated with a number of quite positive teacher behaviors (summarized in Goddard & Goddard, 2001). For example: ●

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● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

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A decreased tendency to be critical of students’ incorrect responses and persistence in helping struggling students arrive at correct answers; Promotion of expectations for achievement in the classroom; Development of warm interpersonal relationships in the classroom; An increased tendency to persist in helping a student who is failing to understand a concept; Greater likelihood of grouping students for instruction; Increased chances of experimenting with instruction; Greater willingness to try a variety of materials and approaches; Greater likelihood of implementing innovative practices; Better planning and organization for instruction; Increasing chances of treating students fairly; Increased willingness to work with students experiencing difficulty; Increased tendencies to recommend placing lower SES students in a regular classroom; Openness to educational consultation; Positive attitudes toward educational reform; Job satisfaction; and Increased levels of parent involvement in school.

A gradually accumulating body of evidence also associates higher levels of individual teacher self efficacy with higher levels of student achievement, particularly in math and reading in the elementary grades and across diverse student populations (e.g., Anderson, Greene, & Loewen, 1988; Ross, 1992), as well as more positive attitudes toward school, subject matter, and teachers; and lower rates of suspension and dropouts (Esselman & Moore, 1992). Higher levels of teacher self-efficacy also are associated with higher levels of student self-efficacy, an important mediator of student learning. Low levels of teacher self efficacy have been associated with an increased probability of leaving the profession (Glickman & Tamashiro, 1982).

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Collective Teacher Efficacy Group or collective efficacy is analogous to, and grows out of, the same theoretical grounding as individual teacher efficacy, a grounding substantially developed by Bandura (1997). Collective efficacy in schools “refers to the perceptions of teachers in a school that the faculty as a whole can execute the courses of action necessary to have positive effects on students” (Goddard, 2001, p. 467). The positive effects of collective efficacy beliefs on the performance of a group of teachers are explained by how those beliefs shape teachers’ behaviors and norms. People working in organizations do not function in isolation. When most teachers in the school believe that, together, they can be successful in teaching their students, there is a high level of social pressure on all teachers to persist in their attempts to do so. Although initial efforts may be unsuccessful, persistence creates opportunities for ongoing problem solving and the refinement of teaching practices until they are successful. Adapted from earlier work on individual teacher efficacy (Tschannen-Moran et al., 1998), the most fully developed model of collective teacher efficacy assumes that it is both task- and situation-specific. This means that teachers’ sense of collective efficacy depends not only on the nature of the task to be accomplished but also on key features of the context in teachers’ work [e.g., the proportion of English as a Second Language (ESL) students in the school]. Differences between schools in the strength of collective teacher efficacy have been associated with variations in both mathematics and reading achievement in four studies (Goddard, 2001; Goddard, Hoy, & Woolfolk Hoy, 2000; Tschannen-Moran & Barr, 2004).

Job Satisfaction Job satisfaction is “a pleasurable or positive emotional state resulting from the appraisal of one’s job or job experiences” (Locke, 1976, p. 1300) or the degree to which people have positive emotions toward their work (Currivan, 2000). As these definitions imply, job satisfaction is often viewed as a global variable, as in this chapter. Motivation and job satisfaction are often considered to be related concepts. But Miskel and Ogawa (1988), arguing for the importance of distinguishing between them, suggested that motivation is a direct cause of behavior, whereas job satisfaction is not. Although one may feel satisfied with one’s job through, for example, the experience of various job-related rewards, one may not necessarily act on that satisfaction. Considerable evidence indicates that job satisfaction has a strong direct effect on teacher retention (e.g., Stockard & Lehman, 2004); a much smaller body of evidence points to a significant indirect effect of job satisfaction on student learning (Ostroff, 1992). Evidence collected in non-school contexts warrants the inference that job satisfaction is likely to have important effects on teachers’ school-wide behavior (Organ, 1990), but there is little direct evidence speaking to this inference. Ostroff (1992) also found a strong relationship between teachers’ job satisfaction and their intention to quit the profession.

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Organizational Commitment Teachers’ organizational commitment has been defined by Mowday, Steers, and Porter (1979) as a three-dimensional construct including: a strong belief in, and willingness to accept, the organization’s goals and values; loyalty and a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization; and a strong desire to maintain organizational membership. Although efforts have been made to tease out the unique sources of influence on each of these dimensions of commitment, there is, as yet, little warrant for considering them separately. The majority of empirical research has been concerned with teachers’ organizational commitment. Organizational commitment and job satisfaction are closely related concepts. Some evidence suggests that job satisfaction causes organizational commitment and that teachers’ working conditions have indirect effects on commitment through their influence on job satisfaction (Williams & Hazer, 1986). But there is contrary evidence. Organizational commitment, this evidence seems to suggest, develops first as a sort of precondition of job satisfaction (e.g., Bateman & Strasser, 1984). Compared to organizational commitment, job satisfaction is believed to be less stable and to vary more directly and quickly with changing work conditions. “Job commitment” and “job attachment” (see Koch & Steers, 1978) are concepts similar to organizational commitment. Teacher commitment has been identified as contributing to student achievement in a relatively small number of studies (e.g., Kushman, 1992; Rosenholtz, 1989). A more substantial body of research, however, has linked greater organizational commitment to employee retention (Angle & Perry, 1981; Williams & Hazer, 1986), job search activities, absenteeism (e.g., Bateman & Strasser, 1984) and perceptions of organizational effectiveness (Hoy & Ferguson, 1985). Job performance also seems to be moderately influenced by organizational commitment (Wright & Bonett, 2002).

Stress and Burnout Burnout is a term used to define the more extreme forms of stress experienced by those who work in interpersonally intense occupations, human services for the most part, that are subject to chronic tension (Cunningham, 1983). The term signifies the inability of people to function effectively in their jobs as a consequence of prolonged and extensive stress related to those jobs (Byrne, 1991). Stress and burnout are closely related states of mind. Dworkin (1997) argued that the greater the level of stress, the greater the level of burnout. However, once burnout has reached a high level, it may actually reduce stress. “In essence, burnout becomes a coping mechanism through which teachers cease to care and thereby experience reduced stress” (p. 77). Maslach and Jackson (1981), authors of a widely used tool for diagnosing burnout, claimed that it is a three-dimensional state of mind including feelings of emotional exhaustion or wearing out, depersonalization (teachers develop negative, cynical, and callous attitudes toward students, parents, and their teaching colleagues), and a reduced sense of personal accomplishment and esteem. Burnout has significant negative effects on teachers themselves, their schools, and their students. For example, teachers suffering from excessive stress or burnout tend to

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demonstrate increased absenteeism, a decline in classroom performance, and poor interpersonal relations with colleagues and students. These teachers are less sympathetic toward students and less committed to, and involved in, their jobs. They have a lower tolerance for classroom disruption, are less apt to prepare adequately for class, and are generally less productive (Blase & Greenfield, 1985; Farber & Miller, 1981). Burned-out teachers can have a chilling effect on the morale of new teachers. Teachers experiencing burnout also tend to be more dogmatic about their practices and resist changes to those practices. They are inclined to treat students in a depersonalized way and resort to victim blaming for low achievement or failure. Dworkin (1987) summarized evidence indicating that high-achieving students placed with teachers suffering from burnout achieve 20% less, over the course of a year, than do students placed with other teachers. Burnout also is associated with higher rates of student dropout.

Morale Common uses of the term “morale” suggest that it is a generalized and relatively enduring state of mind. Good morale is typically associated with hopeful attitudes, an optimistic view toward one’s colleagues, and enthusiasm for one’s work, whereas poor morale is associated with cynicism, feelings of despair, and lack of enthusiasm. Morale and job satisfaction are usually considered to be different but interdependent states of mind. Morale is more future-oriented and anticipatory, whereas job satisfaction is present-oriented and a response to a current set of circumstances. A person who achieves his or her job goals or is making progress toward them should feel more confident about the future than one who is not so successful. Examples of teacher behaviors associated with poor morale include less effective teaching performance (Reyes & Imber, 1992), teacher absenteeism (Briggs & Richardson, 1992), and resistance to change (Briggs & Richardson, 1992) because of its negative effect on attitudes, self-esteem, and self-concept. Poor morale also has been associated with teacher turnover (Rafferty, 2002). Teacher morale does influence student achievement, our evidence suggests. For example, Zigarelli (1996) used three sets of data taken from the U.S. National Educational Longitudinal Study to test the effects on student achievement of a small set of oftenidentified characteristics of effective schools. He found little support for most of those characteristics, but higher teacher morale was strongly associated with higher levels of student achievement. Others have reported similar results (e.g., Black, 2001).

Engagement/Disengagement in the School or Profession We treat engagement here as both an emotion and a form of behavior. Evidence about teacher engagement can be found in the results of research about the causes and incidence of teachers changing schools or leaving the profession. Recent reports of teacher attrition generally agree that it is fairly high. For example, Buckley, Schneider, and Shang (2005) reported that one quarter of all US teachers leave the profession within 4 years. A recent Ontario study (Matsui, 2005) found that one in three elementary teachers were actively considering leaving the profession.

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But the consequences of this attrition are far from obvious, except in the threshold case of being unable to find sufficient numbers of replacements. Taking a broad international perspective on the issue, Macdonald (1999) cited a number of clearly negative effects, including discontinuity of staff within schools engaged in systematic improvement initiatives; reduction in quality of teaching staff when the most qualified leave in disproportionately large numbers; and an aging profile of teachers when a significant proportion of new teachers leave. But, as Macdonald points out, positive outcomes are also possible, including the redistribution of skilled workers to other segments of the job market; return to the profession of teachers who temporarily leave, bringing with them useful new skills and experiences; and elimination of resistance to change when those who leave do so because they object to policy changes or school improvement directions. Although each of these possible positive and negative outcomes of attrition has been observed, we have no reliable data about the incidence of each.

Organizational Conditions Influencing Teacher Emotions This section of the chapter summarizes evidence about those organizational conditions that influence teachers’ emotions. It identifies those conditions that, if they chose to act on them, would be vehicles through which leaders could indirectly improve teaching and learning in their schools. Table 1 identifies conditions that have a demonstrable impact on teachers’ emotions, and through such emotions, the nature and quality of Table 1.

Organizational conditions that influence teacher emotions

Organizational conditions Classroom Workload Volume Perceived fairness Total pupil load Class size Amount of paper work Burden of non-teaching duties Total work time and its distribution Workload Complexity Teaching in area of specialization or certification Student achievement levels Motivation of students/misbehavior (–) Autonomy/lack of autonomy over classroom decisions Atmosphere conducive to learning Availability of instructional resources (e.g., textbooks) Composition of class (student diversity, split or multi grades) School Culture Clear, explicit, shared goals for judging performance Perception of role conflict (or role clarity)

Teachers’ emotions

4, 5, 6 5, 7 7 5 7 5, * 7 7 3, 5, 6, 7 4, 5, 6, 7 3 7, * 1, 5

2, 4 4 (Continued)

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Table 1.

(Continued)

Organizational conditions Positive school atmosphere, friendliness of staff, disciplinary climate Sense of community/collaborative culture (or the reverse – isolation) Safe school environment High expectations for students Academic pressure, a climate of achievement Perceived meaningfulness of the work Structure Time to allow for both preparation and collaboration Opportunity to work in teams (especially relatively small teams) Opportunities for ongoing professional learning Participation in decision making Lack of barriers to effective instruction School size (small better than large) School location (urban less desirable) Quality of physical facilities Institutional integrity (effective, stable programs) Community relations Local reputation of the school Community support/relationships with parents School Operating Procedures Quality of communication within school Fit of school improvement plans with teachers’ view of school needs Regular performance feedback to school working groups Flexible enforcement of rules District Provision of well-designed in-service: Differentiated for individual teachers Distributed throughout period of change implementation Nurtures in-school professional networks Provides support for instruction Teacher salaries Struggle over priorities Pressure for change District size (smaller is better) Government / policy Pace of educational change and its management Extra demands on time (e.g., implementation of new curricula) Erratic, unresponsive policies creating confusion and uncertainty Greater public accountability including the use of high-stakes tests Broader Society Society/community’s view of teachers and their status Negative images of teaching in the popular media Other employment opportunities

Teachers’ emotions 1, 2, 3, 7 1, 3, 4, 5 3, 6 1 1, 3 4 1, 3 3, 4 4, 6, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 1 7 7 7 4 3 3, 7 3 1, 2 2,4 4, 5

1 1 1 1 3, 4, 7 4 5 7 3 4 7 7 3, 7 7 7

Key. 1, individual teacher efficacy; 2, collective teacher efficacy; 3, job satisfaction; 4, organizational commitment; 5, stress/burnout; 6, morale; 7, engagement in the school or profession (retention/turnover); * teacher performance.

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teaching and learning in classrooms. The left column lists the conditions while the right column identifies the emotional states with which each condition has been empirically associated (numbers 1–7) or, in two cases, the effects on teacher performance from studies that did not identify the mediating internal teacher states [identified with an asterisk (*)]. Five broad categories of organizational conditions appear in Table 1, those associated with the classroom, school, district, government and broader society. Conditions within each of these broad categories are further organized into 11 sub-categories.

Conditions in the Classroom At the classroom level, as Table 1 notes, both the volume and complexity of teacher workloads have substantial effects on their emotions.

Workload volume Teachers’ overall attitude about the volume of their work depends on their perceptions of five more specific features of their environments. Commitments to their school, feelings of stress, and morale are all eroded when (1) teachers perceive their workload to be unfair compared to the work of other teachers in their own school or across the district; (2) the overall number of pupils for which they are responsible becomes excessive; and (3) the size of their classes is perceived to make unreasonable demands on the time required for preparation and marking and seriously erodes the opportunities for providing differentiated instruction for their students. Further, (4) excessive paperwork (e.g., filling in forms, collecting information for others) and (5) the burden of such non-teaching demands as hall monitoring, bus duty, and lunchroom supervision add to teachers’ feelings of stress and reduce their morale, commitment to the school, and the likelihood of seriously considering moving on to another school or to another line of work. Workload complexity The complexity (or intensity) of their workload, as teachers’ perceive it, influences the same internal states as workload volume. Job satisfaction also is eroded by teachers’ perceptions of an excessively complex teaching assignment. Such perceptions of excessive complexity arise when teachers are required to teach in areas for which they are not certified or otherwise ill-prepared and when their students are uncooperative and achieve relatively poorly. Complexity is perceived to be increasingly manageable, however, when teachers are given a significant degree of autonomy over classroom decisions, because this allows them to do the job the best way they know how. Manageability also is increased when the school’s atmosphere encourages learning and when instructional resources are readily available. Evidence (e.g., Dibbon, 2004; Harvey & Spinney, 2000; Naylor & Schaefer, 2003) indicates that, from the point of view of teachers, the complexity or general difficulty of their work is significantly increased by insufficient preparation time, excessively large classes, and class composition, including, for example, more ESL and special-needs students. Perceptions of workload complexity are also influenced by disruptive students

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and the unmet needs of students arising, for example, from cutbacks in specialists and the presence of non-designated students with special needs. Students’ aspirations, behavior, and readiness for learning – resulting from dysfunctional family environments – influence teachers’ emotions, as do split- or multi-grade classes, especially for elementary teachers. Inadequate levels of learning resources and inappropriate assignments are a cause of teachers’ negative feelings. Teachers’work is also made more complex by the decidedly uneven pattern of demands on their time. At one extreme, holiday periods afford the relative luxury of time for planning and preparing for instruction without many other work demands to be juggled at the same time. At the other extreme, as Dibbon (2004) reported, many teachers spend from 24 to 28 extra hours preparing for and reporting to parents during each two- to three-week reporting period every term on top of their other regular duties. In between these two extremes are teachers’ “normal,” approximately 50-hour, weeks, about half of which is spent in intense interpersonal interaction with classrooms full of highly diverse children. Of all the things that teachers do, this core function of teaching is one of the highest sources of stress for teachers, in large part because of the sheer number of specific tasks entailed in performing the function well (Harvey & Spinney, 2000).

Conditions in the School Table 1 identifies four sets of working conditions with a significant influence on teachers’ emotions – school cultures, structures, relations with the community, and operating procedures.

School cultures This school condition has significant effects on all seven teacher emotions. Increasingly positive contributions are made to the affective lives of teachers by school cultures in which the goals for teachers’ work are clear, explicit, and shared; teachers are able to find their work meaningful (e.g., clear and morally inspiring goals); there is little conflict in teachers’ minds about what they are expected to do; and collaboration among teachers is encouraged. Positive feelings about their work are also engendered in teachers by a generally collegial atmosphere in the school. How the school manages student behavior is also an important factor. Schoolwide management of student behavior can have significant effects on the time required of individual teachers for this task and hence the time available to them for instruction. There is, therefore, a plausible relationship between this condition and both teacher and student performance. We know, for example, that time devoted to instruction is one of the most powerful explanations for variation in student achievement. And there is evidence that time-consuming individual teacher efforts to deal with students’ misbehavior have significant effects on teacher satisfaction, stress, absenteeism, and attrition. These negative effects are substantially ameliorated when administrators and teachers together set and consistently enforce rules for student behavior throughout the school. Recent analyses of the 2003 PISA data, collected by OECD in a large number

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of developed nations, indicates that the schools’ disciplinary climate is one of the four strongest predictors of student learning. Teachers also respond positively when their schools value and support their safety and the safety of their students and when there are high expectations for students and a strong academic pressure evident to students and teachers across the school.

School structures The primary purpose for school structures is to make possible the development and maintenance of cultures supporting the work of teachers and the learning of students. Not all structures are alterable, at least not easily or in the short term, however. This is the case for school size and location, in particular. There is evidence that positive teacher emotions and work are associated with relatively small schools located in suburban, rather than urban, locations. But there is not much that can be done about school size or location, although “schools-within-schools” is currently a popular response to large school structures. The Gates Foundation in the United States is spending enormous resources in an effort to reduce the number of very large high schools. All other structural attributes of schools associated with teachers’ emotions are potentially quite malleable, however, and can easily outweigh the negative effects of larger school sizes and urban locations. Positive contributions to teachers’ internal states (efficacy, satisfaction, commitment, reduced stress, morale, engagement) and overt practices are associated with structures that provide teachers opportunities to collaborate with one another like common planning times. Positive effects on teachers’ internal states are also associated with time to prepare adequately for classroom instruction. Teachers associate positive feelings about their work with access to good-quality professional development (e.g., Hirsch, 2004). Teacher learning opportunities may be found in many sources in addition to the school. But the school is a potentially rich source of professional learning depending on its structure and culture: Its goals are a legitimate source of direction for professional learning; its students provide the unique challenges to which any new learning must respond; and its resources set boundary conditions on the expression of any new learning. Forms of professional development contributing most to sustained teacher learning include study groups, coaching and mentoring arrangements, networks linking teachers together to explore problems of mutual concern, and immersion in inquiry activities with students (e.g., LoucksHorsley, Hewson, Love, & Stiles, 1998). Empowerment, participation in school-level decisions, and other ways of exercising control over their work are also critical working conditions for teachers. Arguments for the importance of empowerment, task autonomy, and discretion originate in the workplace performance theories of Hackman and Oldham (1975) and Gecas and Schwalbe (1983). Autonomy and discretion, according to such theories enhances commitment by “making people the main causal agents in their own performance” (Rosenholtz & Simpson, 1990, p. 244). Physical facilities that permit teachers to use the types of instruction they judge to be most effective increase teachers’ engagement in their schools and desire to remain in the profession (Hirsch, 2004). Teacher engagement or retention is also increased

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when the school has well-developed and stable programs on which to build when new challenges present themselves.

Community relations A third set of school conditions, community relations, influence teachers’ job satisfaction, as well as the probability of teachers remaining in the school and profession. Positive contributions to these states occur when the reputation of the school in the local community is positive and when there is considerable support by parents and the wider community for the efforts and directions of the school (Naylor & Schaefer, 2003). School operating procedures Finally, at the school level, there are three conditions that, as a group, influence teachers’ sense of individual and collective efficacy, as well their job satisfaction and organizational commitment. These conditions are the quality of communication in the school and how well the school’s plans for improvement match teachers’ views of what the school’s priorities should be. Evidence also points to the value of providing regular feedback to school working groups about the focus and quality of their progress. Conditions in the District A small number of important conditions over which districts have significant or primary control have emerged from the evidence reviewed. These conditions, as Table 1 shows, influence teachers’ individual efficacy, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, stress, and morale. Perhaps the most influential district-level working condition for teachers is access to meaningful professional development. Considerable variation across districts seems likely for this working condition, and there is reason to believe that considerable improvement is called for in many districts. Second, teacher salaries, typically under district control, have significant effects on teachers’ internal states, despite the fact that teachers are among the most altruistic of occupational groups. Salaries have a particularly significant impact on teachers’ feelings when they are noticeably lower in comparison with teacher salaries in nearby districts. Third, districts also are a frequent source of change – new courses, guidelines, standards, forms of student assessment, and the like – either independently or as an arm of the provincial government. Both the nature and the speed of such change can become a significant source of stress for teachers. This is the case when changes are determined with little teacher consultation and actually fly in the face of what teachers believe should be the priorities. Teachers also experience dysfunctional levels of stress when they believe the timetable for implementing district changes is unrealistically short. These changes also require extra time from teachers: time to make appropriate adaptations and to actually implement them well in the classroom. Finally, large district structures (as with class and school structures) are typically less able to provide such helpful work conditions for teachers as a district-wide sense of community and

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differentiated allocation of resources in support of unique classroom and school improvement efforts.

Conditions in the External Environment The external environment includes, for our purposes, the government policy environment, created by either the elected government or its educational bureaucracy, and wider social forces.

Educational policy environment Like districts, governments and their education departments are often sources of substantial change through the enactment of new policies and guidelines. Teachers’ job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and continuing engagement in the school or profession are seriously eroded when the pace of externally initiated changes seems too rapid, and when such changes demand significant amounts of extra time from teachers to both learn and implement. These same teacher emotions also are challenged when externally imposed changes seem erratic or unresponsive to what teachers believe are the real needs of schools and students. It seems likely that many such changes will be viewed in this way (e.g., Leithwood, Jantzi, & Steinbach, 2002). Among the most popular government-generated changes over the past decade have been policies and practices aimed at holding schools more publicly accountable for student learning. Although many of these policies seem well-intentioned, the regulations and practices associated with them typically erode teacher autonomy. These policies also constrain the use of teacher expertise in many ways: For example, by prescribing large numbers of very specific curriculum standards; introducing high-stakes tests that measure a relatively narrow set of student outcomes; endorsing a small number of teaching strategies to be used by all teachers; and, in the case of the United Kingdom, for example, even tightly scheduling the activities to be carried out in the classroom related to literacy and mathematics (e.g., Earl, Watson, Levin, Leithwood, & Fullan, 2003). These policies are strongly associated with teachers’ intentions and actual decisions to leave the profession. Furthermore, implementation of such reforms have been cited as a cause of reduced job satisfaction, teacher burnout, and job-related stress (Dworkin, 1997). An important element of recent accountability-oriented reform efforts has been the development and use of teaching standards. In an extensive review of evidence in the United States, Darling-Hammond (2001) concluded that new teaching standards over the last decade have resulted in a need for teachers to teach “much more challenging content to a much more diverse group of learners” (p. 751). These capacities, she argued, can only be widely acquired throughout the teaching force by greater investment in teacher preparation and development. “These standards change the nature of teaching work and knowledge, positing a more active, integrated, and intellectually challenging curriculum for all students, not just the most academically able” (2001, p. 751). Teachers need to be more skilled in diagnostic teaching with multiple pathways to learning so that students who encounter difficulty get the help they need to succeed. Some current reforms also broaden the issues teachers encounter outside the classroom,

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including developing curricula, assessing student performance, coaching and mentoring colleagues, and working more closely with families and community groups. Norms and values in schools that encourage teachers to collaborate in the design of instruction and in planning for a coherent set of experiences for students have long been considered among the most important features of effective schools (Hargreaves, 1992; Little, 1982). Collaboration is closely associated with a sense of collective efficacy, and it is hard to imagine such efficacy in the absence of collaborative experiences for teachers. The absence of a collaborative culture has typically been understood as an isolated culture (Feiman-Nemser & Floden, 1986). But recent increases in student testing and accountability have created another alternative – a culture of competition among teachers based on their student test scores – under particular conditions. This competitive environment, furthermore, is typically a huge source of stress for teachers.

Wider social forces Three conditions beyond the “official” environment of public schooling have an important bearing on teachers’ job satisfaction and their continuing engagement in the profession. These conditions, difficult for education professionals to change, include both community views of teaching and its status, how those views are portrayed in the media, and alternative employment opportunities. The first two wider social forces impacting teachers are negative views of teaching on the part of community members and media portrayals of the profession. These two forces significantly erode teachers’ job satisfaction and increase the chances of them leaving the profession. Public opinion about schools has an influence on teacher morale; teachers sometimes cite newspaper accounts of public attitudes toward teaching when they comment on how little support they get from parents (Dworkin, 1997). Alternative employment opportunities are a third wider social force affecting teachers. Such opportunities significantly increase the chances of teachers leaving the profession, although such opportunities are not equally available to all teachers. For example, teachers trained in math and science were substantially better situated to take advantage of employment opportunities in the information technology sector that expanded so rapidly during the 1990s.

Principal Leadership Practices that Influence Teacher Emotions A compelling body of evidence suggests that principal leadership has a large influence (through conditions they help to create in their school organizations) on how teachers feel about their work and the subsequent consequences of those feelings on teaching and learning. Indeed, this may be the most powerful, “natural” path through which principals contribute to student learning. Let me explain. A great deal of emphasis in the leadership literature of the past 20 years, typically under the banner of “instructional leadership,” has admonished

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principals to become closely and directly involved in teachers’ classroom instruction. Especially in larger schools and those offering the kinds of diverse curricula common to high schools, this admonition has never seemed more than a fond but unrealistic dream to even the most conscientious of principals. It simply flies in the face of the unavoidable demands on principals’ time, attention, and professional resources. It is an image of the principal as an educational “superhero.” There may be a few of these folks around, but they are in short supply. Mostly we have to make do with smarterthan-average, highly dedicated, and incredibly hard working folks, none of whom are able to walk on water. What these principals are able to do is what effective leaders in most other organizations do. For example, they modify organizational structures to help make colleagues work more productively, ensure access to appropriate staff development, bring teams of staff together to problem solve, create a plan of action to give focus to the organization’s work, and allocate resources to support the organization’s priorities. Effective leaders do these things in a way that contributes to a climate of trust and commitment to a common set of purposes. Principals – who work in the most interpersonally intense middle management role on the planet – do all of these things while complying with external mandates that sometimes fly in the face of local needs, responding to the demands of unreasonable parents (every school has a few), finding replacements for pregnant staff members, managing bomb scares, taking injured students to the local emergency ward and an endless list of other predictable problems that emerge at unpredictable and invariably inconvenient times. Principals live an incredibly fast-paced life in their schools and teachers’ feelings about their work depend significantly on how principals live this life. Good humor, emotional sensitivity, openness to new ideas, demonstrations of care for staff and students, confidence, expressions of optimism – all of these ways of doing business matter a great deal to teachers’ feelings about their work and the school (Day & Leithwood, in press). Table 2, a summary of evidence about principal practices that influence teacher emotions, provides more specificity about how principals work in ways that shape organizational conditions and nurture teachers’ positive emotions. These practices have been organized around four sets of core practices found in a model developed from recent reviews of evidence about effective leadership (e.g., Leithwood & Jantzi, 2005; Leithwood & Riehl, 2005). The core practices are aimed at direction setting, developing people, redesigning the organization, and managing the instructional program.

Direction setting Two direction-setting practices of principals significantly influence teachers’ stress, individual sense of efficacy, and organizational commitment. One of these practices, helping the staff develop an inspiring and shared sense of purpose, enhances teachers’ work, whereas holding (and expressing) unreasonable expectations has quite negative effects. Developing people The largest number of principal practices influencing teachers’ internal states are classified in Table 2 as developing people. Included among these practices are being collegial,

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Table 2.

Principal leadership practices that positively influence teachers’ emotions

Leadership practices

Teacher emotions

Direction setting Developing an inspiring and shared sense of direction Expressing unreasonable expectations (–)

1, 4 5

Developing people Being supportive Buffering teachers from disruption Providing teachers with discretion over classroom decisions Modeling appropriate values and practices Rewarding teachers for good work Being considerate Providing feedback on individual/group work Distributing leadership/involving teachers in decision making Listening to teachers/is open to teachers’ suggestions/collegial Looking out for teachers’ welfare

1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 1, 4 1, 4 1 1, 3, 4, 6 4 2, 4 2, 4 2, 4 4

Designing the organization Flexible enforcement of rules

1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Managing the instructional program Providing instructional guidance Seeking creative ways to improve instruction Providing resources for teachers Minimizing student disorder Other practices Influencing district decisions Communicating effectively Acting in friendly manner Inconsistent in behavior (–) Failing to follow through on decisions (–)

2, 6 1, 5, 6 1, 3, 6 1, 2, 4 4, 6 4 5 5

Key. 1, individual teacher efficacy; 2, collective teacher efficacy; 3, job satisfaction; 4, organizational commitment; 5, stress/burnout; 6, morale; 7, engagement in the school or profession (retention/turnover); * teacher performance.

considerate, and supportive; listening to teachers’ ideas; and generally looking out for teachers’ welfare. Buffering teachers from distractions to their instructional work, acknowledging and rewarding good work, and providing feedback to teachers about their work are also positive working conditions for teachers. Principals assist the work of teachers, in addition, when they provide them with discretionary space, distribute leadership across the school, and “practice what they preach” (e.g., modeling appropriate values and practices).

Redesigning the organization In this category of leadership practices, evidence identified the flexible enforcement of rules by the principal as having significant consequences for teachers’ emotions.

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Managing the instructional program Evidence about this category of practices identified providing instructional guidance either through some formal supervision procedure or, more importantly, in many informal, more frequent ways, including joint efforts with teachers to find creative ways to improve instruction. Providing resources for teachers and minimizing student disorder in the school are highly valued conditions of work which principals are in a position to provide, as well. Other practices Four influential principal practices emerged from the review that could not readily be classified among the four sets of core leadership practices. Positive effects on teachers’ individual and collective efficacy, organizational commitment, and stress were reported for principals who act in a friendly manner and are able to influence the decisions of district administrators to the benefit of the school. Excessive stress for teachers resulted from inconsistent behavior on the part of principals and frequent failure to follow through on decisions.

Conclusion It would be easy to feel overwhelmed by the evidence reviewed in this chapter. If you were a school leader, for example, the choices of conditions to improve in your school might well seem excessively complicated. But leaders influence these conditions either on purpose or incidentally every day. One way to simplify the seeming blizzard of choices is to locate a coherent guide to leadership practice for school improvement. Table 2 provides the starting point for such coherence. The broad categories of practice used to code evidence about emotion-relevant leadership in the table emerged from a synthesis of recent evidence about what successful educational leaders do across many different contexts (e.g., Leithwood & Riehl, 2005). There is considerable support for this classification of successful practices. For example, Hallinger and Heck (1998) labeled their categories of successful practices “purposes,” “people,” and “structures and social systems.” Conger and Kanungo (1998) spoke about “visioning strategies,” “efficacy-building strategies,” and “context-changing strategies. Of course, within each of these broad categories are numerous, more specific competencies, orientations, and considerations. Most of Waters, Marzano, and McNulty’s (2003) 21 specific leadership responsibilities contributing to student learning, for example, can be found within these categories. The categories used in Table 2 reflect both transformational and instructional models of educational leadership, the two models most frequently invoked as ideal in many different countries at the present time. Although both have attracted their share of criticism, much of that criticism is muted when the two are combined and the more specific practices associated with each are specified, as in Table 2. Indeed, evidence suggests that whether exercised by superintendents, principals, teachers or others, these categories point to common practices used by successful leaders in most contexts. These types of practices are not constantly required, and some will be much more important

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than others at particular points in time. But there is enough evidence about their value across enough different settings and circumstances to consider them “the basics” of successful leadership for school improvement. These basics also should be considered “necessary but not sufficient,” since successful leadership is very sensitive to the unique demands of specific schools and districts. So, more than the basics are necessary for success. But not less. Principals who exercise these basic practices with skill and in a timely matter can assume a positive emotional response from most of their teachers.

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35 LEADERSHIP AND SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT

Halia Silins and Bill Mulford

The central themes of critics of the school effectiveness and improvement movement are that it overclaims the success of effective schools. The movement is typified as a socially and politically decontextualised body of literature which, wittingly or unwittingly, has provided support for the inequitable reform programs of neo-liberal and managerial governments (Stringfield & Herman, 1996; Thrupp, 2000). Another major theme centres on the respective emphasis given to “top down” or “bottom up” approaches to school effectiveness and improvement (Scheerens, 1997). The social and political decontextualisation and inequitable use of school effectiveness and improvement research arguments are important and need to be addressed. However, it is the overclaiming argument that has the most relevance for this chapter. Most school effectiveness studies show that 80% or more of student achievement can be explained by student background rather than schools (Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000). On the other hand, school effectiveness supporters believe that, even with only 20% of achievement accounted for by schools, their work has convincingly helped to destroy the belief that schools do not make any difference. They argue that schools not only make a difference but they add value despite the strong influence of family background on children’s development (Reynolds & Teddlie, 2000). Other within schools research suggests that it is teachers in classrooms rather than the school and how it is organised or led that makes the difference. Hill (1998), for example, who found that almost 40% of the variation in achievement in mathematics was due to differences between classrooms, explained this difference as a result of teacher quality and effectiveness. More recent research based on results from the Third International Mathematics and Science Survey (TIMSS), questions this explanation. Lamb and Fullarton (2000) found that the variation in mathematics achievement in high schools was due mainly to differences within classrooms (57%), between classrooms (28%) and between schools (15%). However, the reasons for the differences between classrooms and schools were related more to student background and attitude toward mathematics and the types of pupil grouping practices schools employ than to 635 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 635–658. © 2007 Springer.

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teachers. In brief, organisational and compositional features of schools and classrooms had a more marked impact on mathematics achievement than the quality of teachers. Of course, student achievement in mathematics and science represents a very limited understanding of the full purpose of schooling (McGaw, Piper, Banks, & Evans, 1992). But little evidence is available concerning non-cognitive student outcomes. We have tried to take this and the other points made in the debate on the value of school effectiveness and improvement research on board in our own research. In our Leadership for Organisational Learning and Student Outcomes (LOLSO) project, school performance is measured against student outcome measures which include student participation in and engagement with schools, their views of their academic performance, as well as school retention, completion rates and academic results. At the school level we employ measures of role (school principal) and distributed leadership as well as organisational learning (OL). In respect of the context for school improvement, we include analysis by student SES and home educational environment as well as school size. In this way we believe we are able to test the relative contribution of a range of individual, school and societal factors on student outcomes. Because of this approach to our research, the unfinished nature of the debate on school effectiveness and improvement and the fact that we can do little to determine how our results might be used by others, we believe we are justified in our pursuance of the links between leadership and the school results of OL and student outcomes in the manner described in the chapter. Our emphasis is clearly at the “bottom up” end of the “top down”/“bottom up” debate. As we will show, a “bottom up” emphasis does not preclude “top down” approaches if a strong “bottom up” approach is first in place.

Leadership for Organisational Learning and Student Outcomes: The LOLSO Project Introduction The first phase of this project1 entailed identification of the school and leadership characteristics and processes that are associated with high schools operating as learning organisations. A teacher and principal questionnaire was developed drawing on non-school literature on OL and the work in schools of Leithwood and Jantzi, Centre for Leadership Development, University of Toronto. This questionnaire provided information on sources of leadership in the school, leadership and school management practices of the principal and the management team, and the nature of OL. In 1997, survey data from 2,503 teachers and their principals drawn from 96 secondary schools from two Australian states were collected. Subsequent analysis of these responses (Silins, Zarins, & Mulford, 2002) provided empirical evidence for conceptualising leadership practices that promote OL as transformational in nature and defined in terms of six dimensions. As presented and defined in Table l, these are: Vision and Goals; Culture; Structure; Intellectual Stimulation; Individual Support; and Performance Expectations. Analysis of the responses relating to the nature of OL resulted in the identification of four

School Effectiveness and Improvement Table 1.

637

Leadership practices that promote organisational learning in schools

Construct

Description

Vision and goals

Works toward whole staff consensus in establishing school priorities and communicates these priorities and goals to students and staff giving a sense of overall purpose. For example, the principal helps clarify the specific meaning of the school’s mission in terms of its practical implications for programs and instruction. Promotes an atmosphere of caring and trust among staff, sets a respectful tone for interaction with students and demonstrates a willingness to change his or her practices in the light of new understandings. For example, the principal shows respect for staff by treating us as professionals. Supports a school structure that promotes participative decision making, delegating and distributing leadership to encourage teacher autonomy for making decisions. For example, the principal distributes leadership broadly among the staff representing various viewpoints in leadership positions. Encourages staff to reflect on what they are trying to achieve with students and how they are doing it; facilitates opportunities for staff to learn from each other and models continual learning in his or her own practice. For example, the principal is a source of new ideas for my professional learning. Provides moral support, shows appreciation for the work of individual staff and takes their opinion into account when making decisions. For example, the principal provides moral support by making me feel appreciated for my contribution to the school. Has high expectations for teachers and for students and expects staff to be effective and innovative. For example, the principal has high expectations for us as professionals.

Culture

Structure

Intellectual stimulation

Individual support

Performance expectation

dimensions that characterised high schools as learning organisations. As presented and defined in Table 2, these are: Trusting and Collaborative Climate; Taking Initiatives and Risks; Shared and Monitored Mission; and, Professional Development. Further analysis involved the formulation of a hypothesised model to test the nature and strength of the relationships between the variables included in the study and to understand the interactive nature of leadership and OL. A combination of contextual external and internal influences on the organisation and functioning of schools as learning organisations were selected from the teacher data base for the hypothesised model. External predictors were School Profile (Size in 1997, Area [metropolitan or country] and Principal’s Gender) and Teacher Profile (Years in Education, Years at their School, Age and Gender). The internal organisation predictors were based on teacher responses and included: Resources (perceived availability of resources to improve staff effectiveness); Leader (principal’s transformational practices); Community Focus (the extent that the school is working with the community); Distributed Leadership (a profile of the identified sources of leadership in the school); Staffing Policies (the extent to which staff are placed in areas of competence and consulted); Active Involvement (evidence of administrators’ interest in student progress and extent of positive presence in the school); Staff Valued (the extent to which new staff are welcomed and all staff contributions

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Table 2.

The dimensions that define organisational learning in high schools

Construct

Description

Trusting and collaborative climate

Schools where collaboration is the norm and discussions amongst colleagues are open and candid; staff seek information to improve their work and use colleagues as resources. For example, there is ongoing professional dialogue among teachers. Schools where staff are empowered to make decisions and school structures support staff initiatives; school administrators are open to change and reward staff for taking the initiative. For example, people feel free to experiment and take risks. School staff participate in school-level policy decisions and have a shared sense of direction; current practices are reviewed and problems are solved by teachers and administrators working together; information is shared with parents and the community; the climate promotes cooperative learning. For example, effectiveness of the teaching program is regularly monitored. Staff are encouraged to develop professionally; other schools, external advisers and professional reading are sources of learning; developing skills of working in teams and sharing knowledge is seen as important. For example, adequate time is provided for professional development.

Taking initiatives and risks

Shared and monitored mission (improving school practices)

Professional development

valued equally); and School Autonomy (extent of teacher satisfaction with leadership and the level of autonomy secured for the school by the principal) (Silins, Zarins, & Mulford, 1999). This model was tested using a latent variables partial least squares path analysis (PLSPATH) procedure at the school level of analysis (Sellin & Keeves, 1997). When examining the nature of the relationship between these variables and their influences on OL, we found that the smaller schools (less than 900 students) rather than the larger schools (above 900 students) are more likely to be identified as achieving OL outcomes. In addition, principals who practise transformational leadership (TL) emerged as strong promoters of OL outcomes. Furthermore, when transformational leaders establish a community focus within their school then these factors (i.e., smaller schools, adequate resources, TL, and community focus) result in a greater distribution of leadership responsibilities throughout the school community (including students and parents). This distributed leadership promotes OL outcomes directly as well as through helping staff feel valued, having staff perceive the principal as securing a high degree of autonomy for the school and engendering an overall satisfaction with the leadership in the school. As results of this phase of the LOLSO Project have been published elsewhere (Silins, Mulford, Zarins, & Bishop, 2000), this chapter will report results which examine the relationship of leadership and OL to non-academic student outcomes and then test the association of non-academic student outcomes with retention rates and academic achievement. Studies of school restructuring and school effectiveness commonly choose academic achievement as the outcome to be measured. However, as noted earlier, academic achievement outcomes from specific curriculum areas or from standardised achievement tests do not validly represent the range of complexity of school effectiveness and improvement initiatives.

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Research Methods A full report on the research methods employed in the LOLSO Project in relation to research design, sampling procedure, construction of questionnaires, surveys conducted, the development, identification and confirmation of leadership and OL constructs using multivariate analysis, as well as model building and path analysis using the lesser known partial least squares path analysis procedure of PLSPATH, has been provided elsewhere (Silins et al., 2000; Silins & Mulford, 2002a, 2002b). In this chapter, and using the school as the unit of analysis, two hypothesised models (see Figures 1 and 2) are developed using path analysis with latent variables to investigate the nature and strength of all the relationships in the models. Student level data is used to provide measures of independent variables Home Background and Teachers’ Work as well as the dependent variables of Participation, Academic Self-Concept and Engagement. Teacher level data is used to provide measures of independent variables Leader, Active Involvement, Teacher leadership, Staff Valued, Community Focus and OL. Analysis proceeded in two stages. First, the outer model was refined by successively deleting the manifest (direct measure) variables that did not contribute to explaining the latent variable (construct). All measures that had a loading (in the same sense as a principal components analysis) of at least twice their standard error and equal to or greater than 0.40 were retained. Once the outer model was stable, the inner model was refined. Again, all paths were deleted where the path coefficient (similar to regression coefficient) was less than twice its standard error or less than 0.10. The final models, Model 1 (Figure 1 with factors described in Table 3) and Model 2 (Figure 2 with factors described in Table 5) illustrate diagrammatically the variables that exert an effect on both the outcome variable and the other latent variables. In Model 1, student level data are used to provide measures of independent variables Home Background and Teachers’ Work, as well as the dependent variables of Participation, Academic Self-Concept and Engagement. Teacher-level data provide measures of the remaining independent variables. In this model, aggregation bias will inflate the intensity of the same level relationships although, it is presumed, that the relative strengths of the variables included in this model will be preserved. In Model 2, there is no aggregation bias. Student-level data are used to provide measures of independent variables whereas the dependent variables of Retention and Achievement have been calculated from enrolment figures from the schools and aggregated students’ results in Year 12, the final year of secondary schooling (Silins & Mulford, 2002a).

Results Model 1 – Factors influencing student engagement with school Table 3 reports the significant loadings of the observed variables for each construct in Model l. The strength of the loadings indicates which of the manifest variables predominated in the definition of their construct. All the observed variables contributed significantly to their constructs in this model. Table 4 reports the nature and strength of the relationships between the 13 latent variables (LVs) in Model 1.

Figure 1.

0.74

0.80

0.74

Discuss

Staids

Help

0.66

0.23

0.95 0.95 0.94 0.87

Inst

Inds

Perf

0.96

0.98

Struc

Culture

Goal

Leader

0.90

4

5

0.49

Active involvement

6

0.35

Whst

0.92

Tchteam 0.85

0.79

Teacher leadership

Indtch

–0.25

Model 1– Factors infuencing student engagement with school

Space

Worldev 0.72

0.61

Extrac

2

–0.33

3

Actin22 0.89

School size

Home background

0.26

1 Socioeconomic status

Edocc 0.97 0.56

Ecres 0.98

Size97 10.00

Actin21 0.86

Actin17 0.93

Actin16 0.96 Staff valued

Actin12 0.93

0.60

Val19 0.94

0.93

Actin14 0.89

Val15 0.91

0.94

Actin2

Actin7

7

0.32

0.22

0.76

Opinion

0.29

0.32

0.95 Com20 0.95

Com18 0.95

Com8

0.95

Community focus

8

–0.39 0.59

0.24

0.29

Teachers' work

10

0.27

0.88 Chall

0.80

Bestwk 0.72

Org

Diswk 0.82

Varact 0.86

Lkinstr 0.87

0.24

0.51

0.57

Goalset

0.89

Prod

0.17

Confid Learn

Selfass

Marks

0.84

0.76

0.73

0.82

0.89

13

0.90

Engagement R2 = 0.84

Ident

Undmat 0.85

Grad

0.71

Utility 0.83

Peers

Stutch 0.88

12 Academic self-concept

0.24

0.63

0.32

0.32

11 Participation

0.74

Expart

0.95

Impr

9 Organisational learning

0.54

Com5

0.21

–0.26

0.25 0.28

Respond 0.69

Risks 0.96

0.55

Notab

Collab 0.91

640 Silins and Mulford

Figure 2.

0.61

0.78

Help

0.66

2

0.70

3

0.80

– 0.27

4

0.82 0.69

Org Diswk Bestwk 0.77

0.74

0.87

Varact

Chall

Lkinstr 0.71

Teachers' work

–0.20

0.40

School size

1.00

0.59

0.41

5 Participation

0.79

Expart

Model 2 – Factors infuencing retention and student achievement

Space

Worldev 0.76

0.45

0.83

Staids

Discuss 0.86

Extr

Home background

1 Socioeconomic status

Edocc 0.98

Ecres 0.98

Size9 9

0.40

Notab

Goalset 0.57

Respond 0.77

Opinion 0.68

6

Selfass 0.79

0.75

Grad Marks

0.76 0.90

Learn

Confid 0.89

Undmat 0.82

Academic self-concept

0.55

0.32

0.40

0.46

0.71 0.85

7

Schrr2 0.77

Sacerr 0.86

Retention

0.42

Engagement

Ident

Utility 0.75

Peers

Stutch 0.81

8

0.35

0.45

R2= 0.64

Achievement

9

Tafewag 0.94

Terwag 0.93

Rattafec 0.50

Ratsacec 0.68

School Effectiveness and Improvement 641

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Table 3. Description of variables in the model of factors influencing student engagement with school (Model 1) Variables description and coding

Mean

SD

Loading*

Socioeconomic status [outward mode] Residence category (Ecres) Education/occupation category (Edocc)

930.57 939.42

65.51 74.72

0.98 0.97

Home background [outward mode] Student level of agreement on six aspects of home support for education. 1
strongly disagree; 2
mostly disagree; 3
in between; 4
mostly agree; 5
strongly agree. Encourage extracurricular activities (Extrac) Discuss schoolwork (Discuss) Provide study aids at home (Staids) Help with schoolwork (Help) Conversations about world events (Worldev) Space for study (Space) School size [unity mode] Size in 1997

3.26 3.28 3.81 3.97 3.08 3.62

0.31 0.27 0.30 0.24 0.27 0.26

0.61 0.74 0.80 0.74 0.72 0.66

631.94

283.23

1.00

Leader [outward mode] Teacher level of agreement on six aspects of principal’s leadership practices in the school. 1
strongly disagree; 2
mostly disagree; 3
in between; 4
mostly agree; 5
strongly agree. Goal Culture Structure (Struc) Intellectual stimulation (Inst) Individualised support (Inds) Performance expectations (Perf)

3.56 3.63 3.68 3.34 3.50 3.89

0.44 0.54 0.40 0.43 0.50 0.36

0.98 0.96 0.95 0.95 0.94 0.87

Active involvement [outward mode] Teacher level of agreement on eight aspects of administrative involvement in the school’s activities. 1
strongly disagree; 2
mostly disagree; 3
in between; 4
mostly agree; 5
strongly agree. Administrators have positive presence (Actin2) Administrators visible (Actin7) Administrators easily accessible (Actin12) Administrators observe or inquire about teaching (Actin14) Administrators interested in students’ progress (Actin16) Administrators work with teachers (Actin17) Administrators review student progress (Actin21) Administrators discuss educational issues (Actin22) Teacher leadership [outward mode] From individual teachers (Indtch) From teacher teams (Tchteam) From whole staff (Whst)

3.64 3.75 3.92

0.58 0.57 0.47

0.94 0.93 0.93

2.71 3.50 3.00 3.54 3.86

0.52 0.50 0.44 0.42 0.33

0.89 0.96 0.93 0.86 0.89

2.68 2.57 2.64

0.26 0.28 0.41

0.79 0.85 0.92

Staff valued [outward mode] Teacher level of agreement on three aspects of staff being valued. 1
strongly disagree; 2
mostly disagree; 3
in between; 4
mostly agree; 5
strongly agree. New staff valued and welcomed (Val15) Staff contributions valued (Val19)

3.78 3.23

0.39 0.46

0.91 0.94

School Effectiveness and Improvement

643

Community focus [outward mode] Teacher level of agreement on four aspects of working with the school community. 1
strongly disagree; 2
mostly disagree; 3
in between; 4
mostly agree; 5
strongly agree. Administrators sensitive to community (Com5) Administrators work with community reps. (Com8) Administrators incorporate community values (Com18) Productive working relations with community (Com20)

3.73 3.67 3.44 3.47

0.37 0.40 0.40 0.44

0.95 0.95 0.95 0.95

Organisational learning [outward mode] Collaborative climate (Collab) Taking initiatives and risks (Risks) Improving school practices (Impr) Professional development (Prod)

3.58 3.27 3.36 3.09

0.27 0.33 0.37 0.25

0.91 0.96 0.95 0.89

Teachers’ work [outward mode] Like the way teachers teach (Lkinstr) Variety activities in class (Varact) Teachers discuss my work with me (Diswk) Most classes well organized (Org) Teachers expect me do my best work (Bestwk) Constantly challenged in class (Chall)

3.01 3.13 3.18 3.36 4.07 3.18

0.35 0.29 0.30 0.29 0.22 0.21

0.87 0.86 0.82 0.88 0.72 0.80

Participation [outward mode] Mean no. of days skipped/late (Notab) Respond whenever asked during class (Respond) Extracurricular participation (Expart) Setting my goals (Goalset) Enjoy giving my opinion in class (Opinion)

2.04 4.00 2.08 3.02 3.45

0.23 0.23 0.36 0.18 0.25

0.55 0.69 0.74 0.57 0.76

Academic self-concept [outward mode] Student level of agreement on six aspects related to self-esttem, learning, and self-assessment. 1
strongly disagree; 2
mostly disagree; 3
in between; 4
mostly agree; 5
strongly agree. Understanding material in class (Undmat) Confidence in success (Confid) Extent of learning (Learn) Expectation of graduating (Grad) Satisfaction with marks (Marks) Self-assessment of marks at end of year (Selfass)

3.77 3.75 3.65 4.21 3.56 3.51

0.23 0.24 0.26 0.31 0.25 0.21

0.85 0.89 0.82 0.73 0.76 0.84

Engagement [outward mode] Student teacher relationship (Stutch) Satisfaction with peer interaction (Peer) Usefulness of schoolwork for future life (Utility) Identification with school (Ident)

3.18 4.10 3.62 3.02

0.29 0.20 0.23 0.33

0.88 0.71 0.83 0.90

*PLS Path factor loadings.

Three LVs emerge as direct predictors of Engagement: Teachers’ Work which has the strongest effect ( p
0.63), Participation ( p
0.24) and Self-concept ( p
0.17). Home Background has a strong indirect effect (i
0.69) on Engagement through the support provided for Teachers’ Work by the lower SES families ( p
0.39) in the larger schools ( p
0.29), through its positive influence on Academic Self-Concept which is more evident in the larger schools ( p
0.24), and through the parental encouragement of Participation in the smaller schools ( p
–0.26). The predominant

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Table 4. Direct, total, indirect effects, and correlations of latent variables influencing student engagement with school (Model 1) Variable

Direct effects ( p)

JknStda error

Total effects (t)

Home background Socioeconomic status

R 2
0.07 0.26

(d
0.96)b 0.10

Q2
0.03 0.26

School size Socioeconomic Status

R
0.32 0.56

(d
0.82) 0.07

Q
0.29 0.56

Leader Socioeconomic status Home background School size

R 2
0.17 – 0.23 0.33

(d
0.91) – 0.11 0.08

Q2
11 0.13 0.23 0.33

0.13 – –

0.12 0.24 0.34

Active involvement Socioeconomic status Home background School size Leader

R 2
0.82 – – – 0.90

(d
0.42) – – – 0.02

Q2
0.81 0.12 0.21 0.30 0.90

0.12 0.21 0.30 –

0.15 0.18 0.36 0.90

Teacher leadership Socioeconomic status Home background School size Leader

R 2
0.39 – – 0.25 0.49

(d
0.78) – – 0.09 0.09

Q2
0.34 0.21 0.11 0.42 0.49

0.21 0.11 0.16 –

0.33 0.08 0.42 0.58

Staff valued Socioeconomic status Home background School size Leader Active involvement Teacher leadership

R 2
0.72 – – – – 0.60 0.35

(d
0.53) – – – – 0.06 0.06

Q2
0.71 0.14 0.16 0.33 0.71 0.60 0.35

0.14 0.16 0.33 0.71 – –

0.22 0.01 0.36 0.75 0.80 0.70

Community focus Socioeconomic status Home background School size Leader Active involvement

R 2
0.71 0.22 – – 0.32 0.54

(d
0.54) 0.06 – – 0.14 0.14

Q2
0.68 0.12 0.18 0.27 0.81 0.54

0.10 0.18 0.27 0.49 –

0.10 0.20 0.14 0.78 0.80

Organisational learning Socioeconomic status Home background School size Leader Active involvement Teacher leadership Staff valued

R 2
0.89 – – – 0.21 0.28 0.32 0.25

(d
0.33) – – – 0.09 0.09 0.06 0.07

Q2
0.88 0.16 0.18 0.37 0.80 0.43 0.41 0.25

0.16 0.18 0.37 0.59 0.15 0.09 –

0.27 0.07 0.36 0.84 0.86 0.78 0.86

Teachers’ work Socioeconomic status Home background School size Leader Active involvement

R 2
0.41 0.39 0.59 0.29 – –

(d
0.77) 0.10 0.08 0.10 – –

Q2
0.35 0.11 0.64 0.20 0.19 0.10

0.28 0.04 0.09 0.19 0.10

0.13 0.51 0.02 0.27 0.24

2

Indirect effect (i)

–

Correlation (r)

0.26

2

0.56

School Effectiveness and Improvement Teacher leadership Staff valued Organisational learning

– – 0.24

Participation Socioeconomic status Home background School size Leader Active involvement Teacher leadership Staff valued Organisational learning Teachers’ work

R 2
0.55 – 0.51 0.26 – – – – – 0.27

Academic self-concept Socioeconomic status Home background School size Leader Active involvement Teacher leadership Staff valued Organisational learning Teachers’ work Participation Engagement Socioeconomic status Home background School size Leader Active involvement Teacher leadership Staff valued Organisational learning Teachers’ work Participation Academic self-concept

– – 0.08

645

0.10 0.06 0.24

0.10 0.06 –

0.16 0.16 0.28

(d
0.67) – 0.07 0.06 – – – – – 0.08

Q2
0.51 0.04 0.68 0.20 0.05 0.03 0.03 0.02 0.07 0.27

0.04 0.17 0.06 0.05 0.03 0.03 0.02 0.07 –

0.11 0.65 0.28 0.26 0.28 0.11 0.15 0.24 0.54

R 2
0.63 – 0.29 0.24 – – – – – 0.32 0.32

(d
0.61) – 0.08 0.06 – – – – – 0.07 0.09

Q2
0.60 0.16 0.72 0.24 0.08 0.04 0.04 0.03 0.10 0.41 0.32

0.16 0.43 – 0.08 0.04 0.04 0.03 0.10 0.09 –

0.16 0.66 0.13 0.10 0.06 0.03 0.02 0.07 0.64 0.62

R 2
0.84 – – – – – – – – 0.63 0.24 0.17

(d
0.40) – – – – – – – – 0.05 0.06 0.06

Q2
0.82 0.05 0.69 0.12 0.15 0.08 0.08 0.05 0.19 0.77 0.29 0.17

0.05 0.69 0.12 0.15 0.08 0.08 0.05 0.19 0.13 0.06 –

0.03 0.62 0.01 0.29 0.24 0.09 0.18 0.26 0.87 0.68 0.72

Note. aJknStd
Jackknife Standard Error of the direct effects path coefficient. b d
residual standard error.

total effect of School Size although marginal (t
0.12) favours the larger school influences on Engagement, that is, through Teachers’ Work and Academic Self-Concept. School Size itself is not a major factor. This is in contrast to the moderately larger (t
0.20) total effect of School Size that favours the smaller school influences on Participation and where the associated direct effect of School Size on Participation ( p
0.26) indicates School Size is a factor worthy of consideration in relation to Participation. Two other significant indirect effects on Engagement associated with smaller rather than larger schools should be noted: Leader (i
0.15) and OL ( p
0.19). Four LVs emerge as direct predictors of Academic Self-Concept: Teachers’ Work and Participation have the strongest effect (both p
0.32), Home Background ( p
0.29)

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and School Size ( p
0.24) which indicates that these positive influences on Academic Self-Concept are more evident in the larger schools. Home Background predominates in its total effect (t
0.72) on Academic Self-Concept with Teachers’ Work having a lesser but strong (t
0.41) total effect. Three LVs emerge as direct predictors of Participation: Home Background ( p
0.51) which is the dominant influence, then Teachers’ Work ( p
0.27) and School Size ( p
0.26). The positive influences on Participation are associated with the smaller rather than larger schools. Students’ perceptions of Teachers’ Work influence all three outcome measures in Model 1. Four LVs emerge as direct predictors of Teachers’ Work: Home Background ( p
0.59) is most strongly associated with students’ perceptions of Teachers’ Work. Students’ SES is negatively associated with Teachers’ Work ( p
0.39) indicating that the students of lower SES tend to perceive Teachers’ Work more positively. However, a moderately strong and positive indirect effect (i
0.28) counteracts this to result in a marginal negative total effect on Teachers’ Work. School Size directly influences Teachers’ Work indicating that positive perceptions of Teachers’ Work are supported by students from the larger schools. OL is a direct predictor of Teachers’ Work ( p
0.24). It is worth noting that Leader has a significant and indirect (i
0.19) influence on Teachers’ Work through OL. OL is the variable that measures the extent to which a school is operating as a learning organisation. Four LVs are direct predictors of OL in this model: Teacher Leadership ( p
0.32), Active Involvement ( p
0.28), Staff Valued ( p
0.25) and Leader ( p
0.21). Leader also exerts a strong indirect (i
0.59) effect on OL through the other two leadership variables which results in Leader exerting a predominant total effect on OL ( p
0.80). School Size has an indirect and negative effect (i
0.37) on OL through Leader and Teacher Leadership indicating that the smaller schools rather than the larger schools are associated with Leader and Teacher Leadership and, indirectly, with OL. Community Focus does not exert any influence on OL, Teachers’ Work or any of the three student outcomes. In this model, with student outcomes as the dependent variables and teacher leadership as the source of distributed leadership, community focus does not promote OL in schools. This is contrary to our earlier findings where community focus did influence OL. However, in that study, teacher leadership was only one of 12 sources of leadership (e.g., parents, students and school councils) defining distributed leadership. Active Involvement ( p
0.60) and Teacher Leadership ( p
0.35) are direct predictors of Staff Valued which mediates these effects through to OL. Leader has the strongest total and indirect effect (t
0.71) on Staff Valued. Two LVs are direct predictors of Teacher Leadership: Leader ( p
0.49) and School Size ( p
0.25). Not surprisingly, Leader is a very strong ( p
0.90) predictor of Active Involvement. In this model, Leader itself is directly influenced by School Size ( p
0.33) and Home Background ( p
0.23) indicating that Leader is associated with smaller schools and students from supportive Home Background. In Model 1, SES is directly and positively ( p
0.56) related to School Size and directly and positively, but not as strongly ( p
0.26) related to Home Background. Home Background is not associated with School Size.

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The combined effect of variables in this model explains 84% of the variance of Engagement with a Q2
0.82 indicating a very stable outcome measure and stable model.

Model 2 – Factors influencing retention and student achievement Table 5 reports the significant loadings of the observed variables for each construct in Model 2. The strength of the loadings indicates which of the manifest variables predominated in the definition of their construct. All the observed variables contributed significantly to their constructs in this model. Table 6 reports the nature and strength of the relationships between the nine latent variables in Model 2. Three LVs emerge as direct predictors of Achievement: Retention which has the strongest effect ( p
0.45), SES ( p
0.41) and Participation ( p
0.35). Although Table 5. Description of variables in the model of factors influencing retention and student achievement (Model 2) Variables description and coding

Mean

SD

Loading*

Socioeconomic status [outward mode] Residence category (Ecres) Education/occupation category (Edocc)

976.93 980.72

64.41 67.07

0.98 0.98

Home background [outward mode] Student level of agreement on six aspects of home support for education. 1
strongly disagree; 2
mostly disagree; 3
in between; 4
mostly agree; 5
strongly agree. Encourage extracurricular activities (Extr) Discuss schoolwork (Discuss) Provide study aids at home (Staids) Help with schoolwork (Help) Conversations about world events (Worldev) Space for study (Space) School size [unity mode] Size in 1999 (Size9)

2.93 3.24 4.08 3.76 3.22 3.81

0.32 0.33 0.25 0.31 0.30 0.27

0.78 0.86 0.45 0.83 0.76 0.66

730.62

316.30

1.00

Teachers’ Work [outward mode] Like the way teachers teach (Lkinstr) Constantly challenged in class (Chall) Variety activities in class (Varact) Most classes well organized (Org) Teachers discuss my work with me (Diswk) Teachers expect me do my best work (Bestwk)

3.26 3.28 3.01 3.39 3.46 4.12

0.31 0.28 0.28 0.29 0.24 0.23

0.71 0.87 0.74 0.82 0.69 0.77

Participation [outward mode] Enjoy giving my opinion in class (Opinion) Respond whenever asked during class (Respond) Setting my goals (Goalset) Mean no. of days skipped/late (Notab) Extracurricular participation (Expart)

3.62 4.08 2.94 2.13 1.76

0.21 0.23 0.18 0.20 0.41

0.68 0.77 0.57 0.40 0.79 (Continued)

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Table 5. (Continued ) Variables description and coding

Mean

SD

Loading*

Academic self-concept [outward mode] Student level of agreement on six aspects related to self-esteem, learning, and self-assessment. 1
strongly disagree; 2
mostly disagree; 3
in between; 4
mostly agree; 5
strongly agree. Understanding material in class (Undmat) Confidence in success (Confid) Extent of learning (Learn) Expectation of graduating (Grad) Satisfaction with marks (Marks) Self-assessment of marks at end of year (Selfass)

3.72 3.60 3.67 4.32 3.28 3.31

0.21 0.24 0.24 0.26 0.30 0.19

0.82 0.89 0.76 0.90 0.75 0.79

Engagement [outward mode] Student teacher relationship (Stutch) Satisfaction with peer interaction (Peers) Usefulness of schoolwork for future life (Utility) Identification with school (Ident)

3.44 4.34 3.37 3.02

0.22 0.21 0.24 0.32

0.81 0.71 0.75 0.85

Retention [outward mode] SACE retention rate (Sacerr) School retention rate II (Schrr2)

0.28 0.54

0.19 0.25

0.86 0.77

0.33 0.58 65.19 41.13

0.20 0.26 6.56 2.60

0.68 0.50 0.93 0.94

Achievement [outward mode] Ratio SACE completers (Ratsacec) Ratio TAFE completers (Rattafec) TER weighted aggregate (Terwag) TAFE weighted aggregate (Tafewag) *PLS Path factor loadings.

SES has the strongest total effect (t
0.56), Home Background has an indirect influence (i
0.42) on Achievement through Participation. The indirect influence on Achievement of Engagement (i
0.19) is worth noting and the marginally significant (i
0.10) indirect effect of Teachers’ Work. School Size is not a factor in Student Achievement at Year 12. Two LVs emerge as direct predictors of Retention: SES ( p
0.46) and Engagement ( p
0.42). Indirect effects on Retention worthy of note are: Home Background (i
0.30), Teachers’ Work (i
0.23) and Participation (i
0.17). Again, School Size is not a significant factor in Retention. Engagement with school is a direct predictor of Retention. Three LVs influence Engagement directly: Teachers’ Work, the strongest predictor, ( p
0.55), Participation ( p
0.40) and School Size ( p
0.32). Engagement with school is greater in the larger schools. Home Background has a dominant indirect effect (i
0.71) on Engagement both through Participation in the smaller schools and through Teachers’ Work in the larger schools. In this model Academic Self-Concept is not a predictor of Engagement, Retention or Achievement. Two LVs directly influence Academic Self-Concept: Teachers’ Work ( p
0.59) and SES ( p
0.40). Home Background has a significant indirect influence on Academic Self-Concept (i
0.41) mainly through Teachers’ Work.

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Table 6. Direct, total, indirect effects, and correlations of latent variables influencing school retention and student achievement (Model 2) Variable

Direct effects ( p)

JknStda error

Total effects (t)

School size Socioeconomic status

R 2
0.37 0.61

(d
0.79)b 0.09

Q2
0.31 0.61

–

0.61

Teachers’ work Socioeconomic status Home background

R
0.53 0.20 0.70

(d
0.69) 0.09 0.06

Q
0.46 0.20 0.70

– –

0.20 0.70

Participation Socioeconomic status Home background School size

R 2
0.75 – 0.80 0.27

(d
0.50) – 0.06 0.08

Q2
0.71 0.16 0.80 0.27

0.16 – –

0.22 0.82 0.32

Academic self-concept Socioeconomic status Home background Teachers’ work

R 2
0.41 0.40 – 0.59

(d
0.77) 0.10 – 0.08

Q2
0.33 0.28 0.41 0.59

0.12 0.41 –

0.28 0.54 0.51

Engagement Socioeconomic status Home background School size Teachers’ work Participation

R 2
0.78 – – 0.32 0.55 0.40

(d
0.47) – – 0.09 0.10 0.12

Q2
0.73 0.01 0.71 0.21 0.55 0.40

0.01 0.71 0.11 – –

0.04 0.66 0.18 0.81 0.67

Retention Socioeconomic status Home background School size Teachers’ work Participation Engagement

R 2
0.38 0.46 – – – – 0.42

(d
0.79) 0.11 – – – – 0.10

Q2
0.28 0.47 0.30 0.09 0.23 0.17 0.42

0.01 0.30 0.09 0.23 0.17 –

0.44 0.23 0.45 0.23 0.16 0.40

Achievement Socioeconomic status Home background School size Teachers’ work Participation Engagement Retention

R 2
0.64 0.41 – – – 0.35 – 0.45

(d
0.60) 0.41 – – – 0.12 – 0.11

Q2
0.56 0.56 0.42 0.05 0.10 0.43 0.19 0.45

0.15 0.42 0.05 0.10 0.08 0.19 –

0.53 0.34 0.29 0.26 0.33 0.42 0.69

2

Indirect effects (i)

Correlation (r)

2

Note.aJknStd
Jackknife Standard Error of the direct effects path coefficient. b d
residual standard error.

Participation is a direct predictor of Engagement and Achievement. Home Background is a dominant influence on Participation ( p
0.80) and School Size is negatively ( p
0.27) associated with Participation indicating that Participation is greater in the smaller schools. A smaller, significant, negative and indirect (i
0.16) influence on Participation is SES. This is associated with the smaller schools reflecting lower SES.

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Teachers’ Work is a direct predictor of Academic Self-Concept and Engagement. In this model, students’ positive perceptions of Teachers’ Work are strongly and directly ( p
0.70) associated with a supportive Home Background and the lower SES students ( p
0.20). SES is strongly ( p
0.61) associated with School Size, in this model, so that the higher SES is reflected in the larger schools. The variables in this model explain 64% of the variation in academic achievement at Year 12 between the 50 schools in the sample. A Q2 of 0.56 indicates a stable outcome measure and stable model. There is no aggregation bias.

Discussion Does the Nature of the Leadership and the Level of OL in Secondary Schools Contribute to School Effectiveness and Improvement in Terms of the Extent of Students’ Participation in School, Student Academic Self-Concept and Engagement with School? Model 1 provides the answer to this question, while controlling for socio-economic status, family background and school size. Three leadership variables, transformational nature of the principal’s leadership and distributed leadership in the form of the level of involvement of the school’s administrators in the core business of the school and the extent of teacher leadership that exists in the school, are direct predictors of the level of OL in secondary schools. The extent that school leadership is distributed to individual teachers, teams of teachers and whole staff is mainly influenced by the existence of TL practices in the work of the principal. The transformational practices of the principal strongly promote OL both directly and through their influence on other sources of leadership in the school. Staff perceptions of being valued, influenced in the main by the active involvement of school administrators in the school’s core business and the extent of teacher leadership existing in the school, also help promote OL. However, only the three leadership variables indirectly influence students’ perceptions of teachers’ work through their strong influence on OL. The operation of the school as a learning organisation mediates the weaker enhancing effect of TL, active involvement of leaders and teacher leadership on teachers’ work in the classroom. Students’ positive perceptions of teachers’ work predict increased participation in school, enhanced academic selfconcept and engagement with school. Leadership and OL promote students’ participation in school, student academic self-concept and engagement with school mainly through the mediating effects of teachers’ classroom work. However, OL and the transformational nature of the principal’s leadership have a significant, indirect and positive influence on student engagement (and identification) with school. In this model, the higher SES students are more likely to be found in the larger schools. The students from the lower SES and a supportive family background, however, respond more positively to the way teachers work in the classroom. In Year 10, a supportive home environment promotes student participation in school, particularly in the smaller schools, and in the larger schools its positive impact on students’ academic self-concept is more evident. The home environment is a strong, indirect predictor of

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student engagement giving way, however, to the stronger and direct influence of teachers’ work in the classroom. This model demonstrates that the influence of family educational culture on student engagement with school is through its support of teachers’ work in the classroom, and to a lesser extent through encouraging student participation in school and promoting a positive academic self-concept. The findings of Leithwood and Jantzi (2000) are partly supported here in that family educational culture has a stronger relationship with student engagement and both TL and organisational conditions have weaker but significant effects on student engagement. However, leadership and OL effects are also mediated by teachers’ work in the classroom which has strong direct effects on all three outcomes measures used in this model. Leadership and school systems associated with OL influence and are embedded in the way teaching is carried out in the classroom. At Year 10, family educational culture works together with teachers’ classroom efforts to promote all three non-academic student outcomes of participation in and engagement with school and academic self-concept. This final model makes clear that student participation in schools is an important factor in achieving school goals of student engagement and academic achievement. Greater participation, defined as students being involved in classroom work, participating in extra-curricular activities, setting their goals and maintaining attendance, is a significant predictor of more positive academic-self concept and, with both present, students are more likely to develop engagement with school. However, a positive academic selfconcept is not a necessary pre-requisite for engagement and identification with school. Both participation and involvement in school activities and, especially, the way teachers are working in the classroom, are stronger direct influences on engagement with school. The smaller rather than the larger schools are more successful in promoting students’ participation and involvement in school activities. Schools that develop programs to encourage students to be actively participating in academic and social activities of the school are promoting identification with school, improved studentteacher and peer relationships, and student perceptions of the usefulness of education, all of which define engagement with school. Students’ identification with school contributes most strongly to the definition of engagement. Identification reflects the emotional connection that has been forged by the student with the school. Students identify a “school spirit” and feel they “belong” at their school; they acknowledge a sense of pride in the school and enjoy school most of the time. Newmann (1989) describes disengagement as an especially acute problem for middle and high school students who cannot meet the cognitive demands of secondary education because of non-participation or passive participation. He recommends interventions to increase the engagement with school of greater numbers of students so as to decrease alienation and improve achievement. The factors that lead a student to emotionally identify with school have not been well understood. This model increases our understanding by defining participation in and engagement with school and clarifying the relationship between them. Decreases in a student’s participation and engagement could be a reliable symptom of problems which should be addressed, and, unlike gender, race, ethnicity, family background or home educational environment and socio-economic status, participation and

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engagement with school are potentially amenable to change through modification of school programs, and teacher and parent interventions (Lee & Smith, 1993). Decreasing student participation could be an indicator of the beginnings of disengagement that could culminate in dropping out of school. The size of school is a factor at Year 10. TL and distributed leadership is somewhat more likely to be found in smaller schools with whole staff and teacher teams being the sources of leadership. Also, it is likely that stronger OL characteristics are to be found in smaller rather than the larger schools. This school size effect was more strongly present in our earlier results (Silins et al., 2000) where student outcomes were not under consideration. Our research suggests that schools with between 300 and 900 students are an optimal size for the kind of shared learning, leadership and collaboration required to create productive high schools. The school restructuring literature has advocated that schools work more collaboratively with their community particularly where school-based management is adopted as the form of governance (Retallick & Fink, 2000). Community focus, defined as school leaders working with the community and being sensitive to community needs and values was included in Model 1 to examine its influence on student outcomes. TL and the involvement of school leadership in the core business of the school were strong predictors of developing a community focus in the school. This was more likely to occur in schools with higher SES student representation. However, the school’s collaboration with the community had no influence on OL, teachers’ work or student outcomes. The findings of Hoy and Hannum (1997) where community interaction was among other organisational health factors significantly related to student achievement are not supported. We suspect that, when only teacher leadership is considered as a distributed source of leadership in the school and the focus is on what promotes student involvement in school work and activities, a school community focus may act to counteract these effects because of the additional demands it makes on teacher energy and time. It is argued that at this stage, the Australian schools promoting a community focus have not developed strategies enabling community involvement to fulfil its potential for improving teaching and learning. If we are correct, schools will have to work out how they will involve the community without depleting the time and energy required to promote school internal processes that enhance student outcomes.

What is the Nature of the Relationship Between Non-Academic Student Measures of Participation in School, Student Self-Concept and Engagement with School and Measures of Student Retention and Academic Achievement? Model 2 provides the answer to this question while controlling for student socioeconomic status, family background and school size. Retention, SES and participation in school are direct predictors of academic achievement. Students who stay in school and complete the SACE in Year 12, and who participate in school are most likely to achieve academically. These students are more likely to have a higher SES. Academic achievement at Year 12 is not directly influenced by home educational environment, but it is identified as having an indirect effect through participation. Retention is also more likely with students of higher SES and is strongly influenced by engagement

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with school. Family educational environment is more removed in its association with retention although still positive and indirect operating through teachers’ work in the classroom and participation. Teachers’ work is also a strong predictor of student engagement with school, influencing achievement through retention. Engagement is a direct predictor of retention but only indirectly influences achievement. At Year 12, school size is not a direct factor in influencing student retention or academic achievement. There is a differential effect of size on participation in and engagement with school. In smaller schools, those students who participate in school are more likely to stay on and complete high school whether they become engaged with school or not. In the larger schools, those students who are engaged with school are more likely to stay on and complete high school whether they participate or not. By Year 12, the final year, the non-participants and disengaged would have dropped out leaving those students who are active participants and who identify with school. The contra-intuitive result that academic self-concept is not a predictor of engagement, retention or achievement in Year 12 should be noted. Silins and Murray-Harvey (2000), using a different sample of secondary schools in South Australia and Year 12 data, found that academic self-concept did not emerge as an influential factor on any of the variables in their model which included attitude to school and school performance outcomes. Hoge, Smit, and Crist (1995) observed that past correlational studies have overstated the influence of self-concept on grades and of grades on self-concept. This implies that there may not be much point to improving self-concept with the aim of improving grades, particularly in the senior years of schooling. Finn (1989) asserted that self-concept is not a prominent mediator of school achievement. The contention is that, to improve achievement in the senior years of schooling, it is more worthwhile to increase student participation in learning activities than to try to increase students’ self-concept (Muijs, 1997).

Summary The results of the LOSO research have shown that leadership characteristics of a school are important factors in promoting systems and structures that enable the school to be effective and improve, in brief, to operate as a learning organisation. School leaders need to be skilled in TL practices which work, directly and indirectly through others, towards bringing about: consensus in the organisation’s mission; structures for shared decision making; continual learning through reflective practice; high standards of professionalism; and, a supportive and appreciative climate that promotes a culture of trust and collaboration. The management team must be visible and accessible and involved in the core business of the school, teaching and learning. Involvement in the core business is evidenced by their observations and inquiries about teaching, demonstrated interest in student progress and review of progress from time to time, and commitment to finding time to discuss educational issues with their staff. The school is characterised by distributed leadership throughout the school community with the emphasis on whole staff and teacher teams providing significant sources of leadership.

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Schools can be increasingly identified as learning organisations as they establish sequentially systems and structures of operation that promote: a collaborative and trusting work environment; a shared and monitored mission; empowerment of its members to share decision-making, show initiative and take risks; and, on-going challenging and relevant professional development. These school factors of leadership and OL have been shown to influence what happens in the core business of the school; the teaching and learning. They influence the way teachers organise and conduct their instruction, their educational interactions with students, and the challenges and expectations teachers place on their students. The higher the teachers’ ratings of the school on the four dimensions defining OL, the more positively teachers’ work is perceived in the classrooms by their students. At the same time, family educational environment and culture is a strong predictor of the way students perceive instruction in the classrooms, indicating that the school and family work together to lay the foundation for students’ school success. Students’ levels of participation in and engagement with school are predictors of retention and academic achievement in Year 12. Schools that introduce programs that focus on non-academic outcomes such as involving students in the activities of the school and the classroom, encouraging students to be more active participants in their experience of the educational process, improving student-teacher relationships and promoting student identification with school are more likely to achieve higher academically (Hoy & Hannum, 1997; Marks, Louis, & Printy, 2000).

Conclusion As indicated at the beginning of this chapter, we have focussed on three aspects of high school functioning in the context of school reform: leadership and the school results of OL and student outcomes. Our research has been carried out in the context of a number of ongoing debates on the value of reform approaches and school effectiveness and improvement research. One of these debates is the emphasis given to “top down” or “bottom up” approaches to introducing school improvement (Scheerens, 1997). We emphasise the “bottom up” end of approaches to school effectiveness and improvement. The LOLSO Project findings indicate that a “bottom up” emphasis does not preclude “top down” approaches if a strong “bottom up” approach is first in place. A strong “bottom up” approach exists in schools that are identified as learning organisations. Our research has shown that four dimensions define Australian high schools as learning organisations: Trusting and collaborative climate; Shared and monitored mission; Taking initiatives and risks; and, Professional development. The values reflected in these dimensions result in empowering teachers and students, involving them in processes of school goal setting, decision-making, and review and evaluation, building a collaborative and trusting environment, and providing opportunities and resources for on-going, challenging and relevant professional development and shared learning. Transformational leaders help establish the systems and structures that support “bottom up” approaches and allow “top down” approaches to succeed. Such principals are effective because they are, above all, people-centred.

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TL (Leithwood & Duke, 1999) and the proliferation of adaptations such as values-led contingency (Day, Harris, Hadfield, Tolley, & Beresford, 2000), professional learning communities (Kruse, Louis, & Bryk, 1995), parallel (Crowther, Hann, McMaster, & Ferguson, 2000), and invitational (Stoll & Fink, 1996) models of leadership indicate a paradigm shift away from power and control to an ability to act with others and to enable others to act (Blackmore, 1998). Our research clearly indicates that the closer school leaders’ practices are to being described as transformational, the more active interest school leaders demonstrate in teaching and learning, the more distributed leadership is throughout the school community, in particular to teachers, and the better the performance of that school in terms of student outcomes. In Australia, educational reform is currently focussed on decentralising some level of control of resources to schools however reviews of school-based management overwhelmingly report failure to fulfil the promise of enhancing student outcomes (Dempster, 2000). Our research on leadership, OL and student outcomes provides the strongest support for the four critical conditions put forward by Murphy and Beck (1995) to refocus school-based management strategies. School leaders need to establish systems and environments that promote improved teaching and learning by involving teachers and the school community in shared decision making, increasing participation of students in school activities and creating a culture of collaboration and trust where leadership sources are distributed throughout the school community. Where teachers believe they are empowered in areas of importance to them, especially in schools where there are collaborative, cooperative, and consultative decision making processes in place, teachers will respond to reform as actors and leaders. Shared learning, empowerment and leadership are pre-requisites for school improvement. Where school-based management is implemented to promote student outcomes, conditions that promote shared learning, empowerment and leadership must first be established. Our research has provided further empirical evidence for those arguing that schools make a difference. School effectiveness supporters argue that schools add value despite the strong influence of family background on student outcomes. Taken together, our models indicate that school level factors such as leadership, OL and teachers’ work have a significant impact on non-academic student outcomes such as participation in schools, academic self-concept, and engagement with school. These non-academic student factors reflect the characteristics associated with productive high schools (Hodges, 2000) and we have provided evidence of their influence on retention and academic achievement. Furthermore, school level factors in our research have a stronger influence on students’ academic achievement than students’ SES or home background. When examining our findings in their totality, they demonstrate that schools add value to student development and success against a backdrop of family influence and support. In fact, home educational background appears more open to influence, even by schools, than SES. The message to schools is clear – form a partnership with parents and create a powerful alliance for achieving educational outcomes. The LOLSO results are consistent with other contemporary research in the area. For example, the Australian Council for Educational Research’s longitudinal surveys of Australian youth (Fullarton, 2002) has also stressed the importance of student engagement with school. They found that a high engagement at the school level even

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moderates the negative effects of SES and indigenous status. It was found that school-level factors which contributed to lifting tertiary entrance performance, after accounting for the academic and socioeconomic mix of students across schools and school sector, were a higher level of confidence among students in their own ability, a school climate more conducive to learning, and higher parental aspirations for the students’ education. As we have shown, these are all factors contributed to by transformational and distributed leadership. In fact, an extensive review of the evidence of leadership effects on student learning, including the LOLSO project, has concluded (Leithwood & Jantzi, 2005; Leithwood, Seashore Louis, Anderson, & Wahlstrom, 2004): ●

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Leadership is second only to classroom instruction among all school-related factors that contribute to what students learn at school, accounting for about a quarter of total school effects. Mostly leaders contribute to student learning indirectly, through their influence on other people or features of their organisation. Thus their success will depend a great deal on their judicious choice of which parts of the organization to spend time and attention on. Three sets of practices can be thought of as the “basics” of successful leadership, developing people, setting directions and redesigning the organization. All successful leadership is “contingent” to the unique contexts in which it finds itself.

In brief, our and others’ (see Mulford, 2003a, 2003b) research has identified three major, aligned and sequential factors in leadership and school effectiveness and improvement. The first factor relates to how people are treated. Success is more likely where people act rather than are always reacting, are empowered, involved in decision making through a transparent, facilitative and supportive structure, and are trusted, respected and encouraged. The second factor is the presence of a professional learning community. A professional learning community involves shared norms and values including valuing differences and diversity, a focus on continuous enhancement of learning for all students, de-privatisation of practice, collaboration, and critical reflective dialogue, especially that based on performance data. The final factor relates to the presence of a capacity for learning. This capacity is most readily identified in an ongoing, optimistic, caring, nurturing professional development program. Schools that develop systems and environments that are characterised by these factors are taking on the challenge of becoming learning organisations. This involves the school community in a journey through an ever changing terrain of continual exploration and development sustained by shared values and goals of providing quality education and success for their students.

Note 1. The second phase involved case studies of best practice schools, the third phase a readministering of the surveys two years later when students had moved from year 10 to year 12 and the fourth phase the development of problem-based professional development material (Mulford, Silins, & Leithwood, 2004) based on the quantitative and qualitative data.

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References Blackmore, J. (1998). The politics of gender and educational change: Managing gender or gender relations? In A. Hargreaves, A. Lieberman, M. Fullan, & D. Hopkins (Eds.), International handbook of educational change (pp. 460–481). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer. Crowther, F., Hann, L., McMaster, J., & Ferguson, M. (2000, April). Leadership for successful school revitalisation: Lessons from recent Australian research. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA. Day, C., Harris, A., Hadfield, M., Tolley, H., & Beresford, J. (2000). Leading schools in times of change. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Finn, J. D. (1989). Withdrawing from school. Review of Educational Research, 59, 117–142. Fullarton, S. (2002). Student engagement with school: Individual and school-level influences. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research, Longitudinal Surveys of Australian Youth, Research Report No. 27. Hill, P. (1998). Shaking the foundations; research driven school reform. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 9(4), 419–436. Hodges, A. (2000, April). Web of support for a personalised, academic foundation. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA. Hoge, D. R., Smit, E. K., & Crist, J. T. (1995). Reciprocal effects of self-concept and academic achievement in sixth and seventh grade. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 24, 295–315. Hoy, W., & Hannum, J. (1997). Middle school climate: An empirical assessment of organisational health and student achievement. Educational Administration Quarterly, 33(3), 290–311. Kruse, S., Louis, K. S., & Bryk, A. (1995). An emerging framework for analysing school-based professional community. In K. S. Louis, & S. Kruse (Eds.), Professionalism and community: Perspectives on reforming urban schools (pp. 23–44). Newbury Park, CA: Corwin. Lamb, S., & Fullarton, S. (2000). Factors affecting mathematics achievement in primary and secondary schools: Results from TIMSS. In J. Malone, J. Bana, & A. Chapman (Eds.), Mathematics education beyond 2000 (pp. 210–219). Proceedings of the 23rd annual conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia, Perth, Australia. Lee, V. E., & Smith, J. B. (1993). Effects of school restructuring on the achievement and engagement of middle-grade students. Sociology of Education, 66, 164–187. Leithwood, K., & Duke, D. (1999). A century’s quest to understand school leadership. In J. Murphy, & K. S. Louis (Eds.), Handbook of research on educational administration (2nd ed., pp. 45–72). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association. Leithwood, K., & Jantzi, D. (2000). The effects of transformational leadership on organisational conditions and student engagement with school. Journal of Educational Administration, 38(2), 112–129. Leithwood, K., & Jantzi, D. (2005, April). A review of transformational school leadership research 1996 to 2005. Paper presented at AERA, Montreal. Leithwood, K., Seashore Louis, K., Anderson, S., & Wahlstrom, K. (2004). Review of research: How leadership influences student learning. New York: The Wallace Foundation. Marks, H. M., Louis, K. S., & Printy, S. M. (2000). The capacity for organizational learning. In K. Leithwood (Ed.), Understanding schools as intelligent systems (pp. 239–265). Stamford: JAI Press. McGaw, B., Piper, K., Banks, D., & Evans, B. (1992). Making schools more effective. Report of the Australian Effective Schools Project. Hawthorn, VIC: Australian Council for Educational Research. Muijs, R. D. (1997). Predictors of academic achievement and academic self-concept: A longitudinal perspective. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 67, 263–277. Mulford, B. (2003a). The role of school leadership in attracting and retaining teachers and promoting innovative schools and students. Canberra: Commissioned Paper by the Review of Teaching and Teacher Education, Commonwealth Department of Education Science & Training. Available at: http://www.dest.gov.au/NR/ rdonlyres/161EEEC9-713A-40CD-9E872E5ACA1E19A3/1661/leadership.pdf Mulford, B. (2003b). School leaders: Challenging roles and impact on teacher and school effectiveness. Paris: Commissioned Paper by the Education and Training Policy Division, OECD, for the Activity “Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers”. Available at: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/ 61/61/2635399.pdf

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Mulford, B., Silins, H., & Leithwood, K. (2004). Leadership for organisational learning and student outcomes: A problem-based learning approach. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Murphy, J., & Beck, L. (1995). School-based management as school reform. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. Newmann, F. M. (1989). Student engagement and high school reform. Educational Leadership, 46(5), 34–36. Retallick, J., & Fink, D. (2000, April). Framing leadership: Contributions and impediments to educational change. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA. Reynolds, D., & Teddlie, C. (2000, April). Reflections on the critics and beyond them. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA. Scheerens, J. (1997). Conceptual models and theory-embedded principles on effective schooling. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 8(3), 269–310. Sellin, N., & Keeves, J. P. (1997). Path analysis with latent variables. In J. P. Keeves (Ed.), Educational research, methodology, and measurement: An international handbook (2nd ed., pp. 633–640). Oxford: Pergamon Press. Silins, H., & Mulford, B. (2002a). Leadership and school results. In K. Leithwood, & P. Hallinger (Eds.), Second international handbook of educational leadership and administration (pp. 561–612). Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Silins, H., & Mulford, B. (2002b). Schools as learning organisations: The case for system, teacher and student learning. The Journal of Educational Administration, 40(5), 425–446. Silins, H., Mulford, B., Zarins, S., & Bishop, P. (2000). Leadership for organizational learning in Australian secondary schools. In K. Leithwood (Ed.), Understanding schools as intelligent systems (pp. 267–291). Stamford, CT: JAI Press. Silins, H. C., & Murray-Harvey, R. (2000). Students as a central concern. Journal of Educational Administration, 38(3), 230–246. Silins, H., Zarins, S., & Mulford, W. (1999). Leadership for organisational learning and student outcomes – the LOLSO Project. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association, Montreal. Silins, H., Zarins, S., & Mulford, W. (2002). What characteristics and processes define a school as a learning organisation? Is this a useful concept to apply to schools? [online]. International Education Journal, 3(1), 24–32. Available: http://iej.cjb.net Stoll, L., & Fink, D. (1996). Changing our schools. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press. Stringfield, S., & Herman, R. (1996). Assessment of the state of school effectiveness research in United States of America. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 7(2), 159–180. Teddlie, C., & Reynolds, D. (2000). International handbook of school effectiveness research. London: Falmer. Thrupp, M. (2000, April). Sociological and political concerns about school effectiveness research: Time for a new research agenda. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA.

36 LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT FOR SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT IN EAST ASIA1

Allan Walker, Philip Hallinger, and Haiyan Qian

Leaders Make a Difference The essential role of school principals in effective schools and successful school improvement processes has been firmly established (Hallinger, 2003a; Hallinger & Heck, 1999). Over a decade ago, Sammons, Mortimore, and Hillman (1995) concluded that, “almost every single study of school effectiveness has shown both primary and secondary leadership to be a key factor” (p. 8). Citing an impressive international, although mainly Western, research base Huber (2004a) asserts the centrality of leadership to quality schools. In most of the lists of key factors (or correlates) that school effectiveness has compiled, “leadership” plays such an important part, so much so that the line of argument starting with the message “schools matter, schools do make a difference” may be legitimately continued: “school leaders matter, they are educationally significant, school leaders do make a difference” (p. 669). Newmann and Wehlage’s (1995) widely cited research found that good leadership is essential for developing a collective school-wide focus on high quality student learning. As Sackney and Walker (2006) explain: “By keeping issues of teaching and learning at the forefront of the dialogue, these leaders built organisational capacity by consistently expressing the norms and values that defined the school’s vision and initiating conversations about improving teaching and learning.” Huber’s (2004a) research into school improvement and development supports the crucial role leaders play in driving and maintaining ongoing growth. For all phases of the school development process, school leadership is considered vital and is held responsible for keeping the school as a whole in mind. And for adequately coordinating the individual activities during the improvement processes … . 659 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 659–678. © 2007 Springer.

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Furthermore, it is required to create the internal conditions necessary for the continuous development and increasing professionalism of the teachers. It holds responsibility for developing cooperative school culture (p. 670). Huber’s assertion is backed up by researchers from within the Asian region. As Cheng, Mok, and Chow (2003) recount, “[in the Asia-Pacific region] leaders are often perceived as the key actors mobilising their institutions and members at the site-level to face up with those challenges and make educational services and provision more quality effective and accountable” (p. 922). Hallinger (2003a) cites further research in the region confirming the contribution that school leadership makes to a school’s effectiveness (e.g., Cheng, 1994; Cheng, 2001; Dimmock & Walker, 1998). These studies begin to support international evidence of the centrality of principal leadership to continuous and high quality learning, and positive school transformation (Harris, 2002; Mitchell & Sackney, 2000). Inherent within the leader’s role in school effectiveness and school improvement is their place in leading student learning. Following a review of successful school leaders, Leithwood and Riehl (2003) claimed that: “Leadership has significant effects on student learning, second only to the effects of the quality of curriculum and teachers’ instruction” (p. 4). Efforts to create environments for successful school improvement have recently converged on the notion of shared leadership and greater participation within the school context and, consequently the type of leadership necessary to build and sustain this (Bredeson, 2003; Huffman & Hipp, 2003). This interest is tied to a major school effects research finding that leaders most effectively influence school outcomes indirectly through multiple variables (Hallinger & Heck, 1999, 2003). Or as Southworth (2004) notes: “Effective school leaders work directly on their indirect influence” (p. 102). He described these as a collection of processes and strategies that include, “the careful deployment of school structures and systems” and, ultimately, through the interrelated strategies of modelling, monitoring and dialogue (Southworth, 2005, p. 78). While an international array of scholars have concluded that school leaders do make a difference, it is important to note that how they make this difference is also contingent upon the context within which they lead. Leadership is constructed within a social milieu comprised of multiple, overlapping and constantly shifting contextual factors. These include, but are not restricted to, cultural, political, historical and economic influences (Walker, 2005). For example, successful leadership in the vertically aligned cultural systems typifying East Asian societies may look quite different from descriptions of leadership observed in many Western settings (Walker & Dimmock, 2002). As Huh notes while discussing school change in Korea: No social products, including educational changes, can be transferred directly from one area to another. They are products of the social context and cannot be separated from their unique and specific place and time. This fact suggests that a successful educational change in one country cannot be directly transferred to another country and that it is transferable only to the degree that the social context of the countries involved is similar. (Huh, 2001, p. 26) Principals in East Asia then do influence the effectiveness of their organisations but these effects are mediated by both the internal and external context of the school. They

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influence school outcomes through channels similar to those employed by their Western counterparts, but what they do within schools differs according to the organisational and cultural context. More specifically, we find that their leadership is meditated by important cultural norms of high power distance, a collectivist orientation and hierarchical compliance. We also note the discontinuity between these norms and the assumptions that characterise many of the “global” educational reforms currently dominating the region’s educational environment.

The Reforms The regional education reform environment mirrors global trends (Dimmock, 2003). Cheng and Townsend (2000) and Cheng (2003) identified a set of reform trends common across the region. These include new visions for education, the expansion and restructuring of education and, importantly, the quest for quality education. This quest for quality has been manifest in policies targeting, for example, individual student needs, thinking and problem solving skills, improving teacher qualifications and skills and a growing emphasis on improving the curriculum. Other reforms focus on increased accountability and quality assurance, the privatisation of education, requirements for strategic planning, the development of new curricula and improvement in teaching and learning and the use of information technology. Cheng (2003) classified education reform trends into: macro-level trends (e.g., the reestablishment of new national visions and aims); meso-level (greater community and parental involvement in schools); site level (the continuous lifelong professional development of teachers and principals); and organisation level (learning, teaching and assessment). Reformers throughout the region have also begun investigating the rigid examination and evaluation practices. For example, recent reforms in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China have focused on how to move from “test-oriented education” towards “quality-focused education.” This includes ways to improve curriculum and instructional content, teacher education and educational evaluation (Tang, 2001). Reform also targets the professional development of principals and teachers and, importantly, a marked and quite radical shift to decentralisation and School Based Management (SBM). This includes greater community involvement in school decision-making and, increasingly, the necessity of building communities of learning. As governments struggle to legitimise the communities’ voice, school principals find themselves forced into sharing power with parents, community members and teachers (Walker, 2003). At the same time, however, another important aspect of reform is the tightening of accountability and quality assurance (QA) mechanisms. Interest in quality assurance is manifest across the region in a number of ways, including the decentralisation of QA mechanisms, the internationalisation of QA systems, teacher quality and teacher education, public examination systems, concerns for openness and transparency and the use of multi-dimensional indicators (Mok et al., 2003). All influence the operation and leadership of schools. For example, teachers in Korea, Japan and Taiwan face annual review of their performance and Hong Kong teachers are required to account in quantitative terms (hours) for professional development undertaken. A number of regional societies,

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including Hong Kong, Korea and Japan, have established units dedicated to overseeing QA in schools. For example, the Korean Education Development Institute (KEDI) was recently commissioned to carry out a comprehensive review with the aim of, “establish(ing) quality control systems for school education” (Mok et al., 2003, p. 953). These and other such reforms, although often necessary, place additional demands on schools and on the existing skills, knowledge and abilities of principals. Mok et al. (2003) and her colleagues have done much in identifying the challenges which continue to haunt the area. There are many challenges ahead, not the least the better alignment between education aims and QA focus; between what is expected to be measured and what is being measured; between external and internal review; between the methods for monitoring and expertise (and) support given to schools; and between effort spent of review exercise and expected outcomes. (p. 956) Although it is impossible to provide a definitive picture of the education reform environment across the region given its social, cultural and political diversity, there is a cluster of reforms which seem remarkably similar, at least in espoused intent, across the region, and which hold increasing sway over the lives of school principals. These reforms have remarkably similar roots and mirror global, often neo-liberalist, trends which explicitly link economic productivity and education (Hallinger, 1998a). Much of this may be explained by what Phillips and Ochs (2003) term cross-national attraction – a term developed to explain the widespread borrowing, cloning or assimilation of policies from one system or society to another. This attraction is apparent across education reforms currently in various stages of implementation and/or contestation across the region. For example, concerns over national competitiveness now shape education policy decisions from Tokyo to Singapore (Dimmock & Walker, 1998; Hallinger, 1998b). Many of these policies reflect the necessity of language competence and producing multi-skilled, flexible workers. Increasingly, diverse stakeholders within and between regional societies hold schools accountable for a wider range of “quality” indicators, including the moral fidelity of students and the broader community. Likewise, educational development is seen as a vital component of the national development strategies of regional societies. For example, during the 1990s, Singapore’s schools adopted the mission: Thinking Schools, a Learning Society. Thinking schools empower learners, transforming them into leaders who can take responsibility for themselves and the social institutions of their society (Gopinathan & Kam, 2000). Similarly, an exciting vehicle for enacting similar change in parts of Indonesia is the project Creating Learning Communities for Children. According to Caldwell (2003) this multifaceted initiative includes, “… professional development for teachers; encouragement of parents and other members of the community to support their schools; and most importantly, changes to learning and teaching …” (p. 935). Throughout the region, governments have viewed educational reform as a tool for national development. Hong Kong has tied much of its education reform to social transformation of the society, especially since the change of sovereignty in 1997.

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Likewise, policymakers in Singapore and Malaysia have clearly identified schools as vehicles for preparing young people capable of meeting the needs of rapidly changing societies and economies. Gopinathan and Ho (2000) show clearly in Singapore that politicians “… believe in a positive relationship between education and (economic) development” (p. 166). Beginning in the 1980s, Malaysia implemented an ambitious human-capital based approach to national development entitled Vision 2020. This plan outlined the nation’s vision of what Malaysia would look like as a “developed nation” by 2020 and was firmly grounded on the assumption that economic and social development must be grounded in educational development. This was reflected in Malaysia’s education reform strategy (Rahimah, 1998). Similar patterns of education reform are apparent in Thailand and Taiwan (Hallinger, 1998a; MOE-R.O.C., 1998). While each of the above trends exist to varying degrees in many countries across the region and are illustrative of global trends, their scope, pattern, progress and impact differ, depending upon the local context. Nonetheless, the deluge of reforms reflect an agenda that requires substantial change in the capacities of the people who comprise the educational system. In sum, perhaps the most influential reform components throughout the region are those that mark effectiveness and improvement at the school level. They challenge the capacity of schools to change from the inside, but at the behest of externally mandated policy requirements. Many of these reforms, often under the guise of decentralisation, attempt to encourage a cultural shift toward the construction of more open and participative school communities. Here, two issues stand out. First, principals are pushed to work more collaboratively with teachers and other school stakeholders. Second, they are held more accountable to these stakeholders for what happens in their schools.

The Need for Leadership Development We now turn specifically to the two themes identified above and use these to illustrate some of the challenges they pose to school principals and, as such, how they may inform their ongoing development. The two themes have obvious relevance to leading effective and improving schools. The first theme builds around promoting participation and collaboration within and around the school. As such, associated reforms aim to broaden, deepen and equalise the participation of multiple school stakeholders in school. This is often operationalised through promoting new forms of collaborative learning and joint responsibility for what happens in schools. The second theme encapsulates the skills required to deal with new accountability mechanisms. We note that in practice the demands associated with these reforms are felt simultaneously by principals. Meaningful participation across the school community calls for a culture that promotes and values open and sometimes critical dialogue throughout the school; one that is underpinned by ongoing professional talk, experimentation and, in many cases, shared leadership. The leadership capacity needed to build such a culture is both complex and demanding. Sackney and Walker (2006) hold that leaders of more collaborative communities need, “… skills in communication, group process facilitation, inquiry, conflict mediation and dialogue, and data management.”

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Promoting meaningful collaborative forms requires principals to challenge existing value structures about what comprises an educative community, what learning means and how we relate to each other in schools. In other words, it creates cognitive tension that forces those involved to move beyond their comfort zones and look for “new and different” ways to do things (Walker & Quong, 2005). This, of course, is easier said than done as values are deeply embedded within people’s habits and organisational routines and norms – or personal and organisational identities. This type of change is especially difficult for leaders in regional schools because the tenets underpinning democratising initiatives are largely imported from Western cultural contexts. They challenge the leaders’ own deep “leadership structures” (Gordon, 2002). In places like Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, Korea and Thailand, the cultural norms that characterise principals as well as stakeholders often conflict with concepts such as teacher leadership, student-centred learning, open feedback and discussion and distributed leadership. A focus on such will, therefore, challenge existing cultural norms. Despite the challenges, some initiatives, mainly related to pedagogy, are already highly visible throughout the region. For example, in classroom terms, imported reforms challenge a long ingrained dependence on content coverage and rote learning. New reforms seek to replace this with a focus on thematic topics, inquiry learning, teaching for understanding, multiple intelligences and higher-order thinking skills. Thus, promoting schools as collaborative communities with increased participation by multiple stakeholders is both an important and demanding responsibility of school principals. For those who assume this challenge, Speck (1999, p. 34, cited in Sackney & Walker, 2006) poses the following questions: What do we want students to know and be able to do? How will we know that students can do these outcomes? What does it take to transform schools into places where this happens? And who is responsible for ensuring the desired results are achieved? The second issue relates to the demands accompanying new accountability mechanisms in the region. Interestingly, taken from a mechanistic perspective, these demands while unsettling, may be easier for principals to deal with. Many policies have tightly structured guidelines, mandatory processes and clear performance targets that largely require the use of technical skills. Even so, they challenge principals’ existing skills (such as curriculum leadership) and mind-sets in that they open their once hidden domains to parental and public scrutiny, and then hold them accountable for results. The challenges come not only from the pressure on principals to perform but also from the contradiction between these requirements and those inherent in the desire to form collaborative communities. Although perhaps over-simplified, demands for accountability promote uniformity and conformity among schools, whereas a meaningful collaboration celebrates responsiveness, diversity and uniqueness. Caught between these conflicting pressures, it is easy for school leaders to lose their direction as well as their capacity to lead others. The turbulent reform context and its accompanying challenges highlight the need to reshape principals’ professional development in the region. However, with few exceptions, recognition of this need is a fairly recent phenomenon, and one that remains a

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work in progress. Moreover, the nature and extent of development in this domain varies widely across the region. In Taiwan, as Lin (2001) states forcefully, “Reinventing schools requires exceptional school leaders – such leaders require a commensurate level of support and professional development to make the required role shift and, in many cases, this has not been forthcoming. This casts some doubt on whether they can adopt the new roles” (p. 7). In Japan, “The leadership and management skills of school principals are indispensable, but the current requirements for those positions are very strict making it very difficult to find qualified persons” (Muta, 2000, p. 464). While discussing whether principals will be able to cope with new responsibilities associated with decentralisation, Muta continues “… some questions exist as to whether the principals can carry out such non-traditional tasks” (p. 464). With the exception of a small number of countries, such as Singapore, most regional societies have only recently acknowledged the need for meaningful principal professional development. As Lin (2001) states: “In Taiwan, with regard to principalship, most efforts had been focused on the issues of selection, before-job training, and transference. There were no specific preparation programs for principals … Most of the opportunities for professional development for principals in Taiwan are sparse, unplanned, incoherent, spontaneous and without sequence” (p. 305). In Mainland China, Wang (2004) argues that, recently popularised terms such as “student-centred learning,” “creative education” and “quality education” are in danger of becoming empty political rhetoric unless great attention is paid to the professional development of educational leaders. And in January 2002, the Hong Kong Education Department expressed a plan “to equip and develop school principals with the necessary knowledge, skills and attitudes to become competent to lead schools into the new millennium” (Cheng, 2000, p. 68). To summarise our argument thus far: first, we established that leaders make a difference in terms of both school effectiveness and school improvement, and that their influence is often played out through indirect effects. We stressed that leadership is socially constructed within the context in which they work. Second, education reforms which relentlessly impact the work of principals appear relatively common across the region, at least in terms of motivation and intent, if not form. Third, principals find themselves caught between conflicting demands to promote participation and collaboration and, at the same time, respond to greater external accountability. Fourth, we have attempted to establish the need for more meaningful approaches to principal learning and development across the region.

Leadership Development Across the Region – Three Snapshots Next we wish to describe trends in leadership development in the East Asian region. We do this through three case examples, Singapore, Mainland China, and Hong Kong SAR. We then condense a set of structural and process issues which may inform further discussion about leadership development across the region. While the following discussion of the state of leadership development in the three societies provides a

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worthwhile introduction, it unavoidably ignores much of what is happening in other societies. For example, Malaysia (Hallinger, 2003b), Thailand (Hallinger & Kantamara, 2000) and Taiwan (Fwu & Wang, 2001; Lin, 2003), to name but some, are increasingly investing in principal and other leadership development. More detail about other societies and global trends and comparisons can be found in Hallinger (2003a) and Huber (2004b).

Singapore Among the regional societies, Singapore has paid the most persistent attention to the development of its education leaders. Almost all leadership preparation is conducted by or through the National Institute of Education (NIE) and is generously resourced by the Government. Formal program offerings for (identified) potential principals began in the late 1980s with the introduction of the Diploma of Educational Administration Program (DEA) (Primary and Secondary). At the time, and throughout its fifteen year tenure, the DEA was a ground-breaking program built around executive skills training and a comprehensive mentoring component (Boon, 1998; Walker & Stott, 1993). Almost all new principals in Singapore between 1990 and 2000 went through the program and it was widely acknowledged as an effective vehicle for preparing school leaders (Chong, Stott, & Low, 2003). Running along side the DEA were government funded programs for Heads of Department (HODs) of primary and secondary school. As successful as the programs were, when reconsidered in line with new demands, and within the all-encompassing vision for education as captured in Thinking Schools, a Learning Nation (which basically aimed to organise schools around the framework of learning organisations) they were reviewed and, as a result, changed direction. The changes were driven in partnership around government reform initiatives by the NIE and the newly established Singapore Principals’ Executive Centre (PEC). Both of which developed the main delivery mechanisms. The new approach questioned the appropriateness of basing principal development around a set of skills as “taught by” academics and experienced mentors. One of the problems identified was that such a mode risked simply cloning what already existed, rather than looking to future needs. While recognising the strengths of the DEA approach, Stott and Lee (2005) explained the rationale for restructuring the principal development programs. That can be very useful, because it helps to keep the good things in the system. However, by definition, it does not take you any further than you are at present. We knew things were changing and we had grave doubts about whether the old leadership – as effective as it had been – was capable of leading the changes necessary (p. 98) In line with the learning community metaphor, new programs drew heavily on complexity theory and were built around innovation and creating new knowledge. The first such program launched, the “Leaders in Education Program” (LEP), sought to integrate leadership development and preparation within a broader systemic

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model. While details of the program can be gleaned elsewhere (Stott & Lee, 2005), Chong et al. (2003) summarised the philosophy underpinning the initiative: New leadership (has) to be ambitious and independent, innovative, and able to succeed in conditions that were less clearly defined … It was also clear as we talked to educators both in Singapore and abroad that the new principal would have an expanded and more intellectually demanding role. We needed to train principals who could “think” their way through complex, sometimes unique, and often persistent issues in schools. Such individuals would need … to guarantee high degrees of quality teaching and learning, orchestrate the strategic agenda and direct operations and direct operations at the school-community interface. (p. 168) The program comprises multiple learning mechanisms, including some (but greatly reduced) institutionally based face-to-face programs (such as “schools as competitive learning organisations”); free-form journals, international visits, industrial attachments, focused discussion meetings, seminars by overseas educators, formal reading and theoretical “future school” assignments. “The architecture we designed relegates the significance of ‘content’ to a supporting role and elevates the significance of learning ‘in the job’ and in an intellectually stimulating support environment.” (Stott & Lee, 2005, p. 97). The LEP is complemented by a set of other newly designed programs for other groups of different level school leaders (Stott & Lee, 2005). While research into the efficacy of the new programs points to success (Lee & Stott, 2004), it should be noted that they are incredibly resource hungry and operate within a very centralised system, a system in which the Ministry of Education holds remarkable power, where there is only one major provider of leadership development programs and where the selection of principals follows a structured, centralised path. Such a system, at least if implemented as comprehensively as in Singapore, would face considerable philosophical and pragmatic difficulties in developing societies such as Mainland China.

Mainland China Although relatively little is written in either descriptive or philosophical terms about principal development in Mainland China (at least in English), and it appears somewhat underdeveloped when viewed nationally, signs of movement are becoming to surface. Formalised principal training programs have run in one form or another in Mainland China for over 50 years. From 1949 to 1957 training focused almost exclusively on political ideology: “The main objective … was to train school leaders to be government cadres rather than profession personnel” (Feng, 2003, p. 214). From 1958 to the beginning of the 1980s the political situation prevented much work in the area but from 1979 (when the government established training institutions for principals) training began to operate more regularly and, according to Feng, “experienced notable improvement.” At the end of 1999 the Central Government announced Continuing Professional Development (CPD) requirements for both newly appointed and serving principals. Following the rhetoric of more general reforms both in China and throughout the

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region the basic aim of the policy was to facilitate the provision of quality education through the application of six basic principles. These were that CPD should be: context specific; target group specific guidance; link theory to practice; applicable to practical situations (that what is learnt can be applied); needs driven; and attentive to school outcomes. More specifically, the content of the CPD covers political theories, ethical and moral thinking, laws about Education, modern educational theories and practices, school management theories and practices, modern educational technologies, social science and humanities. All newly appointed principals are required to obtain a certificate through a series of professional development programs of not less than 300 contact hours prior to or within six months after taking up office. These preparatory courses focus on basic knowledge and skills which principals need. It was also stipulated that serving principals undergo not less than 240 hours of CPD over a five-year cycle. If they fail to fulfil this requirement they are given one year within which to “make it up” and if this is not done, they will be “dismissed.” CPD for serving principals focuses on new knowledge and skills, the enhancement of management ability, research and experience sharing. On top of the standard program, the government acknowledges successful and experienced serving principals by organising an advanced program designed to groom selected principals as “specialists” in teaching and management (Ministry of Education, People’s Republic of China, 1999). For example, Shanghai municipality launched an ambitious principal development program in 2005. The program aims to provide in-service training to 1,000 selected principals in the next 5 years. About 100 of these principals will be nominated as “good models” and ten will later be nationally recognised. Of the 100 first-round attendants, 16 were recognised as “potential nationwide famous principals” and were registered for further advanced courses (Shanghai Morning Post, 25 January 2006). Such a model illustrates the competitive and hierarchical underpinnings of the newer Chinese approaches to principal development. There are two nationally designated training centres for school principals under the Ministry of Education. The National Training Centre for High School Principals at East China Normal University was established in around 1990 while the National Training Centre for Primary School Principals based at Beijing Normal University was established in 2000. Both Training Centres have responsibility for training experienced and successful principals and for demonstrating how the programs can be designed and delivered. (Education Pioneer – China Web, 2002; National Training Centre for High School Principal, 2000). Other formal and informal programs are organised by different provincial governments, school systems and other professional bodies, particularly by normal universities and teacher colleges at different levels (see Feng, 2003).

Hong Kong Before 2000 leadership preparation and development in Hong Kong tracked an incoherent and scattered course. New principals were required to attend a basic course focusing on administrative matters only. Other opportunities for potential, newlyappointed and serving principals were diffuse and organised on an ad hoc basis by the Education Department (ED), different School Sponsoring Bodies, higher education

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providers and their associated specialised centres, and some professional associations (Lam, 2003; Walker, 2004; Walker, Begley, & Dimmock, 2000). Preparation was linked only loosely to major education reform initiatives and rarely touched “real” leadership life in schools. In terms of methodology, the few centrally supported programs for education leaders pre-2000 were overwhelmingly classroom based, were tendered out to universities, rarely involved practicing leaders in more than “legitimising roles” and, with few exceptions, were largely detached from school life (Walker & Dimmock, 2005). Prompted by an increasingly demanding reform agenda targeting school governance and school improvement, the then ED developed, debated and implemented the policy Continuing Professional Development for School Excellence (Education Department, 2002). This policy dictated for the first time a coherent framework for principal development – one that aimed to meet the needs of Hong Kong’s practicing and aspiring principals at various stages of development. Programs associated with the framework are run mainly by The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Although certainly not without difficulty, the policy constituted a substantial shift from the status quo in that it delineated levels of leadership development, introduced mandatory requirements, including certification, for principal positions, demanded that Aspiring Principals pay for their own certification, adopted a set of “local” leadership developed in Hong Kong (Walker et al., 2000), asked school leaders to take responsibility for their own and their colleagues learning and aimed to significantly elevate the value of formal, non-university accredited development programs. Within a five to sixyear period since their launch, the reforms have embedded professional structures, frameworks, requirements and programs into the psyche and career planning of school leaders. In line with requirements that programs remain responsive, research has commenced into their components program with the aim of increasing their efficacy [Cheung & Walker, 2006; Education and Manpower Bureau (EMB), 2004; Wong, 2005; Wong & Ng, 2003]. Findings distilled from a range of studies suggest eight distinguishing (closely related) features may be relevant to improving leadership development programs in Hong Kong.2 These are: earning should be linked to school and leadership context and focus on real-time, real life issues; there should be substantial involvement by “trained” experienced principals playing clearly defined roles (in terms of mentoring, sharing, observing, questioning); learning structures should be flexible and rich enough to meet diverse needs (both in terms of method and content) and provide adequate stimulus for reflection; learning should respect existing skills, values and knowledge (experience); learning structures should provide entry to professional and political networks and work to bond cohorts. Given Government commitment to ongoing leadership development, programs in Hong Kong are likely to further evolve in line with these research-based features. Walker and Dimmock (2006) summarise the current state of play: The process associated with policy implementation has certainly begun to shift beliefs about the importance of different forms of preparation. Given the secure

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anchoring of structures provided by the policy, the obvious next step was to look more deeply into the programs comprising the policy. The main purpose for this is to move beyond the formal policy structures legitimising leadership preparation to ways the programs can build a meaningful and enduring learning culture among the school leadership community. In other words, the next stage in the evolution of leadership learning is identifying how programs can best help school leaders learn.

The Way Forward There appears an increasing and somewhat enlightened commitment across the region to offering more thoughtful leadership development structures to improving leadership development. However, there remains considerable scope as to what this may entail and how best to help leaders improve their schools. The pathways needed to address this can be usefully framed by Hallinger’s (2003b) recommendations for practice in school leadership development across the Asia-Pacific Region. These are: ●

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New globally-derived, research based findings as well as indigenously crafted knowledge about teaching and learning and leading school represents legitimate subjects for learning among prospective and practicing school leaders. The changing knowledge base and context for school leadership makes lifelong learning a fundamental facet of the professional role. The process of leadership development should actively engage learners and be organised, at least in part, around the problems that school leaders face in their work. Implementing new knowledge and skills requires a flexible combination of onsite coaching and networks of support in the school that function as and within learning organisations. Professional development of school leaders must take place in a broader context of professionalism of education.

These recommendations hold philosophical and practical implications for principalship preparation and development in East Asia. Recent findings from a growing international research, literature and program evaluation base (Earley & Weindling, 2004; Glatter & Kydd, 2003; Hallinger, 2003a; Hallinger & Snidvongs, 2005; Huber, 2004a, 2004b; Walker & Dimmock, 2005; Weindling, 2004) about leadership learning and development, when combined with those emerging throughout Asia (as introduced throughout the chapter), can be juxtaposed into a set of interrelated issues which may guide the immediate way forward for leadership development.

Mechanisms/Content to Maximise Contextual and Cultural Sensitivity Programs need to work with not against the culture and context within which leaders work. Whereas there is obviously a recognised body of knowledge from the field of leadership, learning and teaching that can fuel leaders learning this is not a static body of knowledge. It is increasingly clear that development programs need to be based on

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a localised curriculum, both in terms of knowledge and culturally-sensitive approaches to learning and leading. This implies that programs consider their intended impact not only on the school, but also the system and the differentiated expectations which may stem from the need to balance these. It is important for programs to note that learning how to do a job does not occur in a professional or organisational vacuum. The societal context in which roles are enacted impacts the principal socialisation processes. As such, principals, as well as system leaders, university teachers and policymakers must recognise how social change impacts the socialization and learning of principals.

Linkage to Leadership Reality and School Life and Outcomes A clear message is that learning be grounded within the reality of schools and school improvement. This does not mean that all learning should happen “in” schools, although an increasing portion may well be in principals’ own and other schools, but that the intent and design of programs is purposefully related to what leaders do in schools to make a difference. As such, programs may incorporate “real” problem- or story-based foci, opportunities for acknowledging diverse views and increasing personal awareness and individual or cooperative action learning. While there is obviously an ongoing need for the meaningful infusion of theoretical frameworks and knowledge, and inspirational motivation from “outside,” if principals do not see learning as impacting meaningfully on what they do in schools it is missing the mark. This is true of learning needed in values and culture building areas as well as for meeting accountability requirements.

Opportunities for Reflection Opportunities for individual and group reflection are important for school leaders to make sense of and apply learning in their contexts. Complex, contextualised learning takes time and involves intricate thought processes. Individual reflection – or self talk – can be encouraged through, for example, program-structured or freer flowing written journals or reports. Reflection through social interaction within and outside the school is also important. It is useful to build enduring groups and/or cohorts of various sizes (within and across levels) to house and stimulate reflective discussions – this is also useful for building trusting professional relationships. Variously shaped reflective forums allow opportunities for different levels of professional learning and encourage life-long learning. Intense involvement of experienced practitioners as mentors and/or coaches. A clear message to all leadership development programs in the region is that they involve experienced practitioners heavily in all aspects. In terms of relevance, cultural fit, acceptance, legitimisation and support, involvement from design to implementation to review is appropriate. In short, the involvement of good practitioners helps programs retain a focus on reality, sometimes missing in higher education institutions and government offices. However, “intense” involvement should still be in partnership with academics and system officials and consciously structured to be forward looking

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rather than simply reproductive. It is also important that principals or others involved as mentors, coaches or advisors themselves receive training, are recognised as effective leaders and have a defined role (and code of ethics). These roles should ideally encompass both professional and psychological support and be designed on the “flexibility within structure” principle.

Multiple Learning Gateways Given that potential and practicing principals learn in different ways it appears important that they be provided with multiple opportunities and ways to learn. Such avenues call for multiple delivery modes (e.g., electronic forums, Problem Based Learning, cooperative “in the job” learning across schools or focused learning sets) which allow for differing learning purposes and styles. The content available through different gateways also needs to remain in a fluid state in order for programs to cover the necessary “basics,” as well as variable situations. Gateways to learning can include strong personal and ethical components and draw on learning both in and outside of schools, and indeed education. Constructing multiple learning gateways also encourages lifelong learning.

Formal and Informal Grouping and Networking Worthwhile learning is more likely to result if school leaders are members of both learning and support networks. Although most principals are members of various networks it is important that these be shaped or expanded to incorporate a stronger emphasis on learning and the conditions which make it more likely to happen. This can be achieved, for example, through purposefully constructed learning sets (linked by interest or a structured task), group-oriented mentoring and user-friendly electronic venues for staying connected. Networks can develop at a number of levels, from neighbourhood to international, from educative to industrial, from principal colleagues to other leaders and educators. However, it would be pointless to structure all networks; programs can also encourage informal, self-driven networks within and beyond education and hierarchical divides.

Participant Control School leaders not only need to take increased responsibility for their own and colleagues learning but also of how and when learning takes place. School leaders are busy people, with many demands on their time. In line with grounding learning more deeply within school and societal contexts and away from simplistic classroom based approaches, programs should build-in “flexibility within structure,” where leaders determine more of the pace, form, level of involvement, timing and even focus of their learning. Whereas this needs to be adequately supported and partly stimulated by providers, for learning to be worthwhile leaders need to share control of their development.

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Meaningful Evaluation and Investigation Preparation and development programs have traditionally been inadequately evaluated. Too many evaluations tend to be descriptive and/or limited to “tick the box” type exercises. As such, there is an obvious need for empirical studies that investigate the impact of programs on what principals do – including on the skills, knowledge, values and attitudes of leaders. It is particularly important to investigate the impact of programs on student learning in schools. Formative, summative and longitudinal evaluations within and across programs that explore knowledge transfer are needed. In addition, studies into program efficacy should link to broader system reforms and change. As well as impact studies and program evaluations participants themselves should be encouraged to look deeply into what the programs have done for them on a personal learning level and within their professional roles.

Intentional Design Although leadership learning programs need to present many and varied learning opportunities, encourage greater participant control and focus on immediate learning contexts this should not be taken to imply that the search for better practice should be some loose, flighty process – learning must still have form and guidance. In short, learning happens best if it uses grounded methods, is underpinned by “learning conditions” and follows a purposeful design. Again, such a design may be built around the principle of “flexibility within structure.” Designs should have clear purpose (related to school improvement for student learning), link to socialisation experiences, include internal and external quality assurance and fit within cultural expectations and settings. Given a shift from pure-content driven to process-driven programs, more useful cross-fertilisation internationally may be possible.

Conclusion Whereas the above discussion does not cover the multitude of issues surrounding leadership development for school improvement we believe they cut to the heart of helping leaders become better at what they do. The chapter sought to provide an overview of the importance, context and progress of leadership development in the East Asian region. As the region continues to develop and grow and we gain more sophisticated understanding what it takes to improve schools, the task of such development will focus more on what leaders do, and on what can be done to promote and support their learning in this endeavour. The clear message is that although the raft of current education reform policies aim to radically shift the work of principals, successful implementation in schools will ultimately depend on the skills, knowledge and values of school leaders. Given that leadership in the region is often constructed in contexts very different from those within which the policies were initially envisioned, it is crucial that leadership development structures not only account for the necessary knowledge, but also how this is contested and implanted within specific leadership contexts.

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Notes 1. We wish to acknowledge the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong for its support through an Earmarked Grant (CUHK 4289/03H). 2. For examples of initial responses to updating programs see: http://www3.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/eldevnet/ Upstream.asp; and http://www3.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/eldevnet/blue_skies.asp

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Section 6 CHANGING TEACHERS AND CLASSROOMS FOR SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT

37 TEACHER LEADERSHIP: BARRIERS AND SUPPORTS

Joseph Murphy

For the last quarter century, the world has witnessed a nearly unbroken chain of initiatives to reform PK-12 education (see Sackney, this volume; Teddlie, this volume). These interventions have been generated in a wide variety of ideological seedbeds. They have emerged in response to powerful changes underway in the larger economic, political, and social environments in which the schooling enterprise is nested. And they have been engaged to solve an assortment of problems and to meet a wide variety of important objectives. One significant line of work to strengthen schools emphasizes teachers assuming greater leadership for the organization in which they work, or what has come to be known as teacher leadership (Crowther, Kaagan, Ferguson, & Hann, 2002; Little, 2003). A comprehensive review of the literature on this growing movement reveals that it rests on three foundational pillars, including (1) the struggle to rebuild the infrastructure of schooling, attempting to exorcise the dysfunctionalities of traditional hierarchical and bureaucratic structures and capture post-industrial organizational forms that privilege collaborative work; (2) the quest to redefine leadership in post-industrial organizations; and (3) the use of reform initiatives that honor professionalism. That same literature helps us to see that, although there are a variety of pathways to teacher leadership, most fall into one of two strategy “bins.” On the one hand, there are the well-established role- and function-based attempts to create more leadership-dense schools. These efforts focus on attaching teachers to, often newly created roles and functions at the school level, such as mentor teacher, master teacher, or coordinator of a program or strand of work. On the other hand, and of more recent vintage, are efforts to operationalize teacher leadership in communities of professional practice, such as instructional team leader. Finally, although the evidence on the impact of teacher leadership remains thin, we are learning a good deal about conditions that damage and support the development of teacher leaders and teacher leadership in schools. It is this latter issue that concerns us in this chapter. Specifically, we examine two key domains – organizational structure 681 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 681–706. © 2007 Springer.

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and organizational and professional culture – that have been shown to hinder the inculcation of teacher leadership. We then review a series of conditions that make the growth of teacher leadership in schools more likely.1

Barriers Organizational Structure Scholars who ply the domain of organizations have carefully documented how “the structure of the organization directs and defines the flow and pattern of human interactions in the organization” (Johnson, 1998, p. 13) and how “the work-related attitudes, activities, and behaviors of teachers and principals are functions of the organizational contexts of the schools in which they work” (Smylie & Brownlee-Conyers, 1992, p. 155). Because “organizational contexts” (Doyle, 2000, p. 19) and “the actual organizational structure” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 79) reflect important values and beliefs, they exercise considerable pull on shared leadership in a school, primarily through their “impact [on] school community and school change” (Doyle, 2000, p. 19). Indeed, there is plentiful evidence that organizational conditions are critical to the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of teacher leaders (Harris, 2003; Hatfield, Blackman, & Claypool, 1986): “The organizational contexts of schools have substantial influence on the performance and outcomes of teacher leadership” (Smylie, 1996, p. 575). Unfortunately, as we explore below, this context – “the organizational structure of schools” (Kowalski, 1995, p. 244) – with its “organizational and structural barriers” (Chrispeels, 1992, p. 75) – has regularly “bedeviled … efforts to develop teacher leadership” (Smylie, Conley, & Marks, 2002, p. 183). “Organizational characteristics [and] structural components can adversely impact the work of teacher leaders” (Silva, Gimbert, & Nolan, 2000, p. 790), and “impediments … found within … the organizational structures” (Duke, 1994, p. 269) of schools can exercise a powerful dampening influence on shared leadership. The disheartening result is that “given the present structure of schools, it is difficult for teachers to view themselves as leaders or to view one another as leaders” (Coyle, 1997, p. 41). In particular, analysts suggest that “the highly bureaucratic, axiomatic configuration of schools” (Suleiman & Moore, 1997, p. 3) with its “hierarchical culture of authority” (Lambert, 2003, p. 32) creates a framework that does not accommodate the behaviors associated with “new roles and norms” (Keedy, 1999, p. 787) and tends to “stifle … possibilities for teacher leaders to be effective change agents” (Wynne, 2001, p. 1). Specifically, reviewers maintain that, with their emphasis on “the hierarchical nature of teaching … based on the nineteenth-century industrial model” (Boles & Troen, 1994, p. 9), “schools are not set up to accept teachers in leadership roles and often actually discourage teachers from taking on additional responsibility” (Smyser, 1995, p. 130). They conclude that “the traditional organizational setting of schools” (Rallis, 1990, p. 193) throws roadblocks in the way of developing distributed leadership (Harris, 2005). A number of dimensions of the organizational dynamic merit attention. First, in a real sense, the current structure of schooling has worked – if not to educate all youngsters

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well, then at least to help meet the goal of universal access. Second, existing organizational arrangements benefit some people, actors who are not simply willing to promote the development of new structures and forms in which their deep-seated values are undermined and their advantaged positions are negated (Crowther et al., 2002). For example, Little (1995) does an excellent job of exploring this issue in the context of the department structure at the high school level. Third, for most educators, the current organizational system is the only one they have known. It is difficult to move to the unknown even when one can glimpse its contours. In addition, even if the change process can be engaged, there are strong inclinations to regress to the familiar. As Lieberman and Miller (1999) reminded us, “new behaviors are difficult to acquire, and in the end it is easier to return to old habits than to embrace new ones” (p. 126). Needed changes are often “abandoned in favor of more familiar and more satisfying routines” (Little, 1987, p. 493). Or as Heller (1994) observed, “People become used to a hierarchical structure, which can be comforting. Someone else is responsible. Someone else takes the blame, finds the money, obtains the permission, and has the headaches” (p. 289). Fourth, the current arrangements are not especially malleable (Donaldson, 2001). The “forces of organizational persistence” (Smylie & Hart, 1999, p. 421) and “institutional precedent” (Smylie, 1992, p. 55) are quite robust. Hierarchy has an extensive and deep root structure and enjoys a good deal of legitimacy (Murphy, Beck, Crawford, Hodges, & McGaughy, 2001). The system also displays considerable capacity to engage in the ritual of change (Meyer & Rowan, 1975) and to absorb new ideas and initiatives in ways that leave existing organizational structures largely unaffected (Cohen, 1988; Elmore, 1987; Weick, 1976). Finally, although some currents buoy concepts such as decentralization and professionalism that undergird shared leadership, equally powerful, if not stronger, currents support the movement to centralization and to the hardening of the hierarchical forms of schooling that “are having a challenging effect on the teaching profession and on the inclination and ability of teachers to assume broad leadership within their schools” (Barth, 2001, p. 446). Thus, while it is discouraging, it should not be surprising given the dynamics described above that, “in many cases teachers and administrators have actively resisted the creation and implementation of these new [teacher leadership] roles” (Boles & Troen, 1994, p. 8). Turning specifically to the dynamics of hierarchy, reviewers have observed that the “organizational structure makes it … inappropriate for a teacher to assume leadership” (Troen & Boles, 1994, p. 276), and that “the school’s bureaucratic structure makes it difficult for teachers to define and legitimate forms of leadership that are fully consistent with teaching’s egalitarian culture” (Little, 1995, p. 55). Especially problematic for teacher leadership are the following ideas embedded in hierarchical structures: “the notion of a single leader” (Moller & Katzenmeyer, 1996, p. 6); “traditional patterns of relationships” (Conley, 1989, p. 2) featuring a boss and subordinates; the idea that the leader is “synonymous with boss” (Moller & Katzenmeyer, 1996, p. 4); and the metaphor of leader as supervisor (Myers, 1970). Hierarchical organizations also define power and authority in ways that dampen the viability of shared leadership (Harris, 2003; Sergiovanni, 1991; Sykes & Elmore, 1989). Specifically, by defining authority in centralized (Fay, 1992a) and solitary

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terms (Barth, 1988a, 1988b), the traditional structure of schools “simply does not support teacher decision making” (Rallis, 1990, p. 193). It leaves teachers “with very limited power in making decisions outside their own classrooms” (Smyser, 1995, p. 132). By configuring authority “as a ‘zero-sum game’ ” (Boles & Troen, 1994, p. 10), “unyielding bureaucracies” (Suleiman & Moore, 1997, p. 3) make it “difficult for teacher leaders to emerge in schools” (Boles & Troen, 1994, p. 10). Simply put, “the hierarchical structure of schools works against multilevel access to policy debate and decision making” (Manthei, 1992, p. 15). Bureaucracies also exert negative force on the health of shared leadership through the use of structures that isolate teachers, structures that reinforce core professional norms such as autonomy, equality, and privacy (Darling-Hammond, 1988) and that “work against the development of teacher leadership” (Urbanski & Nickolaou, 1997, p. 244). Two elements are featured in these structures: time schedules (Coyle, 1997) and systems for dividing up work responsibilities (Pellicer & Anderson, 1995; Printy, 2004). Both of these strands promote segmentation (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001). They slot teachers into self-contained classrooms (Buckner & McDowelle, 2000). All of this promotes the use of an “egg crate” (Boles & Troen, 1996, p. 59) structure that “buttress[es] teaching as a private endeavor” (Little, 1990, p. 530). Such a structure has two primary negative effects. First, it “block[s] teachers’ ability to work together” (Silva et al., 2000, p. 789), makes it “difficult for teachers to engage with other teachers” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 67), and “makes genuine interdependence among teachers rare” (Little & McLaughlin, 1993, p. 2). Second, it promotes “individual rather than collective accountability” (Duke, 1994, p. 270). The consequence is “an assemblage of entrepreneurial individuals” (Little, 1990, p. 530) who, “rather than work[ing] collectively on their problems … must struggle alone” (Lieberman, Saxl, & Miles, 1988, p. 15). Unions as a piece of the organizational mosaic require attention here. At the macro level, unions can act as a brake on the development of teacher leadership throughout the profession (Pellicer & Anderson, 1995; Stone, Horejs, & Lomas, 1997). This is most likely to occur when teacher leadership is seen as unsettling well-established patterns of collective bargaining (Wasley, 1991). At the micro level, “union contracts can be another challenge to teacher leadership” (Blegen & Kennedy, 2000, p. 5). By design, bureaucracy in general and labor relations in particular separate school administrators and teachers. And given that divide, it is not clear why teachers would gravitate to schoolwide leadership positions (Barth, 1988a). More likely is the possibility that “the tension that exists between teacher unions and school district administrators [will] discourage teachers from engaging in roles beyond the classroom” (Killion, 1996, p. 5). And under existing structures and relationships, “the possibility that teacher leadership might actually mean union control” (Institute for Educational Leadership, 2001, p. 6) is not lost on school administrators. Clearly, if teacher leadership is to flourish, hierarchical perspectives of labor embedded in school organizations will need to experience a transformation, as will “labor-management relationships” (Boles & Troen, 1994, p. 8). In the end, because (1) “new teacher leadership roles challenge the very structure of schools” (Whitaker, 1997, p. 2), (2) schools as currently organized have a “leadership resistant architecture” (Donaldson, 2001, p. 11), and (3) “the efforts of teacher

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leaders … will be only as successful as the bureaucracy allows them to be” (Pellicer & Anderson, 1995, p. 21), a direct attack on the prevailing organizational arrangements in schools is in order. Part of this assault will focus on helping “teacher leaders navigate the structure of schools” (Silva et al., 2000, p. 793). The major attack, however, will be shaped by the knowledge that “the organization itself [will] need to change” (Ainscow & Southworth, 1996, p. 235). It will necessitate the creation of “organizational structures [that] support efforts to make change” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 82), the provision of “organizational structures conducive to collegial interactions” (Keedy, 1999, p. 798). We close this section on structure with a caveat. That is, although “organizational constraints continue to plague the promise of teacher leadership” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 127) and “structural changes are needed to promote teacher leadership” (pp. 80–81), “changing structures … will not be enough” (Heller, 1994, p. 292; Murphy, 1991). That is to say, “structural change alone is not sufficient to broaden leadership” (Copland, 2003, p. 29). Although “teacher leadership is enabled by structural changes” (Darling-Hammond, Bullmaster, & Cobb, 1995, p. 94), the development of the “revolutionary organizational structures needed to promote … teacher leadership” (Pellicer & Anderson, 1995, p. 19) must grow from the seedbed of changed norms and “changed social systems” (Odell, 1997, p. 121), as we will describe in the following section.

Professional and Organizational Culture Scholars investigating the nature of teacher work in general (Feiman-Nemser & Floden, 1986; Lortie, 1975; Rosenholtz, 1989) and teacher work redesign (Hart, 1990) and teacher leadership specifically (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001; Little, 1987, 1988), have uncovered a rich vein of knowledge about how “professional norms and school culture” (Wilson, 1993, p. 27) – “the occupational structure of teaching work itself ” (Little, 1990, p. 511) – exert a powerful and often negative sway on the birth and development of shared leadership in schools. At the broadest level, it is argued that “teaching is not a profession that values or encourages leadership within its ranks” (Troen & Boles, 1994) and that “teachers who adhere to the current norms of the profession are … a barrier to changing the role of teachers in our schools” (Odell, 1997, p. 121). In particular, in the narrative that unfolds in this section, we reveal how norms of “privacy, autonomy, and egalitarianism” (Smylie, 1996, p. 576) define the teaching profession. We describe how these standards provide “the yardstick[s] most teachers use to measure … acceptability” (Whitaker, 1995, p. 80) and how “proposals for teacher leadership challenge [these] long-established … norms” (Hart, 1995, p. 12) – how “norms of equality, autonomy, cordiality, and privacy can counter interventions designed to redistribute leadership in schools and how these norms can neutralize teacher leader attempts to form new roles in providing support and collegial interaction for teachers” (Keedy, 1999, p. 788). We explain that, because teacher leadership assaults the central “norms influencing working relationships among teachers” (Smylie, 1992, p. 56), it is “difficult for teachers in many schools to accept or display leadership” (Barth, 2001, p. 446). Too often, when opportunities for shared leadership are

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presented, professional norms stimulate teachers to resist new ways of doing business (Ainscow & Southworth, 1996; Barth, 2001) and cause those who accept schoolwide leadership responsibilities to “display caution toward their colleagues” (Little, 1988, p. 84), “to tread lightly” (Smylie, 1996, p. 576). Turning to “the many-headed hydras of school culture” (Griffin, 1995, p. 44), we learn that “each school’s culture directly influences how willing its teachers will be to take on positive leadership roles” (Moller & Katzenmeyer, 1996, p. 71). We also learn that “teacher leadership can be encouraged or impeded depending on school culture and climate” (Snell & Swanson, 2000, p. 2). Indeed, it seems that “the specific social relationships and norms of individual schools [are] more influential … than the general professional norms” (Smylie, 1996, p. 555) that we previously introduced. “The school social unit” (Hart, 1990, p. 526) also appears to “outweigh the strength of individual teachers’ training, years of experience, effort, personal characteristics, and abilities, and the formal work structure and its impact on the functions of redesigned work” (p. 526). This appears to be the case because “the social and normative contexts of schools … define and govern teachers’ professional relationships” (Smylie, 1996, p. 560) and “social system dynamics” (Hart, 1994, p. 493), in turn, exert considerable control over work redesign efforts such as teacher leadership. Unfortunately, there is also plentiful evidence that “something deep and powerful within school cultures seems to work against teacher leadership” (Barth, 2001, p. 443). That is, “the culture and social norms of schools conspire against leadership development … and bedevil … efforts to develop teacher leadership” (Smylie et al., 2002, p. 183). “Institutionalizing teacher leadership as a norm within the cultural fabric of an entire school is a … challenging task” (Keedy, 1999, p. 797). On one hand, efforts to cultivate shared leadership are hampered by the fact that there are “few meaningful precedents” (Little, 1990, p. 517) for introducing teacher leadership into the institution of schooling and the occupation of teaching (Little, 1990; Wasley, 1991). On the other hand, attempts to institutionalize teacher leadership are “influenced substantially by patterns of belief and practice that define old work roles and by socialization pressures from the workplace that resist new work roles or reshape them to conform to those prevailing practices and pressures” (Smylie & Brownlee-Conyers, 1992, p. 155). Not only are “established social patterns … resilient” (Hart, 1994, p. 477), but the tendency to regress to prevailing norms and practices is actually “heightened” (p. 477) during periods of change such as those associated with work redesign. In “the absence of traditions for mutual work” (Little, 1988, p. 92), forays into teacher leadership often violate cultural foundations that define schools, foundations that are often “fatal to new work configurations” (Hart, 1990, p. 504). Too often, the end result is that “the behaviors and attitudes commonly regarded as demonstrating leadership are not acceptable to … teachers” (Wilson, 1993, p. 27). Not surprisingly, the literature in this area also helps us see that “the first element necessary in a successful guide to recognizing and promoting teacher leaders is to establish an appropriate school culture” (Bishop, Tinley, & Berman, 1997, p. 78; Harris, 2005). Although reculturing the organization to accommodate denser patterns of leadership must begin with knowledge about “how the concept [of teacher leadership] fits into the existing culture” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 80), it is also

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important to work from the understanding that “creating an appropriate culture to support teacher leadership establishes a new dimension” (Bishop et al., 1997, p. 78). What is required is “a school culture that is clearly committed to providing support for the learning of all its members” (Silva et al., 2000, p. 802), “a school culture in which classroom teachers are fully empowered partners in shaping policy, creating curriculum, managing budgets, improving practice, and bringing added value to the goal of improving education for children” (Boles & Troen, 1996, p. 42). That is, “settings in which teachers are encouraged to collaborate, to participate in school-site decisionmaking, to engage in on-going learning, and to reflect upon their pedagogy are the school sites that best foster the leadership of classroom practitioners” (Snell & Swanson, 2000, p. 2). In the balance of this section, we fuse the concepts of professional norms and organizational culture to explore potent dynamics that often obstruct efforts to cultivate teacher leadership in schools, keeping in mind that these forces often interact with the structural barriers discussed earlier. We collect these forces in two categories: norms about teaching and leading and norms about the nature of work.

Norms about teaching and learning One value that is deeply entwined in the cultural tapestry of schools is what might best be labeled the norm of legitimacy, what counts as appropriate work for teachers. The literature confirms that authentic activity is what unfolds in classrooms (Doyle, 2000): a “classroom-oriented, student-centered conception of work” (Smylie & BrownleeConyers, 1992, p. 156). For both the public and teachers themselves, teaching is defined “almost exclusively by time spent in classrooms with children” (Little, 1988, p. 100). Because “time for leadership often equals time away from the classroom” (Fay, 1992b, p. 81), leadership work “can be stressful” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 111) for individual teachers, especially if time away from teaching is seen as “compromising their effectiveness with children” (Smylie & Brownlee-Conyers, 1992, p. 164) and unsettling for the existing culture. Indeed, teacher leaders “take a lot of criticism from principals [and] fellow teachers … over ‘missing school’ ” (Fay, 1992b, p. 81). It is not difficult to see how the norm of legitimacy could deter teachers from assuming schoolwide leadership responsibilities, or how it could depress enthusiasm among the faculty for shared leadership. A related standard is the norm of the divide between teaching and administration, a separation that “has been extensive and profound” (Murphy, 1999; Rallis, 1990, p. 196). One dimension of this norm is the belief that the job of teachers is to teach and the task of school administrators is to manage and lead (Barth, 2001). A second aspect is that it is “the teacher’s job to carry out plans developed by others higher up in the school hierarchy” (Boles & Troen, 1996, p. 43). This “strong us-them split” (Teitel, 1996, p. 149) is heavily buttressed by the structural elements of schooling we outlined earlier, especially the tenets of hierarchy. Where schoolwide leadership requires teachers to occupy territory traditionally held by administrators, “cross the border” (p. 149), “change ranks” (Whitaker, 1997, p. 12), or violate the separation norm, formidable barriers are often erected (Little, 1988).

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The norm of managerial prerogative, or what Keedy (1999) called the “norm of the authority and power of administrators” (p. 787), has a deep root structure in most schools. As is the case with the related norms previously discussed, it casts a pall over the ideology of shared leadership. At the heart of the prerogative standard is the belief that school action outside of classrooms is the rightful domain of school administrators. Given this culture, teachers are “reluctant to challenge traditional patterns of principals’ authority” (Smylie, 1992, p. 55). Understandings have been forged over time between administrators and teachers (Murphy, Hallinger, Lotto, & Miller, 1987; Sizer, 1984). They often show considerable reluctance to overturn such negotiated arrangements, especially when doing so would undercut established patterns of “authority and autonomy” (Smylie, 1992, p. 55). Cast in less generous terms, the argument holds that teachers are powerless to influence activities beyond the classroom (Troen & Boles, 1994), that principals are resistant to actions that would alter this dynamic (Bishop, Tinley, & Berman, 1997; Brown & Sheppard, 1999; Little, 1988), and that efforts on the part of teachers to challenge the norm would produce unpleasant “repercussions” (Clift, Johnson, Holland, & Veal, 1992, p. 902). Two related standards, the norm of followership, the belief that teachers are “followers, not leaders” (Moller & Katzenmeyer, 1996, p. 3), and the norm of compliance, the belief that it is the job of teachers to comply with directives from above (Wasley, 1991), also “undermine … the espoused theory of teacher leadership” (Clift et al., 1992, p. 906), and hinder the emergence of teacher leaders, and complicate their work when they do emerge.

Norms about the nature of work Analysts over the last quarter century have thrown considerable illumination on “the autonomy norm which defines the teaching profession” (Johnson, 1998, p. 18) and on the “deeply entrenched patterns of isolation and autonomy that define teachers’ work” (Smylie & Hart, 1999, p. 430) and breed a “school culture of isolation” (Institute for Educational Leadership, 2001, p. 7). “Most teachers … work alone, in isolation from their colleagues” (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999, p. 157), and they prefer it that way (Griffin, 1995). Collaborative cultures are much in vogue in the educational literature but much less visible in schools. Teachers see professional autonomy, “which is viewed as freedom from outside scrutiny and the right to make independent judgments” (Wasley, 1991, p. 26), to choose ends and means … to adopt for [one’s] classroom” (Wilson, 1993, p. 27), “as a contested right” (Uline & Berkowitz, 2000, p. 419). They also learn “not [to] meddle in the affairs of other teachers” (Teitel, 1996, p. 144), especially in matters dealing with how their colleagues work with youngsters in their classrooms. In short, “they do not wish to lead or be led” (Wilson, 1993, p. 27). Perhaps no norm is more destructive to the health of teacher leadership than “this very strong standard of practice” (Wasley, 1991, p. 26): “The fundamental isolation of teachers in the classroom is a major barrier to their asserting a stronger leadership role” (Firestone, 1996, p. 413). It “inhibits teachers from extending their influence beyond their classroom doors” (Moller & Katzenmeyer, 1996, p. 8). The norm of

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autonomy and isolation “impedes productive relationships, with … other [teachers] and with … administrators” (Uline & Berkowitz, 2000, p. 419) and “inhibit[s] the work of teacher leaders with their teaching colleagues” (Leithwood, Jantzi, Ryan, & Steinbach, 1997, p. 5). Isolation “inhibit[s] professionalism” (Rallis, 1990, p. 194) and “stymies all attempts at reform” (Institute for Educational Leadership, 2001, p. 7). And, as Urbanski and Nickolaou (1997) asserted, “for the sake of such autonomy in their own classrooms, teachers sacrifice their prospects for influence at the school level and beyond” (p. 245). Tightly linked to professional and cultural values about autonomy are the norm of privacy and the norm of noninterference (Feiman-Nemser & Floden, 1986, p. 506) “that pervade most schools” (Smylie & Brownlee-Conyers, 1992, p. 156), what Griffin (1995) called “the privacy of practice” (p. 40). As Uline and Berkowitz (2000) document, the interaction rules in a culture of privacy parallel those found in highly autonomous climates and “include never interfering in another teacher’s classroom affairs, always being self-reliant with one’s own” (p. 418), and holding the classroom “inviolate” (Feiman-Nemser & Floden, 1986, p. 517). “The norm of professional privacy” (Smylie, 1992, p. 63) is construed “as freedom from scrutiny and the right of each teacher to make independent judgments about classroom practice” (Little, 1988, p. 94). While Little (1990) acknowledged that providing help to colleagues is acceptable within tight parameters, in a culture of noninterference and nonjudgmentalness there is a clear “boundary between offering advice when asked and interfering in unwarranted ways” (p. 515). “Offering … unsolicited advice runs counter to the valued, accepted collegial behavior of teachers” (Little, 1985, p. 36) and is a breach of the norm of privacy. Rather, “under the norm of noninterference … teachers are expected to work things out on their own” (Feiman-Nemser & Floden, 1986, p. 506). “Hands off ” (p. 509) rules apply, especially on issues “that bear directly on classroom work” (Huberman, 1993, p. 34). “The precedents of noninterference are powerful” (Little, 1987, p. 500) and the culture of privacy is potent. Both are toxic to shared leadership and the culture of collaboration that supports it (Little, 1987) because “the more strongly that leaders are committed to the norm of professional privacy the less willing they are to participate in decisions concerning curriculum and instruction” (Smylie, 1992, p. 63). On the other hand, it is growing increasingly clear that “the prospects for school-based teacher leadership rest on displacing the privacy norm” (Little, 1988, p. 94) and on “teacher leaders abandon[ing] their privateness” (Carr, 1997; McCay, Flora, Hamilton, & Riley, 2001, p. 137). “The culture of teaching [also] contends that all teachers are equal” (Childs-Bowen, Moller, & Scrivner, 2000, p. 32), a condition that is widely cited as the egalitarian norm (Conley, 1989) or “the egalitarian ethic” (Boles & Troen, 1994, p. 9). Analysts consistently show that “egalitarian norms” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 4) and “the culture of sameness” (Urbanski & Nickolaou, 1997, p. 245) have a long history within the profession (Lortie, 1975; Wasley, 1991) and “run deep in school buildings” (Huberman, 1993, p. 29). “Egalitarianism is deeply rooted and with long standing traditions” (Little, 1995, p. 55); “it is compelling” (Little, 1987, p. 510). As noted, at its core, the egalitarian ethic of teaching – “the fact that all teachers hold equal position and

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rank, separated by number of years of experience and college credit earned” (Wasley, 1991, p. 166) “rather than function, skill, advanced knowledge, role, or responsibility” (Lieberman et al., 1988, p. 151) – “suggests that all teachers should be equal” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 4). Against this cultural backdrop, “teacher leadership … introduce[s] status differences based on knowledge, skill, and initiative” (Little, 1988, p. 98; Yarger & Lee, 1994). Teacher leadership positions “suggest superordinate and subordinate status differences that teachers may not view as socially and professionally legitimate” (Smylie & Brownlee-Conyers, 1992, p. 156). The consequence is not unexpected – “new responsibilities … clash with old expectations for equality” (Hart, 1990, p. 517). At a minimum, “the helping relationships that [are] central to [teacher leadership] challenge the norms of professional equality” (Smylie & Denny, 1989, p. 16). More severely, they “may compel violations of long-standing egalitarian norms among teachers” (Conley, 1989, p. 15). In effect, then, because “teacher leadership is inconsistent with the egalitarian culture in most schools” (Moller & Katzenmeyer, 1996, p. 7) and “assaults the egalitarian norms that have long been in place in teaching” (Wasley, 1991, p. 147), norms of equality act as an “obstacle to teacher leadership” (Killion, 1996, p. 75) and as “an obstacle to designing meaningful teacher leadership roles” (Pellicer & Anderson, 1995, p. 20). On one hand, norms of equality “constrain teachers from the kinds of initiative, or exercise of authority, one typically associates with images of formal leadership responsibility” (Little, 1995, p. 55). They make giving help “problematic” (Little, 1990, p. 517). On the other hand, “they suggest a system of social costs associated with their violation” (Smylie & Denny, 1989, p. 15), social costs such as “collegial disfavor and sanction” (Smylie, 1992, p. 56) and “damag[ed] relationships with peers” (LeBlanc & Shelton, 1997, p. 43). The presence of such costs often produces reluctance on the part of teachers to assume the mantle of “leadership.” Because they “fear the reactions of their colleagues and because they are hesitant to be singled out from the group in an environment that has valued treating everyone the same” (Bishop et al., 1997, p. 77), reticence to take on leadership roles is often the norm. In short, as Katzenmeyer and Moller (2001) confirmed, “the egalitarian norms among teachers do not encourage a teacher to take leadership roles” (p. 79). When teachers do accept schoolwide leadership responsibilities, they often “seem reluctant to challenge the norms of professional equality” (Smylie & Denny, 1989, p. 16). They sometimes “reject responsibility and role innovation … in favor of egalitarian norms” (Hart, 1990, p. 519). They are “hesitant to set themselves up as experts” (Little, 1985, p. 36). They avoid “drawing attention to themselves” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 4) and “display a wondrous ability to diminish their new status and to downplay the leadership opportunities and obligations that (inescapably) accompany the title” (Little, 1988, p. 101). At times, in the face of “both covert and overt criticism [and] passive and/or active resistance [they] may relinquish their leadership role[s]” (Blegen & Kennedy, 2000, p. 4). The research reveals that such reticence on the part of teacher leaders may be wellfounded because “attempts to assign formal leadership roles to teachers often place

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would-be teacher leaders in direct opposition to their colleagues” (Darling-Hammond, Bullmaster, & Cobb, 1995, p. 90) and because teachers often are “not gentle with [colleagues] who violate egalitarian norms” (Hart, 1990, p. 521). And because in an egalitarian culture “the opinions of peers are important to teachers, … negative comments … may stop their initiatives” (Moller & Katzenmeyer, 1996, p. 7). Teachers are known to “defend turf ” (Boles & Troen, 1996, p. 44) in the face of teacher leadership and to distance themselves from colleagues who assume leadership roles (Johnson & Hynes, 1997). They often make it difficult for peers to be seen as experts (Wasley, 1991). They often resist the initiatives of teacher leaders (Hart, 1990; Little, 1988). More aggressively, they sometimes work to undermine the efforts of teacher leaders (LeBlanc & Shelton, 1997), to silence their voices (Dana, 1992), and to banish them from the ranks of the collegium (Stone et al., 1997; Wilson, 1993). In short, “teacher leaders … may … suffer rejection from peers” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 80). And as Duke (1994) observed, “teacher leadership hardly can thrive in such circumstances” (p. 270). A final standard that often impedes the development of a culture of shared leadership and shackles the work of teacher leaders is the norm of civility. As Griffin (1995) reminded us, “schools are nonconfrontative social organizations, at least in terms of how teachers interact with one another” (p. 44). There is a strong press for “cordiality” (Hart, 1990, p. 516) among teachers that often clashes with the function of teacher leadership (Hart, 1990). Coupled with this are accepted modes of interaction among teachers like contrived collegiality and “induced collaboration” (Little, 1990, p. 509) that promote the appearance of shared leadership while maintaining deeply ingrained norms of autonomy, privacy, and egalitarianism. And coupled to all these other standards are norms of conservatism and aversion to risk taking (Lortie, 1975; Rosenholtz, 1989) that privilege the status quo in the face of change that is at the heart of teacher leadership.

Support Systems Teacher leadership introduces important changes in the work of individuals and essential transformations in relationships in schools. In addition to new structures, it requires a web of supporting conditions to take root and blossom (Frost & Durrant, 2003a, 2003b) – “support for individual teacher’s roles” (Hart, 1994, p. 495) and a reconceptualization of “the context in which they work” (Moller & Katzenmeyer, 1996, p. 7). That is, careful attention to “the organizational conditions necessary to function effectively” (Smylie et al., 2002, p. 166) is needed. In their hallmark volume on teacher leadership, Katzenmeyer and Moller (2001) asserted that “supporting teacher leadership means understanding the concept, awakening the understanding of teachers themselves to their leadership potential, and then providing for the development of teacher leadership” (pp. 123–124). Factors that hinder development include “a lack of time, unsatisfactory relationships with teachers and administrators, and a lack of money to get the job done” (Pellicer & Anderson,

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1995, p. 8). Supportive factors, on the other hand, “enable [teachers] to engage in collaborative relationships” (Wasley, 1991, p. 136). According to Little (1987), they include: (1) “symbolic endorsements and rewards that place value on cooperative work and make the sources of interdependence clear; (2) school-level organization of staff assignments and leadership; (3) latitude for influence on crucial matters of curriculum and instruction; (4) time; (5) training and assistance; and (6) material support” (p. 508). For Hart and Baptist (1996), supportive conditions cluster into three categories: (1) “interpersonal support,” (2) “tangible support,” and (3) “enlarged opportunities” (p. 97). Building on the work of colleagues in this area, we describe support for teacher leadership under six broad dimensions: (1) values and expectations, (2) structures, (3) training, (4) resources, (5) incentives and recognition, and (6) role clarity.

Values and Expectations To begin with, because “the basic disposition of a school toward the value of leadership … ultimately determines whether and by what means teachers participate in the school community as leaders” (Barth, 2001, p. 447), there must be a vision about the significance of teacher leadership as well as an accompanying “set of values that accepts and expects teachers to participate in leadership” (Lieberman, 1992, p. 160). Vision and values can be traced to formal leaders, for, as Keedy maintained, “without … principals who value teacher leadership” (p. 797), the likelihood of teacher leadership emerging in schools is dim at best (Murphy & Datnow, 2003). Principals foster teacher leadership by “declaring that they value team efforts and by describing in some detail what they think it means” (Little, 1987, p. 508). Values are also linked to teachers themselves and to their professional associations (Hatfield, Blackman, & Claypool, 1986; Wasley, 1991), particularly to their willingness to privilege community over autonomy and public work over norms of privacy. Values about shared leadership are built up from beliefs (Hart, 1994), shared interests (Little, 1988), shared expectations (Smylie, 1996), and shared purpose (Wasley, 1991). They are also about commitment, specifically about “organizational commitment to empowering teachers for leadership opportunities” (Fessler & Ungaretti, 1994, p. 218), for, as Lieberman and Miller (1999) recounted, “a vision without accompanying commitment will have no chance of becoming a reality” (p. 11). Because “prospects for teacher leadership will be directly influenced by district … practices” (Little, 1988, p. 102), values need to be buttressed by “enabling policies” (Lieberman & Miller, 1999, p. 28). Bishop and his colleagues (1997) outlined the case as follows: “Since policies usually guide the course of action of an organization, and their statements include objectives that guide the actions of a substantial portion of the total organization, teachers will believe that they are empowered when they feel that their actions are undergirded and protected by such formalized policy statements” (p. 78). Little (1987) concurred, arguing that “at its strongest – most durable, most rigorously connected to problems of student learning, most commanding of teachers’ energies, talents, and loyalties – cooperative work is a matter of school policy” (p. 512) and that “high levels of joint action are more likely to persist” (p. 508) when a supportive policy structure is in place.

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Structures In the first third of this chapter, we investigated how organizational structures, especially institutional and bureaucratic forms, inhibit the introduction and development of teacher leadership. We reported how, on the benign end of the problem continuum, school structures circumscribe the ability of “adults to work together in a routine, centrally coordinated fashion” (Donaldson, 2001, p. 19). We also revealed how on the more troublesome end of that continuum, the tenets of hierarchy (e.g., separation of management and labor) often constrain initiatives to promote shared leadership. Here we present the obvious corollary; that is, “teacher leaders need to have a structure for their work” (Lieberman, 1992, p. 161) and “teacher leadership positions will require restructuring schools” (Manthei, 1992, p. 15). “Support for teacher leadership demands the creation of new leadership structures” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 111), the absence of which makes the exercise of teacher leadership exceedingly difficult (Copland, 2003). Scholars in the area of teacher leadership have identified an assortment of structural supports. Underlying all of them are the following two principles, written by Heller and Firestone (1994) and Lieberman (1992), respectively: When planning structural changes to promote teacher leadership, teachers should be considered as more than a possible source of resistance. Restructuring to make teacher leaders – like other kinds of change – is likely to benefit from leadership from many sources, including teachers themselves. (Heller & Firestone, 1994, p. 32) Structure must enable teachers to experiment, to talk about what they are learning, and to re-arrange resources to support student learning. (Lieberman, 1992, p. 161) One key issue is the selection processes used to identify and tap teacher leaders. “To the extent that the selection problem remains at the forefront of discussions of teacher leadership” (Little, 1988, p. 101) – to the extent that “favoritism on the part of principals” (Hart, 1990, p. 515) is perceived – the resulting teacher resentment will likely severely undermine prospects for teacher leadership (Hart, 1990; Little, 1988). A second aspect of supportive structure concerns the extent to which teacher leaders continue to teach or are pulled full time from their classrooms (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001; Wasley, 1991). It appears that structures that feature leadership at both the classroom and school levels enjoy greater legitimacy among teachers. In particular, dual structures allay general concerns about expansion of the bureaucracy (Crowther et al., 2002) and teacher worries about the creation of status differentials and a “new oligarchy among teachers” (Hart, 1995, p. 15). In the preceding narrative, we recounted that existing school organizations provide “relatively rare occasions” (Fay, 1992a, p. 3) for teachers to perform “schoolwide leadership” (Barth, 1988b, p. 133) functions. New structures, on the other hand, will be supportive to the degree that they deepen opportunities for teachers to lead. Such forms provide for richer information networks and more robust vehicles for “deliberate exchange[s]” (Hart, 1994, p. 491). For example, “common planning periods, regularly scheduled team or subject-area meetings, and judicious use of release time” (Little, 1987, p. 511) are all examples of supportive structures. Finally, supportive structures

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need to be both flexible and enduring while encouraging continuity of stakeholders. Specifically, there needs to be “security for leadership roles” (Wasley, 1991, p. 27); these cannot be “subject to easy cancellation” (Troen & Boles, 1994, p. 276). The structure must also foster the capacity of the organization “to keep key people in those structures” (Copland, 2003, p. 29) over extended periods of time (Murphy & Datnow, 2003).

Training Although support in terms of structured learning opportunities consumes an entire chapter of this volume, we offer a few introductory notes on its significance in our web of support here, highlighting three themes. To begin, there is ample evidence that teacher leaders are being asked to assume these roles with little or no training. As Smyser (1995) discovered, With a great need for leadership from teachers, and with lack of training a major obstacle in establishing this leadership, it would seem obvious that there is a need for teacher education programs that specifically train teachers to take on leadership roles. Unfortunately these programs are rarely available. (p. 132) And since “preservice programs often times omit leadership training” (LeBlanc & Shelton, 1997, p. 34) for “assuming leadership roles outside the classroom” (Smyser, 1995, p. 134), most teachers enter the profession with few leadership skills (Buckner & McDowelle, 2000). When tapped for leadership roles, they “are expected to assume [them] with little or no preparation” (McCay et al., 2001, p. 137). We also know that districts and schools are doing little to overcome these initial skill deficiencies: “In-service programs have not prepared teachers for leadership roles outside the classroom” (Manthei, 1992, p. 1). Nor have they been supportive in helping potential teacher leaders become “aware of their leadership capabilities” (Crowther et al., 2002, p. 57) as individuals (Lieberman & Miller, 1999), as participants in groups (Crow & Pounder, 2000), or as members of political organizations (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001). Given the points raised above, our third theme is that if teacher leadership is to become part of the culture of schools, much more support in terms of professional learning opportunities is needed. Studies consistently demonstrate that “creating leadership roles without providing opportunities to learn how to enact these roles … leads to failure and despair” (Lieberman & Miller, 1999, p. 91). As a result, they “reinforce the importance … [of] the need for professional development to lay a foundation for teacher leadership and to support its function” (Smylie, 1996, p. 575). Professional development may “help teachers to more effectively assume leadership roles” (Mitchell, 1997, p. 13) by overcoming difficulties that arise “when teacher-leaders are recruited straight out of the classroom … with little preparation” (Little, 1988, p. 98). The crosscutting leitmotif on education for teacher leadership has been well expressed by Forster (1997): “Commitment to leadership must be instilled as teachers are prepared to enter the profession and reinforced thereafter. It cannot be left to incidental learning or an assumption that the commitment exists simply because one chose teaching as a career” (p. 88).

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Resources Other additional resources – material and human capacity and time – are also critical planks in the support framework bracing teacher leadership. On the capacity issue, it is important to acknowledge that “teacher leadership requires more fiscal resources” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 120). “Forms of material and human support appear to be crucial contributors” (Little, 1987, p. 512) to collaborative work and shared leadership. As is the case with changing organizational structures in general (Murphy & Hallinger, 1993), funding for teacher leadership is most effective when it is used to purchase other critical resources in the support framework like time, training, and materials (Ainscow & Southworth, 1996) and to provide “added remuneration” (Engel, 1990, p. 54) for extra work. Perhaps no element of the support framework has received more attention than time, especially the recognition that time is “at once a help and a hindrance” (Wasley, 1991, p. 137), that it “both supports and constrains teacher leadership” (Stone et al., 1997, p. 57; Walters & Guthro, 1992). In all cases, it is a “critical [factor] in the development of programs for … teacher leadership” (Kahrs, 1996, p. 28) as well as a significant influence on the exercise of teacher leadership. Time becomes “the most important barrier to address in teacher leadership” (LeBlanc & Shelton, 1997, p. 45) and the “most needed” (p. 44) and “the most valuable resource of all” (Lieberman, 1992, p. 161). Woven throughout the literature on teacher leadership is a collection of important findings on time, acknowledgments that teachers face a number of time-related stressors, including: (1) Scarcity. There is a scarcity of time, a critical resource (Wasley, 1991) – “Time in schools is in finite supply and infinite demand” (Barth, 2001, p. 446); “that is, most teachers have no time or insufficient time each day for any sort of … leadership activity” (Donaldson, 2001, p. 12); (2) Depletion of teachers’ energy. “The plates of good teachers are full” (Blegen & Kennedy, 2000, p. 5). “An opportunity for leadership is an opportunity to deplete more time and energy” (Barth, 1988a, p. 133) and, “for many teachers, leadership exists within the four walls of their classrooms, and the thought of anything beyond that is too time-consuming” (Coyle, 1997, p. 42). Teacher leadership often equates to “long hours” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 66). (3) Stress. Because “teachers who wish to undertake new leadership positions end up spending more time than they are contracted for” (Wasley, 1991, p. 133), “teacher leaders report that finding time to accomplish all the work is the most stressful factor” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 105). (4) Competing obligations. Time for teacher leadership often collides with classroom obligations (Hart & Baptist, 1996; Hatfield et al., 1986; Killion, 1996; Leithwood et al., 1997), and time constraints pit different responsibilities against one another (Smylie, 1996, p. 548). “Few teachers report adequate time to perform their new roles well and to fulfill their other responsibilities, particularly working with students” (p. 549);

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(5) The slow pace of change. “The use of time in schools is a major explanation for the slow movement toward involving teachers in leadership roles” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 119). (6) Increased personnel, increased time needs. “The more people involved in [teacher leadership], the more time is required” (Blegen & Kennedy, 2000, p. 5). (7) Insufficient time. Even when “extra time is provided for leadership functions, it is usually not enough” (Leithwood et al., 1997, p. 5). (8) Material resource constraints. “Finding time for teachers to assume leadership roles demands resources” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 118). (9) Time as a resource. “Time in the workday must be restructured so that it can become a resource, not one more reason why teachers are unable to assume leadership” (Boles & Troen, 1996, p. 59). In short, there is a realization that in the area of teacher leadership, time is the “biggest obstacle” (Doyle, 2000, p. 38), the most significant “barrier” (Blegen & Kennedy, 2000, p. 5; LeBlanc & Shelton, 1997, p. 44), and “the most pervasive problem” (Wasley, 1991, p. 137). “The problem of time in the teaching day present[s] the greatest deterrent to general teacher interest in assuming new roles” (Fay, 1992b, p. 77). The literature also shows how “formal scheduled time for the role is essential to the definition” (Fay, 1992a, p. 9) of teacher leadership and exposes an array of venues where time can support teacher leadership: time to learn; time to talk with one another; time to get new materials (or make them); time to experiment, reflect, talk about it; time to create; time to deal with the inevitable conflict that comes with a clash of values; time to build collegial relationships where there have been none. (Lieberman, 1992, p. 161) Time is often needed to lift teacher leadership off the ground (Duke, 1994), to implement teacher leadership in ways that “barriers and obstacles can be resolved” (Whitaker, 1997, p. 15) and to prevent “the strains [that] are compounded when the pace of implementation is fast” (Little, 1988, p. 98). Time “to begin defining [one’s] own set of values and beliefs” (Harrison & Lembeck, 1996, p. 108) is essential. Time is required for professional development (Blegen & Kennedy, 2000; Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001), “for reflection and for opportunities to conduct professional inquiry” Troen & Boles, 1994, p. 278) – time to be more “thoughtful” (Wasley, 1991, p. 138). Extra time is needed for teachers to take part in the leadership process (Wise, 1989), to perform leadership responsibilities (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001) and “to participate authentically in important conversations” (Silva et al., 2000, p. 802). Time for teachers to work together (Harrison & Lembeck, 1996; Wasley, 1991), “for teacher leaders to engage in collaborative relationships” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 108) and “democratic decision making” (Kahrs, 1996, p. 28), is critical. Extra time for planning is also a requisite (Mitchell, 1997; Wasley, 1991). The theme throughout the storyline is quite distinct – until time is “made for teacher leadership … there will continue to be few stories of successful … teacher leadership” (Silva et al., 2000, p. 802).

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Incentives and Recognition “A school culture that celebrates teacher leadership” (Harrison & Lembeck, 1996, p. 111) is yet another indispensable element in the support portfolio. So, too, is a system of “incentives and rewards” (Little, 1988, p. 102) that motivates teachers to serve as leaders outside the classroom. In short, “meeting the monetary and non-monetary needs of teachers profoundly affects the chances of making a difference in teachers’ willingness to serve as leaders” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 127). Currently, the picture that emerges from the literature is one in which “there are no real incentives for teachers to lead” (Pellicer & Anderson, 1995, p. 18). In fact, “there are substantial disincentives” (Little, 1988, p. 102) to change collaborative work at the heart of teacher leadership. In many schools, there is limited recognition for the work of teacher leaders and there are “no rewards for extra effort” (Crowther et al., 2002, p. 34). In too many places, “the only rewards for teacher leadership are added responsibilities” (Moller & Katzenmeyer, 1996, p. 14). Harrison and Lembeck (1996) reminded us that “we have learned several ways to acknowledge teacher leadership” (p. 110). To begin with, as touched upon above, “recognition of leadership and credit for leadership among teachers is a key factor influencing teacher involvement and leadership” (Kahrs, 1996, p. 33). “Recognition was mentioned by all the participants. All of the teacher leaders desired respect, appreciation, and accolades for their work as teacher leaders. This emerged as an important need” (LeBlanc & Shelton, 1997, p. 41). One type of recognition is the acknowledgment of the importance of teacher leadership within the educational system writ large, what Katzenmeyer and Moller (2001) labeled “the widespread recognition of the development of teacher leaders as one of the catalysts that will propel school reform in the new century” (p. 124). In individual districts and schools, two types of recognition energize teacher leaders. First, the actions of persons of “status and influence” (Hart, 1994, p. 492) carry considerable weight. Administrators, union leaders, and wellrespected veteran teachers here merit notice (Hart, 1994). Second, “peer acceptance and recognition” is important to teacher leaders, the absence of which can negatively impact the growth of shared leadership in a school (LeBlanc & Shelton, 1997). Although “rewarding teachers who are willing to move beyond their classrooms to lead is a complicated issue” (Moller & Katzenmeyer, 1996, p. 13) and a “challenge” (Harrison & Lembeck, 1996, p. 111; Hart, 1990, 1994, 1995), in the end, school districts “must provide incentives and rewards for teachers who take the lead in tackling tasks and solving problems” (Boles & Troen, 1996, p. 60). “Principals must identify meaningful ways to reward teachers in ways teachers value” (Harrison & Lembeck, 1996, p. 111). In addition to providing extra pay for leadership work, Moller and Katzenmeyer (1996) uncovered three ways in which principals were able to provide real support and incentives for teachers engaged in both classroom teaching and teacher leadership responsibilities. First, the principals provided access to information and resources and gave their personal time to support the teacher leaders. Second, they honored teacher leaders’ requests for professional development and sometimes initiated opportunities for them to attend

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conferences or represent the school at important meetings. Finally, they gave them the gift of time, covering classes for them, providing substitute teachers, or assigning support personnel to assist them. (pp. 13–14)

Role Clarity Research on shared leadership exposes the fact that “the work of teachers acting as leaders … creates a number of potential difficulties” (Ainscow & Southworth, 1996, p. 23). For example, “role ambiguity, conflict and overload are broadly reported negative side effects of teacher work redesign” (Hart, 1995, p. 12): The research was clear, however, that these teacher leadership initiatives [can] cause serious problems. They [can] create work overload, stress, role ambiguity, and role conflict for teacher leaders as they [try] to balance their new school-level responsibilities with their classroom responsibilities. (Smylie et al., 2002, p. 166) In his groundbreaking work on teacher leadership, Smylie reported that: Virtually without exception, teacher leaders and principals referred to ambiguities and uncertainties to describe the conditions in which they had to develop their new working relationships. These ambiguities and uncertainties concerned how teacher leadership roles were to be defined and performed as well as how these roles might affect principals’ leadership roles, teacher leaders’ ongoing classroom responsibilities, and the schools generally. They concerned how principals and teacher leaders would work together in the development and performance of these teacher leadership roles. They also concerned whether both teacher leaders and principals could trust each other and whether each possessed the requisite knowledge and skill to develop and perform successfully in new work roles and working relationships. (Smylie and Brownlee-Conyers 1992, pp. 162–163) The first piece of the problem that support is needed to address is the role ambiguity and conflict teachers almost always experience when they assume schoolwide leadership responsibilities. One dimension of this ambiguity emanates from confusion between their established roles as classroom teachers and their new roles as leaders at the school level, over the question of “whether they are instructors of students or leaders of teachers” (Smylie, 1996, p. 548). Or, as Wasley (1991) found, “trying to both teach and lead creates its own tensions” (1991, p. 144). Conflicts are especially likely to arise when teacher leaders themselves, or their peers, believe that schoolwide leadership responsibilities prevent teacher leaders from “fulfilling classroom obligations” (Clift et al., 1992, p. 901) and “interfere with teaching” (Crowther et al., 2002, p. 35). Especially damaging is the “perception that the responsibilities of teacher leaders remove them too frequently from the classroom” (Smylie & Denny, 1989, p. 11) and thus may “deter excellence in teachers’ practices” (Crowther et al., 2002, p. 35) in classrooms and “delegitimize the roles of teacher leaders from the perspective of other classroom teachers” (Smylie, 1996, p. 548). The result has been that “left to define

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their roles for themselves, … teacher leaders have had difficulty separating their conventional classroom teacher roles from their extra-classroom teacher leadership roles” (Odell, 1997, p. 120). Working with peers is a second source of role ambiguity and conflict, especially regarding issues of impinging upon the work of colleagues and peer support for teacher leadership (Little, 1988; Smyser, 1995). The issue of “changed working relationships between teacher leaders and other teachers” (Whitaker, 1997, p. 10) is never far from the surface; neither is “the ambiguity associated with other teachers’ perceptions” (Smylie & Denny, 1989, p. 16) of the role of teacher leaders, nor the knowledge that “social relationships of teachers are powerful determiners of how teachers assuming leadership roles will be viewed” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 13). Researchers have regularly discovered that peer teachers are unclear about the roles of teacher leaders (Smylie & Denny, 1989) and possess less than well-defined expectations for lead teachers (Odell, 1997). They often hold teacher leaders “suspect” (Walters & Guthro, 1992, p. 144) “and sometimes harbor resentment against them” (Odell, 1997, p. 120). This condition is most likely to materialize when there is evidence of “conflict between teacher leaders and the social and normative context of faculty relationships” (Smylie & Brownlee-Conyers, 1992, p. 156). Locating and defining “the boundary between administration and teaching” (Hart, 1990, p. 518) only adds to role conflict for teacher leaders and for other teachers and administrators (Little, 1988, Smylie & Brownlee-Conyers, 1992). In a real sense, teacher leaders experience “a netherworld that [is] neither that of the administrator nor that of the teacher” (Datnow & Castellano, 2002, p. 204). They enter “uncharted ground, not plain faculty, nor pure administration” (Wasley, 1991, p. 142): a kind of “no man’s land” between their colleagues in the staff room and the senior management team. In acting in the interests of the whole school they may, on the one hand, be seen as agents of authority, whilst on the other hand, they are wanting to be perceived as acting on behalf of the staff. (Ainscow & Southworth, 1996, p. 243) One of the most severe problems “experienced by these teacher-leaders [is that] of not being accepted by either the collegium of teachers or by the administration” (Whitaker, 1997, p. 11). These new roles “obscure previously clear boundaries” (Hart, 1990, p. 517) between teaching and managing. Of particular importance here are the findings that “suggest that ambiguities and uncertainties associated with new teacher leadership roles have significant implications for the development of new working relationships between teachers who assume those roles and their principals” (Smylie & BrownleeConyers, 1992, p. 179). The consequences of role ambiguity and “role confusion” (LeBlanc & Shelton, 1997, p. 34) thread through the research literature on teacher leadership. Most telling, “individuals have been left to carve out identities and build support from teachers and administrators on a case-by-case basis” (Little, 1988, p. 92). Personal identities are often blurred (Smylie, 1996). Fears often surface, especially around possible “social sanctions” (Hart, 1990, p. 519) and potential ostracism from peers – about “the chasm these new roles might place between [teacher leaders] and their colleagues”

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(Pellicer & Anderson, 1995, p. 13; Yarger & Lee, 1994). Mistrust sometimes emerges (Whitaker, 1997), confusion forms (Hart, 1994), and friendships are subject to “considerable strain” (Little, 1990, p. 513). As traditional norms and understandings change with the influx of teacher leadership roles, “conflicts increase” (LeBlanc & Shelton, 1997, p. 34), tensions rise (Collinson & Sherrill, 1997; Smylie & Denny, 1989), congeniality declines and jealousies increase (Smyser, 1995). For teacher leaders, feelings of loneliness and isolation often result. In addition to the assistance needed to navigate through role conflicts, we know that considerable support is required to help teacher leaders negotiate the role overload that accompanies this new work (Broyles, 1991; Hart, 1996). Studies in this area conclude that “teacher-leaders essentially have two jobs” (Whitaker, 1997, p. 12) and because “the natural tendency of administrators, and even the teacher leaders themselves, is to expect … teacher leaders to take on additional roles, usually without eliminating other responsibilities” (Hart & Baptist, 1996, p. 97) or “compensating for the added demands made by engaging in school leadership” (Griffin, 1995, p. 44), it is not surprising that teachers assuming schoolwide leadership responsibilities often begin “experiencing overload” (Clift et al., 1992, p. 903), “overload associated with [these] new responsibilities” (Smylie, 1996, p. 550). Although related to role ambiguity and conflict, role overload differs from these ideas “in that expectations do not clash; rather they proliferate to the point at which the school runs out of time, energy, and resources” (Clift et al., 1992, p. 902). There is an unwritten principle in the literature on teacher leadership that ferreting out problems illuminates solution paths as well. Here analysts have done an exceptional job in laying out needed avenues of support for teacher leadership. Work on compiling a portfolio of factors to eliminate obstacles and barriers to the successful practice of schoolwide leadership for teachers has been less forthcoming. When they do turn their attention in this direction, reviewers feature core strategies such as garnering “professional acceptance of the existence of teacher leaders in the profession and in the schools” (Crowther et al., 2002, p. 32) and deepening trust among teachers and between teachers and administrators (Blasé & Blasé, 2001; Crowther et al., 2002), especially through collaborative work (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001; Smyser, 1995). They also identify more concrete ideas such as tightening expectations and clarifying roles by developing more specific job descriptions (Miller, 1992; Whitaker, 1997) and providing teachers with “images of what is possible” (Darling-Hammond et al., 1995, p. 104) and “maps and reliable guides to follow (Clift et al., 1992, p. 906).

Note 1. The material in this chapter is adapted from Murphy, 2005, Chapter 6.

References Ainscow, M., & Southworth, G. (1996). School improvement: A study of the roles of leaders and external consultants. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 7(3), 229–251. Barth, R. S. (1988a). Principals, teachers, and school leadership. Phi Delta Kappan, 69(9), 639–642. Barth, R. S. (1988b). School: A community of leaders. In A. Lieberman (Ed.), Building a professional culture in schools (pp. 129–147). New York: Teachers College Press.

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38 THE CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF TEACHERS: ISSUES OF COHERENCE, COHESION AND EFFECTIVENESS

Chris Day and Ruth Leitch

Introduction This chapter will discuss the nature of continuing professional development (CPD) and its association with teachers’ professionalism and effectiveness in the context of efforts by governments worldwide to drive up standards in schools. Recent research has confirmed that high quality education for pupils depends upon the commitment and resilience of thoughtful, knowledgeable, skilled teachers (Day, Sammons, Stobart, Kington, & Gu, 2007). Yet development is neither continuous nor does it follow an even trajectory (Huberman, 1993), and the growth of expertise is not contingent upon age and experience. If employers wish to retain the hearts and minds as well as the physical presence of teachers, then CPD which is appropriate to their cognitive and emotional needs, concerns and commitment at different times in their professional lives and in different school and classroom contexts as well as those of their department and/or organisation is essential. CPD has always been necessary for those who work in schools because of changes in curricula, teaching approaches, the conditions in which they work and the broader external environmental, socio-economic and cultural factors which affect them and their pupils. That such changes are inevitable is a truism. However, their direction and pace differ in different countries, and in different policy contexts; and they will be mediated by teachers’ own professional beliefs and aspirations, and their sense of positive (or negative) professional identity. What is inescapable is that teachers will be called upon to manage different personal, workplace and policy implementation “scenarios,” and that these will vary in intensity. Thus, their capacities to manage these are fundamental to their abilities to become and remain effective (Day et al., 2007). Over the last 30 years, a growing number of publications across and beyond Europe have explored the different purposes and practices of CPD in order to attempt to evaluate its effectiveness (e.g., CERI1 Review, OECD, 1998). Traditional “short burst” events, often held off the school premises, have been criticised because they are unable 707 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 707–726. © 2007 Springer.

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to target specific needs and are regarded as being often “irrelevant” and “impractical.” Problems of transferability of knowledge from one setting to another have been identified, and the model of teacher learning which they represent has been criticised as being insufficiently sustained or participative. Moreover, reliance upon the transient qualities of the “provider” has been found to be unreliable. With the move to financial and managerial devolution in some countries, “school-based” and “school-focussed” CPD have gained in popularity. They appear to minimise costs and maximise the latent expertise of teachers in the school. They fit well, also, with the ideology of teachers as knowledge producers and reflective practitioners; and with earlier notions of “school improvement from within” (Barth, 1990). Yet they have been found, ultimately, to be limited in their impact (after all, the benefits of internal expertise must, eventually, run their course), and successful schools are now recognised as being learning communities in which principals/headteachers “delegate”; “distribute” or “disperse” their leadership functions, promote “collaborative” cultures and ensure a range of differentiated learning opportunities in and out of school which enable all staff to benefit according to need. Thus, for example in the UK and elsewhere, partnerships between schools – networked learning communities – have been established. These promote collaborative action inquiry into learning and teaching in classrooms which is carried out by groups of teachers (Veuglers & O’Hair, 2005). These supplement whole school CPD and a broad “menu” of CPD which, in theory, is available to individual staff. In this chapter, we discuss five related aspects of CPD effectiveness: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

Competing discourses of professionalism: purposes and practices of CPD Meanings of effectiveness CPD and professional learning Evaluating the impact of CPD Cohesion and coherence: the European problem.

Competing Discourses of Professionalism: Purposes and Practices of CPD It is not possible to consider effective CPD without locating it in the contexts of changing economic, social and knowledge contexts which, over the last 20 years, have challenged and continue to challenge the traditional post-war model of teachers as autonomous professionals. Central to this autonomy in the past has been the right of teachers to make informal decisions about the curriculum, teaching, learning and assessment. A decade ago, teachers were still placed – at least by the research community – at the centre of discussions about their development. … persons who wish to reform educational practice cannot simply tell teachers how to teach differently. Teachers themselves must make the design changes. To do so, they must acquire rich knowledge of subject matter, pedagogy, and subject specific pedagogy; and they must come to hold new beliefs in these domains. Successful professional development efforts are those that help teachers to acquire

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or develop new ways of thinking about learning, learners, and subject matter, thus constructing a professional knowledge base that will enable them to teach students in more powerful and meaningful ways. (Borko & Putnam, 1995, p. 60) This analysis of these CPD programs was based on the authors’ own cognitive psychological model and did not explicitly account for key affective features of teacher learning, nor teachers’ social and moral purposes. Nevertheless, it clearly supports Stenhouse’s (1976) proposition that it is teachers who will change the world of the classroom by understanding it. Acceptance of this principle has, however, been forever changed as governments, concerned to improve standards of student attainment and thus raise their position in the educational and economic league tables, have intervened more actively in all aspects of school and classroom governance. Teachers have become more accountable to their paymasters for their performance through, “rituals of verification” (Power, 1997), “audit cultures” (Strathern, 2000) and “standards-based accountability” (Day & Sachs, 2004, p. 8). It has been suggested that there are now two competing discourses of professionalism: (1) Managerial – in which individuals must construct new roles and identities in order to be more accountable against standardised external imposed criteria (Brennan, 1996; Clarke & Newman, 1997). (2) Democratic – which emphasises collaborative, co-operative action between teachers and other stakeholders. Here teachers are acknowledged to have a wider responsibility to society (exercising what are often called “moral” or “ethical” purposes) than the efficient implementation of curricula. These two discourses are not exclusive, but rather contemporaneous and dynamic. As Day and Sachs (2004, p. 7) observe, “It is likely that teachers move between the two, negotiating the contradictions and multiple demands that are placed on them in their busy and complex workplaces.” It is the tensions caused by these two discourses that permeate the education systems of all countries in Europe and beyond and which, in turn, drive the provision of CPD and the choices which schools and teachers make. In writing about the rhetoric and realities of CPD across Europe, Sugrue (2004) drew attention to the growing emphasis placed by policy makers upon CPD which ensures the efficient and effective implementation of their change agendas and which have resulted in both positive and negative consequences of teacher learning. The politicisation of CPD, as with schools, reflects a shift in the locus of control. Those forms of CPD, which best suit the purposes of those with power and resources, are, he suggests, privileged over others. In considering “effectiveness” of CPD, then, who defines effectiveness will dictate not only the kinds of CPD which are fit for purpose but also which kinds of CPD will be resourced and how their effectiveness will be judged. In his review of European policy trends, Sugrue highlighted the tensions between CPD as a means of giving teachers sufficient ownership and control of their development in order, for example, to engage in reflective practices (e.g., action research and other forms of collaborative inquiry), to develop different teaching-learning

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relationships (e.g., pupil participation, voice); and CPD as a means of maintaining, “a coherent, system-wide policy strategy” (OECD, 1997, p. 13). He concluded: While the rhetoric is of increasing complexity in school and classroom ecology, policies tend to rationalise such complexities and reduce them to a series of relatively uncomplicated prescriptive solutions, and provide courses for teachers to instruct them in implementation strategies. (Sugrue, 2004, p. 86) Different countries have developed different policy documents in relation to purposes. For example, in England, the GTCE (General Teaching Council for England) has developed a professional code which is based upon a model of teachers as “reflective practitioners.” The OECD (1998) has developed a policy in which teachers are expected to be role models of lifelong learning for their students. In this broader policy arena, teachers are expected to adapt their traditional roles to those which, “support learners to take charge of their own learning … to develop and practice … participatory teaching and learning methods … (as) … an essential professional skill for educators … in both formal and non-formal settings” (European Commission, 2001, p. 14, cited in Sugrue, 2004, p. 73). Thus, teacher learning through CPD, like pupil learning, is becoming more subject to measures of effectiveness linked to centrally defined purposes; there are ever more urgent calls for CPD to impact directly on pupil learning and attainment; and, as with pupil progress measures, it is those aspects which are most susceptible to classification and grading which dominate. It is not, perhaps, surprising, therefore, that the “deficit” model of CPD (Jackson, 1968) in which it is assumed that teachers need something which they don’t already have, continues to dominate in many countries. For this reason, training programs and coaching models of CPD (Joyce & Showers, 1988) which essentially are used principally to upgrade teachers’ technical skills in the classroom, for the purpose of short-term improvements in pupils’ measurable test gains, have increased in popularity in Europe over recent years, and form a central tenet of new national CPD strategies. More creative, complex “aspirational” models, which build on what teachers already have (e.g., action research, “reflective practice,” networked learning communities) and which recognise the importance to effective teaching and learning of motivation, commitment and emotional resilience, co-exist uneasily with these.

Meanings of Effectiveness Despite its title, CPD is never continuing nor, as some would have it, continuous (CERI,1 OECD, 1998). If informal learning and learning from experience is discounted (since it is, by nature, unrecorded, unremarked and largely private), then, at best, CPD represents a series of more, or less, temporary interventions into teachers’ lives. By contrast, Day (1999) offers a comprehensive definition of CPD: Professional development consists of all natural learning experiences and those conscious and planned activities which are intended to be of direct or indirect benefit to the individual, group or school, which contribute, through these, to the

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quality of education in the classroom. It is the process by which, alone and with others, teachers review, renew and extend their commitment as change agents to the moral purposes of teaching; and by which they acquire and develop critically the knowledge, skills and emotional intelligence essential to good professional thinking, planning and practice with children, young people and colleagues throughout each phase of their teaching lives. (Day 1999, p. 4) Judging the effectiveness of CPD is, therefore, elusive. It is clear from this definition that CPD effectiveness must take account of the purposes and processes of CPD as well as its indirect and direct impact upon different stakeholders of its effects, not only upon their knowledge, skills and actions, but also their commitment and moral purposes and thinking and planning. It must also take account of the moderating influences of their lives and professional learning/career phases and the mediating influences of the pupils and contexts with which they work (Day et al., 2007). School effectiveness research has suggested theoretical linkages between teacher evaluation, staff development, teacher improvement and school improvement (Teddlie, Stringfield, & Burdett, 2003). However, there are variations within each, and it is not easy to measure cause and effect relationships between them, particularly when moderating (school context, professional life phase of teachers) and mediating variables (school culture, CPD, leadership, pupil behaviour, teacher identity) are taken into account. A range of empirical qualitative research and more recent mixed methods longitudinal research into variations in the work and lives of teachers and their effects on pupils (Day et al., 2007) confirms that the nature of the linkages is problematic. This separation of research communities has meant, also, that not all the components have been studied simultaneously or from similar research perspectives. Creemers and Kyriakides (2005) outline a dynamic model of school improvement that aims to take account of factors not only at school policy and system levels but also in terms of teachers’ classroom practices. It proposes the (self-) identification of differing teaching profiles that relate to differing priorities for professional development depending on the stage at which the individual teacher is at any point in time, thus, at least beginning to try to draw together previously disparately researched areas of effectiveness. However, research which focuses upon evaluations of CPD effectiveness shows overwhelmingly that these: ● ●

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rarely focus upon longer term or indirect benefits; rarely differentiate between different kinds of benefits in relation to different purposes; are often based upon individual self reports which relate to the quality and relevance of the experience and not its outcomes; usually occur summatively, after the learning experience, rather than formatively so that they can be used to enhance that experience; rarely attempt to chart benefits to the school or department (possibly because these are often not explicitly contained within purposes).

The problem in terms of evaluation of effectiveness is that CPD serves three key interrelated purposes which cannot easily be separated: (1) the development of the

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system (policy, school); (2) the individual (teacher), and, through these, (3) the pupil. It follows that definitions of effectiveness will relate to the extent that the needs of each of these are met: ●

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Effectiveness for the system: relates to meeting minimum, baseline competences related to classroom teaching, departmental or school role and other system accountability demands for example, knowledge production for policy solutions. CPD design will be oriented towards these. Effectiveness for the teacher: relates to acquiring and updating content and pedagogical knowledge, understanding student learning needs and planning for, monitoring and assessing these; or evidence-based practice as a form of practitioner inquiry (Groundwater-Smith & Dadds, 2004). However, because teaching demands motivation and emotional commitment, effectiveness will relate to teachers’ professional identities, beliefs and ideals (self-esteem, self-image, future perspectives). Teacher learning, as Kelchtermans (2004) suggests, can only be properly understood in terms of earlier learning, present practice and expectations for the future and in the context of influence of historical, social, cultural, organisational change and leadership. Definitions will also relate to the kind of professionalism which is being encouraged for example, managerialist or democratic. Effectiveness for the pupils: relates to the ways in which the pupils’ motivations, attitudes, behaviours, attainments, achievements are affected by what the teacher has learnt through CPD. The influences may be direct (as in the case of new subject knowledge transfer, teaching and learning strategies, changes in the motivations, attitudes, understandings, commitments, and behaviours of the teacher) or indirect (as in the case of increased range of learning opportunities, changes in teacher learner relationships). These may affect pupils’ motivations, attitudes, behaviour, approaches to learning and, ultimately, what they achieve as measured by examinations and tests.

CPD and Professional Learning There is a range of research which links the effectiveness of CPD to conditions in schools which foster (or do not foster) learning cultures for teachers (e.g., Fullan, 1993; Gray, Reynolds, & Fitz-Gibbon, 1999). Such cultures require purposeful, supportive leadership that balances collegial, collaborative work on the one hand with individual, autonomous work on the other (Clement & Vandenberghe, 2000), including intrapersonal learning through forms of reflection (Leitch & Day, 2001a, 2001b) and which match CPD differentially with longer term professional and personal needs as well as those shorter term classroom projects and teachers’ departmental and school-wide roles and responsibilities. One way of framing evaluation in terms of the orientations of CPD and possible benefits to the organisation and/or individual teachers is provided by Day (1999) (Figure 1) although it does not deal with the difficult (and possibly intractable) relationship between teacher learning and pupil learning and achievement.

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Individual professional (extended development)

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Figure 1. Orientations and benefits of career-long professional development planning Source: Day, (1999, p. 104).

The connection between CPD program/activity quality and program/activity outcome effectiveness is complex and often mediated by other variables. Many studies of the impact of CPD limit themselves to the evaluation by the participants and in some cases the providers. However, Meiers and Ingvarson (2005, p. 2) indicate that the time has now gone when questionnaires are distributed at the doors as teachers leave CPD courses and that there is a need for more sophisticated methods for evaluating professional development programs that ask about the “presumed links between professional learning strategies and changes in teacher knowledge, classroom practices and student outcomes.” In “Building a learning profession” (2002) Ingvarson provided an overview of contemporary research on effective professional learning for teachers, arguing that, “teacher quality outweighs student background factors in explaining variation in student achievement” (p. 3) and citing Supovitz (2001) review of research studies which examined the relationship between professional development and teaching practice: Together, these studies provide a solid basis for concluding that professional development that is connected to specific standards for student performance, based upon intensive and sustained training around concrete tasks, focused on subject matter knowledge, and embedded in a systemic context is likely to be effective. (Ingvarson, 2002, p. 85) He suggests that professional learning is “most likely to improve student learning outcomes,” if it increases teachers’ understandings of the content they teach; how students learn that content; how to represent and convey that content in meaningful ways; and how well their students are doing in relation to how well they should be doing. Kennedy’s (1998) examination of ten research studies that specifically investigated the effectiveness of CPD on student learning concluded that the more successful programs focused first on influencing teacher knowledge rather than practice. Indeed, training and development in pedagogical principles will, it is suggested, be more effective when embedded in the context of teaching and learning specific content knowledge. Yet, no evidence was presented which provided a direct cause and effect relationship between CPD, teacher learning and increases over time in measured pupil attainments.

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In England, a systematic review of the impact of collaborative CPD on teaching and learning was carried out by EPPI (Evidence-Informed Policy and Practice Information). This review of research set out to identify, evaluate and synthesise studies conducted since 1988 against agreed review criteria. After an initial examination of 13,479 published papers on CPD, 266 were reviewed in detail using evidence-based criteria. Seventy-two of these were relevant and 17 met the criteria in full. Fifteen of these were found to produce reliable evidence of impact. In all but one, the collaborative CPD was linked with improvements in both teaching and learning. It resulted in greater teacher confidence, commitment to changing practice and willingness to try new things; demonstrable enhancement of student motivation; and improvements in performance. Thus, such work enables program designers to learn more about the factors which contribute to CPD effectiveness without necessarily being able to predict outcomes. It is clear, then, that “effectiveness” is not easy to assess. A range of criteria which are related to the different purposes, forms of and participants in CPD must be used. For example, purposes may be oriented towards five dimensions of teacher development: (1) Classroom knowledge (Classroom practice needs). This might include subject matter updates, extending the range of teaching approaches; or introducing new understandings of learning for example, multiple intelligences, formative assessment, learning styles. (2) Role effectiveness (Leadership/management). This might include training to prepare for understanding new organisational roles such as subject leader, middle manager, principal, mentor or coach; or, for updating skills needed to continue to perform these roles effectively. (3) Whole school (School policy needs). This dimension recognises the need to review and renew key whole school issues: for example, student behaviour policies, community participation and new initiatives related to school improvement which directly concern or have implications for the work of the whole staff. (4) External policy implementation (Government policy needs). Central and/or regional government initiatives have become a regular feature of the landscape of schools. Whilst those which are not legislated (e.g., personalised learning) should be tested against existing best practice, those that are, for example, national curricula, testing regimes, must be debated as part of the implementation process. This dimension is a key part of CPD in the twenty-first century. (5) Professional/Personal development (Long term individual needs). As teachers and other staff move through their working lives, so professional needs will change. Mid-career teachers, for example, may be concerned with work-life management, and those in their later years may need renewal and refreshment of their commitment. All will need intellectual stimulation and emotional renewal through a range of CPD experiences. Over a career and in changing times it might be reasonable to expect that teachers would need to have access to all of these learning opportunities in the interests of improvement and, therefore, effectiveness. Moreover, effectiveness as an outcome of CPD will be different, according to purpose, relevance and quality of the CPD experience. Effectiveness may be interpreted as focussing upon three areas:

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(1) The Teacher: relating, for example, to effectiveness as judged by others (e.g., quality of teaching, role enactment, classroom management, pupils’ performance in tests and examinations), to perceived effectiveness by the teacher concerning the sustaining of motivation, self-efficacy, commitment, ideals and aspirations; as well as understanding new subject matter, approaches to teaching, out-of-classroom responsibilities and roles; and greater understanding of social and economic contexts which influence teaching and learning. (2) The Pupil: the capacity of the teacher to manage and influence pupils’ motivations, attitudes and values, expectations, engagement with learning and knowledge of self and others; to enhance their abilities to be self-reflective and to achieve through the acquisition and application of knowledge about learning and the learner (e.g., pupil learning styles; emotional literacy); and to provide skills/development opportunities which enable access by the pupils to a greater range of appropriately differentiated learning and achievement opportunities. (3) The School: the school-wide educational vision and the way this – together with its responses to externally imposed policies and changes in governance – is translated into school policies for example, on teaching, shared management (e.g., distributed leadership), inclusion, assessment for learning, pastoral care, pupil guidance and relationships with the community. As with classroom learning, the effects of teaching may not always be immediately observable or apparent. It may not be intended to be so and, even if it is, it may not be easily measurable among all students. Thus, to assess “effectiveness” or “impact” of CPD is not always a simple matter. Perhaps this is why there is relatively little research and perhaps it is why schools themselves sometimes avoid it, using only the most broad measures – for example, questionnaires given out at the end of a formal event/series of events; self-report or, less often, a review of the impact of CPD sometime after the experience. It is clear, however, that evaluation practice is most useful when it explores the interrelationship between the impact on teacher, school and pupil (Figure 2). Evaluation processes should be sophisticated enough to track multiple changes and different levels of impact in relation to the orientation and settings of CPD.

Teacher

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Evaluating CPD at three levels

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Evaluating the Impact of Continuing Professional Development2 It is clear from research that a key factor in ensuring effective CPD is matching appropriate professional development provision to particular professional as well as organisational and policy needs and that, thus far, efforts at system level to address these have been minimal. Yet, this “fit” between the developmental needs of the teacher and the selected activity is critically important in ensuring that there is a positive impact at the school and classroom level (Hopkins & Harris, 2001). Where staff development opportunities are poorly conceptualised, insensitive to the cognitive and socioemotional concerns and needs of individual participants and make little effort to relate learning experiences to workplace conditions, they make little impact upon teachers or their pupils (Day, 1999). Although there have been claims that CPD needs to be linked to both individual and organisational goals if both individual and organisational change are to be achieved (Jones & Fear, 1994), from the perspective of our definition of CPD, it is clear that there will be regular occasions during the life cycle of organisations and at particular times of national reform when different needs will predominate, and times in individual teachers’ career development when their needs must prevail. Needs assessment at both these levels is necessary. Effectiveness of professional development, and its evaluation, are context specific; and over time there is need for an optimal mix of CPD experiences which take into account teachers’ professional life phases, career development and school identified needs (Guskey, 1994). Current evaluation of CPD at the system level falls short in a number of ways and areas. Guskey (2000, pp. 8–10) suggests three main limitations. The first is that system-wide evaluation of CPD has tended to focus on collecting data which summarises what has been experienced in CPD rather than its effects; the second is that when evaluation data is collected, this usually takes the form of participant satisfaction questionnaires. Whilst these assess whether participants consider the activity or activities to have been enjoyable and successful, they do not engage with issues such as gains in knowledge, or changes in practice which might reasonably be expected to result from CPD – especially whether there have been changes in student outcomes. Third, evaluations tend not to be formative. They do not take account of change processes nor the more complex professional development activities which take place over a longer period of time and many professional development activities (e.g., network learning, action research) which take place over a longer period of time and involve a greater range and depth of learning activities. A recent study of CPD activity in England by Edmonds and Lee (2002) similarly found that, as in North America, in most cases evaluation took the form of a feedback sheet that was completed by teachers, and which included questions on delivery, content, whether they felt the course had met its objectives, and in some cases whether it was cost-effective and was likely to impact on teaching and learning. Other forms of follow-up were unusual, with actual effects on teaching and learning hardly ever being studied, and long-term monitoring of impact usually not present. Teachers reported that they thought CPD improved teaching and learning, but were unable to provide hard evidence of impact.

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This lack of attention to the evaluation of the impact of CPD is by no means limited to the education sector. Other professions, that likewise attach a lot of importance to continuing professional development and training, show similar concerns for the lack of evidence collected on outcomes of CPD. It is important to recognise that there are different levels at which potential impact of CPD can be gauged. Guskey’s (2000) model offers a particularly helpful way of thinking about evaluating impact at different levels, since it can be related directly to different orientations and intended outcomes:

Level 1: Participants’ Reactions Currently this is the most common and easily collectable form of evaluative evidence, and it is generally carried out in the immediate aftermath of the CPD event. However, in many ways it is also the least informative as participants’reactions to the CPD tend to be impressionistic and highly subjective. Questions addressed at level 1 will include whether the participants enjoyed the event, thought it was useful, addressed their needs, was wellpresented and well organised etc. Three main types of questions can be answered using this approach: content questions (e.g., were issues addressed relevant, was the material pitched at an appropriate level), process questions (e.g., was the session leader well prepared, were the materials suitable) and context questions (e.g., was the room the right size or temperature) (Guskey, 2000). As can be seen from these questions, while they address possible prerequisites of professional development that can facilitate CPD leading to change, they do not themselves measure its impact on practice.

Level 2: Participants’ Learning from CPD Level 2 in Guskey’s framework comprises participants’ learning from CPD. There are several types of learning: cognitive, affective or behavioural, that can result from CPD. These different types of knowledge are acquired and modified in different ways, thus probably requiring different methods of evaluation. As well as specific knowledge and skills and affective outcomes, CPD may result in renewed commitment of teachers as change agents, and in renewed or extended moral purpose. These outcomes are crucial to teacher effectiveness, and need to be taken into account at this level of evaluation.

Level 3: Organisational Support and Change It is clear from the research on school improvement and the growing body of literature on change that CPD programs are unlikely to have a lasting effect without undergirding organisational support. A supportive school ethos and an expectation that all teachers engage in CPD have been found to be important factors in securing change as a result of CPD (Edmonds & Lee, 2002). CPD activities have been found to transfer more easily into changed behaviours and teaching practices if there is good fit with individuals’ professional and personal values and if professional development approaches already exist in the organisation (Knight, 2002). As well as being important in leading to

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success of CPD programs, organisational change can often be a prime goal of CPD programs. Therefore, organisational level outcomes and support are important parts of CPD evaluation since they would have an impact upon motivation on the one hand and sustainability of change on the other. Issues such as alignment of the program to organisational policies, organisational support for the program (especially from leadership), organisational resources provided to the program (including, crucially, time) organisational barriers to the successful completion of the program, and general organisational effectiveness and culture (see school effectiveness literature) are all important aspects in this regard (Guskey, 2000).

Level 4: Participants’ Use of New Knowledge and Skills When a CPD program is directly intended to change practice, it is essential to evaluate whether participants are actually using new knowledge and skills acquired. Evaluation of this level will have to take place after a reasonable time, the length of which will depend on the complexity of the knowledge or skills to be acquired and the amount of time participants require to develop and practice these skills (Grace, 2001; Guskey, 2000).

Level 5: Student Outcomes The fifth level identified by Guskey (2000) is the one least likely to be measured in evaluations at present, but also the one that is most important because it assesses the impact on student learning. Student learning can be defined and measured in a number of ways. A first distinction is between cognitive outcomes, such as mathematical attainment, and non-cognitive outcomes such as attitudes to school. Both require different methods to determine program effects (Guskey, 2000). The most common form of measuring cognitive outcomes is through testing. Standardised and non-standardised testing forms a key part of the educational system, and is usually considered to provide the most reliable measure of cognitive outcomes (Muijs & Reynolds, 2002). As well as cognitive outcomes, non-cognitive outcomes can often be the goal of interventions. CPD can aim to change teaching in ways that improve pupils’ enjoyment of the subject, attitudes to school or self-esteem. Many different noncognitive outcomes exist, and, consequently, many different ways of measuring such outcomes which are fit for purpose are needed. Guskey (2000) suggests that when designing CPD evaluations one should work backwards, starting with level 5, both in planning the CPD activity and the evaluation thereof. This ensures that the final goal of improving pupil outcomes is central to the process. Effective evaluation of CPD will usually need to serve two main purposes: summative evaluation (does the program/activity improve outcomes?) and formative assessment (how can the program/activity be improved?). These two goals can best be served by collecting data in different ways. Test scores will, for example, often being used summatively, while interview and survey data can be used to guide formative evaluation (Scannell, 1996); and in order to be authentic, that is, take account of the different

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levels identified by Guskey and minimise bias, data need to be collected from a variety of stakeholders, rather than just one group, and a variety of research methods used (Smith, 2002). One of the key stakeholders whose potential contribution to the evaluation process is frequently overlooked is that of pupils. Little evidence exists of research into student perspectives of teachers’ professional development as part of an evaluation framework. A body of evidence is, however, emerging (Rudduck, Arnot, Fielding, & McIntyre 2003) that indicates how seeking pupils’ views on learning and teaching experiences, including the transformation of teacher knowledge and pedagogic practice through CPD, is a crucial factor in school improvement (McClelland, 2005). When pupils are genuinely engaged in such consultation processes (MacBeath, Demetriou, Rudduck, & Myers, 2003), not only do teachers benefit from formative feedback on the impact of their professional learning but the process of pupil consultation itself has the potential for “added value” in terms of demonstrable improvement in pupil achievement, commitment and self-esteem. Difficulties, however, persist from the context of performativity, surveillance and traditions of privacy within which most teachers are now working and which make it especially hard to develop such dialogic approaches to CPD evaluation.

Cohesion and Coherence: The European Problem Recent research has confirmed that high quality education for pupils depends strongly on the commitment and resilience of high quality teachers in each of six professional life phases. Thus, the development of teacher quality does not depend upon age, expertise or career phase alone (Day et al., 2007). It might, then, be expected that organisational conditions in support of teachers’ learning needs would be manifested in agreed national and/or regional CPD policy documents, designated CPD leadership, a range of CPD opportunities, formal and informal, optional and obligatory, on site and off site; and the embeddedness of CPD in all school wide policies. However, this kind of coherence and cohesion is the exception rather than the rule. In some countries, program evaluation is becoming more systematic through state-controlled assessment and inspection systems. For example, in England and Wales, the government’s Teacher Development Agency (TDA) funded professional development for teachers must be evaluated for its impact on pupils in schools. Few, however, have managed to create sufficiently sensitive models of evaluation to unpick the relationship between investment in CPD, the quality of intervention and outcome measures relating to increases in school and classroom effectiveness and improvement. Although, there is a strong drive to co-ordinate and create a consistent crossEuropean curriculum for Initial Teacher Education (Bologna Process) and a number of countries are also pledged to the development of a framework for continuing teacher education which links initial, induction, early professional development and in-service phases, there is little clarity and commitment concerning the conceptualisation and most effective implementation of CPD in schools across European member states.

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For example, not all European countries conceptualise teacher education as including in-service, viewing any ongoing development activities as informal, voluntary addenda, rather than comprising essential components within a framework of lifelong learning, commitment to teacher professionalism and systemic improvement. Some (e.g., Greece) view CPD as compulsory. Others (e.g., Germany, Norway, Iceland) distinguish between continuing training (professional refreshment and skills upgrading) and additional training (new skills and certification). Still others (UK, Spain, Portugal) link CPD to career advancement. Thus, across Europe, whilst there is agreement on the need to maintain, and if possible, improve the quality of education, and countries are aware of the important contribution which CPD makes to this aim, nevertheless, there exists a wide range of diverse and sometimes contradictory political agendas running, often simultaneously, with regard to the purposes and requirements of CPD – and thus the agreement on quality standards. This lack of consensus relates not just to differing countries within EU but, oftentimes, States and Municipalities within regions and countries. The main differences can be characterised as arising from pragmatism and idealism. Pragmatic purposes relate to the necessity for teachers to be involved in CPD activities in order to update skills and curriculum knowledge in response to policy changes or to develop new ways to respond to challenging pupil behaviour (the so-called “deficit” model of CPD). Idealistic purposes relate to such issues as developing greater social cohesion, developing such qualities as environmental awareness, gender equality, global awareness (Linde, 2003) or encouraging understanding of human rights, respect and tolerance and citizenship in conflict and post-conflict contexts (e.g., Northern Ireland; Bosnia-Herzogovina). Idealistic goals, whether implicit or explicit, cast teachers in the role of not just transforming schools but also of transforming societies through their capacities to educate and influence the socio-emotional dimensions of children’s experience. (OECD/UNESCO, 2001, p. 26). The question of the desirability of creating a coherent, co-operative and flexible transnational training and development system that remains sufficiently diversified to meet the needs of the systems, the schools, and the cognitive and socio-emotional needs of teachers and pupils in raising levels of school achievement is still moot (Romano, 2002). While we have witnessed a steady growth in Comenius, Socrates and Lingua programs that provide specific budgets to encourage greater mobility and co-operation in the professional development of teachers, it is still too soon to evaluate their impact (Montané, 2002). Among other difficulties of common conceptions, understandings of the nature, purposes and benefits, the age profiles of the teaching force and teacher shortages across countries continue to contribute to the differentiation and unevenness of CPD provision throughout Europe and add to the difficulties of developing any common framework for evaluation of their impact. For example, the requirements for CPD that arise for countries with a very young teaching force (e.g., Italy, Sweden, Germany) that has identifiable needs for early professional development relating to pedagogic practice and subject area knowledge are in contrast to those countries with large numbers of teachers in their forties and fifties (e.g., Israel, Slovakia, Belgium, France, UK) who may require retraining for innovations or reforms such as those associated with the development of new technologies or new student assessment practices (Siniscalco, 2002,

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pp. 13–14), or opportunities to revisit and renew commitment. With regard to problems associated with teacher shortage, fast-tracking people to enter teaching has led some countries (Netherlands; United Kingdom) to develop special accelerated training programs for graduates from other fields. Such flexibility places increased demands (fears of “deficits” due to short training in comparison to traditional models) on CPD and adds to the complexity of quality control. In general, the absence of clearlydefined standards applicable to all teachers at the outset of their training and at key points during their careers, may have ramifications for the quality, coherence, progression and continuity of continuing professional development opportunities. This, perhaps, is why many countries are adopting teacher profiles, as one way of negotiating ongoing development needs and of providing a monitoring mechanism (Eurydice, 2002). Overall, then, there continues to be much justifiable criticism of the lack of broad agreement on the principles of CPD and the random nature of its provision. Viebahn (2003) states that teacher education at all stages in Germany is considered to have a strong “scholarly” approach and as a result leads to the fulfilment of academic standards. However, it is divided into academic and practical stages with little mention of CPD except through further degree qualifications at universities. Cope and Inglis (1992) researching the impact of traditional academic degrees as a form of CPD in England, found that while teachers reported many positive features, there were few reports of specific gains in classroom skills. Nor did teachers see such skills development as an appropriate outcome from university courses. Clearly, the outcomes and effectiveness of such models of CPD are difficult to measure since they do not have immediate classroom effects; their impact can, however, be powerful over the longer period in terms of increased teacher commitment, self-efficacy, intellectual stimulus, reflexivity and renewal of purposes. Equally, in countries where there are shifts from individual career-oriented development towards whole school development activities taking place, professional training is equally fragmented and difficult to monitor in terms of observable and measurable outcomes (Siniscalco, 2002, p. 26). The persistence of diverse and piecemeal approaches to CPD across countries may in large measure, therefore, be related to a variety of conditions and these include, in many cases, restrictions on underpinning funding and resource infrastructures. Indeed, a study (Eurydice, 1995) in the European Union shows that, overall, only a small proportion of total education budgets are spent on in-service training and CPD activities. More significant investment is required to move from ad hoc, voluntary CPD to more systematic provision related to the concerns and needs of governments, schools and teachers. However, it is not only a lack of resource investment that holds back the development of CPD provision. It is also likely that lack of clear direction may be due to limited conceptualisations of the nature, purposes and potential of CPD. Thus, there is an absence of national or trans-national strategies at European level with common purposes, knowledge base, processes and competences/standards or outcome models that should characterise effective CPD and, indeed, whether or not such standardisation and harmonisation would be feasible or even desirable (Buchberger, Campos, Kallos, & Stephenson, 2000).

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Conclusions: Possibilities and Practicalities In a review of research into the field of professional development and teacher learning from a mainly North American perspective, Hilda Borko (2004) reminds us of the oft repeated maxim that changes in classroom practices demanded by reformers rely upon teachers. This implies the need for “high quality” professional development opportunities which will be relevant to purpose and teachers’ organisational, social and individual professional contexts. As Borko (2004) points out, and as her European colleagues have also noted (Day, 1999; Eraut, 1994), we still know very little about how teachers learn from CPD or the impact of such learning on students. Taking a “situated perspective” (Lave & Wenger, 1991) in which teacher learning, “is usefully understood as a process of increasing participation in the practice of teaching, and through this participation, a process of becoming knowledgeable in and about teaching” (Adler, 2000, p. 37), Borko maps what she calls three “phases” of research on teacher professional development, in order to assess the impact of professional development programs on teacher learning: (1) research which focuses upon a single program of CPD and teacher as learner but which does not take the facilitator or contextual influences into account; (2) research which explores the relationships among facilitators, a single program and teachers as learners in CPD which occurs at more than one site; and (3) research which compares multiple professional development programs on multiple sites. Here, researchers study relationships among all key elements – teachers, contexts, facilitators and programs. Borko provides substantial examples of research on all three phases. Whilst Borko’s article is designed to contribute to the design of better differentiated research models it also provides evidence of effectiveness of CPD through teacher self report of increased subject knowledge and understandings of how students’ think; through observing control groups as they incorporate new ideas into their teaching and students’ learning; through multiperspective qualitative evidence of how strong professional learning communities can foster teacher learning and the development of teaching; and through “records of practice” (e.g., teaching plans, examples of students’ work, videotape of lessons and stimulated recall discussions) which demonstrate impact of classroom focussed CPD. The importance of Borko’s critical overview of research into professional development and teacher learning is that it begins to provide a sketch map of certain kinds of professional development programs which are effective in achieving their different purposes – whether these relate to increasing subject knowledge, understandings of students’ thinking, knowledge of and practice of a broader range of pedagogical classroom strategies, or forms of sustained collaborative inquiry (as though networked learning communities or school-university partnerships). She concludes that: A longitudinal field study of multiple professional development programs could address important issues such as: how each intervention operates in diverse settings, program fidelity across sites, impact on teacher and student learning, resources required for enactment, and policies that support enactment. (Borko, 2004, p. 12)

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Borko’s work provides an important contribution to our thinking about ways of assessing the impact of CPD on teacher, classroom and school effectiveness – whether “felt” (perceived) or “observed” (in measurable attitude, behaviour and student results). However, even this is limited for it fails to give proper attention to the processes of change and development in relation to teachers’ emotional identities, sense of agency and commitment (Day et al., 2007). Accounts of “effectiveness,” whether in the context of teachers, schools, students or CPD, are too often couched in forms of rational language. Whilst recognising the complexities of learning and change processes they do not usually explicitly locate these in what Fineman (1993) has called the, “emotional arenas” of organisations. For example, van den Berg (2002, p. 583) suggests that the central question is, “How does educational change affect and build on the personal identity and emotions of those who are centrally involved?” Recognising these adds value to professional development processes. It follows that teachers cannot be helped to develop classroom management skills, for example, “without addressing their emotional responses to the events around them and the attitudes, values, and beliefs that underlie these responses” (Day, 2004; van den Berg, 2002, p. 586; Zembylas, 2003). It is because teachers invest so much of their personal and professional “selves” in their work that emotional or affective learning is an essential part of CPD effectiveness. Yet: Despite the considerable body of literature now available on the professional development of teachers, relatively little research has been conducted on the development of teachers’ professional practices in relation to their beliefs, attitudes or emotions. (van den Berg, 2002, p. 589) A wide range of research has revealed that whether CPD takes place on- or off-site, specific forms of CPD are less important than the learning processes in which teachers are asked to engage by the CPD provider/facilitator, the extent to which these learning processes match their own developmental needs and the extent to which they participate in decision-making processes. It is clear, then, that there are a wide variety of levels and contexts in which CPD can benefit teachers, schools and pupils, and that because of the influences upon, complexities and unpredictabilities of learning, change and development, its effectiveness needs to be judged by teachers themselves, school leaders and students. Effective CPD, like effective schools, will ultimately represent an outcome of visionary leadership and cultures of openness, respect, trust, collaboration and experimentation. It will be a part of, rather than apart from the ongoing learning lives of all in the school community. It should always be remembered, also, that CPD places additional personal and professional demands on teachers’ energy and time and that there are implicit or explicit expectations that they will improve and be seen to improve as a result. Providers of CPD must not neglect the person of the teacher in the pursuit of the implementation of shortterm change agendas. Evaluating the impact of both tangible professional outcomes and those which are intangible – for example, those which are associated with the exploration of personal values, attitudes, emotions, efficacy, identity, or moral purposes – add significantly greater complexity to CPD and demand a more comprehensive, system-wide

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view of purposes, range, processes and outcomes and how these ought to be assessed. In the final analysis, however: The preparedness of governments to invest in the ongoing development of their teachers, through a coherent system of educational provision and incentives, as well as the willingness of individual teachers to invest in their own development, will be important for improving the quality of education. (Siniscalco, 2002, p. 26)

Notes 1. CERI Centre for Education Research and Innovation. 2. This section draws upon a DfES funded project (Goodall, Day, Harris, Lindsey, & Muijs, 2005) in which one of the authors was involved.

References Adler, J. (2000). Social practice theory and Mathematics Teacher Education: A conversation between theory and practice. Nordic Mathematics Education Journal, 8(3), 31–53. Barth, R. (1990). Improving schools from within: Teachers, parents and principals can make the difference. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Borko, H. (2004). Professional development and teacher learning: Mapping the Terrain. Educational researcher, 33(8), 3–15. Borko, H., & Putnam, R. T. (1995). Expanding a teacher’s knowledge base: A cognitive psychological perspective development. In T. R. Guskey, & M. Huberman (Eds.), Professional development in education: New paradigms and practices (pp. 35–66). New York: Teachers College Press. Brennan, M. (1996, April). Multiple professionalisms for Australian teachers in an important age. Paper presented at the annual meeting of American Educational Research Association, New York. Buchberger, F., Campos, B., Kallos, D., & Stephenson, J. (Eds.). (2000). Green paper on teacher education in Europe: High quality teacher education for high quality education and training. Thematic Network on Teacher Education in Europe, Umêa, Sweden. Clarke, J., & Newman, J. (1997). The managerial state: Power, politics and ideology in the remaking of social welfare. London: Sage. Clement, M., & Vandenberghe, R. (2000). Teachers’ professional development: A solitary or collegial (ad)venture? Teaching and Teacher Education, 16, 81–101. Cope, P., & Inglis, W. (1992). The value of in-service degrees: Teachers’ long-term perceptions of their impact. British Educational Research Journal, 18, 297–308. Creemers, B. P. M., & Kyriakides, L. E. (2005, April). Establishing links between effectiveness research and improvement practices: A dynamic model of educational effectiveness. Paper presented at annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Montreal. Day, C. (1999). Developing teachers: The challenges of lifelong learning. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Day, C. (2004). A passion for teaching. London: Routledge. Day, C., & Sachs, J. (2004). International handbook on the continuing professional development of teachers. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Day, C., Sammons, P., Stobart, G., Kington, A., & Gu, Q. (2007). Teachers matter: Connecting work, lives and effectiveness. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Edmonds, S., & Lee, B. (2002). Teachers’ feelings about continuing professional development. Education Journal, 61, 28–29. Eraut, M. E. (1994). Developing professional knowledge and competence. London, UK: RoutledgeFalmer. European Commission. (2001). Report of the Eurostat Task Force on Measuring Lifelong Learning, Brussels: European Commission, Statistical Office of the European Communities, p. 14, cited in Sugrus, C., 2004, p. 73.

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Eurydice. (1995). In-Service Training of Teachers in the European Union and the EFTA/EEA countries. Brussels: EC. Eurydice. (2002). Key topics in Europe: The teaching profession in Europe. Report IV; Keeping Teaching Attractive for the 21st Century. Belgium: Directorate-General for Education and Culture, EC. Fineman, S. (1993). Emotions in organisations. London and New York: Sage Publications Inc. Fullan, M. (1993). Change forces: Probing the depths of educational reform. London: Falmer. Goodall, J., Day, C., Harris, A., Lindsey, G., & Muijs, D. (2005). Evaluating the impact of continuing professional development. London, England: Final report to department for education and skills. Available: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/reserach/data/uploading/RR659.pdf Grace, M. (2001). Evaluating the training. British Dental Journal, 191(5), 229–250. Gray, J., Reynolds, D., & Fitz-Gibbon, C. (Eds.). (1999). Merging traditions: The future of research on school effectiveness and school improvement. London: Cassell. Groundwater-Smith, S., & Dadds, M. (2004). Critical practitioner inquiry: Towards responsible professional communities of practice. In C. Day, & J. Sachs (Eds.), International handbook on the continuing professional development of teachers (pp. 238–263). Buckingham: Open University Press. Guskey, T. R. (1994, April). Professional development in education. In search of the optimal mix. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans. Guskey, T. R. (2000). Evaluating professional development. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Hopkins, D., & Harris A. (2001). Creating the conditions for teaching and learning: A handbook of staff development activities. London: David Fulton. Huberman, M. (1993). The lives of teachers. London: Cassell. Ingvarson, L. (2002). Building a learning profession. Australian College of Education. Camberwell, Vic: Australian Council for Educational Research. Jackson, P. (1968). Life in classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press. Jones, B., & Fear, N. (1994). Continuing professional development: Perspectives from human resources professionals. Personnel Review, 23(8), 49–60. Joyce, B., & Showers, J. (1988). Student achievement through staff development. New York: Longman. Kelchtermans, G. (2004). CPD for professional renewal: Moving beyond Knowledge for Practice. In C. Day, & J. Sachs (Eds.), International handbook on the continuing professional development of teachers (pp. 217–238). Maidenhead: Open University Press. Kennedy, M. (1998). Form and substance in in-service teacher education (Research Monograph. No. 13). Arlington, Va: National Science Foundation. Knight, P. (2002). A systemic approach to professional development: Learning as practice. Teaching and Teacher Education, 18(3), 229–241. Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral learning. New York: Cambridge University Press. Leitch, R., & Day, C. (2001a). Teaching and teacher educators’ lives: The role of emotion. Teaching and Teacher Education, 1(17), 403–415. Leitch, R., & Day, C. (2001b). Reflective processes in action: Mapping personal and professional contexts for learning and change. Journal of In-Service Education, 27(2), 237–259. Linde, G. (2003). The meaning of teacher education reform: National story-telling and global trends in Sweden. European Journal of Teacher Education, 26(1), 109–122. MacBeath, J., Demetriou, H., Rudduck, J., & Myers, K. (2003). Consulting pupils: A toolkit for teachers. Cambridge: Pearson Publishing. McLelland, M. (2005, November). “Why should we tell them what we learn?” Paper presented at PRAR/ CARN conference Utrecht. Meiers, M., & Ingvarson, L. (2005). Investigating the links between teacher professional development and student learning outcomes. Department of Science and Training. Canberra, Act: Commonwealth of Australia. Montané, M. (2002). Guest editorial: Education and culture in teacher training education in Europe: A dialogue among European educators to share knowledge. European Journal of Teacher Education, 25(1), 7–9. Muijs, R. D., & Reynolds, D. (2002). Behaviours or beliefs: What really matters? Journal of Classroom Observation, 37(4), 83–100.

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OECD. (1994). Quality in education. Paris: OECD. OECD. (1997). Staying ahead: In-service training and teacher professional development, “What works in Innovation in Education” Series. Paris: ISBN 92-64-160960. OECD. (1998). Lifelong learning to maintain employability. Paris: OECD. OECD/UNESCO. (2001). Teachers for Tomorrow’s Schools. Analysis of the World Education Indicators, Paris 2001: ISBN 92-64-18699-9. Power, M. (1997). The audit society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Romano, N. (2002). Training teachers for quality education in Europe. European Journal of Teacher Education, 25(1), 11–19. Rudduck, J., Arnot, M., Fielding, M., & McIntyre, D. (2003). Consulting Pupils about Teaching and Learning. Report to the ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Program. Available: http://groups.tlrp. org/access/content/group/126786695509-4234. Scannell, D. P. (1996). Evaluating professional development schools: The challenge of an imperative. Contemporary Education, 67(4), 241–243. Siniscalco, M. T. (2002). A statistical profile of the teaching profession. UNESCO Paris and International Labour Office, Geneva. Smith, C. L. (2002). Using continuous system level assessment to build school capacity. The American Journal of Evaluation, 23(3), 307–319. Stenhouse, L. A. (1976). Introduction to curriculum research and development. London: Methuen. Strathern, M. (2000). The Tyranny of transparency. British Educational Research Journal, 26, 309–321. Sugrue, C. (2004). Rhetorics and realities of CPD across Europe: From Cacophony towards coherence? In C. Day, & J. Sachs (Eds.), International handbook on the continuing professional development of teachers (pp. 217–238). Maidenhead: Open University Press. Teddlie, C., Stringfield, S., & Burdett, J. (2003). International comparisons of the relationships among educational effectiveness, evaluation and improvement variables. Journal of Personnel Evaluation in Education, 17(1), 5–20. van den Berg, R. (2002). Teachers’ meanings regarding educational practice. Review of Educational Research, Winter, 2000, 72(4), 577–825. Veuglers, W., & O’Hair, J. M. (Eds.). (2005). School-university networks and educational change. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press/McGraw-Hill. Viebahn, P. (2003). Teacher education in Germany. European Journal of Teacher Education, 26(1), 87–100. Zembylas, M. (2003). Emotions and teacher identity. Teachers and Teaching:Theory and Practice, 9(3), 213–226.

39 THE EVOLVING ROLE OF TEACHERS IN EFFECTIVE SCHOOLS

Eugene Schaffer, Roberta Devlin-Scherer, and Sam Stringfield

Introduction There are thousands of studies in the areas of both teacher effects and school effects. In each field, a minority of the studies rise to high levels of rigor. Unfortunately, the number of studies that meld the two fields is strikingly modest, with a great need for additional research. In this chapter, we explore the intersection of the two fields with a particular focus on current issues in teacher effects and how they might inform the school effects research base. The fields of teacher and school effects share a common challenge. Both are attempts to understand and elaborate on what most people intuitively know to be true. Millions of American parents add time to their daily commutes and pay tens of thousands of additional dollars to purchase homes in neighborhoods served by “good schools.” Similarly, they will attend Parent Teacher Association meetings, do volunteer work in the schools, and make multiple stressful visits to principals’ offices to get their children into classes taught by “good teachers” (or to avoid “bad teachers”). Clearly, parents – and students – believe that some teachers and schools are more effective than others. The two fields also share a common problem in their research histories: Both began with years of frustration in attempting to identify precisely “what matters” in terms of academic effectiveness. When the fledgling American Educational Research Association (AERA) commissioned the first Handbook of Research on Teaching (Gage, 1963), the 1000 page, two-column per page tome covered the widest practical range of topics in teaching, but not one of the chapters yielded replicable evidence that anything that teachers did mattered in terms of differentiating measurable student gains on any outcome. Similarly, in school effects, the first major US study of the effects of schools, the much-referenced “Coleman Report” (Coleman et al., 1966; reanalyzed by Jencks, 1972) concluded that neither teachers nor schools had differential effects on student achievement, and that the backgrounds and socioeconomic status of individual students’ families were the determining factor in student achievement.1 In no small part because 727 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 727–750. © 2007 Springer.

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the research summarized in Gage (1963) and presented by Coleman et al. (1966) did not include what today would be regarded as sophisticated examinations of actual classroom teaching, such conclusions were viewed as running counter to the experiences of many practitioners. Almost immediately, studies of teacher effectiveness were launched. This teacher effectiveness research appraised the effects of individual teachers on students through direct classroom observation and examined “processes and products” of classrooms. In the second edition of the Handbook of research on teaching (Travers, 1973), one chapter summarized research in which scholars reported on studies of hundreds of hours of actual classroom teaching. That chapter, by Barak Rosenshine and Norma Furst (1973), became the first coherent statement in the field that came to be known as teacher effectiveness. The authors found that a relatively stable body of research was slowly evolving. Replicating observational studies showed that even within poorly performing schools, some individual teachers were making larger than normal gains in student achievement as measured by standardized testing. Rosenshine and Furst (1973) summarized findings from correlational studies; these correlates were used to develop a generic teaching model for beginning and experienced teachers. Teacher behaviors found to be correlated with student achievement were established through numerous studies at a variety of grade levels and subjects (Brophy & Good, 1986; Fisher et al., 1985; Stallings, 1980). Proactive programs based on that research base demonstrated an ability to help teachers develop and refine desired teaching behaviors and produce evidence of enhanced year-long learning on the part of students (Good & Grouws, 1979; Stallings, 1980). The Rosenshine and Furst (1973) findings were greatly expanded upon and refined in the third edition of what was, by then, simply referred to as “the Handbook” (Wittrock, 1986), in which Brophy and Good (1986) wrote what remains a definitive review of research on teaching.2 Note, however, that this was a 20 year process, supported by a substantial number of well funded, overlapping federal grants.3 In the 1990s, as researchers and practitioners moved from a more behavioral model with outcome measures coming from multiple-choice achievement testing, to a more cognitive model for explaining learning, the teacher effectiveness of previous decades came to be viewed by many scholars as overly generic and behavioral. Early arguments about the significance of teachers in student learning became subsumed in discussions of the nature of teacher quality and the importance of content over pedagogy in teacher training. Although critics recognized that high-quality individual teachers were significant in fostering student learning, many came to believe that one teacher’s success was not enough for student growth to be maintained. Widespread, systematic efforts within the school and across classrooms were required. A few researchers then applied the logical framework used to research teacher effectiveness to the study of school settings. In the 1970s and 1980s, examinations of effective and less effective schools began yielding observable differences (Brookover, 1985; Edmonds, 1979; Stringfield & Teddlie, 1988; Teddlie, Kirby, & Stringfield, 1989; Teddlie & Stringfield, 1993). Correlates of effective schools – which included a clearly understood school mission; high expectations for student learning; active leadership; time on task; tracking student progress; a safe, orderly environment; and strong home-school relationships – were translated

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into training materials and programs (Levine & Lezotte, 1990). In-service programs focused on school effectiveness variables became standard across the United States in university and school district programs for principals (although, interestingly, typically not as part of initial teacher training.) Ideas from teacher and school effectiveness influenced the formulation of the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) standards for the licensing of beginning teachers by the Council of Chief State School Officers in 1987. These standards continue to guide teacher education programs and the assessment of teaching across many states. In the twenty-first century, many program reforms have disappeared from the professional scene, yet school and teacher effectiveness studies continue to provide valuable information for beginning teachers, staff developers, and school administrators in the United States and abroad. Such studies have influenced research efforts, state and national legislation, mandated reforms for school accountability, and training programs. In the following sections, we will describe an evolving history and logic of the examination of teacher effects within schools. We will begin with an examination of perhaps the major contextual change in education in the United States in the last 50 years: the increasing demands for measurable effects in student achievement. Then we will very briefly touch on school effects research in general and follow that with the most extensive US school effects study to have rigorously examined teacher behavior within school effects research. We will then summarize a range of school change projects that have included a focus on teaching and teacher involvement in school improvement. Next will be an examination of some general trends in teacher effects/ development field in the United States, then a consideration of the professional life cycle of teachers, from preservice training to effective induction through ongoing professional development to rigorous, research-based teacher evaluation. The final two sections will address practical suggestions for teacher involvement in the academic improvement of schools and a research agenda for the field.

Demands for Reform and Responses The work of Coleman and others, combined with various international comparative studies (e.g., the Second and Third International Math and Science studies) resulted in a serious questioning in policy circles of the US educational system, a questioning that continues today. The much publicized and discussed report, A Nation at Risk (National Commission of Excellence in Education, 1983), found little to recommend in American public education. Quality of teaching was one of many areas singled out for criticism. Numerous policy documents relating to schools, teacher training, testing, leadership, and curriculum followed the report. Recommendations for a major overhaul of the current schooling processes and its supporting systems proliferated, including essentially research-free recommendations for changes in university-based teacher education. In 1989, the first President Bush called an Education Summit to establish national achievement goals, and in 1994, the federal “Goals 2000” was signed into law with expectations for increased student achievement in core subjects. Development of subject-specific standards followed.

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The most recent expression of this policy drive for increased educational accountability can be seen in the 2001 reauthorization of the federal Title I legislation, known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). This $12.9 billion per year effort is focused on accountability for results, provides more accountability for results and freedom for the states, encourages the use of “proven” educational methods, and attempts to provide more choices for parents. This unprecedented legislation requires states to report test results in reading and mathematics in Grades 3–8 (usually ages 9–14) plus one high school grade, typically 10th grade. These data must be disaggregated by race, socioeconomic class, gender, and language for students. Schools must show adequate yearly progress (AYP) by posting improvement in groups of students’ scores or face sanctions. These sanctions can include state takeover of schools. NCLB regulations require schools to make concerted efforts to improve the learning of all students regardless of background. The law assumes that schools have or can acquire sufficient knowledge and means to attain success with all children by 2014.4 These policy initiatives come in part from policymakers’ increasing confidence in the success of school and teacher effectiveness studies, and other “proven educational methods,” as understood under the law.5 This is not an irrational step if one accepts without challenge Edmonds’ (1979) stirring assertion 25 years ago that we can greatly improve any school, “whenever and wherever we choose” (p. 32).

School Effectiveness US school effectiveness research began with studies of positive outlier schools in high-poverty urban contexts (Weber, 1971) and has continued through substantially more sophisticated quantitative and mixed-method studies. The most sophisticated studies simultaneously studied teacher effects within more and less effective schools. Although such studies examine school-level effects, it is a readily observable fact that few children learn mathematics skills as a result of simply sitting in a school building or at the principal’s knee. Nesting teacher effectiveness within school effectiveness elements clarifies the contributions of each to learning. It becomes clear that schoollevel variables, although critical to understanding the success or failure of schools, do not fully explain the performance of students and are, in fact, facilitators or inhibitors of teacher effects. The causal model must run from the larger system through the school to the teacher and students (Datnow, Lasky, Stringfield, & Teddlie, 2006). Nested studies, such as the Louisiana School Effectiveness Study (Teddlie & Stringfield, 1993) and later the Special Strategies for Educating Disadvantaged Children studies (Stringfield et al., 1997), hence became critical to understanding the roles of both schools and teachers in producing improved student performance. Teddlie and Reynolds (2000) identified four stages of school effectiveness research, beginning with the economic or “input–output” studies of Coleman et al. (1966) and Jencks (1972) as a first stage. They considered Stage Two to include process and outcome variables; in Stage Three, issues of equity are introduced; and in Stage Four, context and more sophisticated methodologies are considered. Advancing from the individual variables characteristic of effective schools discussed in earlier reviews (Brookover, 1985; Edmonds, 1979; Levine & Lezotte, 1990; Sammons, Hillman, & Mortimore, 1995), Teddlie and Reynolds (2000) described nine processes integral to

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effective schools. Five of those school effectiveness processes directly involve the work of teachers, as shown below in italics: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

The processes of effective leadership The processes of effective teaching Development [of] and maintaining a pervasive focus on learning Producing a positive school culture Creating high (and Appropriate) expectations for all Emphasizing student responsibilities and rights Monitoring progress at all levels Developing staff skills at the school site Involving parents in productive and appropriate ways (p.144).

Effective schools are dependent on teachers’ classroom performance. Because student success is dependent on teachers, some researchers reasoned that the increased involvement of teachers in the school effectiveness processes must be essential to school improvement efforts. In this regard, the Louisiana School Effectiveness Study (LSES; Teddlie & Stringfield, 1993; Stringfield & Teddlie, 1991) made major contributions to the field. Spending over 1,500 hours in the classrooms of 16 schools over 5 cycles of observations spanning an 11 year period, the LSES authors gathered classroom data that clearly supported the results of prior decades of teacher effects studies (e.g., Brophy & Good, 1986). More effective schools are places that support and sustain more effective teaching. Perhaps as importantly, more effective schools will not tolerate extensive levels of ineffective teaching.

Shared Decision-Making Whole-school site-based management teams united family members, teachers, school officials, and the community as stakeholders in improving the school. Initially, satisfaction and professional commitment among teachers rose, but governance issues, lack of training for teams, and teacher avoidance of additional administrative responsibilities caused conflicts. Because the focus of these site-based management teams drifted from classroom instruction, this movement can provide little evidence of improving student achievement (Brown, 2001; Walker, 2002). Experiments with distributed leadership have also involved teachers in sharing leadership responsibilities for school improvement. The longest standing peer evaluation review has been conducted in Ohio. In this model, teachers are given release time to evaluate other teachers and help less able teachers improve their instruction. One challenge to its widespread adoption is the fact that some teachers resist evaluating their peers. It may be that the time was simply wrong for these participatory reforms. However, for professionalization of teaching to occur, teachers need to be part of school decision-making processes.

Comprehensive School Reform Studies of the results of Title I programs showed that taking identified students out of regular classrooms was not a powerful intervention. The New American Schools projects experimented with involving the whole school in order to impact achievement.

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Initiated in 1998, the Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration (CSRD) Program was established as a reaction to the limited effects fragmented reform efforts appeared to be having on schools and achievement. An outgrowth of work on school effectiveness, whole-school or comprehensive reform, as these programs have variously been termed, was intended to present multiyear, multivariable programs designed to have powerful impacts on school change. A handful of well-designed adoptions have been shown to make a difference in terms of student learning. Direct Instruction, the School Development Program, and Success for All have replicated studies with positive effects on student achievement (Borman, Hewes, Overman, & Brown, 2003). Defenders of other programs not showing the same positive effects described in the Borman et al. meta-analysis have argued that the quality of conducted research, level of implementation, and length of time have not been sufficient to tell whether such programs are effective. The federal government is currently funding projects that employ scientifically based research strategies and provide support for local adopting schools (Coffey & Lashway, 2002). The Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (2000) provides a catalog describing available programs from which schools can choose those models that are best suited to their needs.

The Drive for Accountability A number of researchers are attending to the linkages between schools and teachers in a positive way to ensure that both individual teachers and schools succeed in meeting public demands. Stringfield (1995) argued that educators have significant knowledge regarding schools and school improvement, but they do not consistently apply this knowledge within a school or across schools involved in reform. He called for a model of High Reliability Schools (HRS) in which accountability is placed at the school level with a focus on the collaborative nature of schooling. Schools using HRS insist on success, limit the goals of the organization, and work to ensure reliability and a consistent, high-quality educational process for all students. Because teachers play a central role in an HRS school, active, extensive recruiting of new staff at all levels is the natural first step. Next is the constant, targeted training and retraining of staff, accompanied by rigorous performance evaluation with monitoring for reliability to reach mutually agreed-upon goals. Stringfield’s approach expects success and ensures consistency for agreed-upon goals with high involvement and support from teachers. This model has been used with positive effects in secondary schools in Great Britain (Reynolds, Stringfield, & Schaffer, 2006) and implementation of and research on HRS programs are being undertaken currently in the United States (Lasky et al., 2005). Chrispeels (2004) also acknowledged the centrality of the teacher to the reform process. In recent school effectiveness programs, context, co-construction, integration of other bodies of knowledge, and replication of findings have come into focus in the United States. Chrispeels (2002) and her colleagues have addressed these issues through an inventive Leadership Team Model that incorporates key teaching personnel in decisionmaking and teacher development to support student learning. Exploring practice and policy issues related to the professional development of teachers, especially through school

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teams (e.g., leadership, grade-level, and administrative), she investigated models and theories of whole-system change. Although these strands are distinct, They are integrated through overarching conceptual models based on a systemic perspective of school change, a sociocultural perspective of professional development, and concepts of social capital development within and outside of schools as key ingredients to bringing about significant learning opportunities for communities, educators and students. (Chrispeels, 2002, p. 17) Chrispeels’ findings (2004) have been implemented in schools in California and nationally through a model integrated with Stringfield’s and others’ work as part of the Effective Schools for the 21st Century project (ES21; Lasky et al., 2005). Designed to examine school effectiveness in 16 experimental schools (from a total sample of 32 schools in a randomized field trial) in school districts in the southeast, south central, and western United States, ES21 incorporates elements of school effectiveness highlighted in Teddlie and Reynolds (2000) and research literature related to schools and student learning. Topics and activities involve leadership models adapted from Chrispeels and from research on powerful teaching and learning, teacher development, examination of data for the improvement of student learning, reflection, analysis of student work samples, and HRS. To this point, we have described the nested nature of school and teacher interactions, the critical need for teacher involvement, and the importance of a positive or “strengthbased” model (Chrispeels, 2004) for school improvement. These advances in understanding schools and teaching can inform any school effectiveness model and support the basic elements of school effectiveness noted in the four stages of school effectiveness described by Teddlie and Reynolds (2000). Two conclusions of these developments are that teacher involvement is essential to successful reform efforts and support of teacher development is the pathway to achieving desired changes.

Preservice, Induction, and Career Development for Teachers The US research community has examined teacher education and teacher quality for over 50 years, but it lacks a consistent research model and agenda. The linkages between preservice teaching, induction or first years of teaching, and inservice for experienced teachers have all been topics of study. Any credible vision of teaching as a developmental process begins before the induction phase, extends through the first few years of teaching, and is followed by experienced teachers assuming the role of mentors for novices entering the profession. However, a coherent agenda and welldeveloped methodology for research on the career development of teachers remain elusive (Cochran-Smith & Zeichner, 2006)

Teacher Retention As teachers age, retirements increase, and shortages vex administrators, concerns about retaining teachers are rising in the United States. In the past, schools have not

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provided orientation programs to introduce newcomers to the profession and high turnover has been the result. Between 40 and 50% of novice teachers leave the profession in the first 5 years of teaching (Ingersoll & Smith, 2003; National Education Association, 2006). The problem is particularly acute in the first 3 years of teaching and in schools with at-risk students. Unlike previous generations of teachers who were generally 21 years of age and seeking their first job, Johnson (2004) found that, at present, nearly half of all beginning teachers are 35 years of age or older. Despite their age and previous job experience, they, too, face challenges in their new field that may be only partially addressed by teacher induction programs, which have been widely promoted as a strategy to reduce loss of personnel. As the following examples illustrate, these programs vary in extent, length, topics covered, provision of mentor training, and kinds of participants. An effective model was developed in North Carolina in the 1980s with the goal of linking preservice and in-service teachers. In 1997, the North Carolina General Assembly enacted additional legislation and provided new funding through the Excellent Schools Act (SB 272 and HB 351), requiring an improved state mentor training process, a three-day orientation for new teachers, and a three-year induction period with an additional year of probation to earn a teaching license. Such mechanisms may go a long way in training effective teachers. What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future (National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 1996) provided strong arguments for the powerful effects of good and poor teaching on students. Realizing that minority students and students in poverty often do not get the benefit of excellent teachers, New York developed a research-based mentoring program to counter the loss of new teachers in urban schools. Currently, New York City academies provide regular and extensive training for full-time mentors to guide novice teachers on a weekly basis and have a rubric for assessing mentoring programs (New York State Department of Education, 2006).

School Culture Some teacher induction and mentoring programs appear to be effective in improving retention (Ingersoll & Kralik, 2004; Propst, Schaffer, & Bauguess, 1998); however, effects may be transient and minimal if the overall school culture is not welcoming and supportive for new teachers (Kardos, 2003; Weiss, 1999). The Project on the Next Generation of Teachers has documented the effects of timely hiring; provision of human, material, and financial resources; positive relationships with students, colleagues, and administrators; and professional opportunities on novice teachers’ decisions about staying in teaching. The project researchers (Johnson, 2004) stated that better working conditions cannot be attained by schools alone, however; they need legislative and funding support.

Promoting Excellence For experienced professionals, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) was created to recognize, support, and expand teaching excellence.

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Established as a result of the Carnegie Report, A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the twenty-first Century (Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy, 1986), NBPTS standards define “accomplished teaching” in 27 fields based on five core propositions or themes, including (1) teacher commitment to student learning, (2) teacher knowledge of both the subject and how to teach it to students, (3) teacher responsibility for monitoring and managing student learning, (4) teacher reflective practice, and (5) teacher participation in communities of learning.6 During the course of a year, candidates provide evidence of excellence through portfolios, which include videotapes of quality teaching, samples of reviewed student work, and tests on teachers’ knowledge in their respective fields (Barone, 2002). Over 47,000 teachers have attained NBPTS recognition. Universities have followed the lead of the NBPTS and designed graduate programs that help teachers earn national board certification while focusing on research on teaching and career development. For example, the Master of Arts in Education at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, offers a school-based program for experienced teachers with a dual focus on content knowledge and teacher leadership. These advanced graduate programs, in combination with preservice and induction programs, show one view of teacher training on a professional continuum. Similar to research on mentoring programs, studies contrasting student performance of nationally certified teachers with non-certified teachers have resulted in mixed findings. Several positive studies have shown slightly higher effects on achievement of national board-certified teachers in some subject fields. A recent large study comparing student achievement of certified teachers, rejected applicants, and non-applicant teachers found negligible differences among the three groups, raising concerns. Sanders, Ashton, and Wright (2005) conducted a study of the issue and concluded that the certification process has value but needs revision.7 For effective schools’ trainers and researchers, knowledge of training program activities and their strengths and weaknesses can be helpful in the redesign of their own training programs.

Teacher Participation in Professional Development Leaders in in-service programming have long called for job-related and classroomembedded training for teachers. In the late 1960s, a main concern of the federal teacher center program was that one-size-fits-all staff development did not fit as a training model for the profession of teaching. A common theme in teacher centers was that teachers needed to be in charge of their own development, and many teacher centers across the country encouraged a model in which teachers serve as leaders of workshop sessions for other teachers. Some staff developers continued to express the desire to have teachers as developers and evaluators of their own classroom-based innovations (Christensen, 2005) rather than adhering to directions for programs and lessons others have created. Fullan (1994) argued that what is needed is coordination between bottom-up and top-down reforms. Some researchers find that both internally and externally developed professional development programs can be useful in facilitating change at the local level (Stringfield et al., 1997). More recent research on comprehensive school

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reform efforts has reported that professional development efforts that originate outside the school are typically more effectively implemented than those within the school (Nunnery, 1998; Ross, Alberg, & Nunnery, 1999) due to the time constraints teachers and administrators face. Specificity of materials was linked to success in implementation (Stringfield et al., 1997), despite the fact that some teachers reported experiencing the more prescriptive programs as stifling (Desimone, 2002). Teachers need to be more than mere users of an innovation, however. External program adoptions have been conducted with increased attention to local environments. Developers of research-based programs that are disseminated nationally for school adoption have teachers become familiar with aspects of the program and commit to the implementation of its features before entering different school settings (Slavin, 1999). In addition, continued contact cannot be limited to a few active teachers or administrators who favor the program implementation; it needs to be extended throughout the school (Datnow, 2000). Regular communication and feedback with users – valued characteristics in effective schools – improve fidelity of implementation. For change to be successful, principals need to be informed, involved, and interested. Principals in HRS schools monitor student progress and such knowledge is shared in programs designed to help students (Reynolds et al., 2006). However, in order for an innovation to be actively implemented, more extensive organization and alignment needs to occur. State standards and assessments and the reform effort need to be coordinated, so teachers are not choosing between two demanding and conflicting forces.

Effective Professional Development Professional improvement plans in school districts also foster continuous learning among experienced teachers. Discussions about teaching and learning are enriched with specific classroom observations, and some school districts have established “peer coaching” teams. Uses of persons labeled “peer coaches” can vary greatly. Teachers may develop a theme or area they work on together. Cognitive coaching involves examination of decision-making processes for planning lessons. New or less experienced teachers may be paired with experienced teachers (Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development, 2002). During a common free period or with time provided by a substitute, a teacher can observe a peer in a similar discipline or grade level to collect ideas for further reflection or practical application in the classroom. Some of these pairs continue working together over several years. Informal or formal tools, including checklists, script tapes, or coding, are used to collect data. Observations are not used for evaluation; instead, information is shared in a collegial manner. Peer coaching is designed to improve teaching practice and expand teacher repertoire. Sometimes a videotape of the lesson accompanies the observation and teachers discuss it. Variables correlated with improved student scores in the HRS study of high schools in England and Wales were peer observation of classrooms and provision of staff development in effective practices (Reynolds et al., 2006). Use of video to analyze teaching is becoming more common. Currently, the study of teaching is focusing on ways teachers structure lessons, use examples, and make

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decisions. Mathematics teachers have been working with researchers in Michigan, discussing videotapes of exemplary mathematics lessons. These teachers study lesson segments: Clips can be replayed to ensure understanding so the teachers can apply the strategies to their own teaching. Because the tapes are of teachers like themselves, group members are often more sympathetic to teacher difficulties and also believe that they, too, might be able to implement the new strategies (Grant & Kline, 2003). Other schools have formed Video Clubs so teachers can watch colleagues’ lessons and exchange ideas about teaching (Sherin, 2000). On the whole, teacher conversations about classroom data support improvements in teaching and learning in classrooms. Teaching practices in different countries have also been studied through videotapes (US Department of Education, 2003). As one example, LessonLab featured a collection of exemplary lessons that American teachers can view and analyze. Packages can be obtained for teacher education programs or schools at reasonable prices. Such efforts are building a body of knowledge about excellent practice. Professional development that affects teacher practices in classrooms has certain qualities. Active learning and using specific examples from practice are features that enable teachers to transport ideas into their classrooms. If they can do the training with a “home” group (similar grade level, subject field, or school), teachers will have support for use of desirable new practices. In addition, the relationship of the training materials with state and district requirements increases the likelihood that teachers will find the information, materials, and strategies helpful in their situations and put them to use (Desimone, Porter, Garet, Yoon, & Birman, 2002). New forms of data-driven professional development similarly offer promise to enhance teacher learning. Lesson Study, student work samples, and teacher work samples are currently being implemented in preservice, graduate, and inservice programs. Because they focus teacher attention on student learning, each of these initiatives in teacher development and training has the potential to prepare teachers to be active participants in developing effective schools.

Lesson Study For over a decade, interest has been growing in a Japanese form of professional development that engages teachers in rich discussions about instructional problems and their students’ learning (Lewis & Tsuchida, 1998). In research lessons or lesson study, small groups of teachers in grade-similar groups select a content topic or skill that presents difficulty for their students, and then collaboratively plan a lesson that often also addresses a schoolwide goal, such as building community in the school. One group member teaches the jointly planned lesson while the other teachers observe. They see what parts of the lesson are effective in addressing their goals, describe student responses to tasks, and note any confusions students face during the lesson. During a debriefing meeting, the teachers discuss their observations and analyze the implementation of the lesson, making revisions where they see student misunderstandings or problems (Global Education Resources, Paterson Public School 2, Research for Better Schools, 2002). Based on this debriefing session, teachers redesign the lesson and a second teacher conducts the revised lesson. In a second debriefing meeting,

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teachers further analyze the lesson and its effect on students. Depending on group size and need, a revised third lesson or a subsequent lesson related to this topic could be taught (Fernandez, 2002; Fernandez & Chokshi, 2002). Lesson Study is used to enrich lesson planning and teaching methods. The process may lead to revision of a difficult topic in the curriculum and is intended to foster student learning. Lewis, Perry, and Murata (2006) reported that Lesson Study has been well-received at conferences and has been practiced at nearly 340 schools in 32 US states. Lesson Study has also been conducted with preservice teacher education programs (Perry, Tucker, & Lewis, 2003; Toshiakira, Shimizu, & Takahashi, 2003). Although Lesson Study originated in Japan, its processes are familiar in the United States. Peer coaching (Joyce & Showers, 1996; Sparks & Loucks-Horsley, 1989; Stallings, 1995a, 1995b), action research (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1992), teacher centers, student work sample analysis (Matsumura, 2003), and teacher study groups (Lefever-Davis, Wilson, Moore, Kent, & Hopkins, 2003; Murphy, 1992) have features in common with the Lesson Study approach. In these various forms of professional development, teachers assume leadership roles and serve as sources of wisdom and support for other teachers. Lesson Study supporters recommend that more information be shared about the implementation of different models in Japan and the United States so that implementers can truly understand aspects of the innovation and realize what features need to be constant for the implementation to have an effect. For effective lesson study, teacher groups need to select a challenging problem that causes students to think, develop instruments that collect information about how students are learning, and monitor discussions so students remain at the center of the conversation. In the United States, in the rush to use the practice, some adopters may pay more attention to teachers than to students while observing lessons and may accumulate impressions rather than observe systematically. Debriefing sessions may become debates and defenses, rather than reflective processes that lead to improved practice. Lesson Study advocates argue that research on Lesson Study and similar innovations requires a different perspective so that such innovations are given a chance to be well and faithfully implemented. They recommend acceptance of “local proof ” and study of the reform by collaborative teams of researchers and teachers, rather than hastily initiating randomized trials before the process is fully grasped. Developing a deep understanding of the process of Lesson Study demands more than a list of steps or actions. In addition to specifying characteristics that comprise Lesson Study, videotapes that exemplify teacher debriefing and discussion sessions could increase new participant understanding of the kind of thinking that a complex innovation like Lesson Study requires (Lewis et al., 2006). Many of the concerns and recommendations made by Lewis and her colleagues would be profitable for examination of almost any reform, particularly those that include significant changes in beliefs and behaviors. Publication of final teacher lessons is a valuable idea the United States could adopt and learn from the Chinese or Japanese educational systems, where the practice of disseminating well-developed, well-described lessons is common. The United States could make a unique contribution to the Lesson Study process by analyzing lessons from the perspective of standards and examinations. Accountability and the linking of learning to examinations are the

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driving forces for US schools. Although accountability is clearly part of the Asian education system, such a connection to accountability and testing has, until now, not been part of the US Lesson Study model.

Student Work Samples Analyzing student work samples in teacher study groups has gained momentum in many school districts. In teams, teachers examine a common piece of student work, discuss its strengths and weaknesses, and suggest how they would proceed to help this student improve (Langer, Colton, & Goff, 2003). Teachers new to analysis sessions ask what kind of student work should be selected. A variety of assignments (in-class, homework, or projects, including presentations, interviews, investigations, or reports) can be used. However, the work should fulfill standards, be representative and significant, and address complex problems that demand thinking (Center for Language and Learning, 2003): Teachers also complete individual reports on student work samples. They review the context of the work, including: ● ● ●

What kind of assignment is it? Was the work done with a team or solo? How long did it take to complete?

and the student response to the work, including: ● ●

● ●

● ●

How easy or hard was the assignment for the student? How did the student proceed: with confidence, with persistence, [did she or he] ask for help, [did she or he] reflect on progress? How did the student approach the problem? Did the student create his or her own solution? Did she or he show critical thinking? Is the student able to summarize progress? Can the student apply to other problems or situations? (Center for Language and Learning, 2003)

This strategy appears beneficial in fostering positive teacher attitudes toward the analysis of student learning. It fits well in training for teachers in school effectiveness programs because reviewing student work is a task teachers regularly do and seek to improve. If engaged in regularly and widely, this process can positively affect a school’s overall level of student achievement. Teachers can learn from other teachers in these discussions about distinctions among levels of student work and develop a consistent model for success. Such work matches Stringfield’s (1995) concept of monitoring and his support of job-embedded, on-going staff development. Stringfield, Wayman, and Yakimowski (2005) proposed the creation of Longitudinal Student Work Samples within district data warehouses as a potentially valuable use of emerging technologies. Initial findings suggest that students whose teachers who provide more challenging assignments and have a clear grading system perform better on the Stanford Test of

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Achievement (Matsumura, 2003; Matsumura & Pascal, 2003). Given that there are many kinds of student work to examine, a question worth investigating will be what kinds of student work will systematically yield improvements in student performance in different schools.

Teacher Work Samples As part of performance-based accreditation requirements, teacher education units provide evidence of candidates’ competence through examples of their effects on K-12 student learning. A culminating experience that synthesizes learning, Teacher Work Samples (TWS) are a form of teacher development that encourages teacher leadership among preservice candidates by encouraging (1) examination of the success of lessons, (2) the improvement of instruction, and (3) collaborative work toward student learning and school improvement. Teacher Work Samples are a model for thinking about teaching and learning that enable preservice teachers to address differences in their classrooms and prepare teacher candidates to work effectively with student differences in ability, background, socioeconomic status, and language (Denner, Pankratz, Norman, & Newsome, 2004; Langer & Pokay, 2004; McConney, Shalock, & Shalock, 1998). Closely aligned with the pedagogical and content standards of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and state departments of education, TWS is intended to demonstrate how teachers can be accountable for their students’ learning. A significant feature of the TWS is its ability to facilitate preservice teacher analysis of individual learner progress and reflection. In a TWS, a unit, project, or series of lessons is tailored or selected for a particular class or group based on analysis of the class, school, and/or community. Teacher candidates are instructed to plan their projects around these questions: What are the learning outcomes I want for my students? Why? What do they know? What are they able to do? What activities and methodologies are appropriate for these students to achieve these outcomes? What resources and time do I need to implement these activities? What assessment activities and methods are appropriate for these students? How successful was I at helping my students achieve outcomes desired? What went right? What needs revision? Why? (McConney et al., 1998) Students’ progress on outcomes designed and taught by a teacher are displayed and analyzed. Because of the structure of the TWS, candidates have these responsibilities: (1) relate community, school, and classroom context to planning and, given this information, identify learning targets; (2) after identifying learning outcomes, develop measures for assessment; (3) administer pre-instruction versions of these measures to determine where students are; (4) prepare and carry out plans to help all students meet outcomes; (5) assess and present accomplishments of students; and (6) summarize, interpret, and report growth in learning for each student, selected group, or class.

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The TWS is intended to show teacher candidates’ abilities in planning, conveying, and assessing standards-based instruction. As a formative evaluation tool, Work Samples demonstrate and document effectiveness. They teach novice teachers to focus on what students are actually accomplishing and problems they are having with tasks. Girod and Shalock (2002) have compiled a manual covering the planning and development of these projects. Candidate-developed samples in a variety of fields and levels are provided in the appendices of this manual. In addition, websites provide manuals with full descriptions and rubrics as well as individual examples of candidate work for a variety of grade levels (Renaissance Partnership for Improving Teacher Quality, 2001). Preservice candidate data from work samples have shown demonstrable impacts on student learning. Elementary education candidates were able to tutor weak readers in Grades K-6, many of whom improved in sight word and phonics skills (Cartwright & Blacklock, 2003) and data from candidate work samples have been used for teacher education program improvement (Denner, Salzman, & Harris, 2002). As with Student Work Samples, electronic TWS portfolios are increasingly available. However, the TWS can also be viewed as a reaction to the widespread testing required under the federal NCLB legislation described earlier. Test results on items that are not clearly tied to the state and local curriculum and that are not received in time to be used by classroom teachers are not likely to have the intended positive effect on practices. This preservice experience is intended to develop teachers who are better prepared to be participants in the conversation of improved student learning using valuable and necessary information from the classroom. The goal is to develop teachers who are better informed about examining student work and who will be better prepared to participate in the development of effective schools. These recent initiatives direct attention to ways to develop and use teacher expertise and focus on student learning. Since the 1980s, the landscape of professional development has changed. Multiyear comprehensive school reform projects involve teachers in collaborative projects to design curriculum based on standards or to improve the conditions of schooling (e.g., establishing policy initiatives and connections with families). This stress on group learning for teachers suggests that they are being viewed as professionals, knowledgeable about their craft. Increasingly, the focus of these efforts is to improve student learning. Research continues to indicate that effective schools are co-developed and supported through teachers (Datnow, Hubbard, & Mehan, 2002). Active teacher leadership can expand school effectiveness potential by helping get changes embedded in classrooms. In individual settings, teachers are implementing changes that have positive effects on students, so we know that teachers continue to have the power to kindle learning in challenged students. The next section offers examples of various types of teacher-empowered whole-school reform efforts.

Independent On-site Change A variety of one-school or few-schools teacher-based reforms document the rich array of independent reform ongoing in the United States today. For example, the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) extends the school day from 7:30 A.M. to 5 P.M., has sessions

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on Saturdays, and requires summer school, with the goal that urban students will attain or exceed grade-level expectations. Character development and good behavior are part of the school program. Students with homework problems can call teachers after school hours, and home visits support positive school-home relationships. Principals are responsible for hiring staff that support KIPP program goals (Matthews, 2006a). In an attempt to minimize the divide between accountability and student-centered curriculum, teachers in Hersey (suburban) and Northtown (urban) high schools in Chicago have blended traditional and authentic learning experiences, including test preparation, current controversial issues, classical content, and thematic, interdisciplinary, and project-based instruction. Positive test results confirm the effectiveness of these combined approaches (Ferraro, 2006). A new attitude that calls for balance between conflicting approaches is being tried in other schools with reported success in raising student interest and improving achievement. YES, Youth Engaged in Service, in Houston, Texas, combines community projects with Advanced Placement coursework. Combining career education with intensive study of challenging courses, the California Center for College and Career (ConnectEd) is being supported by the Irvine Foundation. A KIPP school in Washington, DC, uses traditional and progressive textbooks to teach mathematics and has kindergartners succeeding in Grade 1 math. Although some believe that blending two schools of thought can dilute the information and power of using one approach, others see the strength of such a diversified approach as being the ability to appeal to all kinds of learners (Matthews, 2006b). Although these success stories are commendable and can offer insights to those who wish to change their environments, they are not being broadly disseminated and adopted. The significance of these efforts is that teachers are striking a balance among conflicting theories about learning. Individualism, the desire for the new, and an instant gratification mindset, all hallmarks of American culture, may work against our best efforts to succeed. We need to find a balance that respects choice and community (Richardson, 2003). The challenge remains to create workplaces and school districts that are fully committed to a deeper level of understanding teaching. The American quick-fix mentality has led us to expect an easy solution to the problem of school improvement. However, 70 years of earnest and constant reform efforts suggest that the complex problems associated with school reform require and deserve sustained, persistent efforts (Nunnery, 1998).

Developing Effective Schools Through Teacher Involvement Based on the above review, we offer the following suggestions for setting the conditions for successful teacher involvement in the design and creation of more effective schools:

Plan for Systematic Change To effectively change schools, we need to develop a system at the school level that ensures: (1) employment and training of high-quality teachers, (2) a high level of instruction focused on student outcomes, (3) consistent monitoring to ensure improvement in

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student learning, and (4) the involvement of teachers at the decision-making level to ensure consistency of instruction within a grade level and across grade levels. In addition, reform leaders need to consider more than just how to conduct their initiative effectively; they need to plan how to surmount the typical hurdles school present. Lichtenstein (2006) noted that unless reformers consider the current responsibilities and issues school districts face, reform will not be successful. A school’s readiness to participate in an innovation affects whether that project will survive or fail.

Make Time Available for Collaborative Planning for Teachers Because understanding and applying innovations takes time, many reformers have expressed concerns about the lack of time given to collaborative planning in most school days. To gain additional time, lengthening the school day and year and banking time (adding extra minutes each day that are then translated into training time) have been discussed. Through careful planning, middle schools have managed to provide planning periods for teams of teachers, and block scheduling allows for time to be set aside for high school teachers. Coordinated events and planned community agency days are arranged to provide time for planning or new learning. Some schools employ early release days for students or hire substitute teachers so teachers can meet. Discussion boards and email also enable teachers to collaborate and problem-solve together (Cook & Fine, 1997; McCaw, Watkins, & Borgia, 2004).

Consider Teacher Development in Planning Innovations New teacher success may be fostered by working with school districts so that new teachers are given different expectations and responsibilities from experienced teachers. Further, experienced teachers who increase their contribution, not only to their own classroom, but to the school as a whole, deserve to be recognized and rewarded. Finally, since well-designed mentoring programs can aid in retaining new teachers, activities from these programs may help in the development of effective schools. Cadres of teachers in certain career stages may need different tasks and training to be better contributors to the development of the effective school.

Organize and Unify National and State Standards and Testing Desimone (2002) characterized current reform as “one-teacher-at-a-time,” “oneschool-at-a-time,” and “one-system-at-a-time.” She suggested that each level has some but not full success. Schools need a reform process in which all three levels are coordinated and operate together seamlessly. Comprehensive school reforms and effective schools training projects often have assessments built in to their programs, but these may not match the standards-based testing required by states. Desimone (2002) suggested several remedies, including: (1) projects that could help schools match standards and goals with the reform, (2) the design of performance-based assessments for the reform effort (this may be too costly and labor intensive), and (3) the alignment of reform program content to state tests.

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Some researchers and policymakers believe that we have enough understanding about schools to improve them to meet the mandated performance standards, but that we do not consistently implement these standards within schools. Nor have we been able to ramp them up across schools within a district. Constructing common outcomes for schools using an externally imposed set of performance standards and improvement goals could influence the mission and goals of school districts and schools and enable states to obtain comparable data. Collaborative standards projects whose focus has been the achievement of a common ground need to be expanded nationally so that a conversation about unified standards and testing can be achieved across all 50 states.

Focus on Limited Shared Goals Findings from the HRS project noted that effective schools have a few well-understood, shared goals (Reynolds et al., 2006; Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000). Focusing professional development initiatives for teachers and principals for an extended period of time on a significant district need has been one successful strategy in changing student achievement (Elmore & Burney, 1997). Researchers of comprehensive school models note that having various models implemented at the same time at one site confuses and burdens teachers (Berends, Bodilly, & Kirby, 2002).

Develop High-Quality Professional Development for Teachers Most professional development continues to be hit or miss, neither viewed as essential nor connected to the work of classrooms. Professional development builds school capacity for reform, and school improvement needs to focus on improving teacher skills and knowledge. Stigler and Hiebert (1999) noted that “every recommendation for improving teaching requires teachers to learn” (p. 142). Teacher development and training should be based in the implementation of the standards-based curriculum and strategies the district or school has selected and the effects of these strategies on student learning. Collaborative systems of professional development involve teachers in the analysis of their own instruction and the direct assessment of student performance. Lesson Study, teacher and student work sampling, and peer observation employ teamwork and classroom tasks to achieve their goals. These models have the potential to build the needed capacity at the school level to improve instruction in a coherent and consistent manner that is tied to state and federal requirements.

Use Data to Inform Reform Data should be the prime focus of the process of change. Data should be accessible, understandable, and relayed efficiently in order to guide decisions about assistance, resources, and time. Provided with targeted information about students, teachers can be motivated to try new strategies, reteach unlearned content, and help students in need. Software is now available that collects, analyzes, and displays information about students (e.g., Wayman, Stringfield, & Yakimowski, 2004). Promising technologies are delivering data faster and more efficiently so that teachers, administrators, and schools can address problems quickly.

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Future Research Research examining the use of multilevel school effectiveness models is currently under way, with some preliminary findings already showing support for some of these models. What are needed today are examinations of multilevel interventions (e.g., student, classroom, school, system). These need to pay particular attention to the roles of teachers and their development as nurtured pre-professionally, during initiation into the profession, and as embedded within schools and systems. Also needed are assessments of the differentiated impact of various programs on teachers who serve diverse student populations. The techniques required to assist teachers working in very high poverty contexts vs. very affluent suburbs are logically different, yet research on such topics is completely lacking. The differentiated roles that school and school system administrators must play to achieve success in those contexts needs additional study. Descriptions of local modifications of external models and shared examples of successful local models would add to our understanding. Last, influences of external factors, including policy, university research groups, community involvement, and parents’ impact on diverse groups of teachers and hence upon school performance are other avenues worthy of exploration. As this chapter has demonstrated, the entire fields of teacher development and teacher effects as nested within schools and systems is tremendously understudied, and represents a rich area for future research.

Notes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

Note that a reanalysis of the Coleman dataset using more powerful computers and multi-level modeling software unavailable in the 1960s (Geoffrey Borman, personal communication, August 2, 2006) found much greater concentration effects of attending schools serving large numbers of students living in poverty. Two further notes are appropriate here. First, Good and Brophy continue updating their reviews of research on teaching in, for example, the eighth edition of their Looking in Classrooms (Good & Brophy, 1999). Second, the same third Handbook of Research on Teaching contained a chapter on school effects (Brophy & Good, 1986). That chapter probably represented a high-water mark of AERA’s interest in school effects. Although federal funding for medical research has continued to grow in the United States, federal funding for experimental and quasi-experimental studies on the scale of the original teacher effects and program effects studies have not been funded by the US Department of Education for well over a decade. The NCLB legislation also requires all schools to have “highly qualified” teachers in all classrooms without clearly defining “highly qualified.” Increasingly, teachers are being held accountable for student performance (Whoriskey, 2006). Recent reports indicate that nearly 25,000 of the 91,000 schools across the United States will post “failing” scores on AYP (Basken, 2006). The authors believe that unless current rules are modified, this will prove to be an underestimate over time. These five propositions are detailed with examples at the NBPTS website, http://www.nbpts.org/about/ coreprops.cfm A response to the Sanders, Ashton, and Wright (2005) study is available at http://www.nbpts.org/pdf/ summary_of_peer-reviews_of_sanders_study.pdf

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40 TEACHER EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR SUSTAINABLE SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS

Wai-ming Tam and Yin-Cheong Cheng

Introduction The Asia-Pacific is one of the regions in the world that has experienced rapid economic growth as well as occasional economic instability in the last 20 years. Countries in this region were enticed to compete in the world market and to compete with each other for foreign investment. One of the key assets for their success is perhaps the low cost but fairly skilled human capital. This is confirmed by the fact that international comparisons such as PISA and TIMSS have demonstrated time and again that average student attainments in selected subjects in some of these countries have far exceeded those of major Western countries (Willms, 2004). However, in order to maintain a competitive advantage in the increasingly complex and differentiated global economy in the future, education will become a key determinant of development. The importance of education is not merely a means to achieve an individual’s career development and selfactualization but can also be a way of alleviating the negative effects of global competition on individuals and communities, bringing about stability and the development of the society (Cheng, 2003). Hence, governments expect their education systems to meet social demands and help their countries to increase future competitiveness. However, many are troubled with the large education budget and the inefficiency of the system. Under these circumstances, large-scale education reforms are unavoidable. In order to facilitate a large-scale education reform, the reform of the teacher education system is also inevitable. In the following sections, selected national cases are used to demonstrate the diverse strategies for education reform in the region and how reform in teacher education is being employed as a means of achieving national reform goals.

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Selected National Cases There are perhaps two major types of education system represented by countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The countries or territories that were former British colonies adopted a 5  2 3 structure (5 years of secondary, 2 years of matriculation, and 3 years of university). Hong Kong, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore belong to this group. The rest of the countries in the region basically adopted a 6  4 structure (6 years of secondary and 4 years of university). However, regardless which education system a country had, the teacher education systems were quite similar. First, most of the countries in this region allow only those who have completed pre-service teacher education to teach in schools. Second, most of them operated two types of teacher education institution: teacher education colleges for the preparation of non-graduate teachers to teach in primary and/or lower secondary schools, and universities for the preparation of graduate teachers to teacher in senior secondary schools. In the following sections, the recent education reform experiences in mainland China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and India are highlighted, and difficulties and constraints in implementing these reforms are described (see Table 1). This will enable readers to understand the diversity and complexity of the issues and problems confronted by the teacher education systems and how the systems arrived at rather similar solutions.

Mainland China China has been on the track of rapid economic development since the 1980s. Because education is considered instrumental to the nation’s sustained economic and social development, improving its effectiveness and efficiency accords a high priority. Therefore, in the last two decades, the Ministry of Education in China initiated several nationwide reforms in education. Some of the major ones are the implementation of nine years of compulsory education for tens of millions of children, not only in cities but also in the mountains and remote areas; curriculum reform at the pre-primary, primary, and secondary levels; abolition of the job assignment system for university graduates; and improvement of opportunities for post-secondary education by expanding the present university enrollment and allowing private universities and self-funded programs to operate (Wang, 2004). In addition to these reforms, the Ministry of Education has recently shifted its established policy of over fifty years of focusing strategic resources on key schools to giving more differential treatment to disadvantaged schools (Feng, 2007). Anyone who grasps the depth and breadth of the above reforms and understands what is involved in implementing them in this rapidly developing yet densely populated country would appreciate the complexity and the difficulties of the reform tasks. For one thing, the limited resources available in the system make it unlikely that the central and provincial governments can meet all the financial needs of the school sector, let alone the cost of education reform (Wang, 2004). Also, the one-child policy in China has resulted in extremely high parental expectations of children’s educational achievement, something that schools find difficult to deliver. Furthermore, socio-cultural

Curriculum reform of basic education

Learning for life – learning through life Learning to learn: The way forward in curriculum development Competency based curriculum

The education reform plan for the 21st century

Adapting education to the e information age Smart school curriculum

Restructured basic education curriculum

Thinking schools, learning nation

Moving towards a learning society and action plan for educational reform

National education act, 1999

China

Hong Kong SAR

Japan

Korea Malaysia

Philippines

Singapore

Taiwan

Thailand

Indonesia

Policy

The scope of education reform in the Asia Pacific region, 1997–2002

Country

Table 1.

1999

1998

1997

2002

2001 1999

2001

2000 2002

2000

2001

Year

Curriculum designed for the new century: Developing humanitarian attitudes, enhancing integration ability, cultivating democratic literacy, fostering both indigenous awareness and a global perspective, and building up the capacity for lifelong learning (1) lifelong education for all, (2) participation by all segments of society, and (3) continuous development of the bodies of knowledge and the learning process.

Help students to build up their capabilities to learn independently To develop a process-oriented way of teaching multicultural attitudes and behavior such as tolerance, mutual-respect, mutual understanding, and recognition of religious, ethnic, and cultural diversities and differences Establish an educational philosophy suitable for the new century and improve the provision for education It is a reform of the educational system for the new society through ICT to foster the knowledge, skills, and attitudes appropriate for success in the Information Age raising the quality of the Filipino learners and graduates and empowering them for lifelong learning A “learning nation” envisions a national culture and social environment that promotes lifelong learning in our people

“Focus on students’ learning interests and experience, include knowledge and skills which are necessary for life long learning” To build a lifelong learning society

Emphasis

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changes driven by the rapid economic growth have been breathtaking, causing many large cities to develop numerous social problems. Urban social problems, such as juvenile delinquency, divorce, poverty, etc., have grown to an epidemic scale, hampering the effectiveness of school education. Hence, the challenge to the teacher education system in China is to prepare adequate, motivated, and well-trained teachers to take up the responsibility of implementing the education reforms in the midst of huge constraints. In order to guarantee success, changes in teacher education are inevitable. Recently, a number of initiatives with far-reaching consequences were introduced. These include reformulation of the goals of teacher education to align with those of education reform and national development; elevation of the qualification standard of teachers to degree level; transformation of the system of teacher certification by opening up teacher education to comprehensive universities; aligning pre-service and in-service teacher education with the needs of the field; and restructuring the curriculum of teacher education and transformation of teacher practicum and the teacher supervision system to reflect the needs of the field and the realities of the classroom (Wang, 2004).

Hong Kong Since Hong Kong became one of China’s Special Administrative Regions in 1997, the Education and Manpower Bureau, under the new government, has introduced a series of sweeping reforms, affecting almost every aspect of teaching and learning. From 1997 to 2000, two major reform initiatives were introduced. These are the massive information technology project aimed at linking up all classrooms to the Internet within 5 years, and the medium of instruction policy for secondary schools, which requires all publicly funded secondary schools (with the exception of exempted ones) to use the local dialect for instruction. In 2000, the government introduced a new education reform framework for the new century. The reform framework includes a total restructuring of the school curriculum at the primary and secondary levels; changing the assessment mechanism to make it more learner-centered; reforming the student allocation system to make it more equitable and to give more choices to parents; reforming the structure of the system by reducing the length of secondary schooling from 7 to 6 years and extending university education from 3 to 4 years; and restructuring school governance and management by introducing school-based management. Suffice it to say that to implement the above reforms within a short period is far from easy. In fact, the teaching community in Hong Kong has been under tremendous pressure to make the most fundamental changes in the classrooms and in schools. Many teachers complained about the feeling of inefficacy and helplessness when they confronted the changes and the increased work pressure. Cheng (2004) described the situation as a bottleneck syndrome in which the system was made ineffective when it tried to make too many changes within a short time. Furthermore, the education reform initiatives were introduced at a time when the Asia-Pacific region as a whole was experiencing a downturn in the economy. Worse than that, the territory experienced a drastic decline in student population for the first time since World War II. This decline in student population had caught many by surprise and had introduced instability and uncertainty in the education profession. Many schools were in danger of closing down

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because of insufficient student enrollment. Even teacher training institutes were under pressure because university graduates were reluctant to enter the teaching profession. Hence, the teacher education system in Hong Kong faces the challenge of attracting qualified candidates to teacher training programs, to redesign the programs to meet the needs of the society and the recent reforms, and to prepare to deal with budget cuts when there is insufficient enrollment (Tam, 2005). Recently, the government introduced several initiatives to reform the system of pre-service and in-service teacher education and to raise the qualifications of language teachers. Reform of teacher education in Hong Kong actually began in 1992, when the Education Commission published its fifth report (Education Commission, 1982). This report resulted in the consolidation of teacher training schools into the new Hong Kong Institute of Education, and the upgrading of primary school teachers. In 2001, the government introduced a new policy that required all teachers of English and Putonghua to pass a language test to be qualified to teach the subject. In 2003, a policy document entitled “Towards a learning profession: the teacher competencies framework and the continuing professional development of teachers” was published (Advisory Committee on Teacher Education and Qualifications, 2003). The policy laid out the requirements for the continuous professional development of teachers. It also suggested that a new mentoring scheme be established, to support new teachers in their first year of teaching.

Japan In the past, the Japanese school system paid exclusive attention to academic achievement, sometimes at the expense of children’s social and emotional development. Since the 1970s, serious problems have been identified, including the high suicide rates of children, children refusing to attend school, violence in school and home, and rampant bullying in schools (Taki, 2001). Hence, although the country has been successful in providing equal educational opportunity and accomplishing high educational standards, there has also been increasing public criticism expressing distrust of schools, teachers, and the education sector as a whole. In 2002, the Ministry of Education saw the need to de-emphasize intensity and competitiveness within the education system. In essence, the reform attempts to encourage “Zest for Living” and provide “Relaxed Education” for students (Motani, 2005). “Relaxed Education” is perceived as necessary to cultivate “Zest for Living”; it refers to a humanistic learning environment as opposed to a competitive, stratifying school environment. The reasoning behind these slogans is that educators in Japan came to recognize that children in Japan were suffering from undue competition because of the fierce entrance examination system, competition that was exacerbated over the years even when higher education became more accessible. The major reform initiatives proposed by the Ministry of Education in order to realize these goals included: the reduction of school days to 5 days per week, the reduction of curriculum content, the introduction of criterion-referenced assessment, and the introduction of the period for Integrated Studies from Grades 3 to 12. These reform measures were intended to reduce tension in studying; to broaden students’ exposure in learning; and to cultivate their creativity, thinking ability, and power of expression.

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Japan is a collective society deeply rooted in Confucian values. Therefore, the recent education reform has pushed Japanese schools to the forefront of the tensions between tradition and modernity. In Japanese schools, tradition is represented by an Asian model emphasizing effort, patience, what students are willing to do, and enthusiasm (Arimoto, 2004); the modern is represented by a Western model emphasizing self-esteem and individual needs. Obviously, the two models are bound to create conflicts, and teachers are often caught in the middle of this ideological battle. Therefore, how to implement the new education reform in the midst of cultural conflict and how to regain confidence of the public in the teacher education system are the challenges confronted by the teacher education policy-makers. In line with the recent reform initiatives, and in response to internal pressure to consolidate the teacher education system, the Ministry of Education of Japan recently announced a series of plans to reform teacher education. High on the reform agenda are reform on teacher certification, reform on the content of teacher education curriculum, and reduction of number of teacher training institutes. The reforms on teacher certification and on the teacher education system not only reflect public dissatisfaction with the current education reform but also reveal a deep-rooted public distrust of teachers, schools, and teacher education institutions (Arimoto, 2004).

Korea Similar to education in Japan, elementary and secondary education in Korea has become universal, and higher education is highly accessible. However, this growth has been accompanied by serious educational problems, such as excessive government regulation of schools and schooling becoming a tool for passing examinations. Under these circumstances, the Presidential Commission on Education Reform (PCER) was established in 1994 and has been instrumental in Korean education reform. Beginning 1995, the PCER made a number of reform proposals, which include reforming the curriculum in K–12 education for humanities and creativity, creating autonomous school communities to decentralize school governance and administration, and diversifying the post-secondary admission system. At the same time, the establishment of different kinds of high schools and specialized programs was allowed. To hold school districts and schools accountable, the government’s administrative and financial support was linked to the performance evaluation results of the schools. At about the same time as these comprehensive, sweeping school reforms were launched, the PCER also recommended comprehensive plans to reform the Korean teacher education system (Kim, 2000). Included in the reform plans are consolidation of pre-service teacher training institutes and the provision of higher degree training for the teaching profession. Also, within the teacher education faculties of national universities, there was much discussion about whether the existing Bachelor of Education program for the preparation of secondary teachers should be replaced by general degree programs plus a diploma in education (Kim, 2004). These teacher education reform trends in fact reflect an imbalance in the demand and supply of teachers in the Korean education system, in particular, the over-representation of male teachers in the teaching force.

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Malaysia As Malaysia became one of the fastest growing economies in the Asia-Pacific region in the 1990s, and as it took pride in many of its national accomplishments, the country was making final preparations for the new millennium. Under the leadership of the Ministry of Education and the support of many entrepreneurs, politicians, and scientists, Malaysian educators conceived and developed the Smart School vision, a grand project aimed at equipping Malaysian schools with the information technology hardware and human software necessary for the information age. Smart School encouraged teachers and students to be proactive, futuristic, and realistic in meeting the challenges of the future. In order to make Smart School a reality, the education system will need to be transformed, and this will necessarily touch on the basic elements of the system – the school curriculum as well as the teacher education curriculum (Lee, 2004). Hence, the challenge of the teacher education system in Malaysia is simple: transforming the teacher education infrastructure and content to support the Smart School vision. In the past, primary school teachers were trained in teacher education colleges, and the admission requirement to teacher education colleges leading to a two-year Certificate of Teaching was equivalent to O-Level exams (completion of 5 years of secondary education). Secondary schools were encouraged to hire graduate teachers, but because university graduates were in short supply, most secondary teachers were trained in teacher education colleges. In 1996, the Ministry of Education in Malaysia introduced a major reform to upgrade the teaching force. The long-term objective was to have a 100% graduate teaching force in all secondary schools by 2005 and 50% graduates in primary school by 2010, and to upgrade the Certificate of Teaching to a diploma. In association with this reform, the salary of teachers was significantly increased. The purpose of the reform was to attract high-caliber people to the teaching profession and to retain teachers. To meet this target, the Ministry of Education took the drastic step of reducing the length of the Bachelor of Education degree from 4 to 3 years, in all public universities. Needless to say, such a reduction in program time significantly affected the content of the curriculum and the duration of the teaching practice.

India India is a country that is characteristic of its vast population and its cultural and regional diversity. Because of the pluralities and diversities of the country, the education system and the teacher education system need to be region- and culture-specific. Insufficient resources and inadequate institutional infrastructure are often accepted as a fact of life. Single teacher schools and multi-grade teaching continue to exist and grow in many parts of the country. Also, the differences of dialects and languages, widely differing cultural settings, social approaches, and aptitudes have to be acknowledged and addressed by the education systems and the teacher education systems (Walia, 2004). In India, universal elementary education is a constitutional mandate. However, problems of absenteeism, stagnation, and dropouts in schools remain high. The major reasons include lack of interest in education among certain sections of parents and children, lack of proper environment at home and in the area, no correlation between

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the education system and economic needs of the community, oppressive school environment, inadequate teaching aids and equipment, and child labor being legal (Ananda, 1996; Walia, 2004; Weiner, 1991). In addition to trying to enforce universal elementary education among tens of millions of illiterate people as the primary goal, the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), a prestigious national-level organization to advise the national and state governments in all matters of school education, introduced the National Curriculum Framework for School in the year 2000. This recent reform of the school curriculum, with renewed emphasis on Hindu national heritage, is seen by the ruling party as an important achievement in India, as the country is increasingly dependent on a high-quality workforce to meet the challenges of globalization and international competition and, at the same time, meet national needs for cultural identity (Kamat, 2004). As a means of improving the quality of the teaching force, and in support of the curriculum reform, NCERT sees a need to reform the teacher education curriculum. There are different levels of teacher preparation, training, and research institutions in India. District Institutes of Education and Training serve as resource institutions in elementary education at the district level and provide professional support, guidance, and training to elementary teachers. Institutes of Advanced Studies in Education are assigned the task of providing professional guidance to colleges of education and teacher education institutions at the secondary stage. These are the infrastructures that NCERT needs to work on to reform teacher education in India. However, as teacher education in India is examination oriented, changing the curriculum and the infrastructure will do little to improve the system.

Summary of Trends in Education Reform The above descriptions suggest that much change is taking place within the education systems in different countries in the Asia-Pacific region. At the system level, two major needs are reflected in these education reform efforts. First, there is a real need to transform the education system quickly, in order to prepare the country to compete in the global knowledge economy. Countries keenly concerned about better preparing themselves for global competition tend to have broad aims and diverse perspectives in their reform effort. This is seen to be accomplished mainly by shifting from a traditional content-based teaching system to a competence-based learning system. Malaysia, for example, embarked on an ambitious Smart School Project at the turn of the century, a direction that shows a pervasive vision of what schools will be like in the new century. To bring this vision into reality, there is not only a need to equip schools with up-todate information technology facilities, but the country sees a bigger need to transform the nature of teaching and learning within the classroom. Mainland China announced its education reform agenda in the 1980s and has not stopped transforming the system since then. In the past two decades, the education system has gone through several phases of change, and each phase has added depth and complexity. However, the lesson learned in the Hong Kong case may be that the concern for global competition was so keen that reformers in the territory might have embarked on too grand a scale, resulting in the bottleneck problem (Cheng, 2004).

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Second, there is also a need to utilize the education system as a means of solving social problems, such as enhancing social equality, maintaining cultural identity, and reducing the effects of globalization. Other countries were more concerned about cultural identity and political solidarity, and they tended to focus their efforts on some specific aspects of the education system. This is often accomplished by shifting the knowledge content in the curriculum, increasing educational opportunities in the student allocation system, and opening up more opportunities for university places. For example, the recent curriculum reform in India partly served to counterbalance the economic and cultural influence from the West, by emphasizing its own cultural heritage (Kamat, 2004). In Japan and Korea, policy-makers deliberately limited the scope of their education reform and focused their efforts mainly on curriculum reform. Sometimes the scope of education reform does not need to be big, because a small change can produce lasting results as long as one finds the right leverage. At the site level, two major trends are common to many countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The first is the shift of control of education from the central bureaucracy to the site of operation, by decentralizing decision-making power to schools (Cheng, 2005). The decentralization of power is seen as a mechanism to increase professional autonomy of the schools and to empower teachers and administrators to initiate and sustain changes within their schools. Oftentimes, system-level reform endeavors need to be matched with site-level initiatives to create profound transformation in learning and teaching (Schlechty, 2001). The second major trend at the site level is the shift from a bureaucratic to a marketdriven accountability system (Tam, 2005). The shift in accountability takes place when parents are offered more choices in the education of their children. These choices include public schools of parents’ preference in the community, availability of education vouchers, more affordable private schools, and alternative means of education for their children. In many countries in the Asia-Pacific region, this shift in policy has created intense competition among schools in both the private and the public sectors. The sense of insecurity and pressure has caused teachers and administrators to try every means to promote the image of their school in the community, but it has also introduced instability into the education community, with lasting effects. Hence, education reform at both system and the site levels aimed to produce lasting changes in learning and teaching in the classroom, as well as the management of schools. This need to transform the system is seen as a matter of urgency with political consequences, due to the effect of globalization and international competition. Yet, policymakers are often puzzled by the fact that implementing education reform on too large a scale and too rapidly may result in instability within the system. How to steer the wheel of change and find the right leverage to transform the system so that the foundation will not be shaken and the entire education community can benefit from the effort should be of utmost importance (Watzlawick, Weakland, & Fisch, 1974).

Implications for Teacher Education Reform The question that many policy-makers in the Asia-Pacific region are now asking is: Which teacher education system works best in our particular social context and fits

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the economic development and the indigenous culture of our country? Behind this important question are many considerations such as size of the teaching force, literacy rate of the population, geographic distribution of schools, historical development of the system, local economy, government budget for teacher education, social expectations of education, and the status of teachers in the society. These considerations are reflected in many issues that are currently on the agenda of teacher education reforms in the region. Hence, in order to prepare the next generation of teachers who are qualified and competent to meet the challenges in the reform era, the teacher education system itself needs to undergo its own reform. However, what should be the characteristics of teacher education reform within the Asia-Pacific region? Naturally, one expects that the education of teachers within a country is not an independent system, it should be closely aligned with the needs of the larger system, and professionals within the teacher education community should have some say about the reform of their system. In light of this, it is expected that reform in teacher education in the Asia-Pacific region should have four main characteristics. First, it should reflect the needs of the current reform in the education system, as well as the changes going on in schools, which will naturally be related to questions of standards and competence and how they are related to teaching and learning and solving problems within the schools. Second, reform should be concerned about issues of accountability, such as improving the cost-effectiveness of the system, and how the increase in standards is reflected in the improvement in the effectiveness of the system. Third, it should be concerned with the long-term development and sustainability of the teacher education system, how it attracts and retains competent teachers, and how it continues to develop their competence. Finally, it should serve school effectiveness in the Asia-Pacific region.

Trends of Reform in Teacher Education A review of the current teacher education reforms in the region suggests that there are five major trends. These include upgrading teacher qualification, developing an incentive structure and fine-tuning the orientation of training, shifting from a technicalrational model to a reflective practitioner model, consolidating the teacher education sector, and establishing professional networks to support new teachers.

Upgrading Teacher Qualifications In the past, governments in some countries set low qualifications for entry into the teaching profession, to allow a large enough supply of teachers for the school system. Some systems allowed people who had attained a certain level of education to be employed as teachers, even without professional training. As this low qualification for entry no longer serves the needs of most education systems, there is a strong call to upgrade the qualifications of the current teachers as well as to raise the standards of the teacher training programs. Hence, in some regions, such as Hong Kong, Korea, and certain parts of mainland China, the need is to upgrade all teacher education programs to the degree level. In other regions, such as Malaysia and India, the need is to upgrade

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the pre-service programs for primary teachers from certificate level to diploma. In Malaysia, the national government is committed to the goal of having all degree-trained secondary school teachers by 2010. The trend to upgrade teacher quality in the region has resulted in most teacher education institutions having to restructure their teacher education programs and has sparked off a huge demand for higher degrees leading to Master of Education and Doctor of Education.

Orientation of Training and Incentive Structure One heated debate in the teacher education reform agenda is whether teacher education should be carried out through a general degree followed by a postgraduate diploma or certificate of education, or through integrated teacher education leading to a teacher education degree (usually Bachelor of Education). Proponents of the former type claim it provides a solid background in the subject matter and at the same time enables the prospective teacher to be exposed to students in different areas while he or she is an undergraduate. Also, they claim it gives students a chance to make the decision of whether or not to become a teacher at a later stage, when students are more mature. The latter type is based on the argument that teachers need a longer time to be socialized into the profession, they need only to possess subject-matter knowledge at a minimal level, and what they should really have is pedagogical and professional knowledge. In most countries of the Asia Pacific region, a Bachelor of Education appears preferable. In places such as India, Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong – former British colonies – the preferred mode appears to be Diploma of Education (see Table 2). In a vast country such as mainland China, teacher colleges and normal universities are losing ground in the competition with comprehensive universities, because the latter have more strength in academic disciplines. In addition to concern about the orientation of training, there is a question of the demand and supply of teachers, and the even bigger problem of whether the education sector can attract and retain high-quality candidates into the profession. As the education sector appears to be stable in many parts of the region, it tends to attract more candidates to the profession during economic recession. However, as the local economy picks up and more people are attracted by the better prospects of the business sector, the education sector will have difficulty attracting and retaining high-quality candidates. Hence, countries that are concerned with this problem may provide incentives in the teaching profession and may modify their teacher education system in such a way that will allow more flexibility. For example, schools in Hong Kong and Singapore are still allowed to hire fresh graduates to teach certain subjects in their schools, provided that they are simultaneously enrolled in a part-time postgraduate diploma course. Malaysia and Korea significantly increased the salaries of primary and secondary teachers in recent years, as a means of attracting university graduates to the profession.

Shifting Towards the Reflective Practitioner Model Teacher education policy-makers often ask the question of whether the current teacher training programs are effective in helping teachers to acquire professional knowledge,

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Table 2.

Selected indicators relating to educational provision in the Asia Pacific region

HDI rank1

High development 4 11 22 25 28 33 Middle development 4 61 73 80 84 85 93 96 97 108 109 110 111 114 122 127 129 130 133 134 135 136 139 1

Countries

Combined gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary (%) 2002/2003 2

Education index 2

Technology achievement index (TAI) value 3

Japan Hong Kong, China (SAR) Singapore Korea, Rep. of Brunei Darussalam

84

0.94

0.698

74 87 93

0.87 0.91 0.97

0.455 0.585 0.666

74

0.86

..

71 73 85 82 69 69 75 .. 64 82 66 76 74 76 60 48 59

0.83 0.86 0.94 0.89 0.84 0.83 0.90 0.91 0.82 0.93 0.81 0.91 0.90 0.91 0.61 0.76 0.69

0.396 0.337 .. 0.300 0.299 0.203 .. .. .. .. 0.211 .. .. .. 0.201 .. ..

61 .. 35 61 53

0.66 0.48 0.44 0.53 0.45

.. .. 0.167 0.081 ..

Malaysia Thailand Kazakhstan Philippines China Sri Lanka Maldives Turkmenistan Viet Nam Kyrgyzstan Indonesia Uzbekistan Mongolia Tajikistan India Myanmar Cambodia Lao People’s Dem. Rep. Bhutan Pakistan Nepal Bangladesh

The HDI rank is determined using HDI values to the fifth decimal point The education index measures a country’s relative achievement in both adult literacy and combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment. First, an index for adult literacy and one for combined gross enrolment are calculated. Then these two indices are combined to create the education index, with two-thirds weight given to adult literacy and one-third weight to combined gross enrolment (United Nations Development Programme, 2005, p. 341) 3 The technology achievement index (TAI) is a composite index designed to capture the performance of countries in creating and diffusing technology and in building a human skills base. The index measures achievements in four dimensions: Technology creation, Diffusion of recent innovations, Diffusion of old innovations and Human skills. (United Nations Development Programme, 2001, p. 246) 4 All countries included in the HDI are classified into three clusters by achievement in human development: High human development (with an HDI of 0.800 or above), medium human development (HDI of 0.500–0.799) and low human development (HDI of less than 0.500). 2

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and whether such knowledge improves the quality of teaching and learning in the classroom. These questions are related to the more fundamental one of how teachers actually acquire and practice their knowledge, a question that has been the subject of heated debate in the field of teacher education for decades (Galton, 2001; Hargreaves, 1994; Marland & Osborne, 1990; Schön, 1987). Most teacher training programs in the past have adopted the technical model, a behavioral approach focusing on the acquisition of generic knowledge in teaching, such as preparing lesson plans, classroom management skills, questioning techniques, assessment methods, and effective teacher behaviors (Fenstermacher, 1978; Lee, 2004). In many countries of the Asia Pacific region, the technical model is transformed slowly into the reflective practitioner model, a constructivist approach that assumes that teachers need to build or construct their own knowledge and professional competencies through reflection in action (Schön, 1987). Instead of being guided by “experts” they are encouraged to develop their own awareness in the classroom, find a position to interact with the students, and try to find their own means of engaging them. Also, in the reflective practitioner model, the teacher acts as an action researcher trying to interact with and intervene in the social system of the classroom (Borda & Rahman, 2001). Because of the focus on changes in the thinking process of the teachers and the power relationship within the classroom, the reflective practitioner model tends to rely more on a residency type of induction program with an experienced teacher serving as a mentor for the new teacher, rather than a short-term teaching practice arrangement with a university instructor serving as an advisor. Although the reflective practitioner model has not become a widespread trend, some teacher education institutions in the Asia Pacific region (e.g., Hong Kong) are experimenting with this newer approach (Chen, 2000; Leung, 2003).

Building a Professional Learning Community The current wave of education reform emphasizes a paradigm shift in teaching and learning in the classrooms, as well as decentralization in school governance and administration. Oftentimes, the depth and breadth of reform being put forward, and the complexities and difficulties in implementing individual elements, is often beyond the knowledge and competence of the administrators and teachers in one school, even if all the heads can be put together. Sometimes, a school may have attempted an innovation successfully, but the experience is often confined to the boundary of the school. Academics may possess the knowledge but have often alienated themselves from the practice field. When this happens, educators and policy-makers see a need to break down institutional boundaries, to encourage more sharing within the school community, and to promote more cross-sector collaborations. Many countries and regions, such as mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia, are now recognizing the importance of building a professional learning community to support innovations and knowledge sharing. In fact, this is perceived as a necessary long-term strategy to maintain sustainable improvement within the education community.

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Consolidating the Teacher Education Sector In most of the countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the supply and demand of teachers is closely monitored by the government authorities, but the power to grant certificates is given to teacher education institutions. Hence, a system of teacher training colleges and normal universities is created primarily for teacher education and has monopolized teacher supply in these countries. Not only this, but the close dependency of teacher education institutions on government support is deemed harmful to their long-term development. Recently, there have been some indications that this monopoly is being challenged. For example, in mainland China and Taiwan, the government relaxed restrictions to allow some universities to establish their own teacher preparation programs. Also, it is likely that, in the near future, mainland China will shift its teacher education system towards an open market approach by opening the teacher license test to the public: anyone who has the qualification and who has passed the teacher license test will be allowed to teach. The shift towards an open market approach has an important consequence on the existing teacher training colleges and normal universities, resulting in a trend towards consolidation within the system. For example, provincial normal schools and shortcycle teacher colleges in mainland China are forced to close down, or to combine to become full teacher colleges, or to incorporate into normal universities or comprehensive universities. Other countries in the region are also taking steps towards this direction, although none has gone as far as mainland China has. Needless to say, the calls to upgrade teacher qualification, to restructure teacher training programs, and to improve the cost-effectiveness of the teacher education system have all been forces behind the consolidation within the system. Hence, for teacher education systems within the Asia-Pacific region, there appears to be two major trends of consolidation. The first is to merge smaller colleges into fewer regional or provincial teacher education universities. Moving in this direction are countries such as Japan, Korea, India, and mainland China. The second is to incorporate faculty of education or teacher colleges into comprehensive universities. Heading in this direction are countries such as mainland China, Taiwan, and Singapore. The first trend is the consolidation of resources and structure. This has the effect of economy of scale and thus can improve the cost-effectiveness of the institutions. The second trend is the consolidation of knowledge and competence within the system. This has the effect of grounding the institutions in a stronger knowledge foundation, thus improving the overall image of the institutions.

Conclusion The forces of globalization and the knowledge economy are seen both as opportunities and threats by policy-makers in the Asia-Pacific region. They open up the possibility for an uninhibited world market, as long as one finds a niche to compete. They also provide more opportunities for cross-cultural communication and better perspectives for solving global economic and environmental problems. However, the current development

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of globalization also has the potential to destroy national economies, threaten regional stability, and damage cultural identity within a country. Therefore, it is no wonder that national governments are trying every means to build up their strength and fortify themselves for the unknown future. As reflected in the national cases, reform in the education system is seen as a necessary strategy to help prepare the country for the future, whether it is for global competition or for national solidarity. Also, reform in the teacher education system is seen as an indispensable component of this education reform package. In the analysis of teacher education reform in the Asia-Pacific countries, five major trends are apparent. These trends can be further reduced to two broad strategies: the consolidation of the teacher education system and the consolidation of knowledge and competence within the system. The purpose of consolidating the teacher education system is to achieve efficiency and cost-effectiveness. The purpose of consolidating knowledge and competence within the system is to make a better connection between theory and practice and to deepen the practice. Obviously, the two strategies are not always compatible with each other. The question that decision-makers may need to ask is: Which strategy is more favorable for the sustainable development of the education system and the professional learning community?

References Advisory Committee on Teacher Education and Qualifications. (2003). Towards a learning profession. Advisory Committee on Teacher Education and Qualifications, Hong Kong SAR Government. Ananda, G. (1996). Absenteeism, stagnation and drop-outs in tribal areas: A case study of ashram school in Andhra Pradesh. The Primary Teacher, 21(2), 11–19. Arimoto, M. (2004). Challenges and prospects of teacher education colleges and institutions in Japan. In Y. C. Cheng, K. W. Chow, & M. C. Mok (Eds.), Reform of teacher education in the Asia-Pacific in the new millennium (pp. 127–144). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Borda, O., & Rahman, M. A. (2001). Action and knowledge: Breaking the monopoly of participatory action research. New York: Apex Press. Chen, J. M. (2000). A mentoring practicum model: A case study of National Taitung Teachers’ College. Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education and Development, 3(2), 159–186. Cheng, Y. C. (2003). Globalization, localization and individualization of education for the future. In B. Davies, & J. West-Burnham (Eds.), The handbook of educational leadership and management (pp. 660–670). London: Pearson Education. Cheng, Y. C. (2004). The big picture of education reform in Hong Kong: The bottleneck syndrome and prospects. The First Hong Kong Principal Conference, March, 2004, Hong Kong Institute of Education. Cheng, Y. C. (2005). New paradigm for re-engineering education: Globalization, localization and individualization. Berlin: Dordrecht. Education Commission. (1982). Education Commission Report No. 5. Hong Kong: Education Department. Feng, D. M. (2007). Effectiveness and improvement in disadvantaged schools: The case of Mainland China. (This volume). Fenstermacher, G. D. (1978). A philosophical consideration of recent research on teacher effectiveness. Review of Research in Education, 6, 157–185. Galton, M. (2001). The missing foundation of teacher education. In Y. C. Cheng, K. W. Chow, & K. T. Tsui (Eds.), New teacher education for the future: International perspectives. Hong Kong Institute of Education & Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Hargreaves, A. (1994). Changing teachers, changing times: Teachers’ work and culture in the postmodern time. London: Cassell.

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Kamat, S. (2004). Postcolonial aporias, or what does fundamentalism has to do with globalization? The contradictory consequence of education reform in India. Comparative Education, 40(2), 267–287. Kim, H. S. (2000). Towards achieving high quality pre-service teacher training in Korea. Asia- Pacific Journal of Teacher Education & Development, 3(1), 55–78. Kim, H. S. (2004). Korean national universities of education: Reform and further reform. In Y. C. Cheng, K. W. Chow, & M. C. Mok (Eds.), Reform of teacher education in the Asia-Pacific in the new millennium (pp. 145–162). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Lee, M. N. (2004). Malaysian teacher education into the new century. In Y. C. Cheng, K. W. Chow, & M. C. Mok (Eds.), Reform of teacher education in the Asia-Pacific in the new millennium (pp. 81–92). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Leung, F. K. S. (2003). Issues concerning teacher education in the East Asian Region. Asia- Pacific Journal of Teacher Education and Development, 6(2), 5–22. Marland, P., & Osborne, A. (1990). Classroom theory, thinking, and action. Teaching and Teacher Education, 6(1), 93–103. Motani, Y. (2005). Hopes and challenges for progressive educators in Japan: Assessment of the “progressive turn” in the 2002 educational reform. Comparative Education, 41(3), 309–327. Schlechty, P. C. (2001). Shaking up the school house: How to support and sustain educational innovation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Schön, D. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Taki, M. (2001). Relation among bullying, stress and stressor: A follow-up survey using panel data and a comparative survey between Japan and Australia. Japanese Society, 5(1), 118–132. Tam, W. M. (2005). School-community relations: Reality and tensions. Hong Kong Journal of Basic Education, 14(2), 1–20. Walia, K. (2004). Reform of teacher education in India: Trends and challenges. In Y. C. Cheng, K. W. Chow, & M. C. Mok (Eds.), Reform of teacher education in the Asia-Pacific in the new millennium. (pp. 93–106). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Wang, Y. J. (2004). Patterns of development of Chinese teacher education in a reform context. In Y. C. Cheng, K. W. Chow, & M. C. Mok (Eds.), Reform of teacher education in the Asia-Pacific in the new millennium. (pp. 63–83). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Watzlawick, P., Weakland, J. H., & Fisch, R. (1974). Change: Principles of problem formation and problem resolution. New York: Norton. Weiner, M. (1991). The child and the state in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Willms, J. D. (2004). What can we say about the quality and equality of education systems from the first cycle of the PISA? Hong Kong Education Journal, 32(1), 161–175.

41 SCHOOL AND TEACHER EFFECTIVENESS: IMPLICATIONS OF FINDINGS FROM EVIDENCE-BASED RESEARCH ON TEACHING AND TEACHER QUALITY Ken Rowe

Introduction The provision of schooling is one of the most massive and ubiquitous undertakings of the modern state. Schools account for a substantial proportion of public and private expenditure and are universally regarded as vital instruments of social and economic policy aimed at promoting individual fulfillment, social progress and national prosperity. Moreover, since schooling generates a substantial quantity of paid employment for teachers and administrators, it is not surprising that there has long been an interest in knowing how effective the provision of school education is and how it can be improved. What is surprising is the shakiness of our knowledge about educational effectiveness in terms of experiences and outcomes of schooling for students, teachers, parents and the wider community. Even more intriguing is that the journey undertaken by researchers since the 1960s in search of answers appears, 40 years later, to have only begun to cast light on what really matters in affecting students’ experiences and outcomes of schooling, namely, the provision of quality teaching and learning by quality teachers. The global economic, technological and social changes under way, requiring responses from an increasingly skilled workforce, make high quality schooling an imperative. Whereas OECD education ministers have recently committed their countries to the goal of raising the quality of learning for all, this ambitious goal will not be achieved unless all children, irrespective of their characteristics, backgrounds and locations, receive high-quality schooling and teaching in particular (OECD, 2005a, 2005b). Notwithstanding the difficulties entailed in defining an effective school or quality teaching (see Cheng, 1996; Mortimore, 1991; Sammons, 1996, 1999), the work on educational effectiveness to date has focused primarily on the search for ways to measure the quality of a school – defined almost exclusively in terms of students’ academic achievement progress in Literacy, Numeracy and Science. Although the term “quality” is likewise problematic (Istance & Lowe, 1991), the “measurement of the quality of 767 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 767–786. © 2007 Springer.

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schooling is of critical importance at a time when so much school reform in so many parts of the world is being undertaken” (Mortimore, 1991, p. 214). Nevertheless, for the past 30 years, concern about the quality of school education has become a high priority policy issue in all OECD countries where attention has focused on ways of assessing the quality of schools, of identifying factors associated with effective schooling, and on using such knowledge to achieve further improvements in quality.

Research on School Effectiveness Foundations It has been noted frequently that school effectiveness research grew out of studies of educational effectiveness focusing on production functions (Fraser, Walberg, Welch, & Hattie, 1987; Hanushek, 1979, 1981, 1985, 1986; Monk, 1992), and more especially out of the initial sociologically oriented input-output studies by Coleman et al. (1966) and by Jencks et al. (1972). These researchers were interested primarily in issues of social “equity” and the influence of the school relative to that of “sociologicallydetermined” background characteristics of students. Their findings were interpreted as casting serious doubts on the capacity of schools to make a difference relative to the influence of the socio-cultural and economic capital of home background. Indeed, for the past 40 years, the major theories (or models) of learning processes (e.g., Bennett, 1976; Bloom, 1976; Carroll, 1963), and the “process-product” research generated by them (Brophy, 1986; Fraser et al., 1987), have primarily focused on school learning, or “holistic conceptions of student learning in classroom settings” (Boekaerts, 1986, p. 129). Such has been the case despite consistent findings indicating that school factors including, financial and material resources, class size, teachers’ qualifications, classroom organization and teaching methods, account for less than 15% of the variance in measures of student achievement. Rather, during these 40 years, influential studies such as those reported by Coleman et al. (1966) and Jencks et al. (1972) in the USA, “provided evidence that schools and teachers are not effective in enhancing achievement” (Hattie, 1992, p. 9). In fact, reported findings from these early studies suggested that school effects have little impact on students’ learning outcomes. For example, after estimating that only 9% of the variance in student achievement measures was due to school effects, Coleman et al. (1966) came to the somewhat depressing conclusion that “schools bring little influence to bear on a child’s achievement that is independent of his background and general social context” (p. 325). The consensus of findings from these studies was that ethnic and family socio-economic background factors constituted the dominant determinants of students’ educational outcomes. Reynolds, Hargreaves, and Blackstone (1980, p. 208) summarized this consensus in the following terms: “variations in what children learn at school depends largely upon variations in what they bring and not on variations in what schools offer them.” In what has become a familiar pattern, the conclusions arrived at by this early research were consistent with prevailing socio-political opinion. However, a growing

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number of researchers have since provided contrary evidence to the claims that relative to home background influences the effects of schooling are negligible. Many of these researchers have been critical of findings from studies such as Coleman et al. and Jenks et al. because the inherent hierarchical structure of the data had not been taken into account (i.e., students within classes, classes within schools, etc.; or repeated measures nested within students within classes, etc.). Early studies of school effectiveness such as those by Brookover, Beady, Flood, Schweitzer, and Wisenbaker (1979), Edmonds (1979a, 1979b), and by Rutter, Maughan, Mortimer, Ouston, and Smith (1979), were conceived largely as a reaction to the conclusions of Coleman and Jencks. The Brookover, Edmonds and Rutter studies adopted a different starting point and focused on identifying contextual features of schools in which students were performing better than their counterparts in comparable schools, after adjusting for the effects of “intake” characteristics. Given this starting point, the positive conclusions from such studies and the enthusiasm with which they were promoted was not unexpected. The key message from this work was that effective schools are characterized by an “ethos” or “culture” oriented towards learning, expressed in terms of high standards and expectations of students, an emphasis on basic skills, a high level of involvement in decision-making and professionalism among teachers, cohesiveness, clear policies on matters such as homework and student behavior, and so on. Moreover, “effective schools” were also supposed to be characterized by outstanding educational leadership, particularly as implemented by the principal and directed at establishing agreed goals, increasing competence and involvement of staff and at clarifying roles and expectations. Edmonds (1979a) was the first to summarize these features into what has become known as the “five factor model” of school effectiveness, namely: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

purposeful educational leadership; challenging teaching and high expectations of students’ achievements; involvement of and consistency among teachers; a positive and orderly climate; and frequent evaluation of student progress.

Fragility This “five factor model” continues to form the basis of what might be termed the optimistic account of school effectiveness research – an account that presents a positive picture of the role and efficacy of structural or contextual school influences. In addition to the well-known critiques of the “five-factor model” (e.g., Ralph & Fennessey, 1983; Scheerens & Creemers, 1989), there are several problems with the optimistic account, not the least of which is that it was built upon an extremely fragile research base. First, the little empirical evidence available was not extensive with most of the knowledge base being derived from small-scale case studies; but mostly from scholarly reviews and comment (e.g., Good & Weinstein, 1986; Levine & Lezotte, 1990; Purkey & Smith, 1983; Wilson & Corcoran, 1988). For example, the Rutter et al. (1979) study was based on observations made in just 12 inner London schools. Banks (1992, p. 19)

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noted that: “the relevant (research) literature on effective schools is not extensive, with scholarly comment and critique constituting the major proportion.” Second, there have been relatively few large-scale studies capable of providing valid generalizations, and fewer still that have collected longitudinal data that are essential for the estimation of specific effects of schools – over and above that which students bring with them (Radenbush, 1989). Nuttall, Goldstein, Prosser, and Rashbash (1989, p. 775) suggested that it is necessary to be cautious in interpreting “any study of school effectiveness that relies on measures of outcome in just a single year, or stability over time.” While the advice is apt, the logistical problems in mounting and maintaining such studies entail severe practical constraints, resulting in a virtual absence of studies conducted over long periods of time. Third, the methods typically used to analyze the derived data have not allowed for the modeling of complex interrelationships between inputs, processes and outcomes, including indirect effects and reciprocal effects; nor have they taken into account the inherent nested structure of schooling and the organization of students into classes taught by particular teachers. These are problems that only relatively recent methodological advances have addressed. Two developments are especially worthy of comment. The first is the development of structural equation modeling techniques that enable the simultaneous estimation of interdependent effects among variables within a framework that takes into account measurement error, as well as structural prediction residual. The second is the development of multilevel modeling techniques that can account for the inherent hierarchical structure of the data, and enable estimation of the influence of variables operating at different levels of analysis. Fourth, the criterion measures used in school effectiveness studies have typically been limited to un-calibrated raw scores on standardized tests of students’ cognitive achievements (or on public examinations), with scant attention being paid (if at all) to other highly valued outcomes of schooling that include attitudinal, social and behavioral competencies. Whereas the use of scores on achievement tests for the measurement and identification of educational effectiveness is typically justified on the grounds of maximizing reliability, this has often been at the expense of validity. That is, while such tests have moderate correlations with measures of student intake characteristics and background factors, they are questionable in terms of their validity as measures of the curriculum taught in classrooms within schools. Moreover, there has long been criticism of the utility of such tests as measures of either learning or competence. Such criticism has gained credence in the areas of standards monitoring and performance assessment, where new approaches to obtaining more curriculumspecific and “authentic” (Wiggins, 1989) measures of assessment have been attempted during the last 20 years, but it is a criticism that has been largely ignored in almost all studies of school effectiveness. Such methodological criticisms of the early school effectiveness research have provided the impetus for a relatively small number of “second generation” studies and to an even smaller number of what Scheerens (1992, 1995), and Scheerens and Bosker (1997) refer to as “state-of-the-art” studies. These more recent studies consistently find that differences between schools, when relevant prior achievement and “intake”

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characteristics of students are taken into account, are important but not especially large – a finding that is confirmed by results from comprehensive meta-analytic studies by Bosker and Witziers (1995), Hattie (2003), and by the work of Marks (2000, 2005, 2006) and Marks, Fleming, Long, & McMillan (2000). Furthermore, they are of an order of magnitude close to that estimated by Coleman and Jencks (i.e., ~ 9% of the variance). At the same time, those studies that have been designed to enable the estimation of class-level effects have consistently identified larger proportions of betweenclass/teacher variance. This, in turn, has prompted a renewed focus on teacher quality and instructional effectiveness, and to some re-definition of fundamental questions underpinning educational effectiveness research (see Creemers, 1992; Slavin, 1994, 1996; Rowe, 2003a, 2004a, 2004b; Rowe & Rowe, 2003). The small number of “state of the art” educational effectiveness studies undoubtedly reflects the fact that the technical and logistical demands of such studies are immense. In the Australian context, the Victorian Quality Schools Project (Hill, Holmes-Smith, & Rowe, 1993; Hill & Rowe, 1996, 1998; Hill, Rowe, Holmes-Smith, & Russell, 1996; Rowe & Hill, 1998; Rowe & Rowe, 1999) was the first major empirical study of school and teacher effectiveness, although there has been an important national study by McGaw and colleagues into parent and teacher perceptions of what makes an effective school (McGaw, Piper, Banks, & Evans 1992).

The Australian Context Recognition of the importance of teaching and teacher quality in Australian schools has been highlighted in the recent work and report by the Committee for the review of teaching and teacher education (Commonwealth of Australia, 2003). Under the Australian Government’s innovation statement Backing Australia’s Ability, the purpose of the Review is to identify strategies designed to: increase the numbers of talented people who are attracted to teaching as a career, especially in the fields of science, technology and mathematics education, and build a culture of continuous innovation at all levels of schooling in Australia. (Commonwealth of Australia, 2003, p. xiii) Such recognition has gained impetus via the recent establishment of two peak institutes – one at the school level and the other at the higher education level, namely: (1) the National Institute for Quality Teaching and School Leadership (NIQTSL – now known as Teaching Australia), and (2) the Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (CILTHE). Both these institutes were launched officially by the then federal Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Brendan Nelson, on June 3, 2004 (Nelson, 2004a) and August 11, 2004 (Nelson, 2004b), respectively. Interestingly, the objectives of the CILTHE (inter alia) are to: ●

promote and support strategic change in higher education institutions for the enhancement of learning and teaching, including curriculum development and assessment;

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raise the profile and encourage recognition of the fundamental importance of teaching in higher education institutions and in the general community; foster and acknowledge excellent teaching in higher education; and develop effective mechanisms for the identification, development, dissemination and embedding of good individual and institutional practice in learning and teaching in Australian higher education.

It should also be noted that these proactive initiatives have been supported by the federal Government’s funding of research and development projects during 2002 and 2003 for the Quality Teacher Program (QTP) – conducted throughout each Australian State and Territory (e.g., Meiers, 2004). Within this context, Australian teachers continue to be encouraged by the initiatives announced in 2002, namely: (1) a Teachers for the 21st Century initiative – focused on high quality teaching standards supported by teacher professional development programs; (2) a Review of Teaching and Teacher Education, and (3) a strategy to focus on equipping teachers to better meet the needs of students with disabilities, and with other learning difficulties such as dyslexia and attention deficit disorders’, via the funding of “projects at the national and State levels in both the early and middle years of schooling.” Nelson (2002) concluded: In terms of improving educational outcomes for our children there is no higher priority than ensuring that we have quality teachers. A nationally agreed framework on Teacher Standards, Quality and Professionalism is a crucial step in this direction. In reporting these and subsequent initiatives, Dunn (2003, p. 4) cited Nelson as follows: Dr Nelson believes the first move is to lift the status of teaching. “We need to be saying ‘this is a highly valued profession, and we should be treating teachers with much more respect than we do.’ ” At this point, a brief review of the research evidence-base underlying claims to the importance of teaching and the need to build teacher-capacity is helpful.

Learning and Teaching Variation in Students’ Experiences and Outcomes of Schooling It is now well documented that studies of educational effectiveness in terms of estimating the effects of schooling on student learning over time “… share two key features: the fact that student growth is the object of inquiry, and the fact that such growth occurs in organizational settings” (Raudenbush & Bryk, 1988, p. 424). Raudenbush and Bryk go on to note that these features correspond, in turn, to two of the most troublesome and enduring methodological problems in educational research, namely: (1) the problem of measuring change, and (2) the problem of analyzing multilevel data.

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One of the more significant studies to provide evidence regarding the importance of class/teacher effects was that of Scheerens, Vermeulen, and Pelgrum (1989). This study presented findings of a secondary analysis of data from the Second International Mathematics Study (SIMS). The findings, as summarized in Table 1, indicate that for eight of the nine countries for which between-class/teacher information was available, adjusted estimates of the proportion of variance in students’ achievements due to class/teacher effects in several countries exceeded 40%, while school effects were significantly smaller, ranging between 0 and 9%. In commenting on these findings, and those from additional research, Scheerens (1993, p. 20) noted that: teacher and classroom variables account for more of the variance in pupil achievement than school variables. Also, in general, more powerful classroom level variables are found that account for between-class variance than school level variables in accounting for between-school variance. Further, based on multilevel analyses of students’ results on the Year 10 General Certificate of School Education (GCSE) and final year A-levels assessments in the United Kingdom, Tymms (1993, pp. 292–293) commented: In every case (subjects) more variance was accounted for by the departmental level (than between schools), and the proportion of variance accounted for at the class level was more than for the departmental level. A general principle emerges from data such as these and that is that the smaller the unit of analysis and the closer one gets to the pupil’s experience of education, the greater the proportion of variance explicable by that unit. In accountability terms the models indicate that teachers have the greatest influence (my emphasis). Findings from the Victorian Quality Schools Project (VQSP) have confirmed this phenomenon. When the variance in student achievement data for Literacy and Numeracy were analyzed (after adjusting for students’ prior achievements and “intake” characteristics), by taking into account the organization of students within classes within

Table 1. Comparison of Class/Teacher- and School-Level effects in eight countries* (Secondary mathematics scores adjusted for father’s occupational status) Country

Class/Teacher effects (%)

School effects (%)

Canada Finland France Israel New Zealand Scotland Sweden USA

17 45 16 21 42 31 45 45

9 0 6 8 0 5 0 9

* Source: Adapted from Scheerens et al. (1989, p. 794).

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Table 2. Proportional Class/Teacher and School effects for Victorian schools: Achievement adjusted for prior achievement* (13,700 students in 90 government, Catholic and independent primary and secondary schools)

Literacy Primary Secondary Numeracy Primary Secondary

Class/Teacher effects (%)

School effects (%)

45.4 37.8

8.6 7.4

54.7 52.7

4.1 8.4

*Source: Adapted from Hill and Rowe (1996, p. 20).

schools, estimates of the proportion of residual variance due to school and class/ teacher differences were obtained, as summarized in Table 2. The residual variation at the class/teacher-level ranged from 38 to 45% for Literacy and 53 to 55% for Numeracy, whereas school effects, over and above those due to differences at the class/ teacher-level shrank to 4–9%. This is not to say that differences among schools were not substantial in terms of their effectiveness, but rather that these differences were largely accounted for by internal, within-school variation among classes and teachers. The subsequent findings from fitting multilevel structural equation models to the VQSP data reported by Rowe and Hill (1998) and by Rowe and Rowe (1999) indicated strong interdependent effects at both the student-level and at the class/teacher-level between students’: achievement progress, attentive behaviors in the classroom, enjoyment of school, perceptions of teacher responsiveness and curriculum usefulness. Of particular interest was the finding that whereas students’ inattentive behaviors in the classroom had significant negative effects on their progress in Literacy and Numeracy, achievement mediated by quality teaching had notably stronger effects on decreasing their early and subsequent inattentive behaviors in the classroom (or increasing both their early and subsequent attentive behaviors). Above all, the findings underscored the importance of teaching and teacher quality by highlighting the crucial role that teachers have in meeting the cognitive, affective and behavioral needs of all students, as well as providing normative classroom environment conditions that are conducive to learning. The more frequent use of multilevel analytic techniques has highlighted the marked impact that teachers can have on students’ measured achievement outcomes. For example, Cuttance (1998, pp. 1158–1159) concluded: Recent research on the impact of schools on student learning leads to the conclusion that 8–15% of the variation in student learning outcomes lies between schools with a further amount of up to 55% of the variation in individual learning outcomes between classrooms within schools. In total, approximately 60% of the variation in the performance of students lies either between schools or between classrooms, with the remaining 40% being due to either variation associated with students themselves or to random influences.

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The Importance of Quality Teaching John Hattie from the University of Auckland (New Zealand) has provided compelling evidence for the importance of quality teaching via a recent meta-analytic synthesis of the relevant evidence-based research, drawn from an extensive review of literature and a synthesis of over half a million studies (Hattie, 2003). This work has identified and estimated the magnitudes of major sources of explained variance in student’s achievement outcomes – the key results of which are summarized in Figure 1. The findings, as summarized in Tables 1 and 2 and illustrated in Figure 1, of large class/student effects and small to insignificant school effects – are primarily a reflection of variations in teaching quality, and point to the conclusion that it is primarily through the quality of teaching and learning provision that “effective” schools make a difference (Creemers, 1994a, 1994b; Reynolds & Packer, 1992; Rowe, 2003a; Slavin, 1994, 1996). In a paper reporting key findings from the initial stages of the Victorian Quality Schools Project (VQSP), Rowe et al. (1993, p. 15) asserted that: “… on the basis of our findings to date it could be argued that effective schools are only effective to the extent that they have effective teachers” (p. 15). With a slightly different but complementary emphasis, Darling-Hammond (2000) has summarized the evidence-based findings for the effects of quality teaching on student outcomes as follows: The effect of poor quality teaching on student outcomes is debilitating and cumulative … . The effects of quality teaching on educational outcomes are greater than those that arise from students’ backgrounds … . A reliance on curriculum standards and statewide assessment strategies without paying due attention to teacher quality appears to be insufficient to gain the improvements in student outcomes sought … . The quality of teacher education and teaching appear to be more strongly related to student achievement than class sizes, overall spending levels or teacher salaries. Further evidence for the importance of teaching on students’ achievements derive from the VCE Data Project (Rowe, 1999; Rowe et al., 1999, 2002). This population study of 270,000 Year 12 students’ achievements on 53 subjects (known locally as “studies”)

Teachers >30%

Home 5–10% Peers

Students

Schools Principal 5–10%

50%

Figure 1. Sources and average percentage estimates of explained variance in students’ achievement outcomes Source: adapted from Hattie, 2003.

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over a 6-year period (1994–1999) yielded several findings of interest. Whereas there were strong gender effects in favor of girls (~  0.3 standard deviation units), as well as gender/class/school-grouping effects in favor of single-sex classes/schools, the magnitudes of these gender-related effects on students’ achievements paled into insignificance compared with class/teacher effects. After adjusting for measures of students’ “abilities” (as measured by the General Achievement Test), gender and school sector (government, Catholic and independent), class/teacher effects consistently accounted for an average 59% of the residual variance in students’ achievements, compared with a mere 5.5% at the school-level. That is, there was significantly more variation within-schools than between-schools, indicating that the quality of teaching and learning provision was by far the most salient factor accounting for variation in students’ achievements at Year 12. Such findings serve to emphasize that it is at the level of the classroom that learning takes place and that there can be very substantial differences in the progress made by students in different classes within the same school. Indeed, teachers make a difference – regardless of student gender, intake or other background characteristics (Rowe, 2000, 2002, 2003a). Summarizing key findings from a literature review of research related to boys’ achievement progress, motivation and participation at school, MacDonald, Saunders, and Benfield (1999, p. 17) drew a similar conclusion, expressed in the following terms: The role of the teacher was particularly highlighted in influencing boys’ propensity to read as well as their choice of reading. Teachers’ attitudes more generally may diminish or increase the problem of underachievement. The role of the teacher is crucial in helping pupils develop a positive attitude to learning.

Barriers to Reform There continues to be several barriers to reform that: (1) perpetrate prevailing “myths” of “school effectiveness” (or “ineffectiveness”), and (2) generate misinformed and/or misdirected rationalizations of students’ differential experiences and outcomes of schooling. Perhaps the most notable of these is a persistent tendency to place undue credence on various outmoded forms of biological and social determinism which assume that individual children – whether they be boys or girls – do poorly or well at school because of developmental differences, because they are “dumb” or “smart” or come from “disadvantaged” or “advantaged” backgrounds. In this context, Edmonds (1978) long ago made the following comment: The belief that family background is the chief cause of the quality of student performance … has the effect of absolving educators of their professional responsibility to be instructionally effective. (p. 33) Similar undue credence is evident in studies estimating student “compositional” effects (aggregated to the school-level) on school outcomes (e.g., Harker & Nash, 1996; Harker & Tymms, 2004) – the conceptual and methodological approaches to

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which have been shown to be deficient by: Hill and Rowe (1996, 1998), Rowe (2004c, 2004d), and by Rowe, Cresswell, and Hodgen (2003). Regretfully, the longstanding and widespread acceptance of these “beliefs” and their expectations at the teacher, school and system levels amount to little more than “religious dogma” and/or avoidance “copouts” that have little substantive justification in the emerging research-based evidence. As Slavin and colleagues’ evaluations of the “Success for All” program among low SES schools in Baltimore and Philadelphia have shown, students who, regardless of their gender, socio-economic or ethnic backgrounds (including “compositional effects”) are taught by well-trained, strategically focused, energetic and enthusiastic teachers, are fortunate indeed (Slavin, 1996; Slavin et al., 1994, 1997). Alternatively, the negative effects of teachers’ low expectations of students’ success aspirations, and the associated explicit or implicit discouragement, are crushing. Such effects were poignantly illustrated in a Letter to the Editor of The Age newspaper (Melbourne), titled “Apathy starts with the teachers” by Talbot (2002) who writes: I am a first-year law student at Melbourne University. Why is it that I know of only three people (including myself) in the course who did the VCE at government schools? It is a sad indictment of our egalitarian society that teachers are so disillusioned they cannot inspire and support the aspirations of their students. I was laughed at by the Careers Counsellor in Year nine when I said I wanted to study Law. In the following four years I saw the dreams of many of my classmates slowly fade, as they were discouraged from believing in their ability to succeed. Our state education system must be rescued in the name of the principles on which our society is founded. In contrast to mainstream, ideologically-driven opinion, the empirical evidence indicates that the proportion of variation in students’ achievement progress due to differences in student background (~ 9–15%) is considerably less important than variation associated with class/teacher membership (~ 30–60%). Rather, the key message to be gained from the educational effectiveness research cited above, is that quality teachers and their professional development do make a difference, and that it is not so much what students bring with them that really matters, but what they experience on a day-to-day basis in interaction with teachers and other students in classrooms. While it may be difficult to legislate quality teaching into existence, the fact that “teachers and teaching make a difference” should provide impetus and encouragement to those concerned with the crucial issues of educational effectiveness, quality teaching and teaching standards, to at least invest in quality teacher recruitment, initial training, and their on-going professional development. In this regard, the work and contributions of Ingvarson, and of Bond, Smith, Baker, and Hattie (2000) are of vital importance. For example, in the Australian context, Ingvarson has long been an advocate for the importance of establishing teaching standards, the certification of highly accomplished teachers, as well as strategic teacher professional development that are linked to both status and salary recognition (see: Ingvarson, 1998a, 1998b, 1998c, 1999a, 1999b, 2000, 2001a, 2001b, 2002a, 2002b, 2003, in press; Kleinhenz & Invarson, 2004).

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Curiously, a major barrier to reform is a lack of understanding of issues surrounding the vital link between education and health, the developmental and socialization differences between girls and boys, and the needs of those students with learning difficulties – all of which have important implications for teacher training and their ongoing professional development. With few exceptions (e.g., Galbally, 2004; Nelson, 2004a, 2004b; Nuttall et al., 1989; Rowe, 2005a; Rowe & Rowe, 1992a, 1992b, 1999, 2000), such issues are conspicuous by their absence in the published work of “school effectiveness” researchers and “school improvement” commentators. However, these issues are neither minor nor benign, and are of legitimate concern to governments concerned with the provision of educational effectiveness for ALL students. Another barrier to reform is the persistent tendency by education systems to allocate considerable financial and organizational resources to curriculum deconstruction and reconstruction, often at the expense of quality teacher recruitment, training and subsequent maintenance via in-service professional development. For example, “Since 1995 Victoria has invested over $580 million in a variety of literacy programs designed to ensure that all students reach expected reading standards – especially in Reading (Rowe & Stephanou, 2003, p. 1) – with little idea of the “return on investment” in terms of improved student learning outcomes. There is a similar tendency for curricula to treat learning as continuous and cumulative rather than recognizing the different interests and learning needs of students, especially during the “middle” years of schooling (i.e., Grades 5–10) – for both girls and boys. In this regard, MacDonald et al. (1999) argue: “Too many strategies are put in place based on untested assumptions about what boys (and girls) think, do and feel” (p. 17). This has lead to a plethora of popular literature – replete with lists of largely untested intervention strategies and pedagogical techniques for dealing with the claimed educational interests and needs of boys. Whereas some of these techniques may be helpful, their evidential status in terms of “effectiveness” is often little more than aspirational. Clearly, research in educational effectiveness, whether it be evidence-based or casestudy-based, cannot be reduced to simple “blueprints” or “recipes” for improvement such as “check-lists” of strategies for enhancing the achievement progress of boys or girls, nor those related to the provision of frameworks for the development of students’ attitudes and values (see Pascoe, 2002). Nevertheless, there are some powerful messages for policy-makers, school administrators and teachers seeking dramatic improvements in learning outcomes for all students, regardless of their “intake” characteristics. Foremost among those messages is that there are strong empirical grounds for believing that teachers can and do make a difference and that consistent high-quality teaching, supported by strategic teacher professional development, can and does deliver dramatic improvements in student learning (see Ingvarson, 2003; Rowe, 2003b). Indeed, the key message from Richard Fletcher (Director of the Men and Boys Program, Family Action Centre at the University of Newcastle, Australia) is: “We are after good teaching that builds resilience and purpose” (Fletcher, 2000, p. 2). A further important message relates to the power of information about educational effectiveness (in terms of teacher quality) as a catalyst for improvement and reform. All too frequently systems, schools and teachers have lacked credible information regarding the magnitude of their relative contributions to performance and effectiveness.

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Fortunately, this is changing (see Hill, 1995, 1998). The trend now is towards the development of indicator systems that facilitate benchmarking of performance against external standards or reference points. At this stage, however, most of this effort is focused on the measurement of students’ achievements rather than on identifying sources of variation and estimating the magnitudes of key factors that explain variation. The evidence from systems that have put in place indicator systems, and more especially those that have begun to collect and use measures to explain variation in students’ measured outcomes, is that such information is a powerful stimulant to strategic policy and practice interventions that lead to improvement. With few exceptions, “value-added” measures of educational effectiveness rarely occur outside research projects, and there is notable reluctance by some within the profession to countenance any systematic collection of comprehensive data on students’ experiences and outcomes of schooling, and factors that affect them. Nevertheless, with increasing recognition of the power of information to motivate and shape improvement efforts, this situation is changing rapidly (see Rowe, 2005b: Thomas, 2002; Thomas, Smees, & Elliot 2000; Tymms, 1999). A further barrier to reform relates to a key reason why so many improvement initiatives in education fail to live up to initial expectations. Hill (1995, 1998) observes that most reforms in education are directed at the preconditions for learning rather than at influencing teaching and learning behaviors per se. For example, many schools see the “middle years problem” of schooling, or the “education of boys” as a structural one, leading to the establishment of middle schools, P-12 colleges, special transition programs, and single-sex classes/schools (Daly, 1996; Mael, Alonso, Gibson, Rogers, & Smith 2005; Rowe, 2000, 2004b). With the possible exception of the differential effects of specific gender/class/ school groupings, research-based evidence indicates that such structural interventions are preconditions, and their effects on learning per se are, at best, small to negligible, including class size. A key reason for such small effects of “structural” interventions is they are based on the fallacious assumption that schools and their administrative arrangements for teaching and learning are independent of the stakeholders they serve (i.e., teachers, students and parents). The fact that this is not the case requires emphasis – reflecting a failure to understand operationally the fundamental distinction between structure (e.g., single-sex schooling; class size, etc.) and function (quality teaching and learning). Schools and their “structural” arrangements are only as effective as the those responsible for making them work (school leaders and teachers) – in cooperation with those for whom they are charged and obligated to provide a professional service (students and parents). By contrast, effective improvement initiatives such as strategic teacher professional development (PD) are concerned not just with establishing preconditions, but with making teaching and learning more effective. Rather, they typify attempts to make strong connections between knowledge about school and teacher effectiveness and the design of effective improvement programs and initiatives aimed at the enhancement of student achievement progress – especially in literacy and the related skills of verbal processing and written communication – of particular relevance to boys. Finally, while it may be desirable that schools have flexibility in the ways they utilize resources at the school level, including flexibility in the use of staffing resources,

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improvements in students’ learning outcomes are not guaranteed by providing such flexibility. This will only occur if both the necessary and sufficient conditions for learning are in place. That is, the provision of quality teaching by competent teachers supported by capacity building towards the maintenance of high teaching standards via strategic professional development, may then used to change the ways in which students are taught and learn (Darling-Hammond & Bransford, 2005). Many reforms stop short of changing what happens beyond the classroom door and thus fail to deliver improved teaching and learning outcomes for teachers and students, respectively. Rather, real reform in improving outcomes for ALL students calls for substantial change in teaching and learning strategies, but unless there is total commitment of all staff to new ways of working, reform efforts soon falter.

Conclusion The “myth” of “school effectiveness” is grounded in a widespread failure to understand the fundamental distinction between structure and function in school education. Whereas a key function of schools is the provision of quality teaching and learning experiences that meet the developmental and learning needs of students is dependent on organizational structures that support this function, the danger is a typical proclivity on the part of educational policy makers and administrators to stress structure at the expense of function. There is also a lack of understanding that teachers are the most valuable resource available to schools. Unfortunately, such misunderstandings are indicative of a pervasive ignorance about what REALLY matters in school education, and/or the location of major sources of variation in students’ educational outcomes – to inform strategic policy and practice. What matters most? Certainly NOT the “pimple” of student “compositional characteristics” such as gender, socio-economic differences, nor school structural arrangements of interest to “school effectiveness” researchers, but the “pumpkin” of quality teaching and learning provision, supported by specified teaching standards and ongoing teacher professional development, and regardless of teacher gender (Martin & Marsh, 2005; Rowe, 2004e). The need for a refocus of the predominant “school effectiveness” research agenda to one that focuses on quality teaching and learning provision is obvious. Nevertheless, perhaps there IS a need to be reminded that: “Ultimately, most of what we do in school education – including our efforts to improve administrative structures and the quality of the teaching-learning environment – can be judged in terms of their implications for enhanced student learning” (Masters, 1994, p. 2). The same applies to higher education institutions. For the sake of Australia’s students and teachers, let alone its social and economic future (or those of any nation), the enduring hope is that current emphases on the importance of teaching and teacher quality that continue to be granted strong support by the current Australian Government, will be evident in the “reality” of major improvements to teacher professionalism and students’ learning outcomes. But such “reality” will not be realized until teachers are at least in receipt of quality initial education, salaries, conditions and professional development support that are commensurate with their

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essential status in terms of the invaluable contributions they are able make to the enrichment of students’ wellbeing and “life chances,” as well as to capacity-building for the nation’s social and economic future.

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42 SYSTEM SUPPORTS FOR TEACHER LEARNING AND SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT

Janet H. Chrispeels, Carrie A. Andrews with Margarita González

Teachers are central to student learning and school improvement. “The effects of teachers on student achievement are both additive and cumulative with little evidence of compensatory effects … As teacher effectiveness increases, lower achieving students are the first to benefit” (Sanders & Rivers, 1996, p. 1). Furthermore, withinschool differences often are likely to be greater than between-school differences (Printy, 2002; Scheerens & Bosker, 1997). Harris (2004) recently suggested that departments within schools can also differ substantially in their effectiveness, thus leading to different outcomes for students. Given these findings on the importance of teachers to student learning (Carey, 2004), there is a critical need to understand how teacher quality can be enhanced. Students cannot reach the high standards now set for them, unless teaching in every classroom is also improved (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999). How can schools and districts support teacher development to ensure that every child is taught by teachers who constantly work to improve their craft? Although traditional teacher professional development, which often consists of one-time presentations, has not proved effective, research has begun to document professional development strategies that can enhance teacher learning and skills (Joyce, 1990). One approach of emerging interest is site-embedded professional development with colleagues (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999). Recent research, especially at the secondary level, suggests that working in interdisciplinary or department teams can improve teacher practices and generate shared knowledge (Crow & Pounder, 2000; Gallucci, 2002; Harris, 2004; Louis, Marks, & Kruse, 1996; Pounder, 1999; Shiu & Chrispeels, 2004; Stigler & Hiebert, 1999). Few studies, however, have been conducted at the elementary level, nor have studies explored deeply the processes of teacher learning in grade-level teams. In this case study, we describe the results of 3 years of study and work with elementary grade-level teams in one school district and suggest district- and school-level supports that can facilitate teachers’ joint work and optimize their learning for school improvement. There is a growing body of work that indicates that teachers’ joint work at grade or department levels can enhance teachers’ practice (Andrews, 2005; 787 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 787–806. © 2007 Springer.

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Camburn, 1997; Grossman, Wineburg, & Woolworth, 2001; Harris, 2004; King & Newmann, 2000; Louis et al., 1996; McLaughlin & Talbert, 2001; Morris, Chrispeels, & Burke, 2003; Pounder, 1999; Printy, 2002; Shiu & Chrispeels, 2004). Little (1990), Hargreaves (1991), and others, however, reminded us that autonomy and independence of practice are strong norms in the teaching profession and that department, subjectmatter, or grade-level meetings do not guarantee teacher learning or changes in practice. Grade- or department-level groupings can lead to conformity and continuation of practices that teachers have found “worked for them in the past,” especially if “teachers interact only with others like themselves” (Printy, 2002, p. 8). Furthermore, Shiu and Chrispeels (2004) found that habitual routines, which tend to quickly develop as groups work together, may block as well as facilitate learning. Therefore, it is important to identify and understand the types of teachers’ joint work that have the greatest potential to support teacher learning and to identify the school- and district-level actions and activities that support teacher site-level learning in teams. We begin with a description of the complex, multilayered systemic change that was implemented by the case study district and its university partner. A key component of this initiative and the focus of this chapter is the establishment of regular facilitated grade-level meetings. We describe our findings about the type and nature of joint work that teachers undertook in their grade-level meetings. We discuss survey results of what teachers in six schools said enabled their grade-level meeting to contribute to their own learning and that of their students. Finally, we conclude with what our work suggests are the systemic supports that districts and schools need to put in place if they are to maximize the benefits of teacher collaboration in grade-level or department meetings.

Context of the Study: Implementing a Systemic Reform Initiative In 2000, a California coastal school district and a nearby university formed a partnership to implement a systemic change model based on effective schools research (Chrispeels, 2002a, 2002b; Chrispeels & González, 2006). In the past 10 years, the district has been highly impacted by rapid growth, particularly in its Latino immigrant population. At the time of the study, the district served 16,000 students in 15 K-6 schools and three intermediate schools (Grades 7 and 8) and one small alternative school. Eighty-one percent of the students are Hispanic, 72% come from low-income families, and 52% are English Language Learners (ELL). Only 4% of the students go on to four-year colleges. The district and many of its schools struggle to raise student achievement: four schools were considered “High-Priority Schools” for having an Academic Performance Index (API) score below 500, and 6 schools were designated “Under Performing Schools.” The schools range in size from 1,100 to 559, with most enrolling approximately 700 students. To accommodate this many students, the schools operate year-round with students and teachers allocated to one of four tracks, which means one fourth of the students and their teachers are on vacation at all times. This schedule poses considerable challenges for school, grade-level, and systemwide professional development.

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Several important design principles guided the Effective Schools Reform Initiative: (1) Changes would be undertaken at all levels of the system simultaneously – district, school (but not in all schools), grade-level teams, and classroom. (2) Professional development, based on a sociocultural frame, would be sustained over time, driven by district- and school-identified needs, and designed to build leadership capacity of administrators and teachers at all levels of the system. (3) Social and cultural capital would be developed through three main initiatives: (a) a leadership academy for all district and site administrators (Yep & Chrispeels, 2004), (b) leadership team training for teacher leaders (Chrispeels, Castillo, & Brown, 2000; Chrispeels, Brown, & Castillo 2000; Chrispeels & Martin, 2002), and (c) bi-monthly facilitated grade-level meetings for the participating schools. (Additional schools could and did vote to join the more intensive school-level professional development.) Drawing on school effectiveness and improvement literature, the partners recognized the school as the critical unit of change (Edmonds, 1979; Harris & Chrispeels, 2006; Levine & Lezotte, 1990; Mortimore, Sammons, Stoll, Lewis, & Ecob, 1988; Teddlie & Stringfield, 1993) by focusing considerable project, district, and school resources on the professional development for leadership teams (six full days a year), and bi-monthly facilitated grade-level meetings at seven schools, and then 10 of the 15 elementary schools. Nevertheless, based on earlier research (Chrispeels & Pollack 1989; Coleman & LaRoque, 1990; Elmore, 1993; Elmore & Burney, 1997; Louis, 1998; Murphy & Hallinger, 1988), we also knew the critical role of the central office in the success of individual school improvement and did not neglect systemwide changes. No Child Left Behind (2001) marked the first time that the federal government identified local school districts as key players in the school reform process, now holding them accountable for school outcomes. This shift in government policy reflects the emerging literature that examines the role of districts in school improvement (Anderson, 2003; Harris & Chrispeels, 2006; Hightower, Knapp, Marsh, & McLaughlin, 2002; Spillane, 1996; Togneri & Anderson, 2003). At the district level, four major activities were undertaken by the partners: (1) involving 180 classroom teachers representing every grade level and school to align the language arts and mathematics curriculum to state standards; (2) determining the instructional foci that would be addressed by every school (e.g., reading comprehension, writing, English language learning); (3) developing a leadership academy for district- and school-level administrators, which met twice a month after school for professional development; and (4) increasing the use and accessibility of data, especially district and state assessment results, to determine areas for improvement. The focus on reading comprehension provides a useful example of the systemic nature of the reform initiative. Both the curriculum alignment and analysis of test results suggested the critical importance and need to develop reading comprehension skills of the district’s many English learners. At the leadership academy, administrators were introduced to the key issues in reading comprehension and to the resources that would be used with the leadership teams and grade-level meetings (e.g., Strategies that Work, Harvey & Goudvis, 2000; and with the primary grades, Reading with Meaning,

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Miller, 2002). On walk-through visits to the schools, the Superintendent was observed carrying the Strategies that Work text. At the leadership team professional development sessions, the books were distributed to the participating leadership teams and sections were used to illustrate how team members could use the books in their gradelevel meetings. In a subsequent leadership team “Share Fair,” team members were invited to share how they had used sections of the book. Books were acquired by many of the sites for all teachers (in collaboration with the university partner), and the books and strategies were introduced to many grade-level teams by the facilitators who used the texts to guide discussion and plan for application in the classroom. In follow-up surveys with leadership team members and interviews with individual teachers, comments such as “One definite change has been using Strategies that Work as a tool” (third-grade teacher) and “I have tried many of the strategies for reading comprehension very effectively” (first-grade teacher) were heard repeatedly across the sites, confirming that change had entered the classroom through consistent reinforcement throughout the system. An important finding from this three-year initiative was that all schools in the district showed gains over the three-year period; however, schools that participated in the intensive site-level work of leadership team professional development and the facilitated grade-level meetings experienced twice the growth rate in their Academic Performance Index (the California aggregate measure of school-level achievement) compared to the five non-participating schools. In addition, except for one school, these schools showed steady growth over 4 years, without the typical pattern of gain, loss, gain that was exhibited by the others. By 2003, five of the participating schools achieved API scores equivalent or greater than several of the more affluent non-participating schools. These findings suggest that although the district-level work was important and may have helped contribute to the overall district gains, especially in the second and third years, the intensive site-level work added value to the overall improvement efforts of the district. Because the facilitated grade-level work was the most extensive and intense component of the sitelevel intervention, the remainder of the chapter focuses on what has been learned from our study of these meetings.

Teachers’ Joint Work in Grade-Level Teams In the typical American elementary school, teachers enter their classrooms and work for 6 hours a day for 10 months with their assigned students, isolated from one another and with limited opportunities for learning with and from colleagues (Dewey, 1929; Little, 1990; Lortie, 1975). At the end of the day, teachers leave with their accumulated experiences, knowledge, struggles, and mistakes, which tends to maintain both the status quo as well as the variability among teachers’ knowledge and skills. This variability, as shown by Sanders and Rivers (1996), can have devastating and enduring effects on students’ achievement. Furthermore, sending teachers to professional development workshops has not proven effective in ending teacher isolation or reducing instructional variability. “The workplace of the teacher – school – is not organized to promote inquiry or to build the intellectual capital of the occupation” (Lortie, 1975, p. 56).

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Unfortunately, teachers’ knowledge and experience is often lost, thus creating an infrastructure where knowledge is owned by individuals and not used to promote collaboration that enhances teacher learning. To create an infrastructure that would lessen isolation and build on teachers’ knowledge to generate new knowledge, regular gradelevel meetings held during the school day while a “guest teacher” covered classes for the team were instituted as part of the Effective Schools Reform Initiative. The meetings were initially facilitated by an outsider and then by internal teacher facilitators. Among both researchers and educators, there is growing interest in understanding and supporting teachers’ learning at school through interaction with colleagues in joint work during grade-level or department meetings (Crow & Pounder, 2000; Harris, 2004; Marks & Louis, 1997; Printy, 2002; Shiu, 2003; Shiu & Chrispeels, 2004) and in how these teams mediate state policy initiatives (Gallucci, 2002; Grossman et al., 2001). Yet as schools implement and rely on joint work as a means to support on-site professional development, little is known, especially at the elementary level, about the work teachers do and how it affects their practice and student learning (Andrews, 2005). A yearlong study of two grade-level teams in this case study district provides insights about the nature of the work undertaken by the teachers and the ways it contributed to their knowledge development (for a fuller account of the study, see Andrews, 2005). Data were collected through observing 13 kindergarten and thirdgrade team meetings held throughout the year. Pre- and post- interviews were conducted and three of the five kindergarten teachers and three third-grade teachers invited the researcher to observer their classroom twice (Andrews, 2005).

Nature of Grade-Level Work The teachers in these two teams engaged in five types of joint work as each team pursued its agreed-upon collective focus. (1) Sharing includes describing events, materials, and instructional lessons in teachers’ classrooms. Sharing entails little or no interaction. (2) General discussions are bidirectional conversations; yet, when held without clear objects, such discussions often remain at a superficial level, leading to minimal teacher exploration about curriculum content or pedagogical practices. (3) Discussion around objects, such as the analysis of students’ work or lesson plans, creates a boundary for discussion and a reference point for participants’ conversations and requires more active participation (bidirectional conversation) and a fuller analysis of content, pedagogy, or instructional practice. (4) Creation of objects involves the team in an active, bidirectional, and often deep conversation about content, instruction, and student expectations, most often through a debate format as the team collaboratively produces a piece of work such as a rubric, a unit plan, or a parent handbook. (5) Observation and post-observation discussion of classroom practice requires a high level of collegial trust and willingness to make one’s teaching public. Observers reflect on what was observed and often relate the observation to their own practice and articulate new understanding to colleagues.

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The last three types of work all involve interaction around objects and in turn lead to much greater levels of teacher interaction, rich instructional conversations, and the revealing of practice. As a result, as shown in Figure 1, we argue that the potential for building intellectual capital by generating knowledge and engaging in learning is much greater when joint work centers around the creation of a tangible object or observational experiences. We placed these five types of work on a continuum from independent (minimal shared knowledge) to interdependent (shared/generated knowledge). In Figure 1, we also indicate that sharing, as observed in these meetings, remained a relatively independent act and required little response from colleagues disclosing limited shared knowledge. General and not particularly focused discussions moved participants along the continuum to a low level of interdependence. Observations of each others’ teaching and the post-observation discussion seemed to require the highest level of interdependence because of the trust needed to make public their practice, with the other two types of work, discussion of an object and creation of an object, falling in between. In addition, to these five types of joint work, two other critical dimensions of practice were observed: reflection on practice and social-emotional support. Figure 1 illustrates that these practices can occur throughout the process and also can reflect relatively independent acts to highly interdependent processes. Reflection on practice seemed to much more likely to occur in ways that signaled a potential change in practice when teachers were interacting around objects. Teachers revealed insights about their own practice, often out loud to colleagues, as they analyzed student work, created an object, or observed a colleague teaching. Socio-emotional support could be merely a comment, such as “Oh, I’ve had that problem, too,” or taking action to support a colleague in her classroom to help implement a new program. We see socio-emotional support undergirding the entire process and as essential for building trust needed for interdependent work. Table 1 summarizes the types of work that the teams engaged in over the 13 times that their meetings were observed.

KNOWLEDGE:

Sharing One-way sharing of experiences and ideas

WORK:

REFLECTION ON PRACTICE : SOCIOEMOTIONAL SUPPORT:

Figure 1.

Limited shared Independent Discussing Bidirectional conversation (lessons, strategies, and experiences)

Individual New understanding may not lead to change in action In Language Words of encouragement with no support of action

Shared/Generated Interdependent Interaction around objects Analyzing student work Creating objects (rubric) Observing and debriefing classroom observation Dialectic on practice Bidirectional reflection on practice leads to change in action

Intellectual Capital Generated Knowledge Engagement in Learning

In Language and Action Opening up classroom practice to support

Dynamic model of types of work grade-level teams do to promote teacher learning

System Supports for Teacher Learning Table 1.

793

Types of joint work

Meeting

Date

Kindergarten

Third

1

12.2.04

Creation of objects Reflection on practice

2

1.6.05

Interaction around objects

3

1.20.05

Sharing of practices Creation of objects Reflection on practice Sharing of practices Interaction around objects Reflection on practices Sharing/discussion of practices Creation of objects

4

2.3.05

5

2.17.05

Sharing of practice Reflection on practice

6

3.2.05

Interaction around objects

7

3.16.05

Interaction around objects

8

3.30.05

9

4.27.05

10

5.25.05

11

6.22.05

12

8.25.05

Interaction around objects Reflection on practice Reflection on practice Interaction around objects No meeting

13

2.9.05

Interaction around objects

Sharing of practice Observation of classroom practice & debrief discussion Sharing of practice Interaction around objects Observation of classroom practice Reflection on practice Socio-emotional support

Interaction around objects Creation of objects Reflection on practice Creation of objects Reflection on practice

Sharing of practice Interaction around objects Creation of objects Reflection on practice Sharing of practice Interaction around objects Reflection on practice Sharing of practices Discussion Interaction around objects Sharing of practices Interactions around objects Creation of objects Interaction around objects Creation of objects Reflection on practice Creation of objects Reflection on practice Sharing of practices Interaction around objects Creation of objects Reflection on practice Interaction around objects Sharing of practices Discussion Interaction around objects Reflection on practice Socio-emotional support

Two kindergarten teachers observed a colleague’s classroom practice on their own time outside of the gradelevel meeting; however, the missing component was the post-observation discussion with their colleagues after the observation. Source: Andrews, (2005).

The type of work from each meeting serves as a useful tool in understanding the knowledge teachers shared and generated. As can be seen, teachers in these two cases (1) engaged in five similar types of joint work to varying degrees and purposes and (2) provided socio-emotional support for the work and opportunities to reflect on

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practice. More time in the third-grade team was spent sharing, and these teachers did not observe each other teaching. As the year progressed and the work unfolded on the teams, observational data indicated that joint work around objects and observations resulted in much higher levels of participation and active debate about curriculum (content knowledge) and instructional practices (pedagogy). The joint work also led teachers to try things in their classrooms, bringing their work back to subsequent team meetings. The data suggest that sharing and general discussion, while important for team building, are much less likely to lead to changes in instructional practices compared to discussion focused around student work, creation of objects, and observing each other teach. In addition to the types of work, we also wanted to know what kinds of knowledge seemed to be influenced by the teachers’ joint work. Previous research has categorized five types of knowledge that when enhanced seem critical to increasing teacher effectiveness: content knowledge (Shulman, 1987, 1996); pedagogical content knowledge; pedagogical knowledge (Grossman, 1989, 1992; Shulman, 1996, 1987; Wilson, Shulman, & Richart, 1987); knowledge of students (National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, 2002); and knowledge of self (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988; Elbaz, 1987; Schön, 1987). Table 2 presents samples of the types of work being done, kinds of knowledge affected, and teacher (designated Ta, Tc, Td, and Te in the table) dialogue recorded that served as the basis of the categorization. Also participating in these meetings were the team’s facilitator (F2) and the school’s bilingual coach (Co). As is typical of teachers who have worked together for some time, their conversations are truncated and almost in code form. In the first section of Table 2, the team is assessing what they can learn about a kindergarten student’s writing development. In Line seven, the bilingual coach (Co) offers that putting up a word wall that particularly addressed the problem of reversals could be useful to this student and others. This passage is key in showing how the team went from exploring what the student knew and where there were gaps to offering a change in practice that could assist the student. In the second part of Table 2, a third-grade team member justifies the score given to a writing sample based on using the rubric the team had developed. Another teacher presents a reflective comment about his own teaching and raises his concern to the group that he is providing too much assistance, revealing his knowledge of self and opening an opportunity for colleagues to share pedagogical content knowledge. In the final section of Table 2, data are again presented about the kindergarten team and the kinds of knowledge tapped, shared, and developed as the team debriefs the observation of one of their colleagues. These short examples help to reveal the ways in which the work with objects or observations focused teachers’ conversations and facilitated an exchange of views that often led to future action when they returned to their classrooms. The objects also helped teachers reflect on their own individual practice. In the exchange below, the teachers (Ta, Tc, Td, Te), the facilitator (F1), and the bilingual coach (Co) are debriefing their observation of one of their colleagues teaching Writers’Workshop (the team’s collective action for the year). Two of the kindergarten teachers (Ta and Te) have been experimenting with Writer’s Workshop since November through a schoolwide writers’ group that the bilingual coach leads after school. The facilitator and one of the teachers raise the question of

Source: Andrews, (2005, p. 74).

Classroom observation and post-observation discussion

Creating an assessment rubric

Content knowledge

Analyzing and interpreting student work using a protocol

Knowledge of students

Knowledge of self

Pedagogical knowledge

Pedagogical content knowledge

Knowledge of self

Content knowledge

Knowledge of students

Pedagogical content knowledge

Knowledge of students

Knowledge domain

[I noticed] several children were writing for 15 minutes, but two boys didn’t have anything written. I wouldn’t be able to handle [them not writing] because I am too controlling (FN-1.20.04). They start writing [with Writers’ Workshop]. They are responsible for their actions (FN-1.20.04). Sometimes they don’t know how to get what’s up here [points to her head] to their pencil in words (FN-1.20.04).

In this segment, the teachers were able to reveal their content knowledge and make inferences about a student’s work: Ta: He has some sounds. Tc: He knows the concept of words. Co: The line holds the word, the word entity and that text has meaning, self-selected topic. F2: Has a sense of a whole sentence. Te: This child knows all the letter sounds (Field Notes [FN]-2.3.04). Co: [Develop a] word wall with “the,” “dad,” to work on the reversals, and maybe [encourage] rereading to see that they [do not have] “the” [written] twice (FN-2.3.04). In this segment, they were able to share what the student was able to do, objectively discussing the knowledge of the student based on the writing sample: F2: Underlining. Tc: Spaces. Td: Capitals. Co: Pictures, long sentences. Tc: I see reversals, trouble with letters, reversal of b and d (FN-2.3.04). If he wrote on his own, I would have given him a 4, maybe (FN-2.3.04). I was looking more at adjectives [in the student’s work] since I gave them a low score, a two, because all the adjectives were not vivid. He used a lot of color or flavor adjectives, so I thought that was average (FN-2.3.04). I feel like I am helping out too much. I brought up the question: How do you correct them and getting to all 20 [papers]? I was just talking about writing conferences, so it’s meaningful and constructive criticism. Writing process is having things to do in my class. I don’t know how much correcting I should do (FN-2.3.04). I can see reading helps develop their writing [skills] (FN-1.20.04).

Evidence

Types of work and discursive evidence of knowledge domain affected

Type of work

Table 2.

System Supports for Teacher Learning 795

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how to get organized. Te responds, indicating it is an ongoing process. They discuss the supports and modeling needed. In Line 11, Ta, who has already been implementing Writer’s Workshop, indicates that she has observed something new in her colleague’s classroom and will immediately implement this new strategy in her class. (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

(7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12)

Td: [Inquires into when another teacher on their team started Writer’s Workshop.] Te: She [Teacher A] started in November. Td: Did you get some training? F1: We have a writing group with [the bilingual coach]. How do you organize? Tc: That’s my question. Te: It’s a routine and we are still working on it. I am also learning at the same time. I made a chart two weeks ago. Behavior needs to be explicitly taught – what they should be doing. Some aren’t drawing pictures. Td: Modeling is so important. Co: I am impressed how you stuck with [that] little boy … F1: I liked the process chart titled “To be a good writer.” Very nice. Te: Thank you. Ta: Specifically, I like [how the students were] sitting on their journal. I will try that today. Td: I liked that the buddies move to face each other and give each other their attention. We are working on solving our own problems (Andrews, 2005, p. 134.).

The decision to make Writers’ Workshop the focus of their work for the kindergarten team required three of the five teachers unfamiliar with the program to consider making major shifts in their practice. Watching a video of Writers’ Workshop, studying program materials, and observing a first-grade and a kindergarten teacher using the program provided a basis for developing all five types of knowledge as these teachers worked to change their approach to writing. For two of the kindergarten teachers familiar with Writers’ Workshop and already implementing it in their classrooms, the observations and grade-level meetings gave them time to reflect on their practice and to make refinements in their teaching. For the other three teachers, implementing Writers’ Workshop meant significant conceptual as well as instructional changes. Although not contemplating a significant change in the way they taught writing, the third-grade team also began to examine the writing process and their students’ work when, as a team, they decided to develop a writing rubric and use it to score student work. In contrast, when the third grade team merely shared their English language development lessons, there was little dialogue and thus very limited opportunity to generate new knowledge or reflect on practice (see Andrews, 2005 for more details). These findings suggest that if grade-level meetings are to be significant sites for teacher learning and change in practice, the nature of the work has to be focused, involve active participation by all members, and engage the team not just in sharing knowledge but also actively generating knowledge. Rueda (1998) argued that to enhance student learning, teachers need to be engaged in the kinds of professional development that mirror and parallel effective teaching, such as building on prior knowledge, engaging in rich instructional conversations, contextualizing the work in the problems of practice, and tackling complex problems that lead to joint productive work. The data from this study indicate that when the teams were discussing student

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work, creating objects, or observing each other teach, these principles of high-quality professional development were being enacted and teacher learning was taking place. The effects on instructional practice were observed when teachers brought student work back to the grade-level meetings and when their classrooms were observed.

Supports and Constraints of Grade-Level Meetings The first part of this case study provides a close-up examination of the kinds of work that elementary grade-level teams do that are most likely to influence their practice and enhance student learning. Equally important is understanding what supports or constrains the teams from doing work that can improve practice. A survey of 122 teachers in 6 schools in the district provided insights about the conduct of grade-level meetings that teachers perceive assist or hinder their learning. Using a five-point Likert scale, teachers responded to a series of questions about the conduct of their meetings, team conditions for learning, strategies they were discussing that were most helpful, obstacles, and whether or not they felt grade-level meetings were supporting their own learning and that of their students.

Teacher Reports of What Supports and Constrains Grade-Level Meetings Correlation analyses Two correlation analyses were performed to assess the relationships between the teachers’ reported impacts on their teaching and student learning and four process variables: effective meeting processes, strategies and approaches, conditions for team learning, and obstacles. ●

●

●

●

Teachers who reported impacts on their teaching and student performance found that five processes were highly effective for their team work: (1) setting goals, (2) using protocols to examine student work, (3) following group norms, (4) having positive attitudes, and (5) group facilitation training. Two strategies discussed in the grade-level meetings were found to be positively related to the GLM impact on student learning: (1) developing rubrics and (2) staging and focusing on needs of English language learners. Developing rubrics was also found to be highly correlated with the impact of grade-level meetings on teaching. Three conditions for team learning that were prevalent in the grade-level meetings were positively correlated with the teachers’ reported impacts on both instructional practices and student learning: (1) encouragement of divergent views, (2) recognition of members’ uniqueness, and (3) open expression of concerns and ideas. Four obstacles: (1) lack of clear communication, (2) lack of focus and goals, (3) weak facilitation skills, and (4) poor relationships among team members were found to be negatively correlated with the teachers’ perceptions on the impact of the meetings on teaching and learning. Thus, teachers who reported those obstacles hindered their teams from operating effectively also indicated the meetings did not influence their instructional practices and their students’ learning.

Table 3 displays the results of the correlation analysis.

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Regression analysis A multiple regression, as shown in Table 4, was also conducted to learn more about the relationship between several independent or predictor variables (e.g., teaching experience, grade level, frequency of meetings, principal’s attendance, obstacles, processes, strategies, conditions for team learning) and two dependent variables (teachers’ perceptions of impact on instructional practices and impact on student learning). Five factors were found as the best predictors of grade-level meeting impact on teaching practices, accounting for 43% of the variance. Teachers whose teams followed group Table 3.

Summary of grade-level meeting factors affecting teaching and learning Factors

Effective processes

Impact on teaching

Setting goals Using protocols Following group norms Positive attitudes Strategies/Approaches Developing rubrics Staging/focusing on English learners Conditions for team Encouragement of learning divergent views Recognition of members’ uniqueness Open expression of concerns and ideas Obstacles Lack of clear communication Lack of focus or goals Weak facilitation skills Bad team relations

Impact on student learning

0.458** 0.330** 0.399** 0.282** 0.227*

0.349** 0.313** 0.417** 0.217* 0.234*

0.134

0.200*

0.279** 0.308** 0.334** 0.330** 0.500** 0.342** 0.227*

0.201* 0.222* 0.296** 0.318** 0.470** 0.271** 0.212*

* Correlation significant at the 0.05 level. ** Correlation significant at the 0.01 level.

Table 4. learning

Multiple regression of factors that best predict effects of grade-level meetings on teaching and

Factors

Impact on teaching Setting goals Following group norms Open expression of concerns and ideas Lack of focus or goals Lack of clear communication Impact on student learning Following group norms Lack of focus or goals Lack of clear communication * Correlation significant at the 0.05 level. ** Correlation significant at the 0.01 level.

Unstandardized coefficient (SE)

Standardized coefficient

0.615* (0.255) 0.490** (0.172) 0.424* (0.194) 0.625** (0.213) 0.480* (0.221)

R2
0.43 0.220 0.245 0.183 0.265 0.181

0.703 (0.174) 0.813 (0.211) 0.591 (0.241)

R2
0.37 0.350 0.341 0.212

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norms, set clear goals, and expressed ideas or concerns were more likely to perceive impacts on their instructional practices compared to teachers whose teams lacked focus or goals, lacked clear communication, and perceived fewer impacts on their teaching. Group norms, focus and goals, and clear communication were the best predictors for the meetings’ impacts on student learning, accounting for 37% of the variance. These findings give some clear direction for principals and teachers in terms of changes that might be needed in their grade-level or department meetings if they are to maximize the potential of teacher and student learning. The importance of goal focus became clear in the third-grade team, as previously described, when they shifted from merely reporting on their English language development lessons to setting a goal to develop a new writing rubric. The kindergarten team’s goal of implementing Writers’ Workshop also confirms the survey findings and illustrates that, the more substantial the goal, the greater likelihood there will be changes in teacher practices. This suggests that not only are goals important, but the nature of the goal may also make a difference in the quality and depth of teacher learning. Interestingly, but not surprisingly given literature on effective teams (Chrispeels, Brown, et al., 2000; Chrispeels, Castillo, et al., 2000; Chrispeels & Martin, 2002; Hackman, 2002; Larson & LaFasto, 1989) and learning communities (Borko, 2004; Grossman et al., 2001), group norms surfaced as a factor that teachers reported contributed to the quality of the grade-level meetings. In the initial stages of the Effective Schools initiative, leadership teams and grade-level groups were guided in the setting of norms. Five years later, teachers identified them as important to their grade-level team’s functioning. Coleman (1988) defined social capital by the presence of three components: (1) trusting relations among members, (2) enhanced social networks that engender interdependent relationships, and (3) shared norms and expectations with sanctions. The data from this study suggest that perhaps the setting of the norms, which define expectations and imply sanctions, may be a first and preliminary step for building trust among members and supporting an interdependent social network. Norms are also foundational to fostering the conditions for team learning (e.g., encouragement of divergent views, respect for member uniqueness, and open expression of concerns and ideas), which the data indicate are associated with teachers’ perception that the grade-level work was influencing their own learning and that of their students. Thus norms, goals, and agenda create the necessary conditions for team learning (Neck & Manz, 1994; Shiu & Chrispeels, 2004). The absence of these key ingredients, coupled with poor communication and bad team relations, proved to be critical obstacles that teachers reported limited the opportunity for their own learning and consequently that of their students.

Implications: System Supports Needed for Grade-Level Meetings Marzano, in this volume, suggests that in order to maximize student learning, schools must set challenging achievement goals for the school and for each student. This case study indicates that challenging and specific grade-level, interdisciplinary team, or department goals may be an equally important and often overlooked dimension of the

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school improvement process. In other words, district or school goals need to be translated into meaningful work by the grade, department, or interdisciplinary teams as well as individual teachers. Regular team meetings give teachers the opportunity to create their own meaning and strategies through dialogue and joint work with colleagues in ways that will benefit themselves and their students and at the same time move in the direction of the school and system goals (Andrews, 2005; Conley, Fauske, & Pounder, 2004; Shiu & Chrispeels, 2004). Similarly, Marzano (in this volume) cites the importance of establishing schoolwide norms that engender collegiality and cooperation. Grade and department teams are natural sites for fostering collegiality and cooperation. Our data suggest that well-structured meetings – with established norms, goals, meeting times, and agendas – focused on joint work around objects and observations of practice can provide teachers with the meaningful and appropriate staff development needed to advance teaching and learning. As Thompson, Gregg, and Niska (2004) argued: Creating a learning community for adults requires a new form of professional development … Teachers have often considered professional development days a waste of time because a shotgun approach has been used to introduce teachers to new ideas that came from someone else without teacher input and often resulted in no follow through or support to implement the innovation and new strategy. (p. 4) We would argue that grade, interdisciplinary, or department team meetings represent one new form of professional development, but they will remain less than effective if district and school leaders do not create and support the conditions needed for optimal learning and more carefully focus the work of the team. Based on lessons learned from guiding and facilitating grade-level work in this case study district and observing teacher and student learning, we present several actions that district and site leaders can take to optimize teacher team meetings as significant sites for teacher learning.

District Support Because grades and departments are embedded within schools, districts rarely give sufficient attention to the kinds of supports these groups may need to be forces for school improvement. A key district function is working with the teachers’ union to re-examine the school calendar and day to find ways that time can be created for grade-level and department meetings. Some union contracts provide regular preparation periods for teachers; unfortunately, preparation is conceptualized as an individual act and not as a collaborative endeavor. Yet teachers preparing together may be a more powerful form of preparation that could greatly diminish the classroom variability that contributes to different outcomes for students. In the reform initiative described in this case study, another type of district support is training for teacher leaders who could serve as grade-level and department leaders. The external facilitators in this project certainly helped to get the grade-level teams up and functioning. There was some teacher resistance to these “outsiders”; yet the data

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suggest that facilitation skills of creating norms; setting goals; having agendas and minutes at every meeting; and bringing resources such as books, protocols for looking at student work, rubrics, and lesson design or lesson study (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999) formats; and helping teachers to use these resources had lasting effects on teachers. A year and a half after the direct support from the university partner ended, teachers recognized that lack of facilitation skills was an obstacle to their meetings (see also Murphy, in this volume). A third type of support provided in the case study district was training a team of substitutes, guest teachers, who rotated around the schools for a day a week to provide time for teachers to meet during the day. The district provided these substitutes with lesson plans (or, if requested, the guest teacher followed the teacher’s lesson plan). Although the original idea to provide a team of specialist teachers (e.g., art, music, physical education, drama, science) did not prove feasible, one school site did identify such a cadre of substitutes and used them to release teachers during the day, which considerably lessened teachers’ frustration at “being away from their children.” A fourth support the district can provide is clearly communicating its instructional goals to the staff and providing material resources if needed to meet the goals (e.g., in the case study district, providing sites with the reading comprehension books or English language development lessons). In addition, districts could provide grade levels or departments with the student achievement data they needed to guide their work. Particularly problematic in the early stages of this initiative was the lack of timely feedback to the grade levels of the district benchmark assessment data. Finally, a key support from the district level is providing the professional development that principals need to work effectively with grade level and department teams. In Leading Teams, Hackman (2002) stressed the critical role of leadership if an organization is to have effective teams. Leaders must be prepared to support and work with teams to maximize their effectiveness: Preparation is real work. It involves study, to be sure – thinking, reading, visiting other organizations where teams are used, attending management seminars and conferences, and doing whatever else one can do to expand and deepen one’s knowledge of the best ways to create, support, and lead work teams. But it also involves imaginative work – envisioning what might be created, what the teams would do, how they would be set up and led, and all the other matters we have explored in this book. And, finally, it involves political action – sharing with others one’s vision of how teams would work and what they could accomplish, building a coalition of organization members who are prepared to support that vision, and taking initiatives to align the interests of powerful and potentially skeptical others whose cooperation will be necessary to launch and sustain work teams. (p. 17)

School-Level Supports Because multiple grade levels meet at the same time, it is unlikely that principals can attend all meetings. The findings from our study provide a foundation for principals to

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know how they can enhance the effectiveness of grade-level meetings. Some actions might include: (1) Organizing time for grade-level or department teams to meet regularly. (2) Ensuring that grade and department teams set goals consistent with schoolwide goals and develop agendas to meet the goals. (3) Providing facilitation training for designated grade-level leaders. (4) Offering support through extended release time to work on a specific project, coverage for classes while the team members observe colleagues teaching, provision of books and resource materials for study, and recruiting external experts who might work with a team to address a particular content or pedagogical need or supporting a team member to become an “expert.” (5) Helping to resolve conflicts among members. (6) Facilitating cross-team communication through team reports at staff meetings, structuring quarterly vertical team meetings to ensure articulation across grades/ departments, and encouraging team formation around content areas to facilitate instructional conversations and work that will deepen teacher content and pedagogical knowledge. (7) Holding teams accountable for working on those goals through reviewing meeting agenda and minutes, occasionally attending team meetings, and assessing student achievement in relation to team goals. (8) Helping teams to document the impact of their work on student learning through portfolios of lessons and student work, benchmarks, and other assessments, and assessing the team’s work relative to its goals. (9) Recognizing teams for their work and accomplishments. (10) Communicating the work of the teams up the system to the central office and board of education and out to students and families. Unless principals make it a priority to support the work of grade-level and department teams, it is unlikely that they will become significant sites for teacher learning (Borko, 2004). Teachers will take their teamwork seriously if their principals take it seriously. We agree with Dewey (1929) that teacher knowledge is a wasted and untapped resource in most American schools. Establishing strong networks of teachers within schools can lay a foundation for strong teacher networks throughout the system. In the case study district, by the fourth year, teachers themselves were requesting support for second- or fourth-grade teachers across the district to have time to meet. In our experience in working with and studying grade-level teams, we certainly encountered teachers who preferred the autonomy and isolation of their classroom (Little, 1990). Nevertheless, we also worked with over 100 teachers who volunteered to serve on the school leadership teams and several hundred more who worked hard to make the grade-level teams effective. Learning how to make public their teaching and allowing colleagues to scrutinize their students’ work was not easy. Yet our data suggest that grade-level teams provided rich sites for individual teachers to build on their prior knowledge and make meaning of new external demands. It addition, the teams fostered collective learning that began to change practices across classrooms as they developed units together, planned how to assess student writing with a newly

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developed common rubric, or learned about and shared strategies for improving reading comprehension. Given the pressure exerted by No Child Left Behind and the need for high-quality teachers in every classroom, multiple opportunities must be created for teacher learning. We believe that grade-level teams have been overlooked as potentially dynamic and powerful sites for professional development. This case study points the way toward future research that is needed to explore more carefully how gradelevel work leads to changes in teacher practices and student learning. There is a need to better document the actions of school leaders in schools with strong and effective grade-level teams. Finally, more needs to be known about how to develop teacher leaders able to facilitate and guide their grade-level teams to high performance.

References Anderson, S. E. (2003). The school district role in educational change: A review of the Literature (ICEC Working Paper #2). Toronto: International Center for Educational Change, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE). Andrews, C. A. (2005). Generating knowledge and strengthening practice through teachers’ joint work. Unpublished dissertation. University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA. Borko, H. (2004). Professional development and teacher learning: Mapping the terrain. Educational Researcher, 33(8), 3–15. Camburn, E. (1997). The impact of professional community on teacher learning and instructional practice. Unpublished dissertation. University of Chicago, Chicago, IL. Carey, K. (2004). The real value of teachers: Using new information about teacher effectiveness to close the achievement gap. Thinking K-16, 8(1), 1–42. Retrieved on April 28, 2006 http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/ rdonlyres/57/Spring04.pdf Chrispeels, J. H. (2002a). The california center for effective schools: The oxnard school district partnership. Phi Delta Kappan, 83(5), 382–387. Chrispeels, J. H. (2002b). An emerging conceptual and practical framework for implementing districtwide effective schools reform. Journal for Effective Schools, 1(1), 17–30. Chrispeels, J. H., Brown, J. H., & Castillo, S. (2000). School leadership teams: Factors that influence their development and effectiveness. In K. Leithwood (Ed.), Understanding schools as intelligent systems (Vol. 4 in series, Advances in research and theories of school management and educational policy, pp. 39–73). Stamford, CT: JAI Press. Chrispeels, J. H., Castillo, S., & Brown, J. H. (2000). School leadership teams: A process model of team development. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 11(1), 22–56. Chrispeels, J. H., & González, M. (2006). The challenge of systemic change in complex educational systems: A district model to scale up reform. In A. Harris, & J. H. Chrispeels (Eds.), Improving schools and educational systems: International perspectives (pp. 242–273). London: Routledge. Chrispeels, J. H., & Martin, K. J. (2002). Four school leadership teams define their roles within organizational and political structures to improve student learning. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 9(1), 1–19. Chrispeels, J. H., & Pollack, S. (1989). Equity schools and equity districts. In B. P. M. Creemers, T. Peters, & D. Reynolds (Eds.), School effectiveness and school improvement (pp. 295–308). Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Swets and Zeitlinger. Coleman, J. (1988). Social capital in the creation of human capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94, 95–120. Coleman, P., & LaRoque, L. (1990). Struggling to be “good enough”: Administrative practices and school district ethos. New York: Falmer. Conley, S., Fauske, J., & Pounder, D. G. (2004). Teacher work group effectiveness. Educational Administrative Quarterly, 40(5), 663–703.

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Miller, D. (2002). Reading with meaning: Teaching comprehension in the primary grades. Portland, ME: Stenhouse. Morris, M., Chrispeels, J. H., & Burke, P. H. (2003). The power of two. Phi Delta Kappan, 84(10), 764–767. Mortimore, P., Sammons, P., Stoll, L., Lewis, D., & Ecob, R. (1988). School matters. London: Open Books. Murphy, J., & Hallinger, P. (1988). Characteristics of instructionally effective districts. Journal of Educational Research, 81(3), 175–181. National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. (2002). Arlington, VA: Author. Retrieved on August, 12, 2005, http://www.nbpts.org/pdf/drp_oct2002.pdf Neck, C., & Manz, C. C. (1994). From groupthink to teamthink: Toward the creation of constructive thought patterns in self managed work teams. Human Relations, 47(8), 929–952. Pounder, D. G. (1999). Teacher teams: Exploring job characteristics and work-related outcomes of work group enhancement. Educational Administration Quarterly, 35(3), 317–348. Printy, S. (2002, April). Communities of practice: Their professional impact. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Pittsburgh, PA. Rueda, R. (1998). Standard for professional development: A Sociocultural perspective. (Research Brief #2). Santa Cruz, CA: National Center for Research on Excellence, Diversity & Education (CREDE). Sanders, W. L., & Rivers, J. C. (1996, November). Cumulative and residual effects of teachers on future student achievement (Research Progress Report). Nashville, TN: University of Tennessee Value-Added Research and Assessment Center. Retrieved on February 4, 2006, http://www.heartland.org/pdf/21803a.pdf Scheerens, J., & Bosker, R. J. (1997). The foundations of educational effectiveness. New York: Pergamon. Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. Toward a new design for teaching and learning in the professions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Shiu, S., & Chrispeels, J. H. (2004). An analysis of the habitual routines and effectiveness of collaborative teacher grade level teams in an elementary school. Journal for Effective Schools, 2(2), 81–94. Shiu, S. P. (2003). Constructing a learning community for teacher professional development through school reform. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA. Shulman, L. S. (1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57(1), 1–22. Shulman, L. S. (1996). Those who understand: Knowledge growth in teaching. Educational Researcher, 15(2), 4–14. Spillane, J. P. (1996). Districts matter: Local educational authorities and state instructional policy. Educational Policy, 10, 63–87. Stigler, J. W., & Hiebert, J. (1999). The teaching gap: Best ideas from the world’s teachers for improving education in the classroom. New York: The Free Press. Teddlie, C., & Stringfield, S. (1993). Schools make a difference. New York: Teachers College Press. Thompson, S. C., Gregg, L., & Niska, J. M. (2004). Professional learning communities, leadership and student learning (National Middle School Association Research Brief). Westerville, Ohio: National Middle School Association. Retrieved on May 8, 2006, http://www.nmsa.org/portals/0/pdf/publications/ RMLE/rmle_vol28_no1_article2.pdf Togneri, W., & Anderson, S. E. (2003). Beyond islands of excellence: What districts can do to improve instruction and achievement in all schools. Washington, DC: The Learning First Alliance and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Wilson, S., Shulman, L. S., & Richart, A. (1987). 150 different ways of knowing: Representations of knowledge in teaching. In J. Calderhead (Ed.), Exploring teachers’ thinking (pp. 104–124). London: Cassell. Yep, M., & Chrispeels, J. H. (2004). Sharing leadership: Principals’ perceptions. In J. H. Chrispeels (Ed.), Learning to Lead Together: The challenge and promise of sharing leadership (pp. 163–192). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

43 CURRICULUM REFORMS AND INSTRUCTIONAL IMPROVEMENT IN ASIA

Kerry Kennedy

Introduction Asia is characterised more by diversity than uniformity and this diversity itself is multifaceted. Political structures include varying forms of democracy (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Japan, Thailand, South Korea and India as well as nations in transition in Central Asia), communism (China, Vietnam), dictatorships, military or otherwise (Burma, Pakistan and North Korea) and monarchies of different kinds (Nepal, Thailand, Japan). Cultural overlays in the region include Confucianism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity that continue to exert an effect on education even in the most modernized societies. Economically, there are the “tigers” of East and South East Asia, the growing economic giants of China and India alongside Japan, emerging economies in Vietnam and Indonesia, the transition economies in Central Asia and a host of other countries at different stages of development. The key issue for this paper is to consider how amidst this diversity, curriculum and instructional reform has emerged, in what forms and with what effects. Despite the diversities referred to above, a common feature across much of the region has been curriculum and instructional reform. Table 1 is an attempt to show just how pervasive the whole issue of education reform has been across the region: Yet, just as there are diversities of a political, cultural and economic nature across the region, so too there is diversity of educational provision. For example as shown in Table 2 the combined gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary education in the region ranges from 35% for Pakistan to 93% for Korea (United Nations Development Program, 2005). The Education Index ranges from 0.44 for Pakistan to 0.94 for Japan and Kazakhstan (United Nations Development Program, 2005). The Technology Achievement Index ranges from 0.17 for Pakistan to 0.69 Japan (United Nations Development Program, 2001). What is more, development contexts also differ across the region so that only five societies in the region have been classified as having a high level of development1 – Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and 807 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 807–822. © 2007 Springer.

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Table 1.

The scope of education reform in the Asia Pacific region, 1997–2002

Country

Policy

Year

Emphasis

China

Curriculum reform of basic education

2001

Hong Kong SAR

Learning for life – learning through life Learning to learn: The way forward in curriculum development Competency based Curriculum

2000

“Focus on students’ learning interests and experience, include knowledge and skills which are necessary for life long learning” To build a lifelong learning society

Indonesia

Japan

2000

Help students to build up their capabilities to learn independently

2002

To develop a process-oriented way of teaching multicultural attitudes and behavior such as tolerance, mutual-respect, mutual understanding, and recognition of religious, ethnic, and cultural diversities and differences Establish an educational philosophy suitable for the new century and improve the provision for education It is a reform of the educational system for the new society through ICT To foster the knowledge, skills, and attitudes appropriate for success in the Information Age Raising the quality of the Filipino learners and graduates and empowering them for lifelong learning A “learning nation” envisions a national culture and social environment that promotes lifelong learning in our people Curriculum designed for the new century: developing humanitarian attitudes, enhancing integration ability, cultivating democratic literacy, fostering both indigenous awareness and a global perspective, and building up the capacity for lifelong learning (1) lifelong education for all, (2) participation by all segments of society, and (3) continuous development of the bodies of knowledge and the learning process

The education reform plan for the twenty-first century Adapting education to the e Information Age Smart school curriculum Restructured basic education curriculum Thinking schools, learning nation

2001

Taiwan

Moving towards a learning society and action plan for educational reform

1998

Thailand

National education act, 1999

1999

Korea Malaysia Philippines

Singapore

2001 1999 2002

1997

Brunei Darussalam – with the remainder being classified as middle level development nations2 (United Nations Development Program, 2005). Table 2 highlights that the correlation between Human Development Index and the Education Index is not always high suggesting that education has been seen as a key ingredient for development. “Medium development” countries shown above aspire to move upwards and they will often use education to do so. “High development” countries seek to maintain their competitive advantage and they also often see a role for education in achieving this objective. Yet they do so in contexts that differ in terms of resources, cultural norms

Curriculum Reforms in Asia Table 2.

Selected indicators relating to educational provision in the Asia Pacific region

HDI rank1

High development4 11 22 25 28 33 Middle development 4 61 73 80 84 85 93 96 97 108 109 110 111 114 122 127 129 130 133 134 135 136 139 1

809

Countries

combined gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary (%) 2002/20032

Education index2

Technology achievement index (TAI) value3

Japan Hong Kong, China (SAR) Singapore Korea, Rep. of Brunei Darussalam

84

0.94

0.698

74 87 93 74

0.87 0.91 0.97 0.86

0.455 0.585 0.666 –

71 73 85 82 69 69 75 – 64 82 66 76 74 76 60 48 59

0.83 0.86 0.94 0.89 0.84 0.83 0.90 0.91 0.82 0.93 0.81 0.91 0.90 0.91 0.61 0.76 0.69

0.396 0.337 – 0.300 0.299 0.203 – – – – 0.211 – – – 0.201 – –

61 – 35 61 53

0.66 0.48 0.44 0.53 0.45

– – 0.167 0.081 –

Malaysia Thailand Kazakhstan Philippines China Sri Lanka Maldives Turkmenistan Viet Nam Kyrgyzstan Indonesia Uzbekistan Mongolia Tajikistan India Myanmar Cambodia Lao People’s Dem. Rep. Bhutan Pakistan Nepal Bangladesh

The HDI rank is determined using HDI values to the fifth decimal point. The education index measures a country’s relative achievement in both adult literacy and combined primary, secondary and tertiary gross enrolment. First, an index for adult literacy and one for combined gross enrolment are calculated. en these two indices are combined to create the education index, with two-thirds weight given to adult literacy and one-third weight to combined gross enrolment (United Nations Development Programme, 2005, p. 341). 3 The technology achievement index (TAI) is a composite index designed to capture the performance of countries in creating and diffusing technology and in building a human skills base. The index measures achievements in four dimensions: Technology creation, Diffusion of recent innovations, Diffusion of old innovations and Human skills. (United Nations Development Programme, 2001, p. 246). 4 All countries included in the HDI are classified into three clusters by achievement in human development: high human development (with an HDI of 0.800 or above), medium human development (HDI of 0.500–0.799) and low human development (HDI of less than 0.500). 2

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and values, political contexts and unique development priorities. Any reference to curriculum reform in Asia needs to take these multiple diversities into consideration. Against this background of multiple diversities that characterize the region, the purpose of this chapter is to provide an explanation for the widespread curriculum and instructional reforms that are currently on the agenda of many nations. It will do so by considering three broad issues: ● ● ●

What is the impetus of current curriculum reform agendas in the region? What are the implications of the reforms for practice? What are the issues affecting the implementation of the reforms?

Impetus for the Current Curriculum Reforms The Economic Impetus In seeking to account for regional curriculum and instructional reform, it is impossible to avoid reference to the economic contexts in which such reform is embedded. This point was highlighted in a recent Asian Development Bank review of labor market issues across the region: Solving these [i.e. labor market] problems will require implementing an education policy that places less emphasis on the quantitative link between occupation and formal education (to eliminate mismatches), and more attention on the structure and content of education, making it more appropriate for the economic environment in which most students will live. (Asian Development Bank, 2005, p. 82) The call for a “more appropriate education” is an indirect reference to human capital theory that since the 1960s has been largely supply side oriented. It has been based on what Easton and Klees (1992, p. 140) have referred to as the mistaken belief “that by increasing the supply of educated and skilled workers, one automatically insures their employment.” The pervasiveness of this kind of thinking at the policy level should not be underestimated. The main tenets of this traditional approach to human capital theory have been outlined by Kennedy (2005, pp. 2–11). A specific country example will help to illustrate the key issue. Amante (2003, p. 275) as reported in Asian Development Bank (2005, p. 77) diagnosed the problems of Filipino education in the following way: The low level of benefits derived from the Philippine education, especially at the secondary and tertiary levels, is traceable to the unemployability and low productivity of Philippine labor. In turn, these could be attributed to inadequate investments and low levels of technology utilized by business establishments and the very thin economic base of the country. The Philippines has not been short of educated labor. According to Table 2, it has a gross enrolment ratio for primary, secondary and tertiary of 82% and an Education

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Index of 0.89. Nevertheless, the above quotation suggests that the Filipino labor force simply does not meet the needs of employers. Yet it is even more complicated than this would suggest. The Asian Development Bank (2005) has suggested that where the supply of labor cannot meet the needs of industry this acts as a disincentive for industry to invest in high tech developments since the assumption is that there will be no labor to manage or use it. This is a most unvirtuous circle that appears in the Philippines to perpetuate a preference for academic rather than practical education with the result that the mismatch continues with drastic consequences for the employment prospects of individuals and economic growth. As Easton and Klees (1992, pp. 139–140) suggested, there is a need to refocus human capital thinking on “the demand side in the education-labor market linkage.” A new theory of economic growth suggested by economists such as Romer (1994) has had the effect of transforming human capital theory to make it more demand oriented. The key issue of what has come to be called “new growth theory” is that it focused on the supply of labor that would meet the requirements of what is now universally referred to as the “knowledge economy.” Such a value added labor force was seen to influence the economic system from the inside – it was ideas and not technology that exerted the main influence on economic growth. Traditional views of economic growth had focused on the role of technological change, but a precondition for such change was the ideas to bring to about. This focus gave education and training a new role in relation to economic growth. Within “new growth theory” “learning” was seen as an important “externality” influencing not just personal growth and development or even just social growth and development, as in traditional education theories. Rather, learning was seen to be at the heart of economic growth and consequently economic competitiveness. Ritchie (2003) explained it this way: a key driver of innovation and technological progress is the supply of and demand for a large and competent pool of intellectual capital – the knowledge and skills found in the local labor pool. This is not to say that physical capital, investment, and macroeconomic stability are no longer necessary for economic growth. Rather, they are no longer sufficient. Whether they positively impact long-term technological upgrading (as opposed to only aggregate growth) depends largely on the creation of new knowledge and skills in the local economy. (p. 3)

The Social Impetus The economic influence presented above represents just one of the forces in the region responsible for curriculum and instructional change. It is pervasive in terms of catering for the needs of the “knowledge economy,” yet in many medium level development countries in the region (see Table 2), there are equally pressing education reforms that vie with curriculum reform for attention. In Mongolia, for example, the “bundle of reforms” consist of “alleviating deficiencies with buildings and facilities, providing teacher training and re-training, developing curriculum and providing textbooks and other educational materials and increasing student participation in education”

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(Weidman, 2001, p. 5). Similarly, Vietnam has also identified multiple objectives in its development plan for the year 2010, to “consolidate the achievements of the illiteracy eradication and primary education universalization program, provide universal access to lower secondary education, create an enabling environment for distance education and life-long learning, modernize teaching methods and upgrade the quality of staff and school infrastructure” (World Bank, 2001, pp. 57–58). What is common to both Vietnam and Mongolia is that while the needs for curriculum reform are acknowledged, there are other infrastructure and access issues that need to take priority and which in a sense represent pre-conditions for successful curriculum reform. Without buildings, adequately trained teachers, good educational resources or universal access to education, “knowledge based” curriculum reforms will be of little value. These preconditions for curriculum reform act as mediating social conditions for reform in particular countries. They can either hinder or facilitate reforms that are required by economic priorities. In addition to these mediating social conditions in different countries, there are also social and political priorities that can dictate patterns of reform. A good example can be seen in the case of the Central Asian republics. The Asian Development Bank has contributed significantly to reconstruction of these countries in the post-Soviet era. While economic priorities have been readily acknowledged in relation to education for these countries, so too have social priorities as evidenced by the following comment: Another part of the rationale is social and relates to the creation of a common sense of citizenship, a general acceptance of obligations and responsibilities, and individual rights. Education systems are expected to consolidate social cohesion and political stability, in particular by disseminating values of tolerance and peace. Social considerations are extremely important in the Central Asian republics which gained independence relatively recently and are characterized by a complex ethnic structure and multilingualism. (Asian Development Bank. 2000, p. 2) This is an important recognition of a traditional role for the school curriculum and one that is not confined to the Central Asian republics. Despite predictions that the nation state would wither away under the impact of globalization (Ohmae, 1996), there is little evidence to suggest that this has happened. There is even less evidence that nation states have given up their commitment to promoting local values and loyalties through consistent programs of citizenship education. As Kennedy (2006) has argued, conservative agendas for citizenship education now sit side by side with liberalized agendas for curriculum reform. At one time, this may have been considered inconsistent, but in post modern times the co-existence of what appear to be opposites is by no means unremarkable. Another example of this social priority in curriculum reform comes from Hong Kong. There is no doubt that Hong Kong curriculum reforms point in the direction of equipping young people to be citizens in a knowledge society (Curriculum Development Council, 2001). Yet at the same time, moral and civic education has been prioritised as one of the four “key tasks” to be addressed by the reforms. Kennedy (2005, pp. 131–150) has

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analysed this dimension of the reform agenda, pointing out that it seeks to retain a conservative Confucian set of personal values while also promoting a national identity to match Hong Kong’s new status as a special administrative region of China. Thus “knowledge workers” in Hong Kong are also meant to be loyal citizens of China and personally subservient to the hierarchies of the family, the community and the state. Liberalism in the world of work is equally promoted alongside conservatism in the personal and political spheres. While this is a North Asian example, it is probably not far from what might be described as “the Asian way” in the post modern world.

How Then Can We Understand the Rationales for Curriculum and Instructional Reform in Asian Countries? Figure 1 is an attempt to draw the above discussion together. In terms of labor, therefore, the essential ingredients are ideas, creativity, innovation, problem solving and critical thinking skills. These are not skills and attributes associated with the traditional academic approaches to schooling that characterized the Asian region towards the end of the twentieth century. Education monitored by bureaucratic systems that rationed education for elite served the old but would not serve the new economy. Herein lies a rationale and impetus for reform: the “knowledge economy” required workers who are flexible and responsive, able to respond to new contexts and capable of innovation to provide new solutions to old problems. Schools needed to become the engine rooms where such skill sets could be developed, a fact acknowledged directly by a number of Asian education policy makers (Goh, 1997; Law, 2002) as well as curriculum reform documents. Yet why did they act with such apparent uniformity? Ritchie (2003) has argued that the Asian financial crisis in late 1997 marked a turning point in the thinking of regional governments about the need and directions for reform. He has argued that prior to that date, the governments of Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, for example, had relied excessively on foreign capital and a low level skills base for economic growth in an increasingly technologically sophisticated world. There was some commitment to human capital development in education policy prior to 1997 yet “in virtually every country the crisis elevated the issue to prominence as part of a strategic imperative to transition from manufacturing-based economies to ‘knowledge-based’ economies” (Ritchie, 2003, p. 4). Thus, since 1997, education and the economy in many Asian countries are inextricably linked – education became part of micro-economic reform designed to support new imperatives in the macro economy. It acknowledges the pervasiveness of economic priorities for all countries, but recognises that countries across the region respond according to their capacity. Some countries, largely high development countries (see Table 2), responded immediately and have moved to reform the school curriculum so that it can meet the needs of the “knowledge economy.” Other countries have to address mediating factors such as access to education, an adequate teacher workforce, new educational resources and appropriate buildings before they can address major curriculum issues. Yet all countries acknowledge the importance of citizenship education as a means of developing social cohesion, common values and political stability. There are thus twin impulses at

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Key driver of curriculum and instructional reform

Knowledge economies requiring ‘‘ideas’’ and ‘‘innovation’’ Schools need to be the engine rooms for innovation

Different countries respond according to capacity

Curriculum and instruction need to be reformed

If medium development they address mediating factors

If high development they address reform

Social values and loyalties are priorities for all countries

Figure 1.

The key drivers of curriculum and instructional reform and country reponses

work in the region: innovation for the world of work and stability for social and political life. These twin impulses have informed curriculum and instructional reform across the region. Yet what do these reform agendas look like? How are classrooms meant to be different? This question will be addressed in the following section.

What are the Implications of the Reforms For Practice? The reforms relevant to this chapter are of three broad types – curriculum, teaching and assessment. These reforms will be considered in two different ways. First, examples of reform will be taken from high development societies (see Table 2) such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The focus will be on what might be called direct responses (see Figure 1) to a “knowledge based” reform agenda. Second, examples

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will be taken from medium development countries to show what preconditions need to be met before progress can be made with a “knowledge based” agenda. Tan and Gopinathan (2000) have highlighted the main elements of the curriculum reform agenda in Singapore: It focuses on developing all students into active learners with critical thinking skills and on developing a creative and critical thinking culture within schools. Its key strategies include (1) the explicit teaching of critical and creative thinking skills; (2) the reduction of subject content; (3) the revision of assessment modes; and; (4) a greater emphasis on processes instead of on outcomes when appraising schools. (p. 7) Under the banner of “ability driven education” (Tan, 2005, p. 446), this new policy direction, that fits into the Thinking Schools, Learning Nation theme announced by the government in 1997, “aims to equip and prepare students to meet the challenges in a knowledge economy by taking into consideration their individual abilities and talents” (Tan, 2005, p. 447). This focus on all students rather than just elite students is a significant change in policy direction. It signals a move away from a fixed curriculum for all students, greater flexibility for schools and more choice for students. Importantly, it recognises that there are multiple domains in which students might excel, so there is no longer an exclusive emphasis on academic achievement. To give real effect to this, changes have been introduced to what counts as school achievement. In 2004 it was announced that that the ranking of schools on academic achievement in “O” levels would be replaced by a more broad band approach “so as to support and encourage schools in their efforts to provide an all-round education” (Ministry of Education, 2004). In Hong Kong the Education Commission (2000) announced its vision for schools in the twenty-first century: ● ● ● ● ● ●

to build a life-long learning society; to raise the overall quality of students; to construct a diverse education system; to create an inspiring learning environment; to acknowledge the importance of moral education; and to develop and education system that is rich in tradition but is cosmopolitan and culturally diverse (p. 5).

Soon after, the Curriculum Development Council (2001) provided a curriculum response: “our overarching principle is to help students Learn to Learn, which involves developing their independent learning capabilities leading to whole person development and life-long learning” (Curriculum Development Council, 2001, p. 10). The achievement of this objective rests on changes to curriculum, teaching and assessment. Kennedy (2005, pp. 105–112) referred to the main outlines of the reforms. School subjects were grouped into Key Learning Areas thus encouraging more integrated approaches to curriculum development and a focus on generic skills. There was also recognition that responsibility for the school curriculum is shared between the schools

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and a central curriculum agency. While the former are encouraged to experiment and respond to their local communities, there is also an injunction to provide students with access to a curriculum that reflects the principles of the reform. Assessment for learning was promoted as a key element of the reforms especially as an alternative to testing. Four cross curriculum perspectives were identified to support student growth and development as citizens and as learners (moral and civic education, reading, project learning and using information technology) and the focus is to be on learners and their needs. All of this was to be encapsulated in a learning culture that valued student centred approaches to teaching. Another element in the reform agenda was referred to as “the no loser principle.” The reforms were designed so that “there should not be, at any stage of education, dead-end screening that blocks further learning opportunities” (Education Commission, 2000, p. 36). The Secondary Schools Placement Test was to be eliminated; the five bands of secondary schools were reduced to three; O levels and A levels were to be replaced with a single Form 6 exam; and it was envisaged that all students would complete a full six years of secondary eductation. Under the reforms, education was for all, not just an elite and there were meant to be pathways through the system rather than barriers. Yang (2001) has described the full breadth of the reforms in Taiwan. The overarching goals included “modernizing educational ends and processes, meeting individual as well as social needs, establishing life long learning society, promoting extensive and penetrative innovation of education system” (p. 9). As part of these goals, a nine year integrated approach to the school curriculum was proposed in order to reconfigure school knowledge under broad integrating areas rather than traditional school subjects. To assist schools focus on the needs of individual students, they were given new responsibilities for school based curriculum development. So that students would have an easy pathway through the system, revisions were made relaxing admissions processes to senior secondary education and universities. Special attention was also to be made to the needs of handicapped and disadvantaged students. An important feature of the Taiwan reforms had to do with textbooks. As one writer commented “in the move to a nine-year integrated curriculum, creative teaching plays an indispensable role, and requires a lot of creative teaching materials” (Li, 2002). The reforms deregulated the textbook industry to allow multiple texts to be produced for the same syllabus and to open up the industry to private textbook publishers. This removed the monopoly of a single prescribed and sanctioned text that has considerable currency, not only in Taiwan but in other parts of Asia as well. At the same time, in line with school based curriculum development, teachers were encouraged to develop their own teaching materials. This represented an even greater deregulation of textbooks since individual teachers could best cater for local needs with locally produced materials thus reducing uniformity and standardization of the school curriculum as well as examinations. The political ramifications of textbook deregulation should not be underestimated as pointed out by Chen (2002). The similarities in the reform agenda across the three societies are unmistakable and Kennedy (2006) has described the main characteristic of these agendas as the “liberalization” of curriculum. Such agendas seek to remove barriers whether they be subject boundaries, teacher dominated classroom strategies or the undue influence of testing and

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examinations. In this they are consistent with the economic impetus that is driving them: creativity, innovation and problems solving, so necessary to the new economy, can only be nurtured in classroom environments that are unconstrained in terms of teaching style, learning opportunities and assessment practices. A liberalized curriculum is a reflection of the needs of a liberal economy. Another way to view the kind of reforms outlined above is through a theoretical lens. Kennedy (2006) has described this liberalized curriculum as a “pastiche of progressivisms” drawing from the broadest conceptions of progressivist teaching and learning principles. He has argued that the main influence is not so much “child- centred” progressivism but rather social efficiency that focuses on the role of schooling in the provision of a skilled workforce although he does not dismiss the social reconstructionist elements of the reform agendas. Sargent (2006, p. 10), writing of the curriculum reform agenda in China, has made the insightful point that “education policy officials in China use this language of progressivist ideology and weave it seamlessly into functionalist rhetoric about the need for a labor force that is capable of innovation and of acquiring and applying information in practice in the global knowledge economy of the twenty-first century.” In this view, the state has co-opted progressivist principles to support an economic instrumentalism as the basis of the school curriculum. This is a realistic view of the current reform agendas throughout the region. How extensive is the reform agenda outlined above? In terms of the countries listed in Table 2, it applies to all the high development countries and a number of medium development countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, China, and the Philippines. In these latter countries, there are clearly stated policies and objectives that acknowledge the importance of knowledge based reforms. In some countries, there is an acknowledgment of the needs of the “knowledge economy” so that the Indian national government has recently announced the establishment of a National Knowledge Commission one of whose objectives is to “advise the Prime Minister on how India can promote excellence in the education system to meet the knowledge challenges of the twenty-first century” (National Knowledge Commission Constituted, 2005). Where governments determine that there is an economic need related to the new economy, it seems that they will also seek to align the school curriculum to that need. In a decentralized system of education such as that in India, it is difficult to imagine uniform policies such as in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Nevertheless, the central government has sent a very strong message. It needs to be noted, however, that not every country in the region has linked its economic growth to the development of a knowledge based economy. In Bhutan, for example, “the economy is being progressively transformed from subsistence farming to a broader cash-based economy” (Ministry of Health and Education, n.d. p. 4). The education issues are access to secondary education, a relevant curriculum to meet the needs of the labour market and buildings to cater for educational expansion. In countries like Laos and Cambodia, aid projects from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank support expanding access to primary education, provision of textbooks and access for disadvantaged groups such as girls. These are the pre-conditions for knowledge based reforms referred to earlier in this chapter and they demonstrate the diversity that exists in the region. It seems clear from the experience of the high

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development countries in the region that the universalization of primary and secondary education is a key goal before moving onto a substantive program of curriculum reform. It might be expected that the growth of economic capacity in the medium development countries, and especially those towards the bottom of Table 2, will provide the most significant stimulus for them to move towards liberalized curriculum reforms. Without such growth, these countries will be dependent on aid agencies to solve access issues and will find it difficult to move beyond them. Economic growth will at once provide the capital to accelerate educational access and the potential to enter and compete in the global economy. This is a significant challenge for these countries during the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Issues Affecting Implementation of the Reforms There have been no region wide studies to examine this issue of reform implementation although there is a growing literature about the progress of reforms in individual societies including the responses of teachers and the communities in those societies. The implementation of any curriculum reform is very much the product of local conditions and values that affect the way reforms are taken up. Thus it is difficult to make generalizations about the extent of implementation or the prospects for the future. Nevertheless, it is possible to put together a picture of the issues being raised by the reforms in different societies, and to draw from them some general understandings. Tan (2005, p. 450), writing about Singapore, has pointed out how the current reform agenda challenges “the prevailing mindset which focuses on academic achievements.” She pointed out that both teachers and principals have experienced some stress implementing the reforms and that some consideration needs to be given to ways in which key stakeholders can work together to help make the reforms a reality. She also makes the point that even parents have to modify their expectations in relation to examinations and allow their children to explore their individual talents. Another overlay on the Singapore situation is the deliberate attempt by the government to encourage greater competition in the school system so that schools openly compete for the best students (Tan & Gopinathan, 2000, p. 8). The use of performance indicators and school ranking enhances the competition among schools. This kind of reform has the potential to create even more stress for school management and for teachers and indeed may deflect them from the curriculum and instructional reform agenda. Thus when it is asserted that “the reforms” are stressful for teachers, it is not always clear which reforms are creating the most stress. The conflation of different reforms in the minds of teachers and principals has the potential to deflect schools from curriculum and instructional reform if these are seen not to be attractive to parents. If performance indicators do not reflect the values of the curriculum reforms then schools can easily revert to practices that will enhance their competitive status rather than new froms of curriculum and instruction (Tan & Gopinathan, p. 9). This is not only an issue for Singapore, as will be shown later in the discussion of the situation in Hong Kong. The limited information available on China paints a somewhat different picture. Sargent (2006) has reported on the implementation of curriculum reforms in a rural

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province of China. First, she has shown that implementation strategies are very systematic in China and include trials and evaluation. Second, these trials are not confined to the major urban areas. In Gansu province where she worked she has shown that both direct and indirect bureaucratic controls affect the level of implementation of progressive teaching methods. Schools designated as “implementation” schools tend to demonstrate higher levels of implementation that in those schools not so designated. Teachers who receive high evaluations of their performance on a regular basis and teachers who have access to professional development activities tend to be better implementers than when either one of these criteria is not met. These findings come from a local study and are clearly not generalizable to the whole of China. Yet they suggest factors affecting implementation in this Chinese rural province. At the same time, they also point to something of an anomaly: the successful implementation of liberalized curriculum in rural China appears to be related to different kinds of bureaucratic mechanisms. A different kind of implementation problem can be found in Taiwan. Resistance to the reforms became so strong that by mid-2003 there were a number of new anti-reform groups that took the issue of education reform to the streets: They carried slogans protesting against the alleged failure of education reform, and made several appeals, such as: Let children learn happily, allow teachers to enjoy professional autonomy, promote 12-year compulsory education, implement small classes and small schools, increase the number of public universities, and protect the education rights of the disadvantaged. (Chang, 2003) Ho (2005, p. 415) has located these demonstrations as part of the growth of social movement politics in Taiwan following the accession to power of the Democratic Progressive Party in 2000. Increasing political instability provided the context in which “silent endurance turned to loud discontent as teachers and professors took a chance to take back what they had lost.” The main issue to note here is that the reforms were seen to be a contest over values and that when the political opportunity arose, teachers felt so strongly that they took their fight to the streets. There are important lessons here for policymakers convinced of the correctness of their policies but fail to bring with them key stakeholders responsible for implementation. The Taiwan example, while extreme, is not isolated. Following the unfortunate death of two Hong Kong teachers in early 2006, and an inappropriate comment by the Permanent Secretary of Education disputing that the deaths were linked to pressures caused by the education reforms, 10,000 teachers marched to protest against both the reforms and the Permanent Secretary (Ten Thousand Hong Kong Teachers Marched, 2006). The opportunity was one where teachers and their labour union appeared to be pushed beyond the limit. Similar to Taiwan, it seems that teachers will be silent only for so long and when the opportunity arises they will take it to make their views and feelings very public. The result has been a very contrite Permanent Secretary but more importantly a review of the reform agenda to see where it is creating stress and what can be done about it. What emerges from this review of implementation problems and issues in a number of societies is the fragility of the reform agendas. They depend for their success on teacher

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capacity and community acceptance. Where one or both of these is not available, the reforms will be at risk. What emerges most strongly is the centrality of teachers. As Hanushek (2004, p. 22) has pointed out “the available evidence does indicate that improvement in the quality of the teacher force is central to any overall improvements. And improving the quality of teachers will almost certainly require a new set of incentives, including selective hiring, retention, and pay.” This is perhaps the key message for policy makers to take as they undertake massive reforms to their education systems. Policy will only work once it is translated into practice otherwise it will remain rhetoric or even worse, the subject of social and political protest.

Conclusion Curriculum and instructional reform across the region is driven by an economic instrumentalism that seeks to provide workers for the new economy. For some countries this means a liberalized curriculum that frees up examination oriented curriculum to focus on the development of creativity, innovation and problem solving capacities. In other countries, basic infrastructure issues divert resources to expanding educational provision, ensuring adequate building and providing textbooks that at least ensure a standardized curriculum. These latter countries are on the same course as the former, but there are certain preconditions that have to be fulfilled before curriculum liberalization can be implemented. The policies for a liberalized curriculum are somewhat easier to devise than successful implementation strategies. Where the scope of liberalized reforms is broad, where the challenges to community values are significant, where the capacities of teachers to manage change is stretched or when the reform agenda is seen to be overly politicized, then implementation will face significant hurdles. This situation does not seem to be simply one of resources: in societies like Hong Kong extraordinary resources have been made available to support the reforms. Often, as in Hong Kong, it is the combination of reforms. Very often curriculum reform is accompanied by system wide assessment and monitoring of student outcomes, more intense scrutiny of schools through external review processes and more complex management processes through school based management. This bundle of reforms is often too much for schools and the result is often the rejection of all the reforms, including those concerned with the curriculum. Policy makers in the region need to think carefully about the sequencing and pacing of curriculum and instructional reform and their relationship with other reforms. Communities need not only to be consulted but listened to as well. Community values need to be considered as do the values and capacities of the teaching workforce. Curriculum and instructional reform might be a policy priority, but if it is to be more than that new ways are needed to bring key stakeholders aboard. The content and processes of the school curriculum are community issues even though they might at the same time be seen as an adjunct of economic policy. It is this tension at the moment that is unproductive. Communities need to be convinced that the changes are in their best interests; and without being convinced reform agendas will continue to face resistance and opposition. This has often been the story of curriculum and instructional reform in

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other parts of the world and it is likely to be repeated in the Asia Pacific region unless action is taken to make the reform agenda a priority not only for governments, but for communities as well.

Notes 1. Having a Human Development Index above 0.8. 2. Having a Human Development Index between 0.5 and 0.8.

References Amante, M. (2003). Philippines. In M. Hiromitsu (Ed.), Mismatch in the labor market. Asian experience (pp. 270–304). Tokyo, Japan: Asian Productivity Organization. Asian Development Bank. (2000). Technical assistance for sub regional cooperation in managing educational reforms. Retrieved on February 4, 2006, http://www.adb.org/Documents/TARs/REG/tar_oth33025.pdf Asian Development Bank. (2005). Labor markets in Asia: Promoting full, productive, and decent employment, Retrieved on February 4, 2006, http://www.adb.org/ Economics/pdf/Labor-Markets-in-Asia.pdf Chang, C. F. (2003). Backlash hits education reform. (P. Newell, Trans.) Taiwan Panorama 8,066 Retrieved on February 15, 2006, http://www.taiwan-panorama.com/en/show_issue.php3?id
200389208066e.txt &page
1 Chen, J. J. (2002). Reforming textbooks, reshaping school knowledge: Taiwan’s textbook deregulation in the 1990s. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 10(1), 39–72. Curriculum Development Council. (2001). Learning to learn: The way forward in curriculum development. Hong Kong: Printing Department. Easton, P., & Klees, S. (1992). Conceptualizing the role of education in the economy. In R. Arnove, P. Altbach, & G. Kelly (Eds.), Emergent issues in education (pp. 123–142). New York: State University of New York Press. Education Commission. (2000). Learning for life – learning through life. Reform proposals for the education system in Hong Kong, Retrieved on, February 4, 2006, http://www.e-c.edu.hk/eng/reform/ index_e.html Goh, C. T. (1997, June 2). Shaping our future: Thinking schools, learning nation. Paper presented at the 7th International Conference on Thinking, Suntec City Convention Centre, Singapore. Hanushek, E. (2004). Some simple analytics of school quality. Working Paper 10229, National Bureau of Economic Research, Retrieved on February 15, 2006, http://www.nber.org/papers/w10229 Ho, M. S. (2005). Taiwan’s state and social movements under DPP government, 2001–2004. Journal of East Asian Studies, 5, 401–425. Kennedy, K. (2005). Changing schools for changing times – new directions for the school curriculum in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press. Kennedy, K. (in press). Globalised economies and liberalised curriculum: New challenges for citizenship education. In D. Grossman, W. O. Lee, & K. Kennedy (Eds.), Citizenship curriculum. Hong Kong and Amsterdam: Comparative Education Research Centre and Springer. Law, F. (2002, April 14). Speech by Mrs Fanny Law, the Secretary for Education and Manpower, at the 4th Kellogg-HKUST EMBA graduation ceremony, Retrieved on March 4, 2004, http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/ general/200204/14/0412243.htm Li. L. (2002). A textbook case of reform (D. Mayer, Trans.). Taiwan Panorama, 2, 18, Retrieved on February 7, 2002, http://www.taiwan-panorama.com/en/showh2.php3?h1
Educa tion&h2
Educational%20Reform Ministry of Education. (2004). A more broad-based school ranking system, Retrieved on February 5, 2006 http://www.moe.gov.sg/press/2004/pr20040317a_print.htm Ministry of Health and Education. (n.d.). Education sector strategy – realising vision 2020 policy and strategy, Retrieved on February 15, 2006, http://www.education.gov.bt/ Publications/Edn%20Sector%20Strategy.pdf

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National Knowledge Commission Constituted. (2005). PIB press release, Retrieved on February 14, 2006 http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid
9576 Ohmae, K. (1996). The end of the nation state: The rise of regional economies. New York: Free Press. Ritchie, B. K. (2003). Progress through setback? The Asian financial crisis and economic reform in Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, Retrieved on February 4, 2006, http://www.msu.edu/~ritchieb/ research/Progress_through_setback.pdf Romer, P. (1994). The origins of endogenous growth. The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 8(1), 3–22. Sargent, T. (2006). Institutionalizing education ideologies: Organizational control of classroom instruction in China. Unpublished paper, University of Pennsylvania. Tan, C. (2005). The potential of Singapore’s ability driven education to prepare students for a knowledge economy. International Education Journal, 6(4), 446–453, Retrieved on February 4, 2006, http://ehlt. flinders.edu.au/education/iej/articles/v6n4/tan/paper.pdf Tan, J., & Gopinathan, S. (2000). Education reform in Singapore: Towards greater creativity and innovation? NIRA Review, 7(3), 5–10. Ten Thousand Hong Kong Teachers Marched. (2006, January 23). Letters from China, Retrieved on February 15, 2006, http://voyage.typepad.com/china/2006/01/ ten_thousand_ho.html United Nations Development Program. (2001). Human development report 2001. New York: Oxford University Press, Retrieved on October 24, 2005, http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2001/en/pdf/completenew.pdf United Nations Development Program. (2005). Human development report 2005. New York: Oxford University Press, Retrieved on October 24, 2005, http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2005/pdf/HDR05_ complete.pdf Weidman, J. (2001). Developing the Mongolia education sector strategy 2000–2005: Reflections of a consultant for the Asian Development Bank. Current Issues in Comparative Education, 3(2), 1–9, Retrieved on February 4, 2006, http://www.moeys.gov.kh/rbm/Country_Backgrounds/Mongolia/ Mongolia% 20Education%20Reflections.doc World Bank. (2001). Vietnam 2010: Entering the 21st Century – part I pillars of development, Retrieved on February 4, 2006, http://www.adb.org/Documents/Reports/VietNam_2010/default.asp Yang, S. K. (2001, March 14–17). Dilemmas of educational reform in Taiwan: Internationalization or localization. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Comparative and International Education Society, Washington DC. Retrieved on February 4, 2006, http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2/ content_storage_01/0000000b/80/25/c9/58.pdf

Section 7 MODELS OF SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT

44 EFFECTIVE SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT – INGREDIENTS FOR SUCCESS: THE RESULTS OF AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE STUDY OF BEST PRACTICE CASE STUDIES Bert P. M. Creemers, Louise Stoll, Gerry Reezigt, and the ESI Team

Introduction: Research and Practice in School Improvement From the beginning, a major aim of the school effectiveness movement was to link theory and empirical research relating to educational effectiveness and the improvement of education. School effectiveness has its roots in research and theory (e.g., the work of Brookover, Beady, Flood, & Schweitzer, 1979; Rutter, Maughan, Mortimore, & Ouston, 1979), but also in educational practice and policy (Edmonds, 1979). School effectiveness research has attempted to find the factors of effective education that could be introduced or changed in education through school improvement. Scepticism, however, has been expressed about the possibilities of a merger between school effectiveness and school improvement. Creemers and Reezigt (1997) argue that there are intrinsic differences between the school effectiveness tradition, which ultimately is a program for research with its focus on theory and explanation, and the school improvement tradition, which is a program for innovation focusing on change and problem-solving in educational practice. At least in early stages, in school effectiveness circles it was expected that a more or less “simple” application of school effectiveness knowledge about “what works” in education would result in school improvement. In school improvement circles, this was seen as simplistic and mechanistic which would not work in schools. Schools have to design and invent their own solutions for specific problems and improvement in general. Nevertheless Creemers and Reezigt (1997) with others (e.g., Reynolds, Hopkins, & Stoll, 1993) advocated further linkage between school effectiveness and school improvement, for their mutual benefit. School effectiveness research and theory can provide insights and knowledge to be used in school improvement. School improvement is a very powerful tool for the testing of theories. School improvement can also provide new insights and new possibilities for effective school factors, which can be analysed further in effective school research. 825 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 825–838. © 2007 Springer.

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In recent years, there have been examples of productive co-operation between school effectiveness and school improvement, in which new ways of merging the two traditions/ orientations have been attempted (see Gray et al., 1999; MacBeath & Mortimore, 2001; Stoll, & Fink, 1992, 1994, 1996; Stoll, Reynolds, Creemers, & Hopkins, 1996; for an overview see Reynolds, Teddlie, Hopkins, & Stringfield, 2000). Until the Effective School Improvement (ESI) Project, however, the links had not been explored across countries. While sharing school improvement initiatives and projects between countries has been common at International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) conferences since its inception in 1988, joint international projects have been less frequently undertaken, especially those attempting to understand if ESI is a similar phenomenon in different countries and to draw out findings that might be applicable beyond country boundaries (see Mortimore et al., 2000, for one example). This was a key aim of the ESI Project, a project running from 1998–2001, that drew together teams from eight European countries: Belgium; England; Finland; Greece; Italy; The Netherlands; Portugal; and Spain (Creemers & Hoeben, 1998). Another aim was to continue to establish stronger links between the two paradigms of school effectiveness and school improvement to help both profit from each other’s strongest points.

The Effective School Improvement (ESI) Project The project Capacity for Change and Adaptation in the Case of Effective School Improvement (ESI), Framework Program, was designed to investigate the relation between effectiveness and improvement in order to increase the possibility for schools to improve education. Drawing on the definition of improvement of Hopkins, Ainscow and West (1994), the concept of effective school improvement was defined as follows: Effective school improvement refers to planned educational change that enhances student learning outcomes as well as the school’s capacity for managing change. The addition of the term “managing” emphasises the processes and activities that have to be carried out in the school in order to achieve change/improvement. To evaluate effective school improvement, an effectiveness criterion is needed as well as an improvement criterion. The effectiveness criterion refers to student outcomes; this might be learning gain in the cognitive domain, but it might also be any other outcome that schools are supposed to have for students (Creemers, 1996). The effectiveness criterion is met by the answer to the question “Does the school achieve better student outcomes?” The improvement criterion by the answer to the question “Does the school manage change successfully?” (Hoeben, 1998). The measures for outcomes and the management of change can be different depending on the definition of the outcomes (for students) and improvement (for schools) (see Section 3). It is the final objective of the ESI project to develop a model and/or strategy for effective school improvement. The Effectiveness School Improvement project consisted of three related research tasks, namely:

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(1) The analysis, evaluation and synthesis of theories that might be useful for effective school improvement. (2) The inventory, analysis and evaluation of effective school improvement programs in different European countries. (3) The development of a (draft) model based on tasks 1 and 2. The draft model was discussed at conferences of practitioners, policy-makers and researchers in each of the countries and the results were the input for a final meeting of the research teams, resulting in rejection of the idea of a model. Instead of a (prescriptive) model it was decided to develop a comprehensive framework for effective school improvement.

Theoretical Analysis of Effective School Improvement The theoretical analysis for useful insights for effective school improvement incorporated different points of view: (1) the integration of the school effectiveness and school improvement traditions; (2) the search for additional insights in other theoretical traditions such as: organisational theories, curriculum theories, behavioural theories, and theories of organisational learning and human resources management (Hoeben, 1998; Reezigt, 2000). These theories were selected based on the expectation that they could provide concepts and relations between concepts concerning the complex process of school improvement where educational issues (such as the curriculum) and the organisation (of schools) and behaviour of participants are at stake (Scheerens & Demeuse, 2005). The analysis resulted in an overview of factors that might be important for effective school improvement. These were used to develop a framework for the second research task: the evaluation of effective school improvement programs in the participating countries. For a description of the results of this analysis, see Creemers and Reezigt (2005).

The Evaluation of Effective School Improvement Programs Key questions were outlined in the evaluation framework (see Table 1), and each of the questions included a range of sub-themes that were investigated during the case studies. The ESI project was based on several case studies of improvement programs in each participating country. All ESI partners provided a number of program descriptions (varying from two to ten different descriptions) based on the evaluation framework. Researchers in five countries visited the schools involved in improvement programs, while in three others, improvement program data were reanalysed by the country team. Analysis was undertaken to find the factors promoting or hindering effective school improvement in each specific country, and information about the educational systems in each country was used to contextualise each country’s findings. Case studies were written of each program (de Jong, 2000), and country teams were paired up to analyse

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Table 1.

Key questions in ESI evaluation framework

1. To what extent do the student outcomes provide evidence for the school’s effectiveness in attaining its goals? 2. To what extent do the intermediate outcomes provide evidence for the attainment of the school’s improvement goals? 3. To what extent do the students show increased engagement with their own learning and their learning environment? 4. To what extent does the curriculum in the classrooms contribute to the school’s attainment of students’ goals? 5. To what extent does the cycle of improvement planning, implementation, evaluation and feedback contribute to the school’s attainment of its improvement goals? 6. To what extent does the school’s curriculum – where applicable – contribute to the effectiveness of the classroom curriculum? 7. To what extent does the school’s organisation contribute to the attainment of intermediate improvement goals and students’ goals? 8. To what extent does parental choice and involvement contribute to the school’s responsiveness and to its attainment of intermediate improvement goals and students’ goals? 9. To what extent does the learning by the school organisation contribute to the school’s management of change, i.e., to the attainment of the intermediate improvement goals? 10. To what extent do external change agents contribute to the school’s attainment of intermediate improvement goals? 11. To what extent do the contextual characteristics allow for, stimulate or hinder ESI, that is, the attainment of intermediate improvement goals and of the students’ goals? For instance: to what extent does the national curriculum – where applicable – allow for, stimulate or hinder ESI?

similarities and differences between the programs, using a rating instrument (Stoll, Wikeley, & Reezigt, 2002). Next to the factors which resulted from the analysis of the theories new factors came up in the description and the analysis of the case studies. We also explored whether the factors worked in the same way in different countries. This was important for constructing an ESI model, especially if they pointed to factors different from those derived from the theoretical analyses and also because they helped the research team to understand how the factors worked in practice.

Similarities and Differences in the Improvement Process The case studies analysis resulted in each ESI team describing factors that appeared to promote or hinder effective school improvement. In our analysis we found a number of similarities and differences across the improvement process in different countries (for further information, see Wikeley, Stoll, Murillo, & De Jong, 2005). The main findings are summarised in Table 2 at the three levels (context, school, and classroom/teacher).1 The factors are ordered according to the number of countries that have mentioned them in the case studies as influential for ESI. Sometimes the absence of a certain factor is seen as hindering ESI, for example, a school principal who does not act as an educational leader (in The Netherlands). In this case, “leadership” is depicted in Table 2 as an ESI promoting factor. The factors derived from theories and the factors derived from the case studies analysis show considerable overlap. The effects that factors are supposed to exert are also in accordance with the theoretical expectancies, with the exception of market mechanisms. New factors most often referred to

Ingredients for Success Table 2.

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ESI factors for effective school improvement from the case studies analysis

Context level factors External agents involved in improvement programmes External pressure to start improvement External evaluation of schools Market mechanisms Decentralisation of decisions (content, teaching practice) School level factors Positive attitude towards change School culture, shared values, vision on education, mission School organisation that facilitates improvement (time etc.) Leadership of the principal (or other staff members) Staff instability Internal evaluation (assessment of students and teachers) Goal setting (student outcomes and/or intermediate goals) Parental/community involvement in improvement programmes Adequate planning of the improvement process Improvement embedded in overall school development Getting ready for change/tackle visible issues first Complexity/comprehensiveness of the improvement programme Self-regulative improvement cycle Student participation in improvement efforts Classroom/Teacher level factors Teacher motivation and involvement/ participation in processes and decisions Teacher collaboration (in school, across schools) Feedback on teacher behaviour Teacher training/staff development Implementation of essential elements of curricula/innovations

T

N

Yes

  

Yes Yes

F

B

E

S

P

I

G

   

   

0 

 

  

  

Yes











Yes

















 



 





Yes







Yes







Yes





Yes





  

Yes

 



 

Yes







Yes





0 Yes



 







  



 





 

Key: T
is the factor found in theory? (Yes
there is support by validated theory; blank factor found in the analysis of the case studies but not (yet) found in theory) 
positive influence on ESI 
negative influence on ESI 0
no influence on ESI (N
the Netherlands; F
Finland; B
Belgium; E
England; S
Spain; P
Portugal; I
Italy; G
Greece)

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practical constraints that may promote or hinder ESI efforts. Factors promoting ESI in one country were generally seen to promote ESI in other countries. Only three factors did not lead to similar judgements across all countries. These were: ● ●

●

the role of external agents (seen as important in most countries, but not in Spain); the role of parents and the community in improvement efforts (seen as important in two countries, but not in Spain); and the complexity of the improvement effort. (While Spain found a comprehensive innovation for schoolwide improvement to be more successful, the Dutch evidence was that smaller improvement programs with a clear focus in one or two educational domains e.g., literacy were more likely to lead to success.)

The Comprehensive Framework of Effective School Improvement Based on the results of the theoretical and empirical analyses the original draft model was revised several times after discussion meetings with experts and practitioners. A final three-day meeting of the research teams explored these issues and led to the development of a comprehensive framework for effective school improvement (see Figure 1). The comprehensive framework shows that an improving school is firmly embedded in the educational context of a country. Schools and school improvement can never be studied apart from their educational context. This is clearly indicated by the interrupted line around the improving school which is central in the framework. As such, the improving school is always confronted with the main contextual concepts of pressure to

The educational context

Pressure to improve

The improving school Educational goals Improvment culture

Improvment processes

Improvement outcomes

Resources for improvement

Figure 1.

Comprehensive framework for effective school improvement

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improve resources for improvement and educational goals, that exist in the educational context. Even when schools are free to decide about their improvement outcomes, these will always have to be in line with the wider educational goals determined in that context (Stoll, Creemers, & Reezigt, 2006). We concluded that the importance of the educational context appears most prominently in internationally comparative studies such as the ESI project, but should also be incorporated in all within-country studies of effective school improvement (Reezigt, 2001).

Context Factors The research identified three factors relating to context (see Lagerweij, 2001; Sun, 2003). At the start of improvement processes, the pressure to improve is the most important contextual factor. Resources are the second context factor as school improvement can only take place within the resource constraint of any given context. Finally, the improvement outcomes for an individual school will always have to be in line with the educational goals set by the context (see Table 3).

Pressure to Improve Ideally, schools (as organisational units) define their own improvement needs, design their improvement efforts and evaluate them as to whether their needs have been met. Theories about schools as learning organisations often depict this kind of improvement (i.e., learning) processes. In practice however, schools often need some form of external pressure to start improving. This pressure can be beneficial (i.e., a positive influence) for schools able to do that, but it can be damaging (i.e., a negative influence) for schools that do not have the skills to initiate change, especially if they do not receive adequate support. The research identified four factors which constitute pressure to improve: ● ● ● ●

market mechanisms, external evaluation and accountability, external agents, the participation of society in education and societal changes.

Table 3.

Factors within the main contextual concepts of the framework

Pressure to improve

Resources/support for improvement

Educational goals

- Market mechanisms - External evaluation and accountability - External agents - Participation of society in education/societal changes/ educational policies which stimulate change

- Autonomy granted to schools - Financial resources and favourable daily working conditions - Local support

- Formal educational goals in terms of student outcomes

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Resources In order to make school improvement effective, the resources made available by the educational context are very important. Without these, schools are likely to experience difficulties in their improvement efforts. Resources can be material, but there are also other resources (or support) that may be essential for effective school improvement. The identified factors that together constitute the concept of resources are: ● ● ●

autonomy granted to schools, financial resources and favourable daily working conditions for teachers and schools, local support.

Educational Goals Although schools tend to set specific goals for improvement, the context generally sets the wider educational goals and all improvement efforts have to fit within with these. For some countries these nationally set goals form a broad framework whereas for others they are detailed and prescriptive. For example, in the Netherlands, core goals for each school subject are defined for primary and secondary education. These give expected student outcomes and occasionally ways of teaching. The government in the United Kingdom sets national-, district- and school-level targets in core subject areas. Greece has detailed national goals for all schools, elaborated in a national curriculum and centrally prescribed textbooks for school subjects.

School Factors The central place of the school in the comprehensive framework is based on effectiveness and improvement theories and research, which have shown that effective improvement requires school level processes [see also various publications of the International School Improvement Project, (ISIP), e.g., Cuban, 1998; Hopkins, Ainscow, & West, 1994; Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000; Van Velzen, Miles, Ekholm, Hameyer, & Robin, 1985). Teachers are considered an essential lever of change, because change is explicit in their classrooms and their daily practices, but for effective school improvement individual teacher initiatives are not enough. Teachers can succeed in achieving major changes in their classrooms with strong effects on student outcomes, but they cannot be expected to have a lasting impact on the school as an organisation. Improvement efforts initiated by one teacher will generally disappear (e.g., when the teacher changes schools) unless the school as an organisation sustains the efforts. This important notion is problematic for educational systems that have no strong tradition of school-level improvement, even when teacher improvement activities may occur. However, we are not arguing that all improvement activities necessarily concern all members of a school staff. In practice, this will not happen very often, or it will only happen in small schools. Improvement efforts in secondary education or in larger primary schools often concern specific departments or other subsets of school staff.

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In that case, we assume that the factors for the departments or groups of teachers will be essentially the same as the factors that we have depicted in the framework for the school. For reasons of convenience however, we will use the term “school level.” Implications for teachers will be mentioned from this perspective. At the school level the research in the ESI project identified three concepts: ● ● ●

improvement culture, improvement processes, and improvement outcomes.

In the theory but especially in the case studies, these concepts appear to be the key elements of the improving school. The culture can be viewed as the background against which processes are taking place and the outcomes are the goals of those processes. All three are inter-related and constantly influence each other. The culture influences not only the choice of processes, but also the choice of outcomes. The chosen outcomes will influence the choice of processes but their success or failure can also change the culture of the school. The outcomes will also depend on the successful implementation of the processes. These inter-relationships highlight the cyclical nature of effective school improvement that is one that has no clearly marked beginning or end. The individual factors (see Table 4) therefore have to be seen within the overarching framework of these concepts (improvement culture, processes, and outcomes).

Improvement Culture Schools with a favourable culture for improvement will start and continue improvement efforts more easily than schools that constantly try to avoid changes and are fearful of

Table 4.

Factors within the main school concepts of the framework

Improvement culture

Improvement processes

Improvement outcomes

- Internal pressure to improve - Autonomy used by schools - Shared vision - Willingness to become a learning organisation/ a reflective practitioner - Training and collegial collaboration - Improvement history - Ownership of improvement, commitment and motivation - Leadership - Staff stability - Time for improvement

- Assessment of improvement needs - Diagnosis of improvement needs - Phrasing of detailed improvement goals - Planning of improvement activities - Implementation of improvement plans - Evaluation - Reflection

- Changes in the quality of the school - Changes in the quality of the teachers - Changes in the quality of student outcomes (knowledge, skills, and attitudes)

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improvement. The improvement culture can be considered the foundation of all improvement processes in the school. The research identified nine factors as contributing to the improvement culture of a school: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

internal pressure to improve autonomy used by schools shared vision willingness to become a learning organisation improvement history ownership leadership staff stability time.

Improvement Processes Some schools perceive improvement as a discrete event. Whenever a problem arises, it is addressed, but after that business goes on as usual. These schools hold a static view of improvement. More dynamic schools will consider improvement as an ongoing process and as a part of everyday life. Improvement efforts are continuous, cyclical by nature, and embedded in a wider process of overall school development and might be referred to as such. Although improvement processes will rarely move neatly from one phase to the next, there are clearly identifiable stages in all successful improvement processes. These stages may overlap or return repeatedly before the full cycle of improvement is at its end. Planning for example will often not be a one-off activity that takes place relatively early in the improvement process, but plans will be constantly returned to and adapted on a continuous basis. This is especially so for complex improvement efforts that involve many staff members. The research identified five factors/stages of the improvement process: ● ● ● ● ●

assessment of improvement needs diagnosis of improvement needs and setting of detailed goals planning of improvement activities implementation evaluation and reflection.

Improvement Outcomes Improvement efforts ideally focus on a clear set of goals that can be achieved in a certain period of time. When goals are vague or unclear, improvement efforts are more likely to fail. The goals for effective school improvement should be stated in terms of student outcomes (the effectiveness criteria) or in terms of school and teacher factors that are key influences on student outcomes (the improvement criteria). This means that schools that want to improve pursue two types of goals (Hopkins, 1995).

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(1) Goals that are explicitly written in terms of student outcomes. These can reflect a wide range of knowledge, skills, and attitudes and are not necessarily narrowed down to be based purely on cognitive skills achievement. For example, to enhance the student role in the learning processes would be a valid improvement goal. (2) Goals that are focused on change. This type of improvement goal may include changes in the school organisation, teacher behaviour, or the materials used by students. Student outcomes still are the ultimate goal but the improvement efforts can also be judged by the bringing about of change that will enhance these outcomes. In the Netherlands, goals in terms of student outcomes are becoming more common in improvement efforts and in Finland a focus on outcomes is often stressed too. Without this, improvement processes can easily become entertainment and seeking of pleasure during school hours. The role of students has to be clear, observable and important in all teaching and learning processes.

The Use of the ESI Framework The Function of the ESI Framework The comprehensive framework for effective school improvement is neither fully descriptive, nor fully prescriptive in character. For example, the central place of the school in the framework is based on effectiveness and improvement theories and our empirical research that has shown that effective improvement requires school level processes. However, the framework does not dictate what those processes might be in any individual school. Although the importance of teachers and their work in classrooms is certainly acknowledged, individual teachers are generally not considered to be the main lever of change for effective whole school improvement. However, the framework is prescriptive in its focus on student outcomes as the primary goal. For improvement to be effective there must always be a link, at least at the conceptual level, with student outcomes however they may be defined. As was stated earlier, the framework does not pretend to present totally new guidelines or concepts. The innovation that it does represent is that it brings together ideas and concepts from different theories, builds on findings in improvement studies, and tries to integrate them in a coherent way. The framework was developed by research teams from a group of countries with strongly varying educational histories and policies. The discussion of the framework in country conferences showed that it can be of actual use in different settings, because the concepts in the framework and their interrelationships can be interpreted in a way which fits the specific educational context in any one country. The comprehensive framework aims to be of use to three different audiences: practitioners, researchers and policy-makers. ●

For practitioners, the framework is intended to be useful in the design, planning and implementation of school improvement. The framework gives an overview of many factors that may promote or hinder effective school improvement and as such

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it can be used as a way of exploring educational practice. However, schools must interpret the factors in the framework within their own situation and tailor them to their own needs. The framework can never prescribe how a specific school in a specific country should act in order to achieve effective school improvement but it can help to indicate the starting points or issues for reflection. For researchers, the framework is especially important for further research in the field of effective school improvement. It can be used to generate hypotheses and to select variables that should be investigated and further operationalised. It presents an overview of relevant variables but does not specify criteria (such as how often school evaluation should take place to have an impact on improvement outcomes). The international dimension of the framework, reflected in the importance given to the context factors, provides insight in the influences of these factors across countries but also within countries. In traditional improvement research, the educational context is often excluded. Its importance is rarely acknowledged or analysed. Policy-makers too, have to be aware that the framework can never be used as a recipe for effective school improvement or as a ready-made toolbox for the implementation of improvement in schools. The framework merely clarifies which factors must be taken into consideration in the planning of improvement processes in schools. It also shows which conditions must be taken into account, both at the context and the school levels. The framework may help policy-makers to see how important school improvement is for student outcomes or how important the school is as a meaningful unit for improvement. Also, the framework shows policymakers how strongly schools are influenced by the context. This implies that adequate context measures will often be needed in improvement efforts. Leaving schools to improve on their own will not often be a realistic option.

We cannot state strongly enough that the framework will always need interpretation whenever it is used, whether for practice, research, or policy. Keeping this constraint in mind, the framework may have the following functions for practitioners, researchers, and policy-makers. ●

●

●

●

●

It can start a debate and can contribute to ongoing discussions about effective school improvement. It can introduce new arguments into the debate and thereby assist in decisionmaking. It can act as an eye-opener about improvement factors that are different in different countries. It can be used as a tool for the planning, designing, implementing, evaluating, and reflecting on improvement projects and research on effective school improvement. It can be used as an input in teacher training.

The exact functions of the framework will, however, always be dependent on the context in which it is used and the people who use it. Despite many similarities, effective school improvement in these eight European countries is subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, different.

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Note 1. For a more detailed description, see Reezigt (2001).

References Brookover, W. B., Beady, C., Flood, P., & Schweitzer, J. (1979). School systems and student achievement: Schools make a difference. New York: Praeger. Creemers, B. P. M. (1996). The goals of school effectiveness and school improvement. In D. Reynolds, R. Bollen, B. Creemers, D. Hopkins, L. Stoll, & N. Lagerweij (Eds.), Making good schools (pp. 21–35). London/New York: Routledge. Creemers, B. P. M., & Hoeben, T. J. G. (1998). Capacity for change and adaptation of schools: The case of effective school improvement. In T. J. G. Hoeben (Ed.), Effective school improvement: State of the art contribution to a discussion. Groningen, the Netherlands: Institute for Educational Research, University of Groningen. Creemers, B. P. M., & Reezigt, G. J. (1997). School effectiveness and school improvement: Sustaining links. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 8(4), 396–429. Creemers, B. P. M., & Reezigt, G. J. (2005). Linking school effectiveness and school improvement: The background and outline of the project. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 16(4), 359–371. Cuban, L. (1998). A fundamental puzzle of school reform. Phi Delta Kappan, 70(5), 341–344. De Jong, R. (Ed.). (2000). Effective school improvement programs: A description and evaluation of ESI programs in eight European countries. Groningen, the Netherlands: GION, Institute for Educational Research, University of Groningen. Edmonds, R. R. (1979). Effective schools for the urban poor. Educational Leadership, 37(1), 15–27. Gray, J., Hopkins, D., Reynolds, D., Wilcox, B., Farrell, S., & Jesson, D. (1999). Improving schools: Performance and potential. Buckingham: Open University Press. Hoeben, W. Th. J. G. (Ed.). (1998). Effective School Improvement: State of the Art/ Contribution to a Discussion. Groningen: GION, Institute for Educational Research, University of Groningen. Hopkins, D. (1995). Towards effective school improvement. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 6(3), 265–274. Hopkins, D., Ainscow, M., & West, M. (1994). School improvement in an era of change. London: Cassell. Lagerweij, N. A. J. (2001). Met het oog op vernieuwing [A perspective on innovation]. In B. P. M. Creemers, & A. A. M. Houtveen (Eds.), Onderwijsinnovatie [Innovation of education] (pp. 13–28). Alphen aan den Rijn: Kluwer. MacBeath, J., & Mortimore, P. (2001). Improving school effectiveness. Buckingham: Open University Press. Mintzberg, H. (1979). The structuring of organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Mortimore, P., Gopinathan, S., Leo, E., Myers, K., Sharpe, L., Stoll, L., et al. (2000). The culture of change: Case studies of improving schools in Singapore and London. London, Institute of Education: Bedford Way Papers. Reezigt, G. J. (Ed.). (2000). Effective school improvement: First theoretical workshop/contributions from relevant theoretical traditions. Groningen: GION, Institute for Educational Research, University of Groningen. Reezigt, G. J., & Creemers, B. P. M. (2005). A comprehensive framework for effective school improvement. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 16(4), 407–424. Reynolds, D., Hopkins, D., & Stoll, L. (1993). Linking school effectiveness knowledge and school improvement practice: Towards a synergy. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 4(1), 37–58. Reynolds, D., Teddlie, C., Hopkins, D., & Stringfield, S. (2000). Linking school effectiveness and school improvement. In C. Teddlie, & C. Reynolds, The international handbook of school effectiveness research (pp. 206–231). London: Falmer Press. Rutter, M., Maughan, B., Mortimore, P., & Ouston, J. (1979). Fifteen thousand hours. London: Open Books. Scheerens, J., & Demeuse, M. (2005). The theoretical basis of the effective school improvement model (ESI). School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 16(4), 373–385.

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Stoll, L., Creemers, B. P. M., & Reezigt, G. (2006). Effective school improvement. Similarities and differences in improvement in eight European countries. In A. Harris, & J. H. Chrispeels (Eds.), Improving schools and educational systems: International perspectives (pp. 122–142). London: Routledge. Stoll, L., & Fink, D. (1992). Reorganization for effectiveness: The Halton approach. In J. Bashi, & Z. Sass (Eds.), School effectiveness and improvement. Proceedings of the Third International Congress, Jerusalem (pp. 370–380). Jerusalem: The Magnes Press. Stoll, L., & Fink, D. (1994). School effectiveness and school improvement: Voices from field. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 5(2), 149–177. Stoll, L., & Fink, D. (1996). Changing our schools: Linking school effectiveness and school improvement. Buckingham: Open University Press. Stoll, L., Reynolds, D., Creemers, B., & Hopkins, D. (1996). Merging school effectiveness and school improvement: practical examples. In D. Reynolds, R. Bollen, B. Creemers, D. Hopkins, L. Stoll, & N. Lagerweij (Eds.), Making good schools (pp. 113–147). London/New York: Routledge. Stoll, L., Wikeley, F., & Reezigt, G. (2002). Developing a common model? Comparing effective school improvement across European countries. Educational Research and Evaluation, 8(4), 455–476. Sun, H. (2003). National contexts and effective school improvement. Groningen: University of Groningen/ GION, Institute for Educational Research. Teddlie, C., & Reynolds, D. (2000). The international handbook of school effectiveness research. London: Falmer Press. Velzen, W. van, Miles, M., Ekholm, M., Hameyer, U., & Robin, D. (1985). Making school improvement work. Leuven: ACCO. Wikeley, F., Stoll, L., Murillo, J., & De Jong, R. (2005). Evaluating effective school improvement: Case studies of programs in eight European countries and their contribution to the effective school improvement model. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 16(4), 387–405.

45 SELF-DIRECTED LEARNING AS A KEY APPROACH TO EFFECTIVENESS OF EDUCATION: A COMPARISON AMONG MAINLAND CHINA, HONG KONG, MACAU, AND TAIWAN Magdalena Mo-Ching Mok, Yin-Cheong Cheng, Shing-On Leung, Peter Wen-Jing Shan, Phillip Moore, and Kerry Kennedy Recent education reforms in countries around the world have had only modest success. Many reasons have been offered to explain the failure of the reforms, but at the top of the list is the inadequate preparation of teachers for the implementation of these reforms. One such type of preparation involves the development of teachers into selflearners. Self-learning throughout the lifespan is a sine qua non of education. Parallel to this is the development of the Internet as an important medium for teaching and learning. There is an urgent need to develop a theory to deepen the understanding of the nature and process of self-learning of teachers, with the support of a networked human and IT environment. The implications drawn from the theory can contribute to the paradigm shift of education in current worldwide education reforms.

Importance of Self-Directed Learning Self-directed learning has been accorded great importance by educators and policymakers since the turn of the last century. Many countries in the Asia-Pacific region (e.g., Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Macau, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand) identify the cultivation of students’ capacity for self-directed learning as one of the major education aims for the country (Mok & Cheng, 2002; OECD, 2000). Research and publications on self-directed learning have soared in the last 30 years (Long, 2000), and these studies have found self-directed learning to be a key to effective learning. For instance, the American Psychological Association concluded, on the basis of research evidence published in the last 100 years, that cognitive and metacognitive factors are the most important set of factors contributing to effective learning (American Psychological Association, 1997). Indeed, in the constructivist paradigm, learning is viewed as an ongoing process whereby the learner actively interacts with new information and develops new cognitive structures in order to incorporate the new information with existing cognitive structures (Bruner, 1966, 1996). The notion that knowledge is being 839 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 839–858. © 2007 Springer.

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actively constructed by the learner necessitates self-directed learning. Nevertheless, despite the significance of self-directed learning, most of the research evidence was based on research undertaken in North America and Europe. Few studies have been conducted to identify the nature and determinants of self-directed learning in the AsiaPacific region. The objectives of this study are to (1) investigate the nature of selfdirected learning in three geographical locations in the Asia-Pacific region – Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan; (2) identify contributing factors to students’ self-directed learning; and (3) draw implications for teaching and learning.

A Model of Self-Directed Learning Mok and Cheng (2002) proposed a theoretical model of self-directed learning comprising three components and four processes (Figure 1). The three components are (1) the prior cognitive, motivational, and volitional conditions of the learner at the beginning of the learning episode; (2) the learning actions, which refer to the activities and behavior in the learning; and (3) the outcomes of the learning. These three components are linked by four processes: planning, monitoring, and feedback leading to first- and second-order learning. The current study is based on this conceptual model.

1. Prior knowledge & attitudes Academic self-confidence Motivation Attributions Education aim

2. Plan Goal setting Planning

7. Second-order learning Change in self-knowledge Cognition Metacognition 6.First-order learning Motivation Change in learning strategy and behavior

5. Learning outcome

4. Monitoring Self-monitoring Self-regulation

Figure 1.

3. Engagement in learning Initiation Inquisitive mind Information processing Managing resources Strategic help-seeking (Benefits, costs, behavior) Management of learning Environment

Model of self-directed learning (Mok & Cheng, 2002)

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Background of Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan share much commonality in historical background. Both Hong Kong and Macau are Special Administration Regions of the People’s Republic of China since the handover in 1997 of Hong Kong from Britain, after 155 years of British rule, and from Portugal in 1999, after around 450 years of Portuguese rule. Like Hong Kong and Macau, Taiwan has a long history of being under foreign rule, most recently Japan. The history of having foreign governments not only enriches the local education systems of the three places but also gives these systems a strong external orientation. Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan are very close to one another geographically. Each is within reach of the other within an hour by plane, thus facilitating interchange in education and other matters. Macao lies 60 km from Hong Kong and 145 km from the city of Guangzhou. There are ferry connections between Hong Kong and Macau almost every half hour. Taiwan is a bit farther away geographically, located off the southeast coast of mainland China, the 130–180-km-wide Taiwan Strait between the two places, but several flights daily connect it with both Hong Kong and Macau. Consequently, the three places have rather strong connections in many aspects of daily life, including some workers commuting daily between Hong Kong and Macau. The strong links among the three places give ground for comparison among them in their systems of education. Indeed, all three education systems have in common strong links with China culturally, politically, and economically, and all are influenced by Confucianism. Their education systems are themselves intricately connected. The school curriculum of Macau is naturally shaped by the Portuguese system, but it has also been affected by Taiwan (historically), China (more recently), and Hong Kong because of the recruitment of teachers from these places. Some researchers (e.g., Pinto, 1987 quoted in Bray & Koo, 2004) described the Macau education system as a “poly-centred collection of education systems” and observed that some of these systems were imported directly from China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. The Portuguese government had taken a non-interventionist attitude towards education and teacher education for Chinese schools (Pinto, 1987 quoted in Bray & Koo, 2004). The China government in Guangdong, in an attempt to meet the local needs of Chinese schools in Macau, set up teacher education colleges in Macau in the 1980s. Teacher education so formed was subsequently taken up by the University of Macau and gave root to Macau teacher education today (So, 2005). The education systems of Hong Kong and Macau are very small compared to other systems in the Asia-Pacific region. Hong Kong has a total area of about 1,098 square km and a population of 6,803,000 in the year 2003. At the time of this study, Hong Kong had 475 local secondary schools and 461,289 students. Similarly, Macau is a very small city of only 23.8 square km in area and has a population of around 458,000 (as of 2001). In the academic year 2003–2004, Macau had in total 47 secondary schools with 46,509 students. The education system in Taiwan is comparatively larger, serving a population of 23 million who reside in a total area of no more than 36,000 square km. In 2001, the Northern Region of Taiwan, where this study took place, had 240 junior high schools and 129 senior high schools (http://www.cepd.gov.tw/).

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Similar to what governments in neighboring countries have done, the governments of Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan have instigated a number of initiatives and education reform in recent years. A core component common to all is the emphasis on students’ capacity for self-directed learning. Self-directed learning in each location is discussed in more detail in the following sections.

Self-Directed Learning in Hong Kong Hong Kong began large-scale education reforms on the establishment of the Special Administrative Region (SAR) in 1997. It has adopted a rather aggressive approach in the reforms, with a strong emphasis on enabling students to “take the initiative to learn, to think and create, and foster in them positive attitude and values.” An important aim of Hong Kong education is “to enable everyone to develop their full and individual potential in all areas … so that each individual is ready for continuous self-learning. …” This aim is to be achieved through a number of reform initiatives. Project learning is one of the key reform tasks designed by the Hong Kong SAR Government to “strengthen students’ self-learning and thinking abilities through various learning activities and to create more room for independent thinking and construction of knowledge” (Education Commission, 2000, p. 59). Project learning was originally introduced (Education Commission, 2000, pp. 58–59) to formulate an open and flexible curriculum framework for the development of students’ knowledge, concepts, skills, attitudes, and values for self-directed learning in a number of learning areas in school. A survey undertaken by the government (Education Commission, 2004, p. 11) revealed that over 93% of the schools had started to implement this key reform task. Although a number of overarching strategies have been introduced to “create more room for schools, teachers and students, to offer all-round and balanced learning opportunities, and to lay the foundation for lifelong learning” (Education Commission, 2000, p. 1), there are few reform strategies targeting specifically the development of competence for self-directed learning.

Self-Directed Learning in Macau Education in Macau used to enjoy much freedom and diversity before the reform in 1998. The Macau education reform targeted the development of innovative and critical whole persons who have the capacity to put theory into practice. Education in Macau is to develop in students the knowledge and skills needed by the society, and to have the competence for lifelong learning. Capacity for self-directed learning is explicitly mentioned in the education aims of Macau secondary education (Department of School Education and Youth, 2004). Similar to the case of Hong Kong, there are only weak directives from the Macau government on how to implement these initiatives in schools and classrooms.

Self-Directed Learning in Taiwan Taiwan initiated major education reform even earlier than Hong Kong did, emphasizing quality education, curriculum reform, assessment reform, enhancing participation rate

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in kindergarten education, quality higher education, and the articulation between vocational and grammar education. Taiwan has highlighted self-directed learning in the country’s education aims: “Education and culture shall aim at the development among the citizens of the national spirit, the spirit of self-government, …” (Taiwan Ministry of Education, 2000). In addition, more research in self-directed learning is undertaken in Taiwan than in either Hong Kong or Macau.

Self-directed learning of Taiwan secondary students One of the earliest systematic research studies on Taiwan students’ self-directed learning competence is by Cheung and Chien (1983), aiming to investigate secondary students’ learning approaches, learning habits, and learning attitudes. The sample comprised 698 secondary students in Taiwan. The study found that there was significant difference among low-, medium-, and high-achieving students in attitudes toward self-directed learning, after controlling for student gender. In addition, females were found to hold a more positive attitude than did males toward self-directed learning. Notably, Chang and Chien (1983) identified attitude toward self-directed learning as the strongest predictor of academic achievement of all predictors (e.g., reading habits) in the study. Another important study was made by Lin (1995), who compared the self-directed learning of primary 6, junior high 2, and senior high 2 students in Taiwan. Lin found that Taiwan students regressed in their self-directed learning from primary to senior high school. The same was found for students’ volition for self-directed learning. There were only minor differences between male and female students in self-directed learning. The relationship between self-directed learning and academic achievement was strongest for junior high school students. Measurement tools for self-directed learning of Taiwan students Several measurement tools for self-directed learning have been developed in Taiwan, giving a good foundation for the study reported here. Notably, Chen, Lin, and Lee (1989) developed a set of scales to measure the learning approaches, learning habits, learning attitudes, learning environment, and mental and physical adaptation of primary students. The study involved a total of 4,744 students between primary 4 and primary 6 from 45 schools of different types from different regions of Taiwan. Norms were developed using this set of scales. However, the scales had only moderate to low reliability (Cronbach’s Alpha between 0.57 and 0.72). In view of the need for measurement instruments on self-directed learning in response to the Taiwan government’s education reform, Chang, Li and their associates (Chang, Li, Lin, Ho, & Hrong, 1996; Li, Chang, Chen, Lin, & Han, 1993) adapted the Learning and Study Strategies Inventory – High School Version (LASSI – HS) of Weinstein (1990) for Taiwan high students, and for preparatory and vocational high school students. The scales include self-directed learning attitudes, learning motivation, concentration, reading and examination strategies, time management, self-evaluation, stress and anxiety, information processing, and problem-solving strategies. The scales were of high reliability (Cronbach’s Alpha between 0.8 and 0.9) and validity. Norms for male and female students were also developed.

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Comparison of Self-Directed Learning Among Secondary Students in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan The Study Design The comparison of self-directed learning among secondary students in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan is based on a large-scale survey undertaken between May and July 2004 in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. According to Bray and Thomas’s (1995, p. 475) framework, the focus of comparison is on national States/Provinces, across education groups (male versus female students, and across year levels), and on the self-directed learning of secondary students. The approach adopted is one of simultaneous comparison (Bereday, 1964, p. 28 quoted in Bray, 2004, p. 247) using parallel sampling methods and identical data collection instruments to compare and contrast the self-directed learning of secondary students in the three locations.

The Sample and Procedures The questionnaire used in this study was constructed based on the model developed by the authors (Mok & Cheng, 2002; Figure 1) and the literature. It consists of ten sections of Likert-type items, covering the key areas of self-directed learning. This construction of items and scales was discussed among members of the research team and refined before being pilot-tested in a school in each location. Analysis of the pilot data resulted in further refinement of the questionnaire, which was then printed and distributed. Between May and July 2004, a survey was conducted in parallel in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan secondary schools, using the same questionnaire. The questionnaires were administered by teachers during their normal class time. Factor analysis (Mok, Cheng, Moore, & Kennedy, 2004) confirmed the scales to be of very strong validity and reliability for use with secondary students in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. The achieved sample comprised 23,563 secondary students: 14,846 Hong Kong students from 23 secondary schools; 2,968 Macau students from 20 secondary schools; and 5,749 Taiwan students from 20 secondary schools. The sample in each location was non-random but representative (in school type and geographical location) of the population of schools in that location. The students were currently enrolled in Secondary 1 (S1) to Secondary 6 (S6) of the respective locations. In order to avoid disturbing students who were in public examination years, S3 students in Taiwan, S5 students in Hong Kong, and S6 students in both Macau and Taiwan were not included in the sample. Details of the sample are presented in Table 1.

The Variables and Analysis The variables included in the study were selected based on a framework developed by the authors (Mok & Cheng, 2002). These variables were key components to the selfdirected learning of students, comprising academic self-confidence; academic motivation; failure attributions to ability, effort, and strategy; success attributions to ability,

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Self-Directed Learning Table 1. Year

845

Sample characteristics Hong Kong

Level

Male

Female

S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6

1957 1976 1168 1666 – 471

Total

7238

Macau

Taiwan

All locations Male

Total

Male

Femle

Male

Female

Female

1922 1989 1248 1774 – 588

446 511 81 394 386 –

232 291 59 245 320 –

729 707 – 805 721 –

616 662 – 741 694 –

3132 3194 1249 2865 1107 471

2770 2942 1307 2760 1014 588

5902 6136 2556 5625 2121 1059

7521

1818

1147

2962

2713

12018

11381

23399

Notes: (1) Gender of 164 students was unknown; (2) Structural zeros are indicated by “–”

effort, and strategy; perceived aims of education; goal setting; planning; academic initiation; inquisitive mind; information processing; costs, benefits, and frequency of help-seeking; management of learning environment; academic self-monitoring; and self-regulation. The scales developed to measure the variables had reasonable internal consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha between 0.75 and 0.86). Possible scale values range from 1 to 4. Higher scale values represent more inclination for self-directed learning than do lower scale values. The characteristics of the scales are presented in Table 2.

Motivation of secondary students in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan The notion that motivation plays an essential key in effective learning is well documented in the literature on self-directed learning (e.g., American Psychological Association, 1997; Rheinberg, Vollmeyer & Rollett, 2000; Zimmerman & Schunk, 2001). Motivation of students was measured by eight Likert scales: academic motivation; failure attributions to ability, effort, and strategy; success attributions to ability, effort, and strategy; and perceived aims of education. The analysis found that secondary students in all three locations had adaptive attributional beliefs (Table 3). Students were least likely to attribute their success or failure to their ability. Instead, they tended to explain their success and failure according to effort, particularly for Taiwan students in academic failure. Attribution to strategy was also commonly used by students in explaining success, and comparatively less so for the explanation of failure (Figure 2). In addition, both scales measuring motivation and education aims had average values between 2.7 and 2.9 on the four-point Likert scale, suggesting that students were in general academically motivated. Statistical comparison among secondary students in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that students in the three places were statistically different in their academic motivations. In general, Taiwan students tended to be more adaptive than Hong Kong students, who in turn had more adaptive attributions than Macau students, although all of them manifested adaptive attributional beliefs. Nevertheless, the effect sizes and the substantive differences were very small, and values ranged from 0 to 0.1 on the four-point scale (Table 3). On balance, differences between Hong Kong and Macau were smaller than those

This scale measures the students’ self-confidence on academic matters at school. This scale measures the intrinsic motivation of secondary students. This scale measures the students’ inclination to attribute their academic failures to lack of ability. This scale measures the students’ inclination to attribute their academic failures to lack of effort. This scale measures the students’ inclination to attribute their academic failures to poor strategy use.

This scale measures the students’ inclination to attribute their academic success to their ability. This scale measures the students’ inclination to attribute their academic success to their effort.

This scale measures the students’ inclination to attribute their academic success to their strategy use. This scale measures the students’ inclination to perceive education aims as learning.

Self-confidence

Success ability attribution

Success strategy attribution

Education aim

Success effort attribution

Failure strategy attribution

Failure effort attribution

Failure ability attribution

Motivation

Definition

Scale definition and characteristics

Scale name

Table 2.

In order to learn more, I will not be absent from school without a good reason. If you got a very poor grade on an examination, it might be because your competence is usually low. If you got a very poor grade on an examination, it might be because you did not try your best in your preparation. If you got a very poor grade on an examination, it might be because you did not know how to use effective exam strategies. If you got a very good grade on an examination, it might be because you are always competent in examinations. If you got a very good grade on an examination, it might be because you studied hard before the examination. If you got a very good grade on an examination, it might be because you knew how to use effective strategies to answer the questions. I go to school for Personal fulfillment.

I think I can handle my learning at school.

Example item

5

4

4

4

4

4

4

10

5

No. of items

0.80

0.82

0.78

0.81

0.81

0.81

0.74

0.84

0.80

Cronbach’s alpha

846 Mok, Cheng, Leung, Shan, Moore, and Kennedy

Self-regulation

Selfmonitoring

Learning Environment Management

Help-seeking costs Help-seeking frequency

Help-seeking benefits

Information processing

Inquisitive mind

Academic initiation

Planning

Goal setting

This scale measures the students’ capacity in setting academic goals. This scale measures the students’ capacity in planning their academic studies. This scale measures the students’ capacity in taking academic initiation. This scale measures the students’ inclination for inquiry. This scale measures the students’ capacity in information processing. This scale measures the students’ perceived benefits in seeking help on academic matters. This scale measures the students’ perceived costs in seeking help on academic matters. This scale measures the students’ report frequency in seeking help on academic matters in the last two months. This scale measures the students’ capacity in managing the learning environment. This scale measures the students’ capacity in self-monitoring This scale measures the students’ capacity in self-regulation in order to do better academically.

I use learning goals to guide my learning activities. At the beginning of each school term, I set a learning plan for myself. I like taking the initiative to answer teachers’ questions. I am interested in learning new things. When I study, I always think of related things to help my understanding. Seeking advice from others helps me learn some problem-solving skills and methods. Asking too many questions makes others think that I am stupid. In the past two months, I sought advice on how to improve my grades, for fear of lagging behind Before examinations, I ask my family to be quiet so as not to disturb my revision. I reflect on my learning strategies to see if they are effective. After I get back my test papers, I try to understand the mistakes I have made. 5

10

0.77

0.85

0.79

0.75 5

5

0.86

0.83

0.86

0.75

0.77

0.82

0.80

5

5

10

5

5

5

5

Self-Directed Learning 847

2.36 2.92 2.63 2.88 2.72 2.45 3.15 2.91 2.87 2.54 2.61 2.52 3.11 2.76 2.87 3.01 2.05 2.45 2.67 2.90

2.38 2.89 2.60 2.94 2.83 2.49 3.11 2.94 2.86 2.56 2.63 2.55 3.06 2.75 2.77 2.92 2.06

2.41 2.69 2.85

Self-confidence Motivation Failure ability attribution Failure effort attribution Failure strategy attribution Success ability attribution Success effort attribution Success strategy attribution Education aim Goal setting Planning Academic initiation Inquisitive mind Information processing Help-seeking benefits Help-seeking costs Help-seeking frequency Learning environment management Self-monitoring Self-regulation

MC

HK

2.42 2.76 2.84

2.31 2.84 2.49 3.12 2.91 2.44 3.16 3.06 2.73 2.51 2.57 2.47 3.06 2.79 2.93 3.02 1.94

TW

4.4 48.0 12.9

30.7 42.5 76.1 184.5 85.2 11.3 19.4 87.5 129.0 10.3 19.8 51.7 13.9 11.21 179.3 77.8 70.3

F

0.013 0.000 0.000

0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000

p- value of F

0.02 0.05 0.06 0.10 0.09 0.00 0.00 0.07 0.07 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.03 0.02 0.03 0.00 0.05 0.01 0.05 0.03

0.01 0.06 0.01 0.02 0.01 0.03

MC-TW effect size

0.05 0.05 0.08 0.11 0.05 0.03 0.04 0.08 0.10 0.03 0.04 0.07 0.00 0.02 0.12 0.07 0.08

HK-TW effect size

0.01 0.02 0.01 0.03 0.06 0.02 0.03 0.02 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.01 0.06 0.05 0.01

HK-MC effect Size

Comparing self-directed learning of secondary students in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan

Scale

Table 3.

No Difference TW HK
MC MC HK
TW

HK
MC TW MC HK TW HK
MC TW TW HK MC TW HK MC HK MC
TW TW
MC HK TW HK MC HK
MC TW HK TW HK
MC TW MC TW MC HK
TW TW HK
MC MC TW HK TW
MC HK HK
MC TW

Observations from Bonferroni Post-Hoc comparisons

848 Mok, Cheng, Leung, Shan, Moore, and Kennedy

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3.4 3.2 3.0 HK MC TW

2.8 2.6 2.4

Figure 2.

cc Su

cc

Fa

str

il

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fo

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rt

rt

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m Ed

ai

y

Su

Fa

il

str

at

eg

ili ab il Fa

Su

cc

ab

ili

ty

ty

2.2

Motivation of secondary students in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan

Difference between lower and upper form (Lower-Upper) students in self-directed learning 0.20 0.15 0.10 0.05

Ed

ai m

n co nf lf -

at io Se

M

ot iv

en t

l

nm

Go a

vi ro En

fre q

io n tia t

elp

In i

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es s

H

–0.05

In fo

H be elp ne see f it k Fa il ef fo Fa rt il str a te H gy elp se ek co st Su cc ef f Su or t cc str at eg Se y lf m on ito r Fa il ab ili ty In qu iry Se lf re gu l at Su e cc ab ili ty

0.00

–0.10 –0.15

Figure 3.

Difference between female and male (female-male) self-directed learning

between Hong Kong and Taiwan. Substantively, the differences among the three locations were close to zero. For this reason, data from the three locations were pooled for comparisons on other dimensions (e.g., student gender). On average, female secondary students in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan showed higher motivation than did male students (Figure 3) in all scales except the attribution

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Table 4.

Comparing male and female secondary students on self-directed learning

Scale

Male (M)

Female (F)

t ratio (MF)

p-value of t

Abs. effect size (MF)/SD

Observation

Self-confidence Motivation Failure ability attribution Failure effort attribution Failure strategy attribution Success ability attribution Success effort attribution Success strategy attribution Education aim Goal setting Planning Academic initiation Inquisitive mind Information processing Help-seeking benefits Help-seeking costs Help-seeking frequency Learning env management Self-monitoring Self-regulation

2.39 2.86 2.52 2.96 2.76 2.52 3.06 2.92 2.80 2.52 2.55 2.54 3.06 2.74 2.74 2.91 2.09 2.34 2.68 2.83

2.34 2.91 2.64 2.98 2.91 2.42 3.20 3.02 2.87 2.57 2.68 2.52 3.07 2.79 2.90 3.01 1.97 2.49 2.73 2.89

7.23 9.69 14.33 2.27 18.50 12.11 18.37 11.82 10.36 5.35 16.34 3.63 1.95 7.32 21.23 12.46 12.92 18.58 8.73 9.06

0.00 0.00 0.00 0.02 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.05 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

0.10 0.13 0.19 0.03 0.25 0.16 0.25 0.16 0.14 0.07 0.22 0.05 0.03 0.11 0.28 0.16 0.17 0.25 0.12 0.12

M F F M F M No difference F M M F F M F M F M F M F M M F No difference F M F M F M M F F M F M F M

of success to ability (Figure 2 and Table 4), in which males scored higher. Nevertheless, the effect sizes of the gender difference were small, absolute values ranging from 0.03 to 0.25 only. It is noted that females had significantly stronger failure attribution to ability (effect size 0.25) and success attribution to effort (effect size 0.25) than did males. Students from lower (Secondary 1 to Secondary 3) and upper (Secondary 4 to Secondary 6) forms were compared on their academic motivation. It was found that students from upper secondary levels were significantly less motivated and saw fewer aims of education than did students from lower secondary levels (Table 5 and Figure 4). Also, students of upper forms were less inclined to explain their academic outcomes (either success or failure) by either effort or strategy. Although the differences were statistically significant, the effect sizes were in general small and on the order of 0.25. Numerous research evidence suggests that self-confidence is essential to academic success. Students with self-confidence are more likely to overcome difficulties encountered in learning. In this study, secondary students’ self-confidence was measured by a five-item Likert scale. Descriptive statistics and frequency distribution of the items show that the item mean values are not high and a large proportion of students disagree with many of the items on this scale, reflecting the low academic selfconfidence of secondary students in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. This result concurred with results from other studies (e.g., PISA-Hong Kong; Ho, 2004) that found Hong Kong and Macau students, in comparison with their international counterparts, tended to express low academic self-concept or academic self-confidence

Self-Directed Learning Table 5.

851

Comparing secondary students in upper and lower levels on self-directed learning

Scale

Lower Forms S1–S3 (L)

Upper Form S4–S6 (U)

t-ratio (L–U)

p-value of t

Abs. effect size (L–U)/SD

Observation

Self-confidence Motivation Failure ability attribution Failure effort attribution Failure strategy attribution Success ability attribution Success effort attribution Success strategy attribution Education aim Goal setting Planning Academic initiation Inquisitive mind Information processing Help-seeking benefits Help-seeking costs Help-seeking frequency Learning env management Self-monitoring Self-regulation

2.41 2.92 2.58 2.94 2.81 2.48 3.11 2.95 2.89 2.58 2.63 2.55 3.08

2.28 2.82 2.58 3.03 2.88 2.45 3.16 3.00 2.75 2.49 2.58 2.50 3.03

17.34 17.66 0.75 10.83 8.29 3.87 6.62 5.53 18.67 10.94 5.45 6.75 7.60

0.00 0.00 0.46 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

0.24 0.24 0.01 0.15 0.11 0.05 0.09 0.08 0.25 0.15 0.07 0.09 0.10

L U L U No difference U L U L L U U L U L L U L U L U L U L U

2.75 2.77 2.94 2.05 2.45 2.70 2.87

2.77 2.90 2.99 2.00 2.36 2.71 2.84

3.04 17.39 7.11 5.97 10.09 1.58 3.84

0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.11 0.00

0.03 0.24 0.10 0.08 0.14 0.02 0.05

U L U L U L L U L U No difference L U

Female – Male differences in self-directed learning 0.20

0.15

0.10

0.05

fit

t en

be ne

nm ro

ek se

En vi

el p H

rt

te gy

Fa i

ls

tra

ffo

an

Su

cc e

Pl

y la

Fa i

cc s Su

bi lit

t

gy tra

te

co s

ai m

k

Ed

ee ps el

eg f-r Se l

H

n io

ul at e

ito r

at iv

on m

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l oa G

iry Se lf-

–0.05

In qu

H elp fre see k Su q cc ab ili ty Se lfco nf In iti at io n In fo pr oc es s Fa il ef fo rt

0.00

–0.10

–0.15

Figure 4. Comparison of self-directed learning between students from lower (S1–S3) and Upper (S4–S6) levels

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Mok, Cheng, Leung, Shan, Moore, and Kennedy

when responding to questionnaire surveys, despite the fact that they performed better in academic subjects (e.g., mathematics and science) than their international peers. Lack of self-confidence seems to be a problem for Hong Kong students. This problem may be result of individual (e.g., personality) and cultural factors. As can be seen in Table 3, there was no substantial difference among Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan in secondary students’ self-confidence, although because of statistical artifact due to the large sample size, Taiwan students showed relatively lower selfconfidence than did students in the other two locations. Further, statistical analysis found that, at secondary school, males had significantly higher self-confidence than female students had (Table 4). The effect size was small (value
0.1). Nevertheless, there was comparatively a larger difference between students in lower and upper form levels. Students of upper secondary year levels had significantly lower (effect size
0.24) self-confidence than did students at lower levels. This, together with the lower motivation levels of students at upper levels, reported earlier, is of concern and should be addressed as an urgent matter.

Goal setting and academic planning of secondary students in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan As an important component of success learning, goal setting has a direct effect on students’ learning outcomes. Target goal setting is often seen as the first step of the planning or forethought phase (Pintrich, 2000). The target goal represents some form of standard against which the learner judges the learning outcomes and modifies his or her cognition, motivation, and action accordingly. The goal itself may also be modified as an outcome of the evaluation. A skillful self-directed learner sets clear learning goals, is more likely to sets hierarchical goals, links goals to action plans (Ford, 1995), and commits to the goals (Gollwitzer, 1996). In this study, goal setting and academic planning of secondary students were each measured by a five-item Likert scale. Descriptive statistics (Table 3) and frequency distribution of the items showed that not all secondary students were proficient in goal setting. The average scale value was around the mid-point of 2.5 on the four-point scale (Table 3). Results for academic planning was slightly better (averaging between 2.57 for Taiwan and 2.63 for Hong Kong). Item-wise analysis showed that, although students were ready to set individual learning goals and make use of the goals to guide their studies, many students had involved their parents and teachers in their planning. It is worth exploring whether the students did not want to involve their parents and teachers in goal setting, or they were not given the opportunity to do so. Secondary students might benefit from training in how to develop concrete schedules to achieve their learning goals. Teachers and parents could contribute to students’ goal setting by building perspectives, analyzing the difficulty of the task, identifying task relevance, linking new learning with prior knowledge, and breaking down a difficult goal into smaller, hierarchical, and more achievable goals. Taiwan students had lower average values on goal setting and academic planning than did Hong Kong or Macau students. These results are similar to those on other

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853

scales reporter earlier. The differences were statistically significant but not substantively significantly. The effect sizes were only between 0.01 and 0.04, suggesting that the observed differences could just be statistical artifacts due to the large sample sizes in the three locations (Table 3). Females were found to be more competent in both goal setting (effect size
0.07) and academic planning (effect size
0.22) than were males (Table 4). Further, students in lower forms were more competent than students in upper forms (effect sizes were 0.15 and 0.07 respectively; Table 4).

Inquiry of secondary students in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan Three aspects of inquiry were included in this study: academic initiation, inquisitive mind, and information processing, each measured by a five-item Likert scale. Academic initiation constitutes an important component of students’ self-directed learning. Students with academic initiation tend to involve themselves in academic activities without external compulsive requirements. The key concept in academic initiation is to be self-driven. Knowles (1975, p. 18) defined self-directed learning using the concept of initiation: In its broadest meaning ‘self-directed learning’ describes a process by which individuals take the initiative, with or without assistance of others, in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying human and material resources for learning, choosing and implementing appropriate learning strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes. In Berlyne’s (1960) seminal work on curiosity, epistemic curiosity was considered to be an information-seeking activity that the individual used to resolve conceptual conflicts when she or he was confronted with situations that challenged knowledge or beliefs. This perspective of curiosity is further elaborated by Burns and Gentry (1998) in their tension-to-learn theory: The theory posits that if a learner perceives a manageable gap between the base and the target learning and if the target learning is relevant to the learner’s value system, strong internal tension-to-learn will result. From this perspective, curiosity is an intrinsic motivator for, and central to, self-directed learning (Candy, 1991; Reio & Ward, 1998). Curiosity drives people to investigate, explore, and learn. Teachers should design their instructions to arouse students’ curiosity and harness the power of inquisitive minds. Competence in information processing holds the key to success or otherwise of selfdirected learning. Skillful self-directed learners are able to search for information, make judgments on the relevance and importance of the new information, interpret and understand this information through effective strategies, integrate the information into their existing knowledge schema, and apply it to new situations. It can be seen from Table 3 that, statistically, Macau students showed more initiation and had more curiosity than did Hong Kong or Taiwan students; but Taiwan students

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were more competent in processing information than were either Hong Kong or Macau students. There were only small substantive differences among the locations (Table 3). There were also very small substantive gender (Table 4) or year-level differences (Table 5) in students’ inquiry competence. These results are consistent with results on other scales in this study. Long (2000) identified choice, competence, control, and confidence as the four dimensions characterizing self-directed learning. Self-initiation is closely related to these four dimensions. Are secondary students given the choice to initiate their learning? Are they in control of doing so? Are they competent and confident enough to take the initiative in their learning? How can teachers develop the competence and selfconfidence of students to take charge of their own learning? These are some of the questions facing educators today. Our findings suggest that secondary students have enough drive to take the initiative to solve problems, but they might not have the same quest for engaging in teacher-student interaction or for inquiry-based learning. Responding to teachers’ questions carries with it a certain level of risk – of exposing one’s ignorance and of non-acceptance by peers for being the teacher’s pet. Both risks are significant to adolescents, for whom face and acceptance are crucial at this stage of development. Schools need to create supportive learning environments in order to cultivate more academic initiation in students.

Resource management of secondary students in Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan Resource management gauged in this study includes help-seeking and management of physical learning environment. Self-directed learning does not mean the learner is selfsufficient. Rather, the capacity to decide when, where, and from whom to seek help is a competence to be learned. Help-seeking is a double-edged sword. It is found to be positively related to academic performance (Newman & Schwager, 1995). According to Newman (2002), help-seeking can prevent possible failure, and can maintain students’ interest in the learning task, which may subsequently lead to success and reinforce selflearning behavior. However, help-seeking entails the risk of exposing one’s inadequacy and bringing on negative evaluation. It can be a threat to the learner’s self-esteem (Tishby et al., 2001). Research also found that students are more likely to seek help from those perceived to be more efficacious in helping solve the problem. In this study, three aspects of help-seeking were measured: the benefits of helpseeking, the costs of help-seeking, and the frequency of help-seeking behavior. Each aspect was measured by a five-item Likert scale. Unlike in other scales in this study, the costs of help-seeking comprises negatively oriented items. For negatively oriented items, higher scores are associated with lower inclination toward self-learning than are lower scores. Results show that all secondary students in all locations were weak in making use of strategic help-seeking as a resource for self-directed learning. The average scale values for students in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan were around or below two on the fourpoint scale, which meant in the last two months they rarely sought help from peers, parents, or teachers on academic matters. Although many saw the benefits of seeking help, more saw the costs of doing so, as reflected by the higher scale average values of the latter (Table 3). Females perceived both more benefits (effect size 2.8) and more

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costs (effect size 1.6) than did their male peers, although male students reported more frequency (effect size 1.7) of help-seeking in the past two months (Table 4). Students at upper levels perceived more benefits (effect size 2.4) and more costs (effect size 1.0) in help-seeking, although they practiced it less (effect size 0.8) than did their younger peers (Table 5). In addition to help-seeking, strategic management of the learning environment contributes to effective learning as the learning environment defines the context within which learning takes place. It includes the social structure surrounding the learning, as well as the available resources and distractions to the learner. Mok and Cheng (2002) identified teachers, peers, and parents to be key social players that make up the human environment that plays a significant role in the pedagogical, psychological, and behavioral aspects of self-learning (Schunk, 1998). A skillful self-directed learner manages the learning environment by enlisting all available resources that support learning and controls possible disturbances to learning. No difference was observed among secondary students of the three locations in managing the learning environment. Females (effect size 0.25) and students from lower form levels (effect size 0.14) were comparatively more competent in managing their learning environments (Tables 4 and 5).

Self-monitoring and self-regulation of secondary students in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan Self-monitoring and self-regulation are major components in self-directed learning. Self-monitoring in self-directed learning refers to the learner’s reflection and evaluation on the methods, strategies, and outcomes of learning. Zimmerman (2002) defines self-monitoring as a “covert form of self-observation” whereby the learner cognitively tracks his or her personal functioning. In the self-monitoring process, the learner tries to detect if any mismatch exists between the learning goal and the learning outcome. An outcome of self-monitoring is the learner’s metacognition about his or her own thinking, knowledge, learning preferences, strategy use, and effectiveness of strategies. Skillful self-directed learners make adjustments (regulation) to their learning strategies on the basis of feedback from the monitoring. Learners who can detect progress in their learning derived satisfaction, which in turn drives them to make more effort in the same direction (Schunk, 1998). Consequently, self-monitoring and selfregulation are essential for self-directed learning. Secondary students were reasonably competent in their self-monitoring (see Table 3). There was virtually no substantive difference among locations, between genders, or between levels, although statistically females were shown to be better at self-monitoring and self-regulation than were males.

Summary This chapter is concerned with the self-learning of secondary students. Self-learning refers to a process whereby learners assume major responsibility for the initiation, planning, implementation, and monitoring of their own learning. It has been the focus

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of education in major education systems in the Asia Pacific region. This study is important, because the attitudes toward, and capacity for, self-learning underpin the ability for lifelong learning. The study aims to give a portrait of the self-learning of secondary students in three important locations in the region: Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. The three locations have in common a long colonial history. The majority of students in all three locations use Chinese as the main language for learning and speaking, and they share a Chinese cultural heritage. The chapter was prepared for the consumption of teachers, educators and policymakers. We want to find out through our research the self-directed learning strategies considered effective by students, their use of these strategies, and the factors contributing to their capacity for self-directed learning. It is the aim of the chapter to create new knowledge on the self-learning of secondary students; and through the readers’ application of the research findings, the report contributes to the effectiveness and continuous improvement of education. In this report, results of several research studies, which included theoretical and empirical studies undertaken by the authors between 2000 and 2006, were integrated and the findings were presented according to major dimensions of self-directed learning discussed in the literature. Comparisons across the three geographical locations, gender, and year levels were undertaken in search for strategies to promote selfdirected learning in secondary students. This study found virtually no difference in location, gender, or year level other than inklings of emerging differences between upper and lower secondary form levels, favoring the young students. More importantly, it was reassuring that, on average, secondary students were competent in many aspects of self-directed learning. They were motivated, had adaptive attributions for their academic outcomes, were able to set learning goals, and selfmonitor and self-regulate their own learning. However, the academic self-confidence of secondary students in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan was rather low. Further, secondary students might need development in help-seeking. Help-seeking has long been reported to be affected by cultural factors (Sue & Kirk, 1975). The reluctance of students in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan to seek help could be cultural, or it could be related to their low academic self-esteem and their disengagement with schools. Seeking help entails the risk of exposing one’s inadequacy and the risk of one’s self-esteem being threatened (Tishby et al., 2001). Further, students’ disengagement with schools would also mean that teachers might not be efficacious in helping solve problems facing the students. Tishby and associates (2001) found help-seeking to be an interactive process affected by characteristics of the help-seeker (motivation, shyness, personality, etc.) and the identity of the helper. In addition, help-seeking was less likely in ego-involving contexts (Ryan, Gheen, & Midgley, 1998). Classrooms in Hong Kong and Macau were reported in international studies (e.g., Ho, 2003) to be highly competitive, and schools in all three locations had strong normative traditions. Would such a learning context be responsible for the deterrence of seeking help in the students of this study? If so, how could teachers change their teaching strategies to promote a more positive and engaging learning environment in support of adaptive help seeking? These questions are worth addressing through further research.

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Acknowledgements This research is partly funded by the Research Grants Committee (RGC) of the Hong Kong University Grants Committee, Competitive Earmarked Research Grant 2003–2004, Grant Number HKIEd 8005/03H; and a Research Grant of the University of Macao 2003–2004, Research Grant Cativo No. 3279. We wish to express our sincere appreciation to participating schools, principals, teachers, and students. This study would not have come to fruition without their professional expertise and kind assistance.

References American Psychological Association. (1997). Learner-centered psychological principles: A framework for school redesign and reform: Revision prepared by a work group of the American Psychological Association’s Board of Educational Affairs (BEA). Washington, DC: Center for Psychology in Schools and Education, APA Education Directorate. Bereday, G. Z. F. (1964). Comparative method in education. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Berlyne, D. E. (1960). Conflict, arousal and curiosity. New York: McGraw Hill. Bray, M. (2004). Methodology and focus in comparative education. In M. Bray, & R. Koo (Eds.), Education and society in Hong Kong and Macau: Comparative perspectives on continuity and change (pp. 237–250). Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre (CERC), The University of Hong Kong & Kluwer Academic Publishers. Bray, M., & Koo, R. (Eds.). (2004). Education and society in Hong Kong and Macau: Comparative perspectives on continuity and change. Hong Kong: Comparative Education Research Centre (CERC), Hong Kong: The University of Hong Kong & Kluwer Academic Publishers. Bray, M., & Thomas, R. M. (1995). Levels of comparison in educational studies: Different insights from different literatures and the value of multilevel analyses. Harvard Educational Review, 65(3), 472–490. Bruner, J. (1966). The process of education: Towards a theory of instruction. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Bruner, J. S. (1996). The culture of education. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Burns, A. C., & Gentry, J. W. (1998). Motivating students to engage in experiential learning: A tension-tolearn theory. Simulation & Gaming, 29(2), 133–152. Candy, P. C. (1991). Self-direction for lifelong learning. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Chang, T. J., Li, Y. Y., Lin, B. J., Ho, H. M., & Hrong, B. L. (1996). The revision of learning and study strategies inventory for college preparatory and vocational high school students. Psychological Testing, 43, 305–330. Chang, Y. S., & Chien, M. F. (1983). A study on the learning behaviours of secondary students. Psychological Testing, 30, 75–92. Chen, Y. H., Lin, C. W., & Lee, K. C. (1989). Development of measurement scale for primary students’ learning adjustment. Psychological Testing, 36, 1–12. Department of School Education and Youth. (2004). Review of Macao SAR Education Law: Consultative Document 11/91/M. Available: http://www.dsej.gov.mo/~webdsej/www/dsejnews/2003/edu_comment/ new/chap03.htm (Accessed: 20 February 2006) Education Commission. (2000). Learning for life, learning through life: Reform proposals for the education system in Hong Kong. Hong Kong: Printing Department. Education Commission. (2004). Progress report on the education reform (3). Hong Kong: Education Commission, Hong Kong SAR Government. Available: http://www.e-c.edu.hk/eng/reform/progress/ progress003_ch2_sec3_eng.pdf (Accessed: February 28, 2006) Ford, M. E. (1995). Intelligence and personality in social behavior. In D. H. Saklofske, & M. Zeidner (Eds.), International handbook of personality and intelligence. New York: Plenum. Gollwitzer, P. M. (1996). The volitional benefits of planning. In P. M. Gollwitzer, & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), The psychology of action: Linking cognition and motivation to behavior. New York: Guilford.

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Ho, E. S. C. (2003). Accomplishment and challenges of Hong Kong education system. Paper presented at the PISA International Conference: What do the PISA results tell us about education quality and equality in the Pacific Rim, 21–22 November 2003. Ho, E. S. C. (2004). What does HKPISA 2003 tell us about literacy performance of our students: Results from HKPISA 2003. Presentation on Seminar entitled “PISA2003: Hong Kong Students’ Reading, Mathematical and Scientific Literacy”, 13 December 2004, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong. Knowles, M. S. (1975). Self-directed learning. New York: Association Press. Long, H. B. (2000). Understanding self-direction in learning. In L. B. Long (Ed.), Practice and theory in self-directed learning (pp. 11–24). Schaumburg, Illinois: Motorola University Press. Mok, M. M. C., & Cheng, Y. C. (2002). A theory of self-learning in a networked human and IT environment: Implications for education reforms. International Journal of Educational Management, 15(4), 172–186. Mok, M. M. C., Cheng, Y. C., Moore, P. J., & Kennedy, K. (2004). The development of measurement scales on self-learning of secondary students. Paper presented to the Australian Association for Research in Education, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, 28 November – 2 December 2004. Newman, R. S. (2002). How self-regulated learners cope with academic difficulty: The role of adaptive help seeking. Theory into Practice. 41(2), 132–139. Newman, R. S., & Schwager, M. T. (1995). Students’ help-seeking during problem solving: Effect of grade, goal and prior achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 32, 352–665. OECD. (2000). Motivating students for lifelong learning. Paris: Centre for Educational Research and Innovation. Pinto, A. M. C. (1987). Ensino em Macau: umas abordagem sistémica da realidade educative [Schooling in Macau: A systematic investigation of educational reality] (Macau, Gabinete doSecretário-Adjunto para Educaçaòo e Cultura.) (Quoted in Bray, M., & Koo, R. (2004). Postcolonial patterns and paradoxes: language and education in Hong Kong and Macao, Comparative Education, 40(2), 215–239). Pintrich, P. R. (2000). The role of goal orientation in self-regulated learning. In M. Boekaerts, P. R. Pintrich, & M. Zeidner (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Reio, T. G. Jr., & Ward, S. (1998). The role of curiosity in self-directed distance learning on the Web. Proceedings of the 1998 National Conference on the Adult Learner. Richmond, VA: University of South Carolina. Rheinberg, F., Vollmeyer, R., & Rollett, W. (2000). Motivation and action in self-regulated learning. In M. Boekaerts, P. R. Pintrich, & M. Zeidner (Eds.), Handbook of self-regulation. San Diego, California: Academic Press. Ryan, A. M., Gheen, M. H., & Midgley, C. (1998). Why do some students avoid asking for help? An examination of the interplay among students’ academic efficacy, teachers’ social-emotional role, and the classroom goal structure. Journal of Educational Psychology, 90, 528–535. Schunk, D. H. (1998). Teaching elementary students to self-regulate practice of mathematical skills with modeling. In D. H. Schunk, & B. J. Zimmerman (Eds.), Self-regulated learning and performance. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates. So, C. H. (2005). History of teacher education in Macau and its social context. Paper presented at the First Conference of The Coalition of Teacher Education Institutions in the Pan-Pearl River Delta: New Developments in Teacher Education Curriculum, Council Chamber, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong, 13–15 October 2005. Sue, D. W., & Kirk, B. A. (1975). Use of counseling and psychiatric services on a college campus. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 22, 84–86. Taiwan Ministry of Education. (2000). Aims and objectives of education. Available: http://www.edu.tw:81/ english/ (Accessed: 10 September 2003) Tishby, O., Turel, M., Gumpel, O., Pinus, U., Lavy, S. B., Winohour, M., et al. (2001). Help-seeking attitudes among Israeli adolescents. Adolescence, 36(142), 249–264. Weinstein, C. E. (1990). Learning and study strategies inventory – high school version (LASSI-HS): User’s manual. Clear water, Fl: H&H Publishing Company, Inc. Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a self-regulated learner: An overview. Theory into Practice, 41(2), 64–72. Zimmerman, B. J., & Schunk, D. H. (Eds.). (2001). Theories of self-regulated learning and academic achievement: an overview and analysis. In B. J. Zimmerman, & D. H. Schunk (Eds.), Self-regulated learning and academic achievement: An overview and analysis (2nd ed.) (pp. 1–37). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

46 COMING AND GOING: EDUCATIONAL POLICY AND SECONDARY SCHOOL STRATEGY IN THE CONTEXT OF POVERTY – LATIN AMERICAN CASE STUDIES Claudia Jacinto and Ada Freytes

As secondary education expanded in Latin America over the last decade, it became evident that pedagogic and institutional models have met neither the social and economic challenges, nor those of the new youth culture and of students from social sectors included for the first time in this educational level. How to respond, institutionally and pedagogically to mass education in a framework of growing inequality is an unresolved question; as is also, how to do it with equity and efficiency so as to provide greater opportunities to socially vulnerable young people. Faced with these challenges, educational policies have begun to consider the school institutions as a key in the attainment of skills and learning results. In the understanding that efficacy and equity are contained in insuring retention and learning results of the poorest groups in society, reform programs have enacted proposals directed to improve institutional and pedagogic management. However, studies about the implementation of reform and programs show that there is a considerable gap between the initial model and school practices. One reason appears to be that implementation is not strongly linked to the contexts and institutional processes where the actors’ rationales are central. Contrary to what might be thought, what happens to policies at the school level is not considered here as something exceptional. The individual and collective actions of social actors with their political orientations, interests and values, etc., affect policy, influencing and modifying prior decisions. So for a policy on student retention and learning outcomes to be effective it ought to focus on the methods by which schools “re-create” or redefine the external proposals as well as on those initiatives undertaken by schools themselves. This chapter proposes to illustrate and discuss these processes by case results in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile.1 Two of these studies, one in the city of Buenos Aires (Jacinto & Freytes, 2004) and the other in Uruguay (Aristumuño & Lasida, 2004) had the purpose of identifying, revealing and comparing different types of policies and programs directed towards greater inclusion within secondary schools of disadvantaged 859 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 859–870. © 2007 Springer.

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youth. The other objective was to examine, by means of a qualitative study (ten schools in each case), the pedagogical and institutional strategies used to improve retention and learning quality. These were schools dealing with disadvantaged youth that showed good results when compared to other schools in similar environments. The third case study examines a program of positive discrimination in Chilean secondary education, known as Liceo para Todos or Schools for All (Marshall with Centeno Gazmuri, 2004).

From Policies to Schools: Appropriation, Passivity or Resistance The research on which this chapter is based as well as other studies, shows that there is a long distance between the conception and design of a policy and how it reaches the school. Along the way the participants (school authorities, administrators, supervisors, parents and students) play an active role in “re-creating” the policy through their beliefs, values and strategies. If programs are to find ways to improve educational opportunities for young people from poor backgrounds, this observation is important. For when programs are re-created the intention of the proposals may be changed, and not achieve the expected impact on the school. On the other hand, if it is creatively adapted then they may improve on the original intentions of the project. The Argentine, Uruguayan and Chilean case studies analyze the policy implementation processes in the schools studied. Depending on how the school received the proposed initiatives and implemented them, the studies describe the schools’ reactions in terms of three kinds of strategies – appropriation, resistance and passivity. Appropriation takes place when proposals are adapted to the school’s culture and circumstances and are connected to other school activities that are part of its broader institutional project. It constitutes, therefore, a true “re-creation” of external initiatives, directed to solving school problems as seen by administrators and teachers. This kind of strategy is used in those schools that are active in identifying the challenges to be faced and in searching for adequate forms to deal with them. The Uruguayan study (Aristimuño & Lasida, 2003) offers examples of how “appropriation” was used to effect the institutional changes that were required by reforms of the school system’s Basic Cycle (Ciclo Basico),2 a key priority of the Uruguayan educational reform process, 1995–2000. Besides modifying the curriculum and organizing it in areas and themes rather than through a discipline structure, the Reform of the Basic Cycle introduced a number of changes in the schools’ operation such as lengthening of the school day, strengthening the principal’s role, providing support for school educational development projects, concentrating teachers in schools and establishing weekly coordination meetings between the teaching body and the administration. These coordination meetings directed joint work and pedagogical reflection among teachers and heads and illustrates how the appropriation strategy operated. The evaluations carried out by the Uruguayan Public School Administration3 body show a good degree of satisfaction with how the coordination meeting structure operated. However, the reports note problems with the level of participation and teamwork,

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which are understandable given the difficulties of overcoming teachers’ individualist approach to work, especially at secondary level. In this respect, it was considered that there was “insufficient guidance on how to work (especially in remoter areas of the country) all of which would have weakened, at least, the motivation to participate” (Aristimuño & Lasida, 2003, p. 48). Despite light and shade regarding the operation of the coordination meetings, the ten Uruguayan case study schools show that the additional meeting periods were fully used; probably because the schools already had a culture of teacher collaboration and interchange, particularly in finding answers to identified student needs. The teachers who were interviewed declared that the coordination meetings functioned as a “work space” that broke with the traditional isolation of classroom teachers, allowed them to raise questions about management and to pursue a more holistic follow-up of students’ development. While the schools showed different degrees of use of the coordination meetings, certain schools offer particular examples of “appropriation” of this policy. Some formed working groups that undertook specific responsibilities and tasks delegated by the principal. Other institutions used the coordination meetings as opportunities to discuss and agree on classroom strategies. In one school, for example, teachers decided on the adoption of a common approach to the development of writing skills. These examples show that policies are appropriated in the institutional context when the intended policy change is seen as a mediating factor for the achievement of existing school objectives. Another example of this type of “positive” redesign is found in the implementation of the Programa de Fortalecimiento Institucional de la Escuela Media (Institutional strengthening of secondary schools program). This is a policy supported by the Buenos Aires City government that began in 2001. The program operated on the basis of setting up what was called a “module.” These modules provide additional time for teachers to develop projects, mainly for first and second year students. They allow the school to take a proactive role in facing student difficulties, and while providing them with advice, encourage teachers to formulate their own projects. A group of the Buenos Aires schools studied stand out for their genuine use of policy “re-creation”(Jacinto & Freytes Frey, 2004). Some institutions gave new life to activities proposed by different municipal departments. For example, radio and film workshops; simulated business enterprises; the retention and care of pregnant students and student mothers; tutorials for new students by older ones, were all adapted to the pedagogic or social objectives defined by the school and linked to a coherent institutional policy. This was achieved principally through common approaches agreed upon during collective discussions (consultative council) and coordination activities (departmental meetings and project monitoring by the school management team). When schools have a strong institutional culture and explicit ideological commitments, the appropriation process can result in a real modification of the policy that is consistent with the school’s own criteria. This occurred in two schools, both with a history of working with an extremely excluded population. In the first school, the tutorial system promoted by the program was reformulated because teachers did not feel they had sufficient preparation to deal with the serious problems that derive from

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social exclusion. They thus adopted whole-class discussion and dialogue, which allowed students to develop self-communication skills and self-reflection. Another example of this re-creation of policy, based on the schools prior commitment to disadvantaged youth, was the development of institutional networks with other schools in order to deal cooperatively with the problems of students. The specific projects developed in these networks were in turn included as part of the Institutional Strengthening Program, thus broadening the scope of the policy. A second type of policy response, in contrast to appropriation, is what we call resistance. Resistance strategies are discussed in the literature on educational change. In fact, the failure of numerous reforms can be explained by contradictions between the change proposals and the ideas and behavior of the teachers and school heads that implement them (Bolivar, 1999). Their attitudes in fact provide the framework by which institutional actors evaluate policies. If the designs are considered unfeasible or inadequate, if the efforts are considered to be too great in terms of the expected benefits, the school actors are unlikely to commit themselves to their implementation. They often incorporate the new elements into their discourse but rarely into new practice. In this new era of educational reforms, schools seemed to be bombarded with multiple, innovative programs that often contradict each other. This not only reduces the possibility of absorbing a change but often generates considerable resistance (Ezpeleta, 2004). Thus, the school actors’ resistance frequently alters public policy objectives such as improving equity and efficacy, and gives rise to non-desirable or contrary effects. The application of the 1990 guidelines developed by the Buenos Aires city government, to offer secondary schooling to all primary school leavers, provides us with a good example of resistance. As a general rule the city government has no explicit mechanisms for selecting students such as entrance tests or assigning pupils to schools by area of residence. Nevertheless the school enrolment policies promoted together with urban segregation effectively acted as selection mechanisms for young people (Jacinto & Freytes Frey, 2004). Following the 1994 decision that compulsory education should be extended to the first 2 years of secondary schooling, schools established links with primary schools consisting of talks, visits, etc., to inform the pupils about their local secondary schools and their particular approaches. The intention of these links was to ease the access from primary to secondary of disadvantaged young people through information and simplified school registration procedures. However, the study of the implementation of the guidelines showed that in fact the link practices ended up favoring selection. Primary school pupils with links to certain secondary schools were guaranteed enrolment in these schools and could account for as much as 50% of the first year students. This meant that through its established links with primary schools, a secondary school could set the socio-economic profile of an important percentage of entrants.4 Enrolment also depends on demand. The most prestigious or traditional schools have more applicants than vacancies, meaning that they can send their excess numbers to schools with lower demand. On the other hand, in other schools enrolments had declined, especially in the inner city, as a result of a greater demand for private subsidized schooling and diminishing neighborhood populations. As the minimum number

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of students to start a class is regulated, new student recruitment becomes a critical issue for schools with low enrolment, and so they forego the use of selection mechanisms. The Buenos Aires case study shows that certain schools use “gathering strategies,” that is, they take in difficult students, repeaters and pupils expelled from other schools. Unfortunately, this kind of strategy engenders and consolidates second-rate schools that in turn contribute to educational segmentation and inequity. Thus it turns out that even though a school district may not uphold selection procedures, in reality selection does take place. This happens for different reasons such as wanting to ensure a certain student social profile for the school, or to maintain or increase enrolment. However school strategies also operate in a larger web of laissez faire attitudes by those who manage educational policy. This affects, for example, clientship practices developed by the intricate group of actors that mediate between the central administration and the schools – heads of departments, inspectors and school boards – all of whom contribute to the reinforcement of inequality. (Veleda, 2003). Family and young students’ choices and behavior can also have the same effects as is shown in relation to policies of the city of Buenos Aires in the early nineties, that were directed towards broadening inclusion at the secondary level. To cover the growing demands from marginal urban areas or poor neighborhoods there was a need to create new schools and even, as happened more recently, to relocate schools. While, in a positive sense, this expanded schooling opportunities, some schools interpreted the policies in terms of self-exclusion, which reinforced spatial segregation and caused such schools to be stigmatized as “places for the poor.” This happened because families opt for what we might conceptualize as “self-defining” strategies that push them to see the local school as the only possible alternative for their sons and daughters, in order to avoid the risk of failure in other institutions. Self-definition also appears in the way schools perceive themselves. Heads and teachers who were interviewed referred to their institution as “the school for these young people.” This last example illustrates the complexity and non linear interactions between policy design and the rationale of actors involved in its implementation. On the one hand, the schools we studied effectively contributed to inclusion and learning at secondary level, and their very committed teachers actively endeavored to provide pedagogical alternatives to meet the educational needs of young people living in extreme poverty. On the other hand, selection and self-defining processes resulted in a concentration in those schools of culturally and socially excluded young adolescents, thus reinforcing segregation and stigmatization. The third strategy is institutional “passivity” which occurs in schools open to receiving and incorporating initiatives from various levels – national, provincial and municipal – as well as from the many NGOs that develop educational projects, particularly those working with youth in poverty environments. They often receive projects uncritically and with little deliberation about the appositeness of proposals. There appears to be little capacity to learn from experience, shown by the lack of program continuity of the different actions or the insistence in adopting strategies unsuccessfully tried out in other situations. This type of response is associated with a certain kind of institutional functioning, characterized by lax coordination between principal and

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teachers. Programs appear to depend on individual teachers’ initiatives rather than on the institution as a whole. The Argentine case study offers examples. Some schools show a great openness to different city government projects – and of other organizations – adopting a multiplicity of programs (i.e., links between secondary and primary schools, assisting students to engage in learning, competencies for workplace practice; tutorials, support classes, radio and school newspapers). The obverse of this passive incorporation of different activities is the multiplication of different actions resulting from personal initiatives, with a consequent lack of articulation and dispersion of energy. Without a long-term institutional strategy that could provide coherence to such initiatives, they lack continuity and in the course of time are abandoned without evaluation. Other examples are found in school responses to the Action Plans included in the Chilean Liceo para Todos program (School for All).5 This policy supports the design and execution of an action plan by each participating school community. Its purpose is to reduce school drop-outs, by attending to two complementary dimensions; pedagogic (teaching practices) and the social and psychological needs of students and without disregarding issues related to school management and its relation to the surrounding environment. (Marshall, 2004, p. 62) Non-competitive government resources are provided to each school according to their size (between 300 and 8,000 US dollars for 2 years) in order to fund their plans of action. An evaluation6 of the plans undertaken by the Liceo para Todos schools shows an uncritical adoption of the vocabulary and action models found in the Handbook used to guide the formulation of change plans.7 As noted by the evaluators, this uncritical implementation appears in several ways. One of these is the homogeneity of the different plans. This similarity cuts across all the plans’ dimensions, from the identification of similar problems to proposals for action that do not differ much from those suggested by the Handbook. (Raczynski, 2002, p.18) Second, no priorities are offered for problems identified in the plan and above all for those aspects that would require intervention. As stated, the Liceo para Todos policy emphasizes four change dimensions (teaching methods, student needs, community and environment, and institutional management). However, though the plans propose actions for all these dimensions, they do not prioritize them nor consider their interrelationships. This difficulty of setting priorities is shown in the lack of coherence between diagnoses, objectives, activities and resources requested. Last, one can observe the “passivity” of the proposals in their high degree of standardization (i.e., reproduction of examples found in the Handbook) and traditionalism (i.e., reiteration of habitual school practices without evaluating their previous results). Only 8 of the 97 plans broke with these characteristics, and were considered as “outstanding” by the evaluation report.

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Schools in Search of Adequate Strategies Many of the newer problems related to institutional management and pedagogy require elements of innovation and change in practices that are rarely articulated in policies. An example is given by the way in which secondary schools have had to learn how to deal with problems that arise from conflict or serious disruptions in schools. As a consequence of broad social changes, traditional ways of managing school discipline are now in question. Historically, in secondary schools the daily interactions of adults and young people were based on discipline, respect for hierarchical authority and unquestioned rituals – for example, modes of verbal address, school uniforms etc. However, more recently the legitimacy of traditions and established hierarchies are being called progressively into question, thus affecting the traditional school discipline mores. Proper behavior and the line between unacceptable and tolerable behavior – as defined by traditional school culture – are continuously challenged by the young. In the past secondary schools excluded young people who did not conform to their rules and rituals. With secondary education moving towards becoming compulsory a consensus grew that more young people should stay at school. Thus building an institutional climate for learning became a central issue. The Argentine, Uruguayan and Chilean school case studies coincide in showing that a satisfactory effort toward social harmony contributes to better results not only in terms of retention, but also of learning results. Setting “rules for the game” that organize interactions in an orderly way is a requirement for young people’s integration, reducing drop-out rates and making learning possible. A harmonious environment is an institutional condition to facilitate efficacy and appropriate teaching-learning processes. Although central to teachers’ concerns, it is surprising that the issue has been marginal in secondary school research and educational policy. While there is a growing concern and suggested forms on how to deal with the most critical situations, such as school violence, the daily construction of social harmony – that encourages student retention by creating an appropriate learning environment – does not appear to be on educational policy agendas. This means that the schools themselves, particularly those working in poverty environments, have little alternative but to set out their own “rules of the game.” The goal of retaining the diverse school populations that attend secondary schools thus turns into a continuous task of building harmony through the use of dialogue, confrontation and negotiation between unequal actors. In this task, schools are faced with the obstacle of a youth culture whose communication codes and interactions are far removed from the school’s own codes. Teachers are perplexed at the language and new forms of expression of juvenile sociability, particularly when they take on a violent character that includes confrontation and discrimination between distinct neighborhood groups. The school thus becomes a sounding board for the breakdown of social networks and for socio-economic polarization. What does the empirical evidence collected by the case studies tell us about how schools, operating in difficult environments, manage to achieve (if they do so) the kind of social harmony that facilitates pupil retention and creates conditions for learning? Our research shows that an adequate management of conditions for social harmony is one

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that builds agreements between the young people’s behavior patterns and interrelations and those of the school culture. Underlying the many approaches used to further social harmony, all the schools studied were slowly incorporating principles and practices that moved away from a punishment-based system of regulations and towards the adoption of a vision of school order that is built collectively. The construction of a “good atmosphere” appears fundamental for the young to feel they belong to the school (Aristimuño & Lasida, 2003). Hence the weight assigned by the schools to dialogue, reflection, and the creation of personal links as ways of changing those behaviors that are inimical to living together. Our research evidence shows that dialogue and negotiation are key to ensuring the retention of young people who regard the school culture as substantially alien to themselves. In critical contexts, the day to day management of school harmony presupposes the development of trust and affection and a view of the school as a place where the grave problems experienced by the young are restrained. When those who are close to young people – tutors/teachers, advisors and principals – achieve these relationships it is possible to work out ways to support attitudinal change. Once they feel recognized, most young people will begin to leave aside their defiance and anomie and begin to observe certain basic rules of the game. However, this understanding and adaptation to the young’s cultural mores remains complicated. Schools face a trade-off in this respect. If, on the one hand, the contrast between school behavior patterns and relationships and those of the habitual environment of the young is too sharp, then many will remain “excluded”; thus impacting on equity of opportunities. On the other hand, an excessive adaptation to the codes and conduct of young people – above all if these are the result of social marginalization – will neither favor school processes nor its capacity to develop new attitudes and learning. Within this context, the schools studied are exploring innovative strategies to promote social harmony. First, they have incorporated alternative sanctions that encourage young people to take responsibility for their own conduct and change their attitudes towards punishment. Such is the case of the “acuerdos de convivencia” (harmony agreements) in Argentina and Uruguay, through which the students, helped by their parents, make commitments to the school authorities. “Compensatory tasks” and “community sanctions” are other examples of these measures that consist in undertaking some type of service activity (Aristimuño & Lasida, 2003; Jacinto & Freytes Frey, 2004). Second, some schools are encouraging students to feel integrated and part of the school by offering recreational or sport projects or having days devoted to building repairs and decoration. Being in the school and working on non-academic projects produces the kind of “good atmosphere” that characterizes the institutions that have installed these practices. Finally, a key strategy for maintaining a harmonious climate has been the appointment of “tutors” with the task of supporting students. Tutors, who previously had been in charge of resolving disputes and providing individual guidance to students, are now progressively using group strategies to help the young people manage their relationships and their problems. (Jacinto & Freytes Frey, 2004).

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School aides8 too, play a fundamental role. Their positions previously were associated with control over attendance and discipline. The studies show than when they move from a role of control to one of assistance and support, they become key persons in creating a work climate, which is propitious for learning. They are continuously in contact with students, monitor them and know about their problems during classes. They talk to pupils, advise them and prevent violence. This includes identifying and followingup students with high rates of absenteeism. In some cases, these inspectors became responsible for projects involving issues related to school climate or to specific problems such as protection and care of pregnant students and student mothers or drug prevention. All of this has provided the inspectors with a crucial role in the development of an affective framework, and the socializing of students in the institution’s “rules of the game.” This, in turn, has encouraged greater student retention. How do policies take account of the complexities of constructing school harmony? In some localities, norms on discipline and harmony are producing greater youth participation. Such is the case of regulations of the city of Buenos Aires that eliminate reprimands and support the establishment of “consejos de convivencia” (social harmony councils) with the purpose of encouraging young people to work for a convivial institutional climate. While some evaluations note that these measures have not been widely applied, some schools offer valuable experiences in this direction (Jacinto & Freytes Frey, 2004). But although these norms constitute a valuable initiative toward democratization they are not enough. The complexity of sustaining a harmonious school environment today leads us to consider that much more is needed by way of pedagogic tools than what is offered by this type of regulatory framework. The potential of tutorials is demonstrated by the case of Buenos Aires City as well as Uruguay, where tutors were introduced with the 1996 reform. However, the Uruguay study shows that schools found it difficult to establish the appropriate conditions needed for tutors to function adequately, and so tutorials do not operate well in many schools. One of the main limitations is the lack of support from other specialists (educational psychologists) or teachers (Aristimuño & Lasida, 2003). Perhaps the greatest policy gap concerns teacher education and professional development. The teachers interviewed remarked on the need for training to help them face the diverse institutional and pedagogic challenges posed by the work with young people and prevent what they call the “pathologies” in students (Jacinto & Freytes Frey, 2004). Only very capable principals who understand the need to adjust to new environments and the personal initiative of teachers to engage in appropriate professional development beyond what is on offer, manage to fill in this policy gap. Neither initial teacher education nor continuous professional development opportunities consider sufficiently the hardships encountered by teachers in the new contexts and new youth cultures. Those schools that achieve social harmony – based on adaptability and the steady effort to develop positive relationships with students in poverty environments – offer examples of innovation. However, these innovative efforts have not been sufficiently acknowledged in policy-making as evident in the lack of systemic policies of teacher education and development that might support what the schools are trying to do.

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Conclusion The empirical evidence considered for this article supports the statements about schools and policy made at the start of the article: (1) Schools active role of “re-creation” in the implementation of policies designed to improve the education of young people who live in poverty. (2) Schools’ response strategies to the challenges of institutional management in poverty environments. The studies referred to suggest that institutional mediation of change programs does not always operate in similar ways. Schools strengthen the expected results of the program (greater equity, better learning outcomes) when they adapt them to the reality of the school and thereby generate new learning – but they can also block their intended strategies or change their meaning. Many schools appropriate improvement policies, widening their scope and producing change that goes beyond what was expected of them. Others, however, react passively or with resistance. Some programs are perceived by the schools as divorced from their reality, disconnected from teachers’ interests and overloaded with excess administrative requirements. The projects are then treated passively – they multiply without connection to school daily practices – or with resistance because they are considered useless or involving too much work. These different responses of schools to policies suggest the need to diversify strategies directed to improving educational opportunities. As Marshall (2004, pp. 71–72) notes: Experience shows that when the programs are installed in schools as a single and homogenous intervention, there is a risk of maintaining inequities or of not adjusting the program to the specific forms and needs found in each situation. It is important, therefore, to work with implementation schemes that allow for different modalities both in the substance of the actions themselves as in the support for the management and teaching teams. These must be responsive to the particularities of the institution and its context. Such complex intervention schemes also require institutional conditions, supervision and suitable principals able to accompany and provide leadership to the process. As discussed, we find that the schools themselves are able to provide adequate responses which policy has only tentatively explored. This raises new questions in terms of policy: how can the learning and experience developed in schools be used? How to expand the “good practices” of the schools? What structural modifications are required for their dissemination? Essentially, this chapter has argued that it is a challenge for teacher education and professional development to take on the complex task of strengthening and broadening capabilities to face the demand for harmonious school environments and improved learning outcomes, especially for the young who are poor. While it is known that the multiplication of an efficacious strategy in a given institutional context is subject to many conditions and can never be exactly replicated, the

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systematic study of experiences such as the ones presented in this chapter could provide lessons for public policy design (Jacinto & Terigi, 2007). In fact, policy-making has begun to recognize the importance of institutional participation in implementation, and is including in its designs what we call mediation mechanisms. The Argentine Program for the Fortalecimiento Institucional de la Escuela Media and the Chilean Liceo para Todos include as part of their interventions pedagogical support by specialized teams, provided in Argentina by a non governmental institution, and in Chile by supervisors from the Ministry of Education (Jacinto & Freytes Frey, 2004; Marshall, 2004).9 The fact that certain strategies are as much school initiatives as they are state policies leads us to think that just as there is a consensus on the shortcomings of past policies to improve institutional and pedagogic practices, there is now a growing consensus on what are the problems that need to be faced for that purpose. This is suggested in a recent work on strategies to deal with absenteeism or students overage; and on tutorials and other actions that provide guidance to students, (Jacinto & Terigi, 2007). To improve efficacy with equity, among other means, we need to travel along the road that allows for the coming and going between public policies and school strategies.

Notes 1. The studies were undertaken as part of the International Institute of Educational Planning (IIEP)’s project, “Strategies to improve secondary education opportunities in Latin America,” coordinated by Françoise Caillods and Claudia Jacinto. 2. This is the first cycle of secondary education (3 years). The primary level (6 years) together with this Basic Cycle are compulsory in Uruguay. 3. Equivalent to the Ministry of Education in other countries. 4. For example, the linkages of one of the secondary schools to four primary schools had the purpose of assuring a specific social mix of the student body. The linkages pursued the entry of middle or lower middle class pupils, and yet at the same time they encouraged the diversification of the social composition of the school population by offering direct access to those with less income levels. Also significant was the fact the Buenos Aires schools with linkage projects were those that ended up having a higher percentage of students from the middle classes. 5. This program was created in 2000 with the aim of improving retention and quality in the schools attended by socially and educationally vulnerable young people. The program has three components – together with interventions of lesser importance – (1) scholarships for students at risk of dropping out; (2) strategies to improve teaching and (3) support for initiatives and plans of each school to reduce drop outs and improve learning outcomes (Marshall, 2004). 6. This evaluation analyzed a sample of 97 Action Plans for 2002, followed by a study of ten schools to examine implementation and the perceptions of the institutional actors about the “School for All” program. 7. It is known as the Cuaderno de Apoyo a la Elaboración del Plan de Acción 2002–2003. 8. They are persons contracted to assist in diverse tasks in the school such as roll-calling, supervising recreation activities, or standing-in for absent teachers. 9. The studies show that each option has its dilemmas. The use of supervisors entails the problem of their traditional role associated with securing observance of norms, as well as the habitual overload of work that supervisors bear. Both place obstacles in the way of a change toward a kind of clinical supervision that requires an ability to analyze problems and particular needs of each school and to help and support the search for solutions, linking them to policy intentions. On the other hand, in the case of non-government institutional support, one of the difficulties is a certain overlapping or imprecision regarding project jurisdiction with the ministry supervisors, which

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Jacinto and Freytes could make relations difficult. The key then is how to manage the complementarities to strengthen both roles. In the Buenos Aires program, as experience in the intervention grew and the first stage was successfully completed, the need for more intensive help from the supervisory structure was recognized as a way of institutionalizing the new practices.

References Aristimuño, A., & Lasida, J. (2003). Políticas y estrategias para el mejoramiento de las oportunidades de los jóvenes. Estudio sobre la educación secundaria en Uruguay. París: IIPE-UNESCO. Bolivar, A. (1999). “Diseño, diseminación y desarrollo del curriculum: Perspectivas actuales”. en J. M. Escudero (Ed.), Diseño, desarrollo e innovación del curriculum. Madrid: Síntesis. Ezpeleta, J. (2004). Lo institucional de la escuela en las políticas de reforma educativa, en Emilio Tenti Fanfani (Ed.) Gobernabilidad de los sistemas educativos en América Latina. Buenos Aires: IIPE-UNESCO. Jacinto, C., & Freytes Frey, A. (2004). Políticas y estrategias para el mejoramiento de las oportunidades de los jóvenes. Estudio en la Ciudad de Buenos Aires. París: IIPE-UNESCO. Jacinto, C., & Terigi, F. (2007). ¿Qué hacer ante las desigualdades en la educación secundaria? Aportes de la experiencia latinoamericana. Buenos Aires, Santillana/UNESCO/IIEP. Marshall, M. T. with Centeno Gazmuri, D. (2004). Programas de mejoramiento de las oportunidades. El Liceo para Todos en Chile. París: IIPE-UNESCO. Raczynski, D. (2002). Evaluación de la línea Planes de Acción de los liceos adscriptos al Programa Liceo Para Todos. Santiago de Chile: Asesorías para el Desarrollo. Veleda, C. (2003). Mercados Educativos y Segregación Social. Las Clases medios y la elección de la escuela en el conurbano bonaerense. Documento de Trabajo No 1, CIPPEC.

47 THE SCHOOL REVIEW PROCESS: THE CASE OF THE BRITISH SCHOOLS IN LATIN AMERICA

David Bamford

The Latin American Heads Conference (of schools reflecting British Practice), more commonly known by its initials LAHC, was founded in 1996, at the initiative of a group of Heads of British schools who were anxious to form an association whose principal aim would be to ensure the pursuit of high international standards in education. The association currently includes as its members the Heads of 35 schools in nine countries throughout Latin America. The School Review was conceived as a result of the first LAHC conference, held in 1997, and it has now become the prime yardstick within the association for measuring existing quality of schools and an indicator of possible directions and instruments for change and improvement. Essentially, the School Review is an aid to improvement. It is neither a requirement nor a condition of LAHC membership that a school be subject to the Review, but is applied upon request from the individual school. It has been used separately at Primary and at Secondary level; it has also been applied in parallel to two separate Preschool and Lower Primary Sections of the same school. In two cases, the element of Classroom Practice has been taken as a unit in isolation and applied within the Secondary section of a school. It is the flexibility of the Review, which gives it its particular character.

The School Review Process in the British Schools of Montevideo, Uruguay The Review is perhaps best understood by viewing it in the context of schools, which have undergone the process. To this end this chapter will consider the experience of the British Schools in Montevideo, Uruguay, which requested the Review of its Senior School for 2001 and of its Junior School for 2002. These schools at the time had separate managements, albeit on the same campus, each one with its own Head, reporting directly to the Schools’ Board. 871 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 871–886. © 2007 Springer.

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At the beginning of the new millennium, the question facing the Senior Management of the schools was how to achieve evolution rather than revolution, quality of service and new teaching practices, how to further the creativity of the students while maintaining the traditional level of academic excellence; and, above all, how to create an efficient and sustainable School Development Plan which would be to the benefit of all. The need was clear but there were many different options on how to proceed. Among these was to use the ISO 9000 quality management standards,1 a home produced development plan incorporating staff appraisal, to invite independent evaluation groups who had visited the school previously from the UK, to join an international schools’ organisation with compulsory accreditation or, as eventually agreed, to request the LAHC School Review. The effectiveness of this review had already been demonstrated by successful applications in Markham College, Lima (1999) and St George’s College, Quilmes, Buenos Aires (2000). Although the LAHC Review model had been recently developed and tested, the feedback given to the Members’ Conference in 2000 was sufficiently positive for the school authorities to consider that this might be the instrument of evaluation that was needed. Among its main advantages was its design specific to Latin American Schools of “British ethos,” and the fact that it was known to be a non-threatening evaluation or review and not a hostile inspection. It was considered that the self-evaluation and external evaluation would provide a good basis for subsequent continual self analysis and striving for improvement. This meant also that the Review would empower the school departments as, they would be requested not only to analyse their own procedures but to give their views on aspects of whole school policy. There were advantages in its timing as the schools could select the dates and be able thus to plan and implement the changes they saw necessary, as well as budget for the cost of the Review without reducing other resources. Finally, there was confidence in the calibre of those who might form part of the Review team as well as in the training provided to reviewers and the scope of the evaluation model. The LAHC was seen as a highly professional body by the school Board of the time who agreed that it would be a marvellous opportunity to objectively evaluate the school by international standards, and then receive a comprehensive list of commendations and recommendations. Support from the School Board was, at all stages of the process, – before, during, and after the Review – complete, unquestioning and unconditional. The Review was requested at an important point in the Schools’ history. There were several aspects related to the Schools’ performance and strategic direction that had been questioned and there was an implicit understanding that the infrastructure and resources for the needs of twenty-first century students (active learning strategies, consensual discipline policy and values program, school-wide and departmental coordination between teachers, written policies and procedures, curricular provision, assessment policies, budgetary information for Heads in both Schools) all suffered important limitations. An external Review would help confirm and support the validity of this self-assessment.

The Review Process Once the decision had been taken by the Board of Governors and the Heads to undertake the Reviews the announcement to staff was met with different appreciations of

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what it would mean for the School. As the review dates were confirmed, explanations about the aims and process of the LAHC review were given, and certain staff members reacted with natural trepidation and anxiety, others with scepticism and occasionally hostility; but a majority including middle and senior management, embraced the prospect with enthusiasm. The Review considers academic theory and practice, and also a number of other areas: ideological, organizational, personal and structural/infrastructural. The starting point is the school’s own evaluation according to certain guidelines. Prior to the visit the school provides requested documentation. This is studied by the members of a team put together for the purpose and chosen from trained personnel in the member schools. The team visits the school for a week, observing teaching/learning, collecting evidence pertinent to the aspects under review, and conducting meetings and interviews. At the end of the visit, a full report is submitted, containing the findings of the team, together with the appropriate commendations and recommendations. The process as carried out in the two schools is presented below.

The Preliminary Visit The first stage in the Review is the preliminary visit. The team leader or co-ordinator visits the school in order to discuss the process with the Head and Senior Management, visits the premises, agrees on the constitution of the team (quantity and areas of expertise of the members), discusses mechanics and accommodation, and explains the process to the staff. This last aspect is essential, since it is always necessary first of all to show the “human face” of the Review, and then to help the staff to shift the pre-established paradigms of inspection and the apprehensions that anticipation of such a process creates. On this occasion, the members of staff who were suspicious of, even hostile to, the projected Review gave expression to their feelings. After the process was explained, questions were invited, and a number of these revealed that the questioners had in mind an unsettling, probing exercise aimed at detecting and targeting weaknesses. Although the leader of the exercise was given a rough ride by some of the more belligerent members of staff, this was a valid test of his level-headedness under fire and good preparation both for future such visits and for emphasising the low-key nature of the Review in future training exercises.

Preparation The period prior to any external evaluation is always filled with activity. In addition, the process of self-evaluation, which precedes the School Review causes a great deal of self-examination, self-questioning and anticipation of steps needed to improve existing procedures. In the two British Schools, the Senior Management Teams, Administration and Academic Departments began to examine the Review model, anticipate its requirements, and work towards what the Review would look for and evaluate. In fact, there was considerable satisfaction by members of staff in the Senior School, for example with the new wall displays they put up, the rearranged classrooms, new departmental handbooks, new inventories and departmental three-year plans. The new staff handbooks produced, incorporating school-wide procedures, were the first

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of their kind in years. The school was tidied, classrooms painted, and students saw a change – though the more sceptical considered that all these cosmetic changes were simply a short term effort prior to the Review. During the months leading up to the Review, the documentation produced by both schools for this process was extensive, insightful and very useful. Staff began to identify and discuss possible areas of strengths and weaknesses within their classroom practice, their departments and other areas of concern school-wide. A certain consensus began to form about the areas that would need improvement, and the more motivated, innovative teachers began to suggest making changes even before the reviewers arrived. In retrospect it was understood that vital to the communication of this process was the fact that the entire school community share information about the purpose and the procedures of the Review prior to the arrival of the evaluators to the institution. Despite the aforementioned scepticism, attitudes throughout the school were generally positive. Since it was gradually understood by all members of the school community that the Review was not going to mean any kind of witch hunt, but that the aim of the operation was to assist the school in identifying areas and strategies for improvement, an atmosphere of co-operation began to prevail. Concerning the process it was recorded that: ●

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There was mutual support amongst staff in the face of what could be considered a trying and stressful time. To complete the self-evaluation documents and prepare for the Review, Senior School Co-ordinators had to sit down with their Junior School counterparts to check curriculum plans, review evaluation procedures and basically “get to know each other.” The Heads encouraged this and led by example, with weekly meetings, which included the presence of the Deputies and on occasion the Psychologists or Administrator. Meetings of this nature were an important step in whole school communication; as trust and co-operation were built and helped prepare the way for the Junior School Review the following year. Students in Senior School were involved in the Review procedure at all times during the week and were eager to speak and to co-operate. As the then Head of the Senior School states: It was pleasing to hear their loyalty to the great majority of their staff, which again gave us the will to continue and the feeling that we were on the right track. We actively encouraged the Prefects to be a part of the process and the Social Anthropology Diploma students undertook their own questionnaire and analysis for the Review as a part of their subject’s internal evaluation. Their final report was archived in the library for complete transparency.

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Parents wanted to take part in the improvements of their School and were insistent that their views be heard. For weeks afterwards they also insisted on knowing if the school had “passed,” “the grade achieved,” “what had to be done to reach standards.” Although it was gratifying to see such interest and desire for involvement, this did indicate flaws in the preparation of and communication to such an important group of stakeholders, since the Review is not about success or failure, benchmarking or achievement of standards; it is essentially an instrument of self-help and self-improvement.

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The Review The Head of the Senior School reported that the Review itself: … was conducted by an exceptional team of highly qualified professional evaluators who seemed to blend into the School without any fuss, led by the LAHC Executive Officer who, in his customary manner, put a very human face on the whole exercise. Their approach was courteous, engaging, and interactive though at the same time probing. In the words of the Deputy Head of the Junior School: The LAHC Review team that visited the Junior School in 2002 had a profound impact. The phrase ‘no stone was left unturned’ was expressed more than once by staff after the Review team decamped. Their findings were met with general agreement and the subsequent recommendations were taken very seriously. These comments most likely reflect the feeling of all staff that participated in this process. The Review week was intense and the final report in both Schools came as a shock to some and as an excellent starting point to others. Despite the fact that all knew the School was far from perfect and that the Review was intended to “help a good school continue to improve,” the change that would be required to align the people, systems and resources back towards its initial vision and mission was challenging and admittedly daunting. For the co-ordinator and leader of the Review process, it was gratifying to read such comments, since considerable pains were taken to stress the non-hostile aspects of the Review, that it is not an inspection, but an evaluation whose starting point is the school’s own self-assessment and whose main aim is an indicator of ways to improvement. In addition, the Code of Conduct for Reviewers, one of a number of documents contained in an ever-expanding Guidance Manual sent electronically to members of the team before the process, stresses the utmost importance of discretion, tact, professionalism and unobtrusiveness. The aim is to see the schools at work, observe, collect, corroborate and process evidence while causing as little disturbance as possible.

Post Review The school’s planning and self-analysis had been such that there were few real surprises in the Review report and it confirmed many of the weaknesses and opportunities for improvement that had already been outlined to the Board and staff. This is not a criticism of the Review model, quite the contrary. The model was perceived by the school authorities as being so efficient that if real commitment and time are invested in the self-analysis, there really ought not to be surprises. It also gave the staff the confidence that they could appraise themselves, that they were generally accurate in their analysis and observations and that the identified strategies for improvement were on the right lines. The exception was an area that had been overlooked – creativity: how it could be

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brought more into the mainstream curriculum. One paragraph in the report created one of the most profound changes in the school in the post-Review period. Even professionals can miss the obvious, either by not seeing the “wood for the trees” or being blinded by words, good intentions and the mask of the National System; but significant change occurred as from day one of receipt of the written report. This change has been apparent in many of the areas touched on by the report, for example considerable refurbishment of classrooms and laboratories, the introduction of the Pastoral program, greater reconciliation of national and international academic programs and greater departmental ownership of relevant portions of the academic budget. It is, perhaps, a mark of the general accuracy of the observation by the members of the team that such details are often spotted in a Review. It is true that those concerned are active educational practitioners – managers and teachers – working within a Latin American context. However, it cannot necessarily be expected that external eyes will pick up every nuance and idiosyncrasy of a school’s personality in the course of a week. On the other hand, it is frequently demonstrated in the course of a Review that the comparisons and cross-referencing carried out by a team of a dozen or so professionals will prompt the detection of a particular weakness. Recent cases of this in other Reviews have been the detrimental effect on the teaching-learning process of casual attitudes towards punctuality and less than optimum benefits to pupils of a greater emphasis on teaching than on learning or the under-development of notetaking techniques. In the case of the Review of the Senior Section of the British Schools, since this was the Board’s and staff’s first experience of the process, one of their biggest questions was how accurately the Review would reflect the areas of improvement that were needed within the School. The feeling after the Review was that there were very few surprises in what had been observed. In fact, the commendations and recommendations that were proposed by the LAHC reviewers were so valuable that they became part of the first new whole School Development Plan that was drafted in 2003. The structure of this plan relied heavily on the conceptual framework of the LAHC documents and Review procedure, and it specifically incorporated selected recommendations made in the report. Following the Review there were several important and visible changes. A senior member of staff states that: the SMT, Pastoral program, reorganization of departments into faculties (by subject and building area), sporting success, leadership activities, changes in the approach to science, integrated fieldwork trips in Senior, start of attempts to co-ordinate the Maths department (National and IB), Resources Task Force, initial Senior School discipline policy, Staff Handbook, New teachers’ Handbook, some Departmental Handbooks, changes in School ethos etc. had all occurred … With the arrival of the new Heads of both sections, the Junior School in 2003 and the Senior School in 2004, all these changes were accepted as the new starting point and implemented through creative ways of responding to the initial recommendations made in the LAHC Review reports.

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Aftermath In the words of the Executive Assistant to the Board of Governors: we stand on the shoulders of previous efforts that others have made. As the School approaches its 100th anniversary, it is very evident, that if we hadn’t had so many excellent contributions from staff members along the course of history concerned with improving on the work of others, the School would obviously not be what it is today. From the date of the Reviews onwards there has been much dismantling and restructuring, anticipated changes that are still part of a work-in-progress, but all this activity has steadily gained an increased sense of urgency and increasing momentum given the extensive documentation left behind from the Review. Commenting on the aftermath of the process the Deputy Head of the Junior School stated: To a great extent, although the Review document or parts of it were available to all staff school-wide, its implications were mainly felt at management level at first. The following two years after the Review saw organizational surgery take place in the restructuring of Senior Management, a necessary requisite if a Development Plan was to prioritise and realise recommendations. The documentation and all reports drawn from its initial findings have provided a rich stimulus for countless discussions about areas to improve in both the academic and administrative sections of the School. The decision taken by the Board of Governors in 2003 to delegate authority to a professional in educational management who was able to apply a full-time effort in pushing through many of the changes that had to be made – and which in many cases are still in progress – is considered by the Board a critical factor in the success of these changes. This person, Executive Assistant to the Board of Governors, had the knowledge, time and stamina necessary to push through the mandate of the Board of Governors. It was really only after the Board of Governors, Senior Management and other school authorities began to generate strategies of how to work with the recommendations that the true benefits of the Reviews were fully understood in both Schools.

Deconstruction and Reconstruction In concrete terms, the principal consequences of the Review in the British Schools of Montevideo are as follows:

Clearer Job Descriptions and Changes in the Organisational Structure Descriptions were clarified and lines of communication established which greatly facilitated the achievement of school-wide goals. The management structures in both Schools

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were reviewed and new organisational charts were defined in both Senior and Junior and finally redefined in 2004. This led to a greater sense of purpose and direction.

Introduction of First School Wide Development Plan As a result of the Review’s recommendation and a visionary understanding of the Schools strategic direction on the part of the Board of Governors, the School produced its first development plan for the period 2003–2005. It was the first time that a wholeschool Development Plan was written which encompassed common objectives for both Junior and Senior School. Its design, as recommended by the LAHC Review, “attempted to put educational priorities, curricular, human, social and professional development at the centre of all planning.”

School Culture/Ethos/Organizational Structure/Communication The Review obliged all members of staff in the academic and administrative areas to communicate more fluidly on a whole school basis while providing an atmosphere of positive criticism with regard to existing procedures, methodology, etc., to improve documentation in most areas, investigate/study actual provisions, leading towards future planning and eventually the new Development Plan. It put into operation the grouping of all teachers/subjects into Departments and this resulted in the eventual revision of the existing organisational charts, encouraged the search for improvements in all areas, replacing complacency, involving all staff, including administration, in one common School Project with increased participation of the wider community; pupils, parents, teachers and former pupils. The contrast of all these changes with the School culture before the Review was immense. No longer could it be said that it is an accepted fact that the School is in fact three schools; Junior, English Speaking Secondary and the National Baccalaureate. The entrenched attitude that teachers could work with total autonomy was broken and projects were now undertaken with a more collegial, participatory style. The entire focus of the School has now turned towards “creating collaborative and collegial communities of teachers, providing them with the appropriate autonomy and motivation to make better curricular and pedagogical decisions in the interests of their students and therefore improving student learning” (Supowitz, 2002, p. 1591).

Teaching and Learning/Appraisal and Assessment/Pedagogy Most educational institutions are faced with the harsh reality that rapid and profound change in our global society has obliged schools to revaluate their teaching systems and the teacher training programs that relate directly to the students’ learning. Over the course of almost 100 years the size of a class group has increased four-fold within the British Schools and the “drive for a modern day pedagogy advocating student-centred, technology enabled learning is now at odds with teacher comfort zones still nestled in a teacher talk, print based classroom” (Kimber, Pillay, & Richards, 2002, p. 155). Under

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these circumstances the school had to ask itself how to design an educational system that could meet these demands while giving personalised attention to students without losing its pre-defined standards of quality. The LAHC review obliged all members of the community to reflect upon these facts. Although as stated by the Deputy Head of the Junior School, “one should also be reminded of a primary tenet of the LAHC Review Team: that, as an advisory body, it is taking a snapshot of the school over a period of one school week.” As such, it is not able to recognise the full implications of the local paradigm, even within a common educational culture of British styled schools that are members of the LAHC. The two British Schools, for example, are located in a leafy suburb of Montevideo, an island within a city island, separated in the southern extremities of the southern hemisphere by a large estuary to the south and “campo” (countryside) to the north. Among other recommendations made in the report was the creation of a wholeschool policy on assessment, with a detailed structure that was to be adhered to by all staff. This translated into the 2003 Assessment Action Plan where a series of diagnostic tests were designed for each class to give teachers information on the students during the first 2 weeks upon entering their class. The results were carefully recorded so that lesson plans could respond to the individual and group needs. The new assessment tests were now going to be composed by the teachers instead of the curriculum co-ordinator and for the first time teachers would also be asked to decide on the marking criteria. Once the teachers were more confident working with the precise marking criteria for each area, they were asked to develop a report card that reflected the marking criteria in each area and what the child was learning in the classroom. Documentation of the procedure was produced and follow-up workshops on training for assessment were conducted in the INSET sessions in 2004 through differentiated learning and group work. This is but one example among many of the shared decisionmaking processes that the Review had been instrumental in instigating, the advantages of which have been seen and felt in greater degrees of empowerment of teachers, resulting in higher levels of commitment, responsibility and accountability for both their own performance and their students’ progress and results. An Assessment Action Plan challenges teaching methodologies and child-centred learning at many levels. Significantly, the influential “Black Box” paper (Black & Dylan, 1998) that has advocated radical reform in reconciling formative assessment with the rigours of summative assessment in the UK has also been invaluable within INSET sessions in 2005. The implications of the paper are not to be taken lightly and relate directly to teaching methodologies. Assimilation of formative, child-centred concepts through workshops and teachers experimenting with and discovering the benefits of formative assessment has provided a new mind-set amongst many of the teaching staff. The creation of an assessment document is merely a statement of intentions; the step of articulating it by creating an environment where teachers can open their classroom doors to peers and management derives from a belief that a reflective attitude is vital where professional change is required. Subsequently, a requisite ingredient of sustainable professional development amongst staff is the exchange of good classroom practice that embraces defined elements of the school’s Development

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Plan in teaching and learning; it is a matter of extended professionalism and supportive management. The comment made by one teacher to the effect that progress following the LAHC Review, is “patchy” is very apt, as teachers inevitably assimilate new ideas in different ways; sometimes the change is profound and rapid and sometimes slower and shallower. Time is required and long-term professional development essential.

Knowledge Management All the recommendations set out in the reports required managing massive amounts of information in order to understand trends and monitor them within the School. There was no way that staff running the day-to-day activities of the School would also be able to compile the reports that would be required for decision-making at a more strategic level school-wide without being provided with better data and information gathering tools. Faced with this reality, the Board of Governors began to explore different options of staffing and instructional technology that could address this issue. It was fairly evident that knowledge management within the School, from both a practical and policy perspective could be used to support educational administration, which in turn would support teaching and learning. Unparalleled expansion in the use of ICT was already enhancing and enriching all aspects of schooling – teaching, learning, management and administration – and the School had to explore more creative ways of exploiting these benefits to the student’s advantage. In March 2004, the two British Schools were able to launch part of the efforts in this area through its educational portal, which would permit easy access to all class lists for attendance, grading, and lesson planning, amongst many other documents in the Senior School. The portal would allow students, parents and teachers to see assigned homework, access subject information placed by the teacher, keep track of their own performance and grading, etc. It would make the exchange of information between teachers and students and other members of the School community more effective and efficient. As a result of this project the School was named by the European Union as one of the centres of innovation in South America, gaining through the Integra project recognition of ICT-related improvements that use knowledge management to create effective learning environments.

Financial Reporting As a direct result of the recommendations in the report pertaining to specific administrative functions throughout the School and those formulated by the Board of Governors in the Development Plan 2003–2005, action has been taken over the course of the last 2 years to generate greater involvement of academic staff in the creation and control of the educational budget. Changes and innovations were introduced to the financial software applications in the general ledger, budgeting, accounts payable, asset management, inventory control,

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accounts receivable and billing, payroll and financial reporting to permit better financial control by multiple users.

Conclusion All the changes mentioned above were initiated as a direct response to recommendations made within the Review report and the Whole School Development Plan 2003–2005. It is true that the solutions to the recommendations made rest on the creativity of the staff within the School but the legitimacy and the observation of an outside evaluation to make a change cannot be underestimated. The reports provided school authorities with the identification and the consensus to move forward with these changes. By May 2004, the school had an infrastructure to match that of any school on the continent; despite devaluation, inflation and political uncertainty, it was taking in more students than at any time in its history; it had re-established its sporting excellence in both hockey and rugby, with considerable recognition and participation in the National teams; it boasted the best IB statistics in its history with students entering the finest universities in the world with impressive scholarships (including the University of Cambridge); it gloried in the fact that a significant number of staff were either IB examiners or members of IB subject review panels; it had been awarded a Diploma of Excellence by the Uruguayan President, Dr. Jorge Battle; it had established a reputation for impressive musicals, bands, choirs and general creativity; it was co-operating in the local community with projects that made a real social and economic difference; it supported the Ministry of Tourism in producing free translations for promotional videos and web page publicity; it had been a leading figure in the planning of the Jubilee Celebrations of the British Embassy (re-establishing important links with the British Community). Above all, the staff had lost the fear of positive change and embraced appraisal, evaluations and continual improvement. They were a highly motivated team and at a perfect moment for a new Headmaster to guide them to new expectations and the requirements of further medium- and long-term goals. Quite possibly, given time and the right leadership, these changes might have occurred anyway, but there is no denying that Review was the catalyst for change at the British Schools and that without it, it would have been very difficult to improve so quickly, so successfully and in such a sustained way.

Effects of the Review of the British Schools in Uruguay Over the Review Process There were a number of ways in which the Review instrument and its procedures were modified as a result of the experience. One of these was the establishment of a follow-up system to the schools reviewed. There were also a series of innovations in the way in which the reviews were carried out. Both these effects are described below.

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Follow-Up Procedures Initially, the involvement of LAHC in the Review process came to an end with the submission of the report. Since the association has no authority to inspect and makes no claim to be a body of accreditation, it was not considered that it could hold a school accountable for the implementation of and recommendations made in the report. It was up to the school to give the report due consideration, decide which recommendations it would accept and implement and incorporate these into whatever action or development plan might be devised. There were at least two other factors, which played a part in this situation. The first of these may perhaps best be described as caution. Those who had devised and composed the Review instrument had done so against time and within the narrow opportunities permitted by their demanding jobs as Heads of Schools. Also, progress of the Review had to be dictated by a considerable measure of cautious pragmatism. The instrument was there, but its identity and effectiveness were to evolve and be evaluated with use. The other factor was the time available to the personnel driving and applying the Review. In the early stages, this consisted of one person, himself Head of a school and already uncomfortable with having to take time away from his post to co-ordinate and apply the process. To have had to take more time to apply a follow-up was, at the time, unthinkable. With the appointment of a full-time Executive Officer to LAHC, this picture changed. Full control of the Review became part of the Executive Officer’s brief, together with responsibility for liaison, training and representation. With an increasing number of schools requesting the Review and with the movement around Latin America, which became part of the visible aspects of the newly created post, the possibility, even necessity, for a follow-up procedure began to emerge. Significantly, it was during the application of the Review to the Junior School in Montevideo in 2002 that this began to take shape in a conversation with the then Chairman of the Board and later through visits in 2003 and 2004 to schools that had been previously reviewed. These visits, paid on the crest of a wave of post-Review activity, underlined both the validity of the Review exercise and the sense of direction and cohesion, which an overall evaluation can give to a school and its staff. This led to the idea that a follow-up process should be incorporated into the Review procedure. It was agreed that the Executive Officer would pay a two-day visit to the British Schools in Uruguay during the month of August 2005. Time would be taken up with examination and discussion of progress made since the Review. It was agreed that a useful starting point would be to produce a list of all the recommendations made in the reports to both schools, indicating those which had been accepted and implemented, accepted and were pending, those on which decisions had not been taken and those which had not been accepted, together with the reasons. The visit revealed that over 90% of the recommendations across the board – academic and Whole School Aspects, Senior and Junior School – had been accepted and were in different stages of implementation. During the 2 days, discussions were held with staff at all levels in both schools. So positive were these, and so favorable were general reactions to the Review and its consequences, that a concrete format has now been devised for the post-Review follow-up visit and this has been incorporated into the process as standard procedure.

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Briefly summarized, the process takes the form of an audit. The school is asked to provide detailed information on the acceptance, implementation and otherwise of the recommendations in the report. It needs to describe progress made since the Review, incorporation of the implementation of recommendations into action plans and/or an overall School Development Plan, as appropriate. This information is sent to the team leader or other person undertaking the post-Review audit between 1 and 2 weeks in advance of the visit. During the visit, meetings are held with different groups of stakeholders: the Board, Senior Management, Middle Management, teaching staff, pupils, parents, etc., with the information provided by the school and previously digested by the auditor as a base. The information gleaned from these meetings provides the material for a report on the audit in which the relevant perceptions, commendations and recommendations are recorded, and so the process continues, with a future Review being planned for a determined moment in the future. There are benefits inherent in this procedure, which go beyond the mere audit itself. The instances of conversation made available by the meetings held allow members of the school community to voice concerns, seek clarification, assistance and advice and for all these to be addressed either by the auditor in person or though the network of communication which LAHC has generated. Since the post-Review visit to the British Schools in Montevideo was carried out, there has been a flow of correspondence between Senior and Middle Managers at the school and the Executive Officer of LAHC concerning further improvements and advice on new curricular plans, among other matters. Three further post-Review audits of schools reviewed in 2002, 2003 and 2004 are planned for 2006.

Innovations in the School Review Process One of the difficulties experienced by a school is accommodating a team of between 6 and 13 people for a week. Space is often at a premium and computers tend to be in short supply. In earlier Reviews, the teams had been lodged variously in a parents’ meeting room, the music teaching room, a computer room and the library, causing, in every case, a measure of inconvenience to the school. In those early Reviews, the teams only had access to a small number of computers, and a secretary who typed the final report. This however, slowed down the final stages of the operation. This was later changed as members of the teams considered that they could be responsible for word-processing their sections of the written report. The British Schools in Montevideo went one step further; for both Reviews, they accommodated the team in a spacious and well-lit room that was not in regular use and hired in a suite of computers, checked and virus-free, which were all linked to a state-of-the-art printer. These measures set a new standard in team accommodation and also in requirements of levels of competence of the Review team members. It is a prerequisite now that the latter be fully computer literate and able to work on a keyboard at reasonable speed. The requirements with regard to computer provision have been raised another notch over the past 2 years, and it is now requested that the suite of computers provided for the team be fully networked (both to the school’s system and among themselves) to facilitate the storage and sharing of documents and files.

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Both applications of the Review in the British Schools became testing grounds for the instrument itself, which has continued to develop and grow both stronger and more adaptable with each successive application. The Review of the Senior School introduced the concept of having two people on the team for Mathematics and two for Science: one to review the curriculum taught in English and one that taught in Spanish. The school requested this, as the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum in these two areas (taught in English) and the national curriculum (taught in Spanish) were considered both to be completely separate and to represent too heavy a load for one person. There was also a change in the way in which the verbal feedback on the ten Whole School Aspects was presented. In the first three Reviews, the whole team, with each one summarising his/her findings, had done this, but it was too heavy a bludgeoning of fact, detail and criticism to be of any real positive use. In this Review, it was condensed into a composite summary and presented as a PowerPoint presentation to the Head and selected Senior Managers and Board members. To the team, it seemed to work, but, during the two subsequent Reviews, this format gave rise to criticism, so it was revised again and, for the Review of the Junior School the following year, a format was adopted which is still in use (see following paragraph but one). For the Review of the Junior School, since the latter consisted of three distinct “layers”: Prekindergarten to 1st Grade, 2nd to 4th Grades and 5th and 6th Grade, it was decided to adopt a different mode of working to collect and process evidence. The team was divided into groups according to the three levels; separate meetings of the three groups were held at the end of each day and the leaders of the groups in conjunction with the team leader then combined the resulting information and evidence. This format has since been found to be equally workable in a school that has vertical divisions (e.g., departments) and it has been adopted as standard. It has many factors in its favour. Among these, a principal one is that is allows for a great deal of discussion, crosschecking and cross-referencing of the evidence collected. A document has now been developed for entering evidence across the ten Whole School Aspects, and this assures completeness of coverage. With regard to the presentation of the verbal feedback on the Whole School Aspects, what was asked for from individual team members at the end of the Review of the Junior School in Montevideo was a very brief summary of the findings, commendations and recommendations. This was delivered by the team leader and one of the group leaders to the Head, Board Chairman and selected Senior Managers. Those concerned sat round a table. There was opportunity for dialogue and the session was felt to be highly positive. As previously mentioned, the feedback is still delivered in this way, with the difference that the team previously agrees on the wording of the commendations and recommendations in each of the ten Aspects. These are then presented to the school representatives, together with the background to the recommendations, and the document containing the information is included as an annex to the written report.

The Final Word The key to the success of the LAHC School Review is really in the process of selfexamination and evaluation that it entails. The report submitted to a school at the end

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of the Review should not contain any surprises; a school that is effectively run and staffed knows what its strengths and weaknesses are. What the Review does is oblige the school to scrutinise all areas of its operation, bring its structures and documentation up to date and consider essential aspects of its identity and mission. If the process is effective, and it has been demonstrated to be so, the reviewed school is left, at the end, with an objective appreciation of its strengths and a clear set of pointers as to what should be done to improve the quality of its educational provision.

Note 1. see http://praxiom.com/iso-intro.htm

References Black, P., & Dylan, W. (1998). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. London: NFER-Nelson. Kimber, K, Pillay, H., & Richards, C. (2002). Reclaiming teacher agency in a student centred digital world. Asia Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 30(2), 155–167. Supowitz, J. (2002). Developing communities of instructional practice. Teachers College Record, 148(8), 1591–1626.

48 INQUIRY-BASED SCIENCE EDUCATION AND ITS IMPACT ON SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT: THE ECBI PROGRAM IN CHILE

Rosa Devés and Patricia López

Introduction In spite of the extraordinary advances of science and technology in the last decades and the increase of their influence, science continues to be a site of privileged knowledge. There is consensus at different levels that the achievement of a more equitable access to scientific knowledge, requires improving the quality of science education in schools. Envisioning that this challenge cannot be confronted by the school system alone, the World Science Academies have called for “a stronger involvement of scientists to work as active partners with their local educational systems to ensure effective science education” (InterAcademy Panel of World Science Academies, 2000). This new deal between science and schools has great potential to induce the changes that are required to improve the quality and equity of education. In Chile, the Chilean Academy of Sciences has encouraged the establishment of an Inquiry-Based Science Education Program (ECBI, Spanish acronym) a joint initiative of the Chilean Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Education and the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Chile. The program is inspired by the belief that high quality science education is important for all children. Effective science education is expected not only to expand children’s understanding of the natural and material world, but also to stimulate their curiosity, introduce them to the practice of scientific inquiry and prepare them for lifelong learning. It is anticipated also that effective science education will contribute to the full expression of children’s creative potential, improving their quality of life and that of their community. The implementation strategy of the program, which is the subject of this chapter, is systemic and it follows the model developed by the National Sciences Resources Center (National Academies and Smithsonian Institution). It includes five different components: curriculum, professional development, material resources, community support and evaluation. Cooperation and leadership is considered essential to ensure 887 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 887–902. © 2007 Springer.

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real and sustainable change and thus, a major effort is devoted to the strengthening of interactions inside and outside the school system by working together with a common goal in view. The program, which initially was aimed exclusively at developing a model for improving science education in Chilean elementary schools, is now producing changes that exceed its original goals and which are encouraging new forms of relationship between the different individuals and organizations that constitute the system. We suggest that this is due to the fact that the attitudes that are inherent to inquiry, and which are therefore fostered and strengthened by the practice of the approach, lead to productive and fruitful interactions that are guided by cooperation, creativity, self-evaluation, critical reflection and a strong ethical behavior. During the last decade the concerns for equity and quality that oriented the Chilean Education Reform resulted in important structural changes. Among the most relevant are a national curriculum framework that sets the Minimum Content and Key Objectives for learning; syllabuses for all subject matter at all levels; building of new schools and classrooms in view of the extension-of-the-school-day from half- to full-day (232 more hours/year in primary schools); increased connectivity through the introduction of an extended ICT system; a massive program to familiarize teachers with the new curriculum; more than doubling of teachers’ salaries in real terms since 1990; a reform of teacher education in 17 universities; exposure to best teaching practices worldwide through a program of study-tours, and the improvement of the national assessment system (SIMCE) (Cox, 2003). Although the magnitude and scope of the investment has been significant, results have been modest and it is generally accepted that reform has not yet fully reached the schools and their classrooms. In a recent OECD (2004, p. 266) report this was attributed in part to the weak coupling between policymaking and school practice: Well-intentioned Ministry reforms are weakly coupled to actual school practice, because there is no supervisory/instructional assistance structure to ensure that the reforms are being implemented as anticipated in the reform program. Further, teacher education is very important in influencing the nature of school practice, but Ministry reforms are weakly coupled to teacher education, so university preparation of teachers does not necessarily conform to the improved capacity required by Ministry reforms. Finally, school practice is important in influencing student outcomes, so the weak implementation of Ministry reforms resulting in little improvement in school practice results in little improvement of student outcomes. However, as recently pointed out at a meeting in Santiago of the OECD Global Forum by the Head of the Curriculum and Evaluation Unit at the Ministry of Education: Comparatively good assessment systems can be set up quickly, far more quickly, cheaply and with higher visibility than the effective support systems for teachers that are required for them to reach the new performance levels that policies demand. I would argue that there is a built-in bias in ministries of education in favor of accountability and pressure, which – intended or not – result in an imbalance

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against teachers’ capacity building policies, which are more expensive and difficult to set up and less visible for the public in the short run. (Cox, 2005) In this chapter we will describe how and why the ECBI Program, which was initially conceived by the scientific community as a contribution to the desired renewal of the teaching and learning of science, has become a model for strengthening the weak bonds between policy making, teacher capacity building, school practice and student outcomes.

Development of the ECBI program in Chile Systematic work to develop the program began in 2002 under the leadership of Jorge Allende, a distinguished Chilean biochemist. International support from the National Sciences Resources Center (NSRC), the French Academy of Sciences and the Fundación México-Estados Unidos para la Ciencia (FUMEC), was crucial in the process that led to the engagement of the Chilean Ministry of Education as a partner of the Chilean Academy of Sciences in this mission. In 2003, a pilot project, involving 1,000 children, was implemented in 6 elementary schools of the district of Cerro Navia in Santiago (Grades 6 and 7). The following year, the project was extended to 24 schools and two neighboring districts (Lo Prado and Pudahuel), reaching approximately 5,000 children (Grades 1–4 and 6–8). These municipalities are located approximately 10 km northwest of the city center. The children that attend these schools belong to families having monthly incomes between US$175 and 220 and exhibit a high index of social vulnerability that affects their quality of life and learning opportunities. Parents have, on average, 8.5 years of schooling. During the first 2 years, the program was co-sponsored by the Ministry of Education and the Fundación Andes, a private foundation that promotes new initiatives in education in Chile. In 2005, results of the pilot project induced the Ministry of Education to allocate, a specifically targeted budget to implement inquiry-based science education in the schools. The ECBI Program thus became a national program, which is coordinated by the Ministry of Education, alongside a pre-existing initiative to improve literacy and numeracy skills. Forty new schools, from regions outside of Santiago, were incorporated and the coverage increased to approximately 20,000 children. The growth of the program, and its new direct dependence from the ministry, required a change in the organization. The present structure of the program rests on agreements that are reached between the Ministry of Education and Chilean universities. The participant university is required to adhere to the systemic model of reform (see below), use materials and professional development strategies that have been certified by the program and develop a cooperative scheme that includes the schools, the districts and the scientific community. In addition, the university must ensure interactive collaboration in the project of academics from both their Education and Science departments. Agreements were reached in 2005 with the universities of Chile, of Concepción and of Playa Ancha to set up the ECBI Program in three different geographical regions of the country. The leaders of the regional programs meet regularly at the Ministry of Education to coordinate actions, evaluate progress and plan ahead. The Chilean Academy of Sciences continues to be an active participant of the international component of the

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project. In 2006, the ECBI Program is being extended to three more geographical regions, with a total coverage of 30,000 children. It is also involving three new universities: the University of La Serena, La Frontera and Talca. This means that half of the regions in the country will have schools engaged in the program under the leadership and alliance of six universities.

A Systemic Approach: The Five Components of the ECBI program The implementation strategy of the program is systemic and follows the model developed by the National Sciences Resources Center (National Academy of Sciences – Smithsonian Institution). It includes five different components: curriculum, professional development, material resources, community support and evaluation. The driving force of the program is the construction of nearness, complementation and partnership between the scientific community and the school system. This form of relation is expected to influence the interactions within the school itself. It is predicted that the strategies that are required to transform the traditional teaching and learning approach – based on conceptual content and information – into one that also emphasizes the development of competences and abilities, will impact the whole system promoting leadership, autonomy and the cooperative work of its members.

Curriculum: The Inquiry-Based Methodology The inquiry-based teaching approach is supported by knowledge about the learning process that has emerged from research (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). As clearly expressed in the guide for teaching and learning through inquiry edited by the National Academies: From birth children employ trial-and-error techniques to learn about the world around them. As children and as adults, when faced with an unknown situation, we try to determine what is happening and predict what will happen next. We reflect on the world around us by observing, gathering assembling, and synthesizing information. We develop and use tools to measure and observe as well as to analyze information and create models. We check and re-check what we think will happen and compare results to what we already know. We change our ideas based on what we learn. (Olson & Loucks-Horsley, 2000, p. 5) This is a similar process to the one used by scientists to study the natural and material world in the search for new knowledge. In inquiry-based science education, children become engaged in many of the activities and thinking processes that scientists use to produce new knowledge. These involve asking questions, gathering information, proposing explanations, subjecting them to test, obtaining results, analyzing the results obtained, proposing explanations, communicating their findings to others and considering the new evidence that emerges from this interaction. This process is guided by their own curiosity and passion to understand.

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Evidence shows that this methodology does not only facilitate the learning of scientific content, but it also offers students the possibility of developing scientific thinking. The learning of major concepts is very naturally built on to previous knowledge and students are able to formulate new knowledge by modifying and redefining their concepts and adding to them. The methodology favors the recognition of inconsistencies between previous beliefs and new observations, and in this way facilitates learning. Since in this type of methodology the children are given the chance to articulate their own ideas, compare them and contrast them with the ideas of others, they are able to improve their capacity to recognize when they have understood and when they need more information, that is, they develop the ability to monitor their own learning (Harlen, 2000). Learning is guided by the standards-based programs set and developed using research strategies by the NSRC and registered as Science and Technology for Children (STC). There are eight units for Grades 1–8: Comparing and Measuring, Plant Growth and Development, Changes, Motion and Design, Properties of Matter I, Food Chemistry and Properties of Matter II. Each unit is developed during one semester. Science lessons are structured following the learning cycle: focus, explore, experiment, think and apply. In a typical lesson, the children think over a problem, raise questions and share their views, make observations, record their results and analyze the relation between their predictions and the results observed. At all times they are encouraged to communicate their thoughts and experiences as well as to listen to and learn from others. Special emphasis is placed on the use of the science notebook. Since 2005 a process to develop eight new units that are aligned with the Chilean curriculum has been taking place. In the following paragraphs we present evidence mostly obtained from the children’s notebooks. In these notebooks children are encouraged to write not only their experiences and observations, but also their thoughts. After each lesson they are invited to answer in writing the question “What did I learn?” On other occasions, they have been asked to express their thoughts about the program through ad-hoc questionnaires. The quotes are from different students: Today I learned to compare the density of different substances by answering some questions and whenever I answered, I learned. We also compared different objects such as wax and aluminum blocks, and blocks made of transparent plastic and white plastic. If I go on learning I will become the best of all scientists. I also learned that someone intelligent could go really wrong. (Grade 6 student, Cerro Navia, 2003) In these few lines, the student described not only what he learned, but also how he learned it and even the consequences that learning might have on his life. In the last sentence he shows understanding about the nature of this type of learning experience: I learned a lot. I never thought that this school would give us the opportunity to learn and also give us free materials. The teachers know a lot and they teach us what they know. They also learn with us because we make comments, reach conclusions and give opinions. I learned about volume, density, mass etc. (Grade 6 student, Cerro Navia, 2003)

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This student is fully aware of the process that is underway, he recognizes the difference with the former situation, but is nevertheless respectful and grateful to the teacher, who has continued to teach him. His comment shows that he understands that new opportunities arise because a new methodology is being employed and that the teacher is receiving support. My life changed, as did that of my classmates and my teachers. I learned that things are not always as I would like them to be and I learned to share with my classmates and with the class. (Grade 6 student, Cerro Navia, 2003) The student recognizes a major effect of the new methodology implemented by the program, not only on his and his classmates’ own life as learners, but also on their teacher. He acknowledges and values the new experience and the effect it has on his relations to others. We believe that in this short time with the ECBI project we have learned a lot about science and we agree with the timetable. However we think that we should have more time to do experiments. We would like to use a different uniform with white coats like those of scientists and we would agree to raise money to pay for the cost. (Grade 7 student, Lo Prado, 2004) The student acknowledges that he has learned, and stresses the importance of experimental work. It is evident that they want to have a full experience of science, including its symbols, represented here by the white lab coats. In July 2005, after the completion of the inquiry-based science, the children in Grades 2–8 were given a questionnaire. Most of the children in Grades 1–6 had worked with the methodology for one semester, and those in Grades 7–8 for two semesters. The questionnaire which was answered by 360 children contained four questions: (1) What did you like best of the science lessons? (2) What did you not like? (3) What was the most important learning you had? and (4) Do you believe that all Chilean children should have this kind of science lessons? For reasons of space, only sample answers to the last two questions will be reproduced here. A different child gave each answer. Which was your most important learning? Grade 2 (Weather) “To classify the clouds and learn the names of the clouds” “With the experiments one cannot play” Grade 3 (Plant Growth and Development) “How the bee pollinates and that from a flower a fruit is born” “The plants should be treated with love” Grade 4 (Changes) “All type of solid, liquid and gas can be mixed, but sometimes they cannot be separated” “To have our own ideas and work in a group”

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Grade 5 (Motion and Design) “What are distance, trajectory, force, friction and the standard vehicle” “I learned to share” Grade 6 (Properties of Matter I) “To determine density, the volume and mass” “To work and respect my classmates in the group” Grade 7 (Food Chemistry) “That all foods are useful for people to grow” “How to eat with balance, to think and to reflect” Grade 8 (Properties of Matter II) “That science is important for humanity” “To tolerate, to organize ourselves without a teacher and to communicate what we have learned” Do you believe that all Chilean children should have this kind of science lesson? “Yes, because one must know what it is to investigate in science, if you did not know how to investigate in science, you would not know science” Grade 2. “Yes, so that when the children become parents, they are able to help their children with their science lessons” Grade 3. “Yes, so that when they grow older they can be scientists” Grade 4. “Yes, because if I have science lessons it would not be fair that others didn’t” Grade 5. “Yes, because what I learned is beautiful and other children should also know it” Grade 6. “Yes, because in my country there is much poverty and much ignorance” Grade 7. “Yes, because everyone has the right to be important in this country” Grade 8. The following general conclusions can be drawn from the analysis of all questionnaires: (1) The answers given by the children are remarkably similar irrespective of their age, (2) Children at all stages of development appreciate that learning goes beyond scientific concepts and includes processes and attitudes, (3) Children value mostly what they learn and secondly that learning this way is fun, and (4) Similar results are observed in different classes, showing that the program is succeeding in the transfer of the methodology to the teachers. Only 2 out of 360 children thought the program should not be applied to all Chilean children. Teachers also show understanding and value for this form of teaching. They recognize that learning has improved and that its scope goes beyond scientific content knowledge. The following comment was written by a Grade 7 teacher 2 months after starting the program in 2003. I see changes in the children: more affection, more enthusiasm, more expectations. They work with more freedom and if they move around the room, it is to share

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their learning or opinions. In addition, the improvement in language ability is remarkable and a stronger commitment is observed in children with learning and behavioral difficulties. (Grade 7 teacher, Cerro Navia, 2003) One of the most common observations is the surprise that teachers express regarding children who had previously been considered unable to learn and were not actively participating in classrooms activities. The ECBI form of teaching and learning is inclusive as it offers a variety of different opportunities for engagement and involvement. Therefore, it is almost the norm that children who had been excluded from classroom activities, find that the program allows them to re-engage in the learning experience. This has, as expected, a significant impact on self-esteem and general academic improvement. My life changed, I am not the same person. Last night though I worked until very late, I knew that what I am doing has remarkable effects on children learning. My colleagues also stay up until late, but only to mark exams that show that their children have not learned. I am very fortunate. (Grade 8 teacher, Pudahuel, 2005) Teachers notice the increase in the effectiveness of their work and develop strong commitment, which is driven by the conviction that children are able to learn more. I used to teach “force and movement” theoretically and I was worried that now I would have to teach it using inquiry methodology. But the results were excellent. The difference is that the children now have internalized the concepts, the children learn and I learn with them. (Grade 5 teacher, Cerro Navia, 2005) Teachers are aware of the difficulties and challenges of the new methodology, but at the same time, are capable of finding ways to overcome the problems they face. Essentially, they realize that inquiry offers them and the children an opportunity to become lifelong learners. By immersing themselves into inquiry, they fully start to grasp the concept of a learning community. I have enjoyed each and everyone of my lessons with all my classes. I always come out thinking: How can I tackle better this or that subject? How can I optimize time in order to cultivate as best as possible my students’ potentialities that are so lacking in stimulation most of the time? As I watch them enjoy these lessons and see their enthusiastic faces, their astonishment, doubts, happiness, anger, etc. I feel more committed … I cannot avoid recognizing that I feel tired, but at the same time I have the satisfaction of having given the best of myself. (Grade 7 teacher, Lo Prado, 2005)

Professional Development The application of the inquiry-based methodology implies a series of innovations and transformations, both from the point of view of the content to be taught and also in

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relation to the ways in which the teacher interacts with students and the rest of the team to assure a successful practice. However, professional development activities in the ECBI program do not have as its only goal to increase teachers’ understanding of science or to improve their pedagogical and social skills, they also aim at building capacities to sustain the systemic model for science education and therefore they must also reach the school and district administrators, the scientists and other members of the community. This requires, in addition to designing, organizing and implementing formative activities that can challenge and benefit all members of the team, the development also of an atmosphere of confidence, trust and mutual interest that will contribute towards the building of a learning community which can be self-sustained and disseminated. As Michael Fullan (National Staff Development Council, 1999) has said: “School improvement happens when a school develops a professional learning community that focuses on student work and changes teaching. In order to do that, you need certain kinds of skills, capacities and relationships. Those are what professional development can contribute to …” The model is thus defined as having the following characteristics (Loucks-Horsley et al., 1989) ● ● ● ● ● ●

It focuses on what the students are to learn It models what is expected to occur in the classroom It is continuous and it is embedded in the daily work of teachers It recognizes the different needs of teachers with different experiences It supports systemic change It involves all members of the team

The main formal structures that form part of the professional development activities are the following:

Workshops for teachers and principals entering the program Teachers attend the workshops together with their principal and the pedagogic head.1 District administrators are also invited to join the school teams. The participation of the school and district senior administrators at this stage has been shown to be is essential for the successful implementation of the program. These workshops have a duration of 40 hours and through them: (1) principals and teachers develop a shared vision, (2) teachers learn about inquiry through inquiry, (3) teachers learn science content by becoming involved in the same activities as the children, and (4) teachers and principals prepare a plan for the management of the program. During the workshop, teachers have contact with a significant number of experts.

Workshops for teachers that have been in the program 1 or 2 years In these workshops principals and teachers evaluate results, teachers improve their understanding of science content, teachers and principals from different schools share

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best practices and learn science content. In this case there is a closer interaction with a more significant number of scientists. Monitors (see below) and scientists plan and teach together, mimicking the relationship that is established between teacher and monitor in the school classroom. In-classroom professional development for all teachers with assistance from a monitor. Monitors provide the most important part of this continuous professional development. They are specially trained teachers and science graduates, who have as their main function to support the teachers in the development of effective learning experiences. This implies working with the teachers before and after each science lesson, as well as assisting them in their work with the children. For the first 3 years of implementation, teachers are accompanied in their classroom by a monitor for 3 hours per week and an additional 90 minutes during their planning. The work of the monitor is highly valued by the teachers. At present, the ECBI program has 44 monitors that work half time. The group of monitors is diverse in age, professional background and experience. It includes elementary and secondary schoolteachers, with or without post-graduate studies; biologists, one sociologist and one engineer. Some of the teachers have worked for 30 years and others are just finishing their initial training, some have worked in private elite schools and others in deprived schools. We believe that this diversity contributes to a richer learning environment. However, these monitors share certain essential common features such as a great interest in increasing their knowledge and skills regarding inquiry-based methodology, ability to listen, support, teach and empathize. Monitors contribute to the teacher’s professional development essentially by modeling. This approach ensures an efficient transfer of the methodology and it stimulates the development of a learning community. There is a continuous program for the training of the monitors. In each school, before the lesson begins we have 90 minutes to plan with the teacher. During this time we also evaluate the result of the previous lesson, we review the content, the objectives and we prepare the materials that are necessary for experimentation … In my view, what is most important at this moment is to visualize the questions and doubts that children may have, and in this way prepare ourselves to address them. If we do it well, we will be able to help the children elaborate new questions, so that they can move forward in building their own knowledge … In the classroom, the teacher, the children and the monitor are one team and each one has a task to perform. Mine is to support and collaborate with the teacher as she works with the children and to make sure that the different stages and dimensions of the inquiry method are present and carried out as planned. (A Monitor who is a sociologist, 2005)

Professional development program for monitors There is a continuous professional development program for monitors that includes an initial workshop of 24 hours, and an in-service program through weekly 3 hour meetings dealing with organizational issues, planning and evaluation as well as training for

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each teaching unit. The monitors work in close association with each other and also in direct contact with the pedagogical leadership of the project.

Strategic planning workshops for the leadership teams responsible for starting new programs One of the objectives of the program is progressively to expand its coverage, reaching more children, teachers and schools in different regions in Chile and also other countries. This requires a thoughtful plan to prepare the teams to access decision-makers, detect and attract potential leaders and provide assistance and training at the start of the new programs. The program collaborates in the development of these capacities through strategic planning workshops following the model developed by the NSRC. Two strategic planning workshops have been carried out (2004, 2005) with the participation of 16 teams of academics (scientists, educators), administrators (municipalities, schools), teachers and educational experts (ministries, foundations). Half of these teams have been from countries other than Chile – Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Panama, Peru and Venezuela. The overall goals are to: (1) develop a shared vision for inquiry-centered science learning and teaching, (2) explore ways to translate this vision into a reality, (3) visualize the different dimensions involved in the implementation of an inquirybased science learning and teaching program, (4) provide networking experiences to the participants, (5) envision potential actions directed to international cooperation. Participants leave the workshop with a first draft of a 3–5 year strategic plan. The ECBI Chilean team participated in July 2002 in this type of activity organized in Washington by the NSRC and recognizes that the experience was crucial for the successful development of the program.

Materials To ensure that the inquiry-based science curriculum reaches the classroom teachers, they must be provided with all the materials they need. It is important to change the concept that it is the teacher’ responsibility to develop materials and collect the needed resources for teaching, even in the absence of economic restrictions, for this has proved to be unrealistic and inefficient. The materials used in the ECBI program have been acquired and assembled in Chile from prototypes donated by the National Sciences Resources Center (NSRC). In this way, a cost-effective system to provide appropriate materials to all classrooms has been developed. Small materials’ centers have been implemented in each school and a project to organize a first material resource center to serve three districts will be piloted in 2006. Experience has shown that science will be taught more effectively if science materials are managed outside the school and made available to teachers when they need them. Thus, the most effective way to deal with this problem is to establish a science material support center (National Sciences Resources Center, 1997).

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Administrative Support and Involvement of the Community The program has made an effort to involve several members of the social community that are relevant to the program. Aside from the scientists directly involved in developing the program, other scientists from different universities, disciplines and countries have participated and met with the children and with the teachers. Teachers of other subjects and school authorities have participated in workshops dealing with the methodology employed and contacts with the business community were initiated in 2005. Parents have also played an important role in assisting teachers in the classrooms and in the handling of the materials. According to reports from school principals and teachers, the program has increased parental commitment to school activities. Parents and other members of the community have been specially exposed to the progress of their children through the organization of “Public Lectures” in which the children report on what they have learned. Public lectures are held after the completion of each study unit and they are the main instrument to make the program known to the community (families, political and academic worlds) and are also a crucial instance for assessment. It is often at the public lecture when the teachers come to see and appreciate the changes that the children have gone through.

Evaluation Evaluation considers the school as a system and at present includes the following actions or instruments: (1) assessing children’s learning on science content and scientific thinking by means of a written test applied before and after a module, (2) assessment of children notebooks, (3) direct follow-up by the monitors on teacher performance, children learning, classroom and school environment, (4) assessment of the impact of the program in the school through written questionnaires and interviews directed to principals, teachers and children. Data is also available from national and international assessments (SIMCE and TIMSS). Efforts are being made to implement a long-term evaluation process that is congruent with the objectives of the ECBI program. An external evaluation of the program will be carried out in 2006, which will have an international component linked to an initiative of the Inter-Academy Panel to develop an international assessment protocol for inquiry based science education (see below).

Transfer and International Cooperation As stated above, one of the objectives of the program is progressively to expand its coverage, reaching more children, teachers and schools from different regions in Chile and also other countries. A plan to transfer the experience through the organization of strategic planning workshops is underway and is proving very successful. Through these activities the Chilean ECBI Program has stimulated the establishment of similar

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programs in Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia and Panama. It has also strengthened its bonds with similar programs, which are underway in Colombia, Brazil and México. As happens within the classrooms these interactions are guided by the principle of cooperation with respect and attention to the development of new ideas. This approach has also been used to expand the program in the public system. In addition, the program is having an influence on science education in nine private schools that have adopted the methodology [Fundación Belen (7), Saint George’s College, Experimental School Liceo Manuel de Salas] and a cooperation agreement has been established with the Alliance Francaise school (La main à la pˆate) to share experiences and best practices. The Chilean ECBI Program has greatly benefited from international cooperation. From the start, it received the support of people and institutions carrying similar projects in Latin America (México, Brazil, Colombia) and other parts of the world. This help has come in many different forms that include training of the leadership team, the rights to use high quality materials; the sharing of translated material, collaboration in strategic planning workshops and the participation and organization of international conferences. Since 2004 the Chilean Academy of Sciences is coordinating the Science Education Program of the Inter Academy Panel (IAP) and the InterAmerican Network of Academies of Sciences. At present the IAP is coordinating the implementation of an international protocol for the assessment of inquiry based science education programs.

Conclusion After the first 3 years of implementation, we value especially the systemic character of the program. It is noteworthy that, at each level of the school community involved, important qualitative changes have been observed. Results show that changes have occurred in each of the five components. Among the most important achievements the following can be emphasized: positive changes in classroom atmosphere with better collaborative relations and stronger team work; progress in the learning autonomy on the part of students; increase in motivation to learn more and better participation of children considered to have learning difficulties. Teachers report that class attendance has increased and is higher those days when science lessons are scheduled compared to the other days of the week. They also report that the children that attend these lessons exhibit greater responsibility, enthusiasm for learning and commitment with respect to children that attend traditional lessons. The ECBI program stimulates children’s ability to express their thoughts orally or in writing. Consistently, there is evidence that those children, who are engaged in the program, write more in their notebooks and have increased their vocabulary. The importance of communicating ideas and experience, subjecting them to test and to the consideration of others and to getting information from different sources is constantly cultivated and encouraged. This occurs through group discussions and oral presentations and reaches its maximal expression in the public lessons delivered at the end of each unit. This is when students, with the assistance of their teachers and monitors get organized to share their learning with parents, visiting scientists and other members of the community.

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Among the teachers, we notice a progressive adaptation to the new methodology and an increase in knowledge of science content and teaching methods which contributes to a better self-evaluation, generates autonomy and a better disposition to innovate in their pedagogic practice. In the schools, it is evident that the collaboration between authorities and teaching staff is improving. The role of the monitors in the project has been essential for this to happen. Throughout the shaping of the project the monitors have given their support during the realization of the activities in the classrooms, and have greatly contributed to the follow-up. The results of the project are best seen and conveyed through the opinions of the principals and the academic directors of the schools (2005):

About the children ●

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The children are eager to give their opinions and are not afraid to make mistakes, they question more and they express a need to verify. (Violeta Parra Elementary School) A remarkable increase in class attendance and improvement in behavior and personal presentation is observed. (El Salitre Elementary School) There is a positive attitude towards the science lessons, enthusiasm, participation and team work. (El Salitre Elementary School) The children are revolutionized with the new materials that they work with. (Complejo Educacional Pedro Prado School) Science has attracted the interest of the students that had been previously considered as having learning difficulties. (Complejo Educacional Pedro Prado School) Students have improved their oral expression, they act with greater autonomy, they have learned to work cooperatively, their argumentation is clearer, more precise and reflexive, and what is more relevant: these characteristics have been observed by other teachers that work in other subject matters. (República de Italia Elementary School)

About the teachers ●

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Teachers have changed their views about science education and they enjoy verifying that the children are able to express what they have learned. (Complejo Educacional Pedro Prado School) There is discussion about the development of the project in the classroom, what works and what doesn’t. Teachers are constantly evaluating their practice. Since all teachers are involved there is a greater commitment to help each other. (Complejo Educacional Pedro Prado School) The methodology changes the relation between students and teachers, generating solidarity which is evident in their effort to reach consensus. (Millahue Elementary School)

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About the monitors ●

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The role of the monitors has been crucial for the good implementation of the program, for thousands of reasons: the most important one being the constant support offered to the teachers. They are an objective referent that nourishes the project from within. They have helped to ground the methodology in the classroom practice. (República de Italia Elementary School) The monitors are highly committed and they are clear as to the role that they must play in the school, both in the professional development of the teachers and in reassuring the learning of the children. They are creative and versatile. They are aware that mutual support that must be developed with the teachers. (Manuel Guerrero Ceballos Elementary School)

About the parents and the community ●

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Parents are more aware of what happens in the classroom and more committed; some are cooperating with the activities. They are also more involved in the school. (Complejo Educacional Pedro Prado School) Parents and teachers are proud to participate, both because of the contacts established with academics, scientists and professionals, and also because of the good achievement results, the development in our students of self-esteem and selfappreciation in the academic domain, as well as the good performance of the teachers. (Poeta Vicente Huidobro Elementary School)

About the infrastructure and the materials ●

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The experimental material is excellent, without it the children would not be able to live through the scientific processes that ultimately explain their own existence. (Monseñor Carlos Oviedo Elementary School) There is a better and more efficient use of some spaces in the school with objectives that are centered on the project (science room, gardens). (Manuel Guerrero Ceballos Elementary School)

But it is the children themselves that always more eloquently express the importance of the program Before everything was theoretical and it didn’t convince. Now we see it with our own eyes. (6th Grade student, Cerro Navia. Santiago de Chile)

Note 1. Most Chilean schools have an administrative head or principal and a pedagogic leader who is concerned with teaching and learning activities and professional development in the school.

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References Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. R. (2000). How people learn: Brain, mind, experience and school. Washington DC: National Academies Press. Cox, C. (Ed.). (2003). Políticas Educacionales en el Cambio de Siglo. La Reforma del Sistema Escolar de Chile. Santiago, Chile: Editorial Universitaria, Santiago, Chile. Cox, C. (2005). Quality and equity: Challenges for education and training in a global perspective. Paper presented at the OECD Global Forum, Santiago, Chile, 23–24 October 2005. Fullan, M. (1999). Cited in Revisioning professional development. The national partnership for excellence and accountability in teaching. Edited by National Staff Development Council: Ohio, USA. Harlen, W. (2000). Teaching, learning and assessing science, 5–12. London: Paul Chapman Publishing Ltd. Inter Academy Panel of World Science Academies. (2000). Transition to sustainability conference. Tokyo, Japan. Loucks-Horsley, S., Carolson, M., Brink, L., Horwitz, P., Marsh, D., Pratt, H., et al. (1989). Developing and supporting teachers for elementary school science education. Washington, DC: The National Center for Improving Science Education. National Sciences Resources Center. (1997). Science for all children: A guide to improving elementary science education in your school district. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Olson, S., & Loucks-Horsley, S. (Eds.). (2000). Inquiry and the national science education standards: A guide for teaching and learning. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2004). Review of national policies. Chile, Paris: OECD.

49 CREATING NEW SCHOOLS USING EVIDENCE BASED SOLUTIONS – A CASE STUDY

Jenny Lewis

Introduction An Australian school, Noumea Primary School, set out to identify and collect authentic and authoritative evidence and relate it to learning as a means of improving organizational effectiveness and performance. Under visionary and collegial leadership Noumea staff have become “skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights” (Garvin, 1993, p. 16). Collegially, the school community has built an evidence-based environment that has promoted sustainability through innovative and informed Evidence Based Leadership in Action – a reform that has become embedded in the practice of Noumea’s teachers and in the operations of the school. As a result of these reforms, Noumea was included in the top 25 (out of 2,200) government and non-government schools in the state of New South Wales in achieving outstanding improvement in Basic Skills Mathematics in 2000. Noumea was awarded the 1999 National Assessment Award and the 2000 State Literacy Award for its use of innovative structures and programs. It received the 2003 ACT KM Inaugural Platinum Award for mature development of school culture and technology to enable organizational learning. At the national level, Noumea received two 2003 National Quality Teaching Awards for leadership and achievement of mathematics outcomes through the use of technology. A nationally funded study dealing with literacy among boys found that teachers at Noumea were exceptional in the way they used school and student data to develop individual learning programs for each student, and developed innovative and exciting teaching tools to motivate their students to learn (Freebody, Alloway, Gilbert, Muspratt, 2002). This case study illustrates the reforms implemented at Noumea between 1994 and 2004 under the leadership of one principal. In 2004 a number of staff and the principal moved to other learning opportunities in other schools and professional associations. 903 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 903–916. © 2007 Springer.

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Creating New Schools Using Evidence Based Solutions – A Case Study In a world that is constantly changing, there is not one subject or set of subjects that will serve you well for the foreseeable future, let alone for the rest of your life. The most important skill to acquire now is learning how to learn. John Naisbitt (1990, p. X) The capacity for schools to innovate and change has for many years been constrained by traditional bureaucratic practices and conservative beliefs about the social purpose of schools. Over the last decade however political and economic trends have begun to impose systemic demands for reform to assure the public and themselves that schools are not only providing quality education but are running efficiently and effectively. The implementation of regional and national testing programs and training have had mixed results due to their implementation being mandated, and their outcomes contributing little to teacher knowledge about student learning needs. Some school leaders have realised this disconnect and researched educational and business structures and tools that have enabled the transformation of schools from nineteenth to twenty-first century learning environments and have employed student centric solutions as the focus of school reform. These leaders have researched inclusive school improvement programs and have begun to shift the process of change to enable the teachers to actually create it. They have found that shifting the development and responsibility of the pedagogy and improvement process from the principal’s office to the classroom, purposes the process for those it affects most, the teacher and the students. Within these classrooms school practices that once served the predictable school bureaucracies are now viewed as non-functional. These classrooms treat knowledge as a dynamic evolutionary process in which knowledge is continually created and recreated in various contexts and at various points of time to ensure improved student results. There is an acceptance of professional accountability and an acknowledgement that political accountability is a requirement of any government department but that this accountability can be imbedded in a collegial environment in which teacher work and judgement are honoured. These school leaders have achieved this by connecting the parts of the organisation that are historically isolated, fragmented structurally, geographically and culturally so that member of the school community can access the information they need to improve student and school outcomes. They have sought technical solutions to facilitate access of the combined knowledge to those who require it at any time, anywhere. The solutions have not only promoted the sharing of existing knowledge, but have also driven innovation both in terms of internal processes and organisational practices. These schools view the past as a resource more than an impediment. These schools with quality time have evolved a knowledge baseline to their work and have assured that as a learning community (Hough & Paine, 1997), communities of practice (Nonaka, 1991; Wenger, 1998; Wenger & Snyder, 2000) are healthy, and decisions are collaboratively developed. They have developed a number of evidence

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based practices in a variety of formats that are continually being designed and developed in schools. One such school is Noumea Public School. Noumea Public School is a large primary school (580 students) in a low socio economic area to the west of Sydney in the state of New South Wales, Australia. The student population is transitional with 43% of students leaving and enrolling each year, and 62% being of Polynesian or Indigenous descent. Many families are now third and fourth generation unemployed. The school staff continually changes with the principal encouraging teachers to seek promotion positions in other schools after 5 years of dedicated service at Noumea. Staff are always replaced by newly appointed teachers. Thus 83% of staff are always in their first 5 years of teaching. Until 10 years ago, Noumea was identified as a “school at significant risk” and it is a credit that the Noumea community has redefined Noumea as a very successful school, rebuilding it as a learning organization, and basing its reforms on contemporary education and business principles conducive to knowledge creation and knowledge sharing (DeLong & Fahey, 2000; Garvin, 1993). Noumea leadership saw it as essential to develop powerful ways of employing authentic evidence in teachers’ daily judgments in order to bring about continuous improvements in teaching, student learning and well-being outcomes. They saw transformation as being accelerated through the concepts of the learning organisation, knowledge management and evidence-based leadership and practice consistent with the image of “the intelligent school” (MacGilchrist, Myers, & Reed, 2004) and the concept of “intellectual capital” (Stewart, 1997). Noumea leadership realised that the use of authentic evidence was the key to sustainability and growth. It was seen a strategy that would promote both organizational and individual learning through the capturing, packaging and sharing of the knowledge that resided within individual staff members. It was seen as way to unlock and hold on to the value of “the things we know.” Noumea achieved this by reconnecting all parts of the school so that staff could share their knowledge, perspectives and experiences about students and programs to bring all areas to the same level of capability. These learnings were formalized as strategy and it was the principal’s responsibility to ensure that innovations were sustainable by ensuring in turn that resources, professional support and reflective time were adequate. The processes to develop this knowledge and the continual valuing of evidence are detailed below.

Building a Sustainable Learning Organisation In 1994 a new principal was appointed to Noumea. Initial observations and analysis of available data indicated that the school was “at risk” in terms of learning growth and community morale. School staff trying to improve learning outcomes were beset each day by a number of critical incidents. These incidences not only consumed time but were also emotionally draining and stressful to staff attempting to make a difference. Overall the school was found to be running inefficiently and organised around bureaucratic structures that depowered and divided members and minimised trust. At a Disadvantaged Schools review meeting (staff and parents) in late 1994, it was decided that if a positive learning culture was to be created, a review of current practices was required. The review conducted by the Noumea community1 gathered data

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and information on student behaviour patterns, learning, teaching and assessment practices, and the reporting of student achievement. The review looked at programs and processes that were enhancing or impeding whole school change. Evidence was collected through surveys, discussion groups, one to one interviews, student data and teacher assessment of student work samples. These data indicated low literacy and numeracy results against district and state benchmarks, high incidences of student misbehaviour, high student and teacher absenteeism and traditional school structures that continually impeded school reform programs. As a result of these data, the Noumea community came together to decide priorities, processes and programs that would enable the development of a proactive learning culture. A number of teams involving members of Noumea’s community were established with specific tasks and responsibilities. Community strategic planning conferences were conducted; visits to other schools were organised; and a literature review was completed which looked at school improvement models, learning community theory and sound change practices. These teams began to reflect on the alignment or lack of alignment of approaches to current processes and practices, and to remove real and perceived constraints that existed in the school. Having identified whole school needs it became easier to identify non value-added activities and to question their relative function. Many traditional practices, structures and mandatory programs were challenged and in some instances removed or significantly modified. In their place key processes were established that would support the core business. As a result hard questions about shared leadership, teacher culture, communication channels and participative processes were addressed; as was consideration given to the ways students were grouped and resources allocated. Traditional class grouping by academic year were disbanded and in their place grouping structures that allowed students to learn to their fullest potential in different places at different times with different teachers and class mentors. Collaborative process and a respect for continual improvement became key elements as teams began to rethink and redesign structures within the organisation. More importantly Noumea’s community came to believe that this extensive change process would culminate in dramatic improvement of student and school outcomes. Leadership guided alignment of organisational elements within the school enabling the holistic implementation of school-based innovations and the school’s vision. A school wide approach to pedagogy was generated and school infrastructures (encompassing time, space, curricula and technologies) were modified to facilitate implementation. The school community shared an understanding of, and commitment to, the essential features of the innovation resulting in a strong basis for successful implementation. Sustainable communities of practice that consisted of people who were informally, as well as contextually, bound by a shared interest in learning and applying a common practice were nurtured. A flexible structure that supports a “community of leaders” at the school level was established. The school principal and executive members of staff provided a team of support (not a hierarchical framework) to staff and community members. This flat line team interchanged leadership depending on the initiative, modelling collaborative

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relationships and team commitment. The embracing of a community philosophy meant that well informed knowledge-centred decisions about school change progressed with healthy discussion, and a sharing of a variety of understandings and prior learnings illustrating distributive leadership in action (Hough, 1990; McLaughlin & Marsh, 1978; Nonaka, 1991; Showers, Joyee, & Bennet 1987; Spillane, 2006). As an innovative school, the Noumea community began to believe that: ● ●

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each person had a significant, and creative contribution to make; creating a co-operative group environment furthered individual uniqueness and responsibility; dealing with complex situations simply and comprehensively produced better results; high quality is the reward of attention to process, timing and environment; effective decision making depended on ongoing learning and broad based participation; extending openness and information access enabled greater responsibility and commitment.

Initially staff were reluctant to move through another cycle of change. This was understandable due to the many staff and principal changes at the school over previous years (five principals appointed in 10 years). Professional learning needed to embrace and support change process, and to recognise leadership development within the school community. Parent participation became paramount and through a number of professional learning programs parents accepted a greater role in decision-making in relation to learning and teaching, school restructuring and whole school development (Caldwell, 1996). Leadership development and density were encouraged, and teachers and parents with great energy and success quickly accepted opportunities. Their focus on learning and performance enabled the school to bridge the gap between organisational learning and strategic planning. A strategic plan was developed that set in place agreed direction and framed school community beliefs and values. A key feature of Noumea’s learning cycle was the process of visioning as a collective and individual exercise. The enrichment of teachers’ personal visions was seen as important in contributing to the school’s collective vision and has required deliberate dialogue, recognition of diverse value systems, careful listening and an enthusiasm for enriching everyone’s professional values. Visioning provided the focus for collecting evidence about the real work of the school and its preferred future. Staff regularly presented their beliefs about Noumea in enjoyable activities such as describing the school as a metaphor – Noumea is like a roller coaster, many ups and downs and everyone travelling together having fun – Noumea is like a Pearl Jam concert: it rocks! As an animal – Noumea is a chameleon: always changing; and as a tune – We are the Champions (Queen). This development of shared language on sticky notes and staffroom posters was a positive way to centre vision, collectively appreciate each other’s thoughts and include new members of staff in the collaborative process. Renewal of self became the basis for transforming the school. As teachers began to reshape their thinking about learning, their thirst for professional development increased, the outcome being a number of promotions annually to positions in other

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schools. A continually changing staff and parent population meant the maintenance of a significant professional learning program to support new members. Mentoring time was built into the weekly timetable to enable staff to research the Internet, to observe the teaching/learning process in classrooms on and off site, and to redesign their approach to teaching/learning processes. The timetable enabled teachers to block time together to share programs and ideas. Staff also developed personal learning journals to reflect on their beliefs, practices and challenges and shared these in weekly team meetings. Strategies such as these moved the school’s use of evidence from a reactive to a proactive perspective. The sharing of leadership was viewed as an important strategy to build a culture of professionalism in which mutual trust, shared knowledge and responsibility could thrive (Crowther, Kaagen, Ferguson, & Hann 2002; Sachs, 2002). To achieve this from the day they were appointed to the school, all teachers were recognized as leaders with many gifts and talents to contribute to school and student improvement. Within 5–6 weeks of their appointment, teachers were expected to accept at least one leadership role and to share the load of the real work of school. It was believed that if teachers were responsible for part of the school they would quickly become involved in and feel an active member of the Noumea community. All teachers were provided with an in-house mentor and professional partner (supervisor), as well as school time to research, reflect on and practice leadership with colleagues. The concept of professionalism was openly and continually discussed and as Judyth Sachs (2002, pp. 84–85) reported five core professional values were developed into school based practices. Teachers were encouraged and expected to: ● ● ●

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Learn individually, in teams and in larger communities of practice; Participate as active agents in their school-based and external professional worlds; Collaborate with members of the school community and those colleagues who contribute to their learning in the external environment; Cooperate and develop a common language and technology for documenting and discussing practice and desired outcomes; Be proactive in debate and activities about the things that matter for students and the school as part of their moral purpose (Sachs, 2002, p. 84–85).

Most importantly teachers were encouraged to practice leadership and to research and self actualise in areas that they felt passionate about (Spillane, 2006, p. 24).

Developing Evidence Based Practices for Sustainability This culture of Noumea – the school’s character as a trusting, collaborative, inquisitive and responsible learning organization – was an essential context of, and integral part of its identity as an organization that pursues evidence-based improvement. Evidencebased education at Noumea was not a technical, disconnected process where teachers irregularly collected and analysed quantitative test data about student performance, in isolation from other kinds of valuable formative evidence. Evidence-based education and leadership at Noumea, was not just a bunch of meetings, but a way of life.

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The staff took a very early stance on selecting the right pedagogical practices that aligned classroom learnings with assessment and reporting practices. They also did not want to waste time collecting information and data that would contribute minimally to improvement processes. An international and national focus on outcome-based education at that time set the scene for initial research. It was felt that a learning platform enabled: ● ● ● ● ●

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improved teacher judgements about student learning achievement; alignment of assessment and learning experiences; a clearer focus on where students needed to improve; improved implementation of curriculum and continuity of learning experiences; improved accountability through the use of a common framework and language for monitoring student learning achievement; teachers and administrators to monitor student outcomes to support student and school development planning, and improved school and system accountability moving the school learning culture much further than the back-to-basics movement that has seen so many teachers teaching to test expectations, and taking a minimalist approach to teaching/learning practice.

The standards approach to curriculum was seen as logical as teachers and students could collaboratively map student outcomes over time to quantify achievement, share a learning language, determine value-addedness, and identify point in time teaching/ learning experiences (Beare, 1994; Murphy, 1992). Visits to Australia at that time by Al Mamary provided the practical theory, and to some extent the external permission, to continue with current change process. Mamary’s (1991) total educational system known as the Outcomes-Driven Developmental Model (ODDM) confirmed process and challenged direction in terms of school mission and shared beliefs, and provided a model of development for outcomes-based education. Using this model and building on the works of Spady (1994) and Middleton (1997), teams began to develop a language that would be understood by teachers and parents as they began to share and discuss the issues and tasks at whole school level. The theories of William Glasser (1990) and the practices of Bill Rogers (1993) were researched as appropriate foundation frameworks to support student well being. These programs supported the learning process and emphasised student’s rights and responsibilities, encouraged reflection of cause and effect, modelled self-control, and most importantly mandated “no blame, no shame.” The schools’ decision to create a new learning platform and to embrace an outcomes approach meant a significant change process for teachers, students and parents. For some it meant a major shift in their educational platform (revolutionary), and for others it was the next logical step in their teaching journey (evolutionary). It meant: ●

recognising that every student could be successful and that these incremental, individual successes should be celebrated. This was achieved by shifting from a competitive learning environment to a cooperative learning environment where the individual student learns at their personal performance level and in ways that cater for individual learning styles, cultural backgrounds and personal circumstances;

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moving from a model of remediation to one of prevention and continuous improvement. An outcomes approach enabled class based reform and a placing of emphasis on more explicit learning outcomes. As the learning platform was established staff began to ask the questions: (a) what do we want our students to know? (b) when do want our students to know? (c) how much should our students need to know? (d) how well should they know? moving from an exclusive curriculum to an inclusive curriculum that provides sequentially planned units of work. This was achieved through teachers collaboratively programming and developing integrated units of work. This allowed the participation of every student in the learning process, the level of outcome to be achieved differentiated to ensure success; changing the learning environment from one of fear and failure to one of trust and success. Teachers have established an explicit approach to learning, clearly articulating the outcome of a learning activity and therefore ensuring student understanding before commencement of learning.

Accepting this research base as the school’s pedagogical position meant that things such as standardized testing (a white Anglo Saxon focused process), half yearly and yearly testing (a traditional “busy” non-learning time for schools), and “flavour of the month” pedagogies being pushed by particular equity areas in the government education department were dismissed. Staff discussions about the usefulness of standardized testing determined that these dated processes provided little evidence and served no purpose in a school where curriculum outcomes were the centrepiece for validating student improvement. Traditional testing was viewed as too abstracted from what was being taught in classrooms and as adding no value to teacher and parent knowledge. With parent permission these approaches to testing were removed and in their place, daily teacher judgments of student evidence became critical in informing next-day lesson preparation and student, teacher and parent knowledge about student progress. Noumea leadership established infrastructure that provided individuals, collegial groups and the whole staff with the quality time and resources to analyze data, scrutinize evidence, identify areas of action and development, and the time to be involved in action research (Harris, Busher, & Wise, 2001, p. 86). A collegial style of management was encouraged to enable constant informed interchange of professional information among colleagues (Harris, 1995; Sammons, Hillman, & Mortimore, 1995).

Developing an Evidence Based Learning Community Ultimately, the value of knowledge management comes from people’s ability to reuse valuable evidence to work faster, shorten learning cycles, identify new opportunities, increase the quality of deliverables, and increase the volume of work on matters of priority (Reynolds, 2003). This process of knowledge management needs systemic and strategic support to operate effectively. At Noumea, it was the responsibility of the principal and middle management to ensure that all teachers were supported in

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processing and interpreting of evidence and thus actively contributing to building Noumea as an Evidence-Based Learning Community. Implementing successful knowledge management required Noumea staff to develop a deep capacity among its entire staff to be at the forefront of knowledge and skill in practicing and supporting learning and teaching. This was more than occasional in-service training and professional development. It was a systematic, continuous and purposeful approach that started with knowing what teachers and students knew, didn’t know and wanted to know. This was strategised through the continual creation of evidence based leadership and practice. Spreadsheets, templates and checklists were initially designed to provide as much data and information as possible. Teachers’ efforts to retrieve useable information from this stockpile of data were commendable but this process exerted high demands on the time that took them away from the very classroom activities that their data driven efforts were meant to be improving! Noumea required a knowledge creation and management system that would help teachers and parents review student and school data, and pursue ongoing improvements of and adjustments to practices in a way that supported and did not interrupt the workflow of the school. Data collection, analysis and management, teachers felt, should be part of and not an extraneous addition to or burden upon this workflow. Ultimately, Noumea staff developed a networked-based knowledge management system known as SchoolMate that combined the many paper trails relevant to a student into one integrated information system. SchoolMate fostered quick data entry and retrieval as students completed tasks in the classroom. Staff agreed protocols ensured data entry was of a consistent standard. Two networked workstations were situated at each side of each classroom so that data could be entered using quick drop-down menus, checkpoints, batch up date buttons, and accessible frames to support the entry of qualitative and quantitative data. SchoolMate fields were linked so that data entered in one area could inform data in another area. For example, a teacher who could review data about a student who had attended eight schools and had numerous absences was better informed about the reasons for low literacy and numeracy performance. Data entry took two to three minutes a day enabling students to access the work stations for their research at any time. There were also a number of workstations provided in the staffroom and library to support any-time, anywhere access. All student data were stored on a central fileserver and was accessible in every class and staffroom. Whoever was responsible for the student could access data from any workstation assuring immediate and responsive actions. Numerous graphically presented reports enabled immediate understanding of student performance in a clear and concise manner that could be shared with staff, students and parents. Data could be collapsed, aggregated and interrogated in terms of learning and well being by class, grade, whole school, gender, ethnicity, support intervention, and age to determine program development and value-addedness. Teachers could also identify the degree of value they were adding to a student in learning and well being at a touch of a button. Having the data at the teachers’ fingertips meant that they could interpret and act quickly on behalf of a student changing learning/teaching direction immediately – not 10 weeks, 6 months, or a year later when traditional results were gathered and

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programmed for (NB as a result of these school based successes SchoolMate has been rebuilt in a .NET 2 web-based framework so that teachers can access data and information, anytime, anywhere. SchoolMate.NET is now used in schools in a number of countries). In developing this knowledge management system, the school also recognized that knowledge resides in the user and not in the collection (Malhotra, 1998). Thus, tutorials were developed to help teachers manage information, analyze data more effectively and act on these data more efficiently. Professional development programs provided “just-in-time” and “just-in-context” opportunities for teachers who had the right as professionals to request personal research time, visits to colleagues’ classrooms, and visits to other schools both physically and virtually. Staff meetings were also used for staff learning time and that learning was then replicated in weekly team meetings to enable collegial discussion and personal meaning. Weekly staff meetings of an hour were dedicated to sharing data and information so that every teacher has full knowledge and could contribute to the strategies necessary to assure and improve student learning and well being. Leaders used these meetings to draw upon the ideas and energy of colleagues, not only engendering more creative solutions, but also building trust and commitment that they can call upon in the future. Staff were encouraged to reflect on and continuously challenge their own and each other’s practice in order to generate new learnings that assist students to achieve (Schon, 1987). Teachers were also allocated three hours of class-free time (two hours provided by the government department of education) with a team of colleagues to analyze student data, complete action research tasks together and investigate innovations that would add value to school and class processes. Within these weekly meetings, the executive member and teaching team regularly monitored, reviewed and evaluated students’ class data and samples of work drawn from SchoolMate folders. This led to greater consistency of judgment about student performance and generated critical dialogue and sharing of issues and successes through celebrations of tasty food and good coffee. These learnings were regularly shared at whole school staff meetings where evaluation of school trends enabled quick solutions to be devised to emerging problems before they reached crisis proportions. The consistent question was “how could we do this better?” Staff were also encouraged to research an area of interest and given time to apply this research into classroom practice. An example of an innovation that evolved included three school-based Reading Recovery trained teachers designing a whole class approach using Reading Recovery (usually one on one) with four and half and five year old students in their first year of school (most research indicates that children must not be immersed in Reading Recovery until the age of six). Through discussion and experimentation they designed a successful program that not only achieved significant results at Noumea but also in other schools as well as being reviewed by Macquarie University as a significant innovation. Successes such as these were nurtured through quality time for individual and collaborative research, permission to take significant risks and a continual seeking of evidence by teachers to improve student outcomes. Staff also began to challenge structures that impeded learning potential and turned their attention to the ways students were traditionally organised in classes. Classes were

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organised three weeks before the end of the school year according to learning and wellbeing data generated by SchoolMate. Teachers reviewed the suggested placements and organised classes based on knowledge of ideal learning buddies and preferred strategies for learning success. Teachers nominated their preferred class and were able to access important data and information about this class from their workstations. They were given quality time to discuss valuable information about their new students with their current teachers and where necessary observed these students working in their current learning environment. This strategy enabled all teachers to establish the most appropriate learning environment and learning pathways for each student from the first day of the following year. This practical use of evidence assured a responsive start to the school year and a very relaxed positive learning environment for each and every student.

Conclusion At a time when the improvement of student and school results were not only holding schools to professional but also political accountability, Noumea developed the architecture and community to fundamentally change the way staff work and responded to these accountabilities in a student centric environment. The daily work of teachers and school leaders were honoured as the school transformed into an effective and efficient learning organisation. Sustainable practice became a way of life. Noumea’s unrelenting focus on learning outcomes and its embracement of information and communications technology as a way to drive and support evidence-based improvement were consistent with a determination to create a school for the knowledge society (Caldwell, 2004; Drucker, 1999; Hargreaves, 2003). Teachers, parents and students collaborated to provide direction to school programs and accepted a shared responsibility for student, class and whole school improvement. Sharing this responsibility resulted in a genuine understanding of standards, expectations, and value-added achievement. This happened naturally as school members accepted the responsibility to control their destiny. Leadership at Noumea was strategic, and focused on the nurturing of a learning community. It acknowledged in a comprehensive and coherent way the importance of accountability, and it addressed the need to shift the culture to ensure sustainability (Caldwell, 2004). Leadership understood that creating and nurturing a learning organization required a dramatic shift in the organization’s pattern of decision-making and worked consistently to reorientate the way people approached work. Noumea’s leadership engaged teachers in the kind of research, investigation, experimentation and evaluation required to explore the multiple challenges facing schooling for the twenty-first century, and encouraged construction and reconstruction of Noumea as an Evidence Based Learning Community. This is the real and future work of school leaders whose ability to assure organisational learning, and to broaden and deepen the leadership capacity of the school, will be the hallmark of sustained school success. Peter Drucker (cited in Anderson Consulting Institute of Change, 1999, p. 2) suggests that the strength of these leaders will be their capacity “[to] know how to ask rather than tell.”

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Schools have the potential to develop as “organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking were nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people were continually learning to learn together” (Senge, 1990, p. 7). Certainly the research and practices are available it is just a matter of learning.

Note 1. In this context, Noumea community included teachers, clerical staff, cleaners, parents and where appropriate students.

References Anderson Consulting Institute for Strategic Change. (1999). The evolving role of executive leadership. New York: Anderson Consulting Institute for Strategic Change. Beare, H. (1994). What is the next quantum leap for school systems in Australia? – The 1994 Currie Lecture ACEA 18. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Administration. Caldwell, B. (1996). Redesigning schooling for the information age: The role of networking. Keynote address to a conference on the theme Electronic Networking and Australasia’s Schools conducted in Sydney by ITEC, April 12, 1996. Caldwell, B. J. (2004). A strategic view of efforts to lead the transformation of schools. School Leadership & Management. 24(1), 82–99. Crowther, F., Kaagen, S., Ferguson, M., & Hann, L. (2002). Developing teacher leaders. California: Corwin Press. DeLong, D. W., & Fahey, L. (2000). Diagnosing cultural barriers to knowledge management. Academy of Management Executive, 14(4), 113–127. Drucker, P. F. (1999). Leadership challenges for the 21st century. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann. Freebody, P., Alloway, N., Gilbert, P., & Muspratt, S. (2002). Boys, literacy and schooling expanding: The repertoires of practice. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Fullan, M. (1991). The new meaning of educational change. London: Cassell. Garvin, D. A. (1993). Building a learning organisation. Harvard Business Review, July-August, 78–91. Glasser, W. (1990). The quality school. Harper and Row: New York. Hargreaves, A. (2003). Teaching in the knowledge society: Education in the age of insecurity. New York: Teachers’ College Press and Buckingham: Open University Press. Harris, A. (1995). Effective subject departments. Report commissioned by DfEE. University of Bath. Harris, A., Busher, H., & Wise, C. (2001) Effective training for subject leaders. Journal of In-Service Education, 27, 83–94. Hough, M. (1990). Curriculum: Project management for educational administrators. ACEA Monograph Series 7. Hawthorn: Australian Council for Educational Administration. Hough, M., & Paine, J. (1997). Creating quality learning communities. Melbourne: Macmillan. MacGilchrist, B., Myers, K., & Reed, J. (2004). The intelligent school. 2nd Edition. London: Sage. Malhotra, Y. (1998). Towards a knowledge ecology for organisational White-Waters. Keynote presentation at the Knowledge Ecology Fair 1998: Beyond Knowledge Management. Mamary, A. (1991). Fourteen principles of quality outcomes-based education. Quality Outcomes-Driven Education. October, pp. 21–28. McLaughlin, M., & Marsh, D. (1978). Staff development and school change. Teachers College Record, 80(1), 84. Middleton, M. (1997). Assessment towards the next Millennium the Why the What and the How. Paper presented to the Blacktown District Principals Conference, Australia, May.

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Murphy, J. (1992). Effective schools: Legacy and future directions. In D. Reynolds, & P. Cuttance, (Eds.), School effectiveness: Research, policy and practice. London: Cassell. Naisbitt, J. (1990). Megatrends 2000. New York, NY: William Morrow. Nonaka, I. (1991). The knowledge creating company. Harvard Business Review, November-December, 96–104. Reynolds, S. (2003). Practical knowledge management – A white paper. Intraspect Europe. Available at: www.intraspect.com Rogers, W. (1993). Classroom management and Behaviour. Ashton: Melbourne. Sachs, J. (2002). Rethinking the practice of teacher professionalism. In C. Day, A. Fernandez, T. Hauge, & J. Moller, (Eds.), The life and work of teachers: International perspectives in changing times. London: Routledge/Falmer. Sammons, P., Hillman, J., & Mortimore, P. (1995). Key characteristics of effective schools: A review of school effectiveness research. London: OfTSED. Schon, D. A. (1987) Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Senge, P. M. (1990). The fifth discipline: Five practices of the learning organisation. New York: Doubleday. Showers, B., Joyce, B., & Bennet, B. (1987). Synthesis of research on staff development: A framework for future study and a state-of-the-art analysis. Educational Leadership, 45(3), 77–87. Spady, W. (1994). Choosing outcomes of significance. Educational Leadership, 51(6), 18–22. Spillane, J. (2006). Distributive leadership. Somerset: Jossey Bass. Stewart, T. A. (1997). Intellectual capital: The new wealth of organisations. London: Nicholas Brealey. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice. Learning meaning and identity. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Wenger, E., & Snyder, W. (2000). Communities of practice: The organisational frontier. Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb, 139–145.

50 BEST PRACTICE IN SECONDARY SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT: THE CASE OF SALISBURY HIGH SCHOOL

Helen Paphitis

School Context and Background Salisbury High School was established in 1959 as a large co-educational secondary school (Years 8–12) in a low socio-economic area in Salisbury North, a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia (SA). The school is in the City of Salisbury, and is part of the SA Department of Education and Children’s Services (DECS). It is in the Salisbury District, one of 12 districts in the decentralized administrative arrangements in DECS.

A High Level of Disadvantage Salisbury North has a significant transient population and a high proportion of residents live in housing trust (subsidized) accommodation. It has one of the highest gambling, youth unemployment and crime rates in Australia, and many families are third and fourth generation unemployed. The area has been undergoing urban renewal in an attempt to build a more stable, sustainable community. Salisbury High School is currently designated a Category 2 school, due to its multiple disadvantages (on a 7-point scale with 7 being the least disadvantaged). The school has approximately 1,000 students, with 35% designated as disadvantaged; 18% from non-English backgrounds; 14% with special needs, including two severe multiply disabled classes, three special classes having about 90 student on negotiated educational plans; 7% Indigenous (Aboriginal) students; and 3% participating in an off-campus alternative program for post compulsory at risk students (Paralowie House). The school’s 120 staff include a Student Services Team, a Chaplain (who is a full-time police officer), a Student Employment Services Officer, a Youth Worker, and many other voluntary or part-time people who contribute to the school (e.g., Work for the Dole program, Friends of Salisbury High School, trainers, musicians, mentors, researchers, filmmakers, artists). 917 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 917–930. © 2007 Springer.

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In the mid-1990s, the school faced a number of challenging and complex issues, including negative community perceptions, high welfare dependency, and low attendance, retention and achievement rates. There was discussion of the possibility of the school being closed due to declining enrolments (around 500) and the existence of three other secondary schools in close proximity. At this time the school had no clearly understood or articulated vision, mission or values; had low expectations; and was operating in financial deficit. Unclear policies and inconsistent practices, difficult student behavior management and general complacency contributed to low staff morale and a high staff turnover. A one-size-fits-all curriculum which was not well documented meant that, while staff intentions were good, approaches to teaching and learning tended to be “hit and miss,” depending on the commitment, expertise and innovation of individual teachers. Staff did not generally choose to teach at Salisbury High School but were sent there under the Education Department’s transfer process (I was one of those, arriving at Salisbury High School in 1983 in my fourth year of teaching, and I have never left). There was no school improvement model in place to address the challenges that were being faced, and there were punitive approaches to dealing with behavior management. Few students completed secondary school or entered university, and data were not collected on student destinations after leaving school. Despite all this, there were staff and leaders who were committed to social justice and who wanted to provide a safe, supportive learning environment and successful learning opportunities for our students.

Getting Started The first and most enduring change was the introduction of the “care group” system. Although there had been a home group structure in place, this was changed to involve every full-time teacher and leader, including the principal. Care group sizes were reduced to less than 15 students, who remained in the same care group for their 5 years at the school. The care group teacher became the first port of call for families and the advocate for individual students. The aim was to develop positive relationships between parents, students and staff, to support student wellbeing, monitor student achievement, develop pathway plans, encourage community service, and develop citizenship. In addition, the care group teacher was given the power to broker behavior management, including determining if the student needed to be suspended. Initially, there was negativity and skepticism among many staff towards the care group system. Some staff felt they lacked the skills to participate and a few refused to do so, requesting a transfer to another school. However the introduction of care groups was positively received by families, particularly as the only person they really needed to connect with was their child’s care teacher. Parents were invited to collect their children’s reports from their care teacher four times a year. As support, training and development were provided by year level leaders, counselors, and school leaders, more staff saw the value of this structure and built meaningful relationships with students. The care group system has been one of the most significant initiatives the school has introduced and has underpinned the success of the school to date. During the mid to late 1990s, there was a focus on developing a “Success For All” culture which valued and acknowledged a wide range of student and school successes.

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It began with a team of likeminded staff led by the author, then a newly appointed Assistant Principal, and supported by the Principal, who publicized the successes and achievements of the school. This was the beginning of turning around and creating a culture which, after a number of years, is now accepted as the “norm.” Enterprise Education became the driver for change, with the school being badged the first “Enterprise High School” in Australia in 1995. This provided the opportunity to introduce a new logo and the motto “Pathways to Success.” A school aim was to place every student in employment, further education or training. A leadership position was created to introduce enterprise and vocational education across the curriculum and a number of improvements were made. Instead of seven or eight lesson days, the school introduced three lesson days and began to seek community and industry partnerships. As teachers underwent training and development, improvements were soon evident throughout the school, and pockets of excellence emerged. This focus on “getting kids jobs” resonated with the community and the media, and a change started to occur in people’s perceptions. These successes were promoted by the school, and enrolments began to increase steadily. However, there were still many challenges, including a high turnover of staff, systems that were not thoroughly thought through and adhered to by all, and variability in student outcomes across the school.

Initiatives The author was appointed Principal at Salisbury High School in 1999 and set about building on the progress we had made as a school in the late 1990s as well as addressing the very significant challenges the school continued to face. The initiatives we have taken since 1999 to bring about sustainable whole school improvement can be clustered into three main categories: setting directions, developing staff and enriching teaching and learning, and building infrastructure for continuous improvement.

Setting Directions As the newly-appointed principal I found myself asking: “What is my purpose? What values and beliefs are important to me? What do I care about? What do I need to do to lead learning? How did my values and beliefs align with the core purposes of the school?” To build community confidence, we needed to be clear about what the school stood for, where it was headed, what it hoped to achieve, and how it was going to get there in a language that was easily and commonly understood by the broader community. We also had to provide evidence of achievement. Although I took on the role of building a sustainable, effective and efficient organisation with enthusiasm and anticipation, I was not always clear about how to do that. In my previous roles as teacher, assistant and deputy principal, I had a good understanding of the wider environment in which the school operated and had contributed to the changes achieved to date. Now I needed to take up the “mantle” of principalship and play the lead role in setting and reinforcing the school’s culture and directions. I was highly motivated to engage staff in developing a shared direction and to build an

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inclusive, success-oriented culture focused on addressing our challenges and improving student outcomes. The challenge for us was to engage with our broader community to give our students the maximum opportunities and to develop and nurture the unique talents of each student. I was keen to provide an environment in which all students could achieve and experience success through academic, personal and social growth. I looked forward to the challenge and was excited about the prospect of leading the school to seek new solutions and new approaches to existing challenges. I also anticipated new challenges and sought support in several ways. I: ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

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canvassed staff, parents and students for possible solutions; worked closely with the District Superintendent and other principals and leaders; researched literature on effective schools and successful leaders; sought the expertise of successful business and community leaders; participated in the inaugural Governor’s Leadership Foundation program; fostered and used external networks and resources that may be able to assist; became more aware of the wider environment, including other schools and systems, the community, society, business and government; encouraged others to adopted a “can do” approach and to be quick to sum up and grasp opportunities that would benefit the school; and recruited and appointed likeminded leaders as vacancies allowed.

I valued the lessons I had learnt from my predecessor, who had a fearless attitude towards the “system” and anything “mandated.” I had learnt the importance of “taking charge” and of not being overwhelmed, disheartened or disempowered by challenges, but of having an open and positive attitude towards change. For example, when “Partnerships 21” (a local school management model) was introduced by the SA Government in 1999 for voluntary adoption by schools, we were quick to sign up and take advantage of the opportunities it offered. Rather than seeing change as a threat, we looked for how we could adapt what we were already doing to meet new requirements and benefit the school community. One of the benefits of Partnerships 21 I was enthusiastic about was the opportunity to have some say in staff selection and flexibility in our leadership structure, which this model allowed. We saw how it could address one of our biggest challenges: staff who did not choose or want to be there. I also relished the increased freedom and autonomy this model would give us, and set about convincing our school community to vote for it, which they did. Partnerships 21 offered what the Review of Teaching and Teacher Education in Australia (2003) identified as a requirement for competent leadership: “freedom and authority to steer, manage and orchestrate what are very often large, complex organizations.” In preparing for the principalship, I had given a lot of thought to what I would implement once I was in the role. The research on highly effective schools had provided me with some broad directions about the “what” without really providing me with the “how.” In the midst of my day-to-day work of endless meetings, small interactions and continual interruptions, I knew that I had to manage my time more effectively and to develop some strategies to lead and implement change.

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My first initiative was to introduce a structure that divided the work of the organization into eight manageable and clearly defined functions. This was developed with a business friend to whom I was expressing my frustration about the never-ending demands of leading and managing a school. I needed to delegate and trust and empower others to assist me. This model is similar to what businesses use and I was keen to test it. The eight functions are: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

Operations Human Resources Curriculum (Teaching and Learning) Care (Care System) Finances Facilities Marketing Strategic Alliances.

Since 1999, each of these functions has been led by one or more senior staff who lead, manage and communicate initiatives and progress, including through the school newsletter, to the Governing Council, and to our weekly executive meeting. A further way that vision and high expectations for the school have been communicated is through recognition of staff and student achievement. We have taken every opportunity to recognize student and staff achievement and to “talk up the school.” We purposefully created a positive school climate of high expectations and success through a variety of approaches including parent evenings, open day assemblies, newsletters, awards, personal approaches, school visitors, presentations, and school promotional materials. We also have engaged the local media to promote our aims and achievements. Another initiative we embarked on with other schools and districts in 2001 was The Quality in Schools project. It gave us the time and tools to properly engage with accountability frameworks. Although we provided our school community with an Annual Report and set new priorities based on our Three-Year Strategic (then called Partnerships) Plans, we did not have a coherent school improvement model that provided an effective and ongoing self-evaluation linked to what we were doing. It was the start of what has been referred to as “intelligent accountability” which helps the system learn from itself and shows the public that they are getting value for money. We needed to collect and analyze a combination of qualitative as well as quantitative data that would help leaders and teachers develop themselves and their practices, promote high performance, help support student progress and to develop intervention programs. This has been essential in generating new knowledge and has moved the school’s focus about data collection and information gathering from a typically reactive to a proactive perspective. The Quality in Schools Project also highlighted the need to develop explicit shared school values. The school’s Quality Team’s process led by the Deputy Principal, took over 12 months to identify and adopt the values that are important to the school community’s staff, students and parents. The Salisbury High School Values are Relationships, Respect, Honesty, Success and Organisation. These values reflect our core educational

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purposes and are displayed in classrooms, in promotional materials, in student diaries and are often referred to in conversations with various members of the school.

Developing Staff and Enriching Teaching and Learning Acknowledging people’s expertise and building mutual respect, trust, and common purpose are important for the management of change. I worked collaboratively with my executive team to achieve this. We wanted to engage and intrinsically motivate staff, rather than being dependent upon obedience and compliance. I was keen to build on what had been achieved so far, and to develop leadership capability in others to create leadership depth throughout the school. The route to higher standards of achievement is to focus not simply on what we teach, but on how we teach. Questions such as: “What curriculum should we be offering to ensure engagement and successful pathways for students?” “What do students need to learn?” “What will they learn?” “How will they learn?” and “How will their success be measured?” were often part of professional conversations. They kept our focus on the students, their wellbeing and learning. That meant addressing the challenge of access, equity and excellence. I appointed an Assistant Principal responsible for curriculum and professional learning who had a strong belief in equity for disadvantaged students and believed that curriculum should not be “watered down” for challenging students. She led our curriculum reform and worked with the executive team and curriculum managers to build on successes and challenge assumptions and practices that did not support students learning (e.g., recognizing that every student has a different starting point and different aspirations). This led to our decision to embark on introducing the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program. This is a particularly significant achievement in a complex disadvantaged school, which has many students with diagnosed learning difficulties. We knew that it was impossible to gain unanimous support, approval and commitment from staff for all our new initiatives. Rather than attempting to “move” all staff simultaneously, our strategy was to concentrate on those who had the expertise and commitment and to provide them with the appropriate support. They were given the time, resources, professional development and encouragement to develop new initiatives. We facilitated or led an autonomous team of like-minded staff to achieve those aims. We believed that the “contagion effects” of committed staff and demonstrated success would eventually bring some negative or reluctant people “on-side.” Our ongoing professional learning programs centred on improving student learning and raising educational standards. We believed that this would occur when every student mattered and careful attention was paid to their individual learning styles, motivations, and needs; when there were high expectations and quality assessments; and when students were supported by partnership with others well beyond the classroom. New teachers at the school are now provided with a “buddy” who is a mentor and professional partner, a strong induction program. They build a personal portfolio and belong to two teams. One is a learning area team (discipline based), and the learning area coordinator becomes their line manager, and a year-level team in which they remain and go to the next year level with the students for their 5 years of schooling (if they begin with a Year 8 care group). Within this year level team, which is led by a

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year level manager, one can see that staff develop a strong team spirit, autonomy and ownership of students’ wellbeing and progress. Care group teachers, drawing on their knowledge and relationships of their students and their families, become strong advocates for their care groups. Very often care group teachers, having built positive relationships with their students, keep phone details of their care group in their mobile phones and use this as a way to check on attendance and other issues. Both teams meet every three weeks, with agendas determined by the needs of the teams, drawing upon the enthusiasm and energy of colleagues, and focused on developing ideas and strategies to improve student learning (e.g., student wellbeing/progress by care group teachers and specific discipline base learning program development in learning area teams). Staff are encouraged to reflect on their practice and be continuously informed through a range of data to challenge their own practices and that of their colleagues. In addition, all staff are required to contribute to the wider school agenda by selecting a nominated whole school project team to participate in. These are often led by staff with an interest or expertise in these areas, driven by an agenda for improvement. Here staff have the opportunity to research, reflect and practice leadership with colleagues to achieve specific school objectives (e.g., professional learning team, marketing team, assessment and reporting team). Staff have many opportunities to learn individually, in school-based or external professional communities, and to participate actively in teams within the school or across clusters, districts or states. The Professional Learning team uses multiple measures (e.g., term reports, literacy and numeracy data, Year 11 compulsory subjects, South Australian Certificate of Education results, Academic Risk Review) to inform its planning of the school’s Professional Learning Program. It is linked to the strategic plan, student and staff needs and offers “just-in-time” and “just-in-context” opportunities as well as mandated whole school training and development. In addition, there is ICT training of staff via micro training and development sessions, mentoring programs, outsourced programs, and site visits. All staff (teaching and non-teaching) are expected to obtain an ICT Certificate 1 accreditation. Since its inception in mid 2005, we have around 40% of staff with ICT Certificate 1 accreditation with the prospects of nearing 100% staff accreditation by the end of 2006. Some of the processes include: ●

●

● ●

●

●

a wide range of enterprising teaching techniques to promote a broad range of learning strategies facilitating high quality ICT that promotes individual and group learning as well as teaching authorization of the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program (IBMYP) Assessment for Learning that feeds into lesson planning and teaching strategies, which clearly identifies what students need to do to get there Targeted and innovative opportunities for students (e.g., Literacy and Numeracy, ESL support, Special Education program, Indigenous Education, SRC, Rock Eisteddfod, Success Camp, Community and Service, Duke of Edinburgh Award, Global Citizenship Medal, public speaking, Lions Youth of the Year, Youth Advisory Council, Mentoring, peer support, sports) Becoming a Registered Training Organisation in Technology

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using workforce reform to enhance teaching and learning and to ensure consistency (e.g., employing a student employment services officer, human resources manager, staff support) links to services beyond the classroom, involving the wider community and families, parents providing strong support (e.g., Youth Opportunities and the Paralowie Youth Services partnership) development of flexible senior school pathways within the South Australian Certificate of Education thereby balancing entitlement, personal relevance and choice (e.g., university, vocational and/or community pathways).

The parallel development of processes focusing on leadership and teacher development, efficient organization and management, including continuous improvement, continue to strengthen Salisbury’s progress as a learning organization which attempts to meet the needs of its community.

Building Infrastructure for Continuous Improvement To ensure that we were offering the best education and care we could, we needed to provide the conditions and climate where teachers could operate effectively. We needed to ensure that there was alignment of organizational elements, which were managed well and supported our core purpose. Our operations needed to run smoothly and we wanted client satisfaction with our service delivery. Regular appraisal of how students are progressing, and how the core systems of the school are working, are part of the routine of good management. We needed to ensure that there was alignment of our eight organizational functions and that they supported our core purpose. In developing the infrastructure of the school, we questioned the value of some traditional practices and structures and tested them through our “quality lens.” Time and consideration were given to issues such as staff decision-making, grievance procedures, professionalism, staff morale, the purpose and frequency of staff meetings, timetabling, workforce reform, and how resources were allocated. Reviewing and improving policies, processes and practices is now an ongoing part of our work. Our drive to continuously improve led us to use the Australian Business Excellence Framework (ABEF) as an independent assessment of how we were going, to find what our gaps were, to guide us in future directions and to improve our management and leadership practices. Through the ABEF we learned that “what doesn’t get measured, doesn’t get done” and that “all people work in a system/culture: outcomes improve when people work on the system.” This integrated leadership and management system describes essential features and approaches of organizational systems that promote sustainable, excellent performance. We were keen to see how we measured up against other successful businesses and put ourselves through a very rigorous external evaluation process. The outcome was that we received a Bronze Australian Business Excellence Award in 2004. The ABEF process galvanized the school community to work together towards a common goal, creating a sense of synergy and anticipation. This culminated in a trip

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to Sydney for the Awards Evening with ten staff being randomly selected to go. It was one of the highlights for the school that year. Quality improvement is a key feature of our school and is embedded into our processes. To manage the Human Resources function of the school, we have set up an HR Office managed by a Human Resources Manager (an Assistant Principal) who is our liaison with the education department’s HR system, and a school support staff officer. All matters related to HR (e.g., staffing, leave arrangements, temporary relief cover, staff and student timetables, staff and student information) are located there and staff have indicated how supportive and important this function is to the efficient running of the school. Given the decrease in numbers in the senior school, one of the enterprising strategies that had been set up in the 1990s to offer a broad senior secondary curriculum was a cooperative arrangement with a nearby school. Although there were some successes, there were also many issues (e.g., attendance, retention, teacher commitment and competition). As our enrolments increased, we ceased the partnership, but instead looked to developing other arrangements with training providers to deliver the increasingly popular vocational courses that our students were choosing. Consistent with our motto “Pathways to Success” we wanted to ensure that we provided seamless transitions from school to beyond school learning, training or employment. This has now expanded to a coordinated regional model with ten secondary schools forming an alliance (Northern Adelaide State Secondary Schools Alliance) to maximize student access to VET certificate courses. Another significant initiative at Salisbury High School was the development of our information and learning technologies. In 2001 SHS had 120 computers that were predominantly 6 years old and spread around the school in staff office areas and 5 computer suites. One suite was dedicated to ICT Certificate IV, a second to Information Processing, and two to ICT. The rest of the school had to share the remaining suite for teaching purposes. The server was not functioning, cabling was limited to the top middle wing of the school. Staff and students saved work on floppy disks and students constantly forgot to bring their disks to school or disks became corrupt. Over the past 5 years, with the ongoing support of the school community, we have invested over AUD $1.5 million of our school budget to address the issue of ICT and student learning. Our inaugural ICT Rescue Plan (2001) revealed that students became more engaged in their learning, stayed focused on their tasks longer, had increased “work pride,” were less disruptive, and were more supportive of each other’s learning. The result was an ongoing ICT Plan (2002 – the present). The ICT Plan further revealed that a shift in focus from ICT across the curriculum to Multimedia across the curriculum enhanced and accelerated the progress of positive student learning attitudes in terms of behavior, cognition and emotion. These developments were achieved through: ●

●

appointment of an Assistant Principal in Information Systems and Learning Technologies; investment in data cabling throughout the school using high speed fiber optic backbones and coaxial cables, complemented by strategically placed wireless antennae to improve staff and student ICT accessibility and flexibility; and

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establishment of high speed, high powered, remote access, multi-processing servers that manage, secure, store, and automate: user files and file management; software utilization; peripheral management; external and internal communications; total systems maintenance; and an increase in computer access in the school.

Features of the school’s IT infrastructure in 2006 include: ● ●

●

●

●

● ●

over 500 computers (Mac’s and PC’s) based in 22 mini-theatre computer suites; computer suites owned and managed by Learning Area/Curriculum teams. Additionally, there are “Year Level” and “Pathway based” computer suites, and optional computers are available for classrooms (pending on teacher request); recycling of all 500 computers so that most computers are predominantly 2 years old and no computer is more than 4 years old; additional establishment of mini-theatres in the boardroom, school gymnasium, and resource center (which has additional commercial and cable TV capabilities), the expansion and decentralizing of computer suites (i.e., making them curriculum and pathways based) has seen the creation of whole new classes and learning practices (students are voting with their feet) throughout all year levels and learning areas that focus on, incorporate, and integrate: video editing; digital music; robotics; textile technology; animation; stop-motion animation; web editing, and/or; digital photography; an interactive white-board for students with physical disabilities; and as part of the whole school network, the SHS staff and students are able to use an interactive Digital Video Server that houses over 800 Educational titles with accompanying interactive student work sheets and staff notes. The digital videos can be played for personal viewing, whole class viewing, or whole school viewing, and video titles can be found via a Digital Video Search Engine.

Our future projects include the creation of a live digital radio station; geographic information systems and global positioning systems technology for our Society and Environment students and; motion capture technology for our Physical Education and Dance students. In managing the school resources, we place a high priority on school cleanliness and a pleasant environment. The Business Manager and his team manage maintenance issues routinely and deal with graffiti and mess promptly. There has been an increase in seating and shade areas over the past few years and we are awaiting approval for a new performing arts centre. As our enrolments and retention increased, we asked for and received nearly new classroom spaces, and apart from one kitchen, our specialist areas are stretched. We have had to ensure that timetabling took account of our facilities shortages, staff expertise and availability. As much as possible, staff teach in their own classrooms and are expected to keep these and other spaces clean and pleasant. We have developed a quality checklist for use when we have visitors or hold events to ensure that we present an attractive and well presented school. We realize the importance of school pride, identification with the school, and its reputation in the community. Budget plans as far as possible reflect our school priorities.

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In addition we place a high priority on establishing and maintaining good communications and effective relationships with external stakeholders. We form mutually beneficial external alliances that have benefited our students. We are entrepreneurial in nurturing partnerships and networks and obtaining financial and in-kind support from the system, government, community and the corporate sector to support our teaching and learning programs (e.g., boys education, Indigenous education and values education). Some years ago, we decided to establish an Old Scholars Foundation and that has been another very successful initiative, with many old scholars seeking us out to contribute to student awards. As a school with high proportions of non-English speaking parents and community members, we use interpreters, translators and community liaison officers as needed, and were recently successful in obtaining funding in collaboration with three other schools to provide career information to parents of non-English speaking backgrounds. To ensure that we were paying attention to profiling our successes, the Marketing Project team has ensured that we had a plan in place, and this has been supported by a public relations consultant (ex-journalist) who has given us very useful advice over many years. The High Demand Schools Project 2004 (of which we were 1 of 20 schools) found that parents value schools which offer positive “word of mouth” and good news media stories, congruent values and culture and are a genuinely respected place in the community. That report also found that parents valued high expectations, high quality teaching and caring teachers, extra learning opportunities and depth in co-curricular activities, a broad range of subject choice, pathways to vocational training, established industry and university-TAFE linkages, strong parental and community involvement, and a strong leadership team which is focused on successful operations, common purpose of staff and the wider community, an individual sense of responsibility among staff, and staff and students working together for students success. We felt we were already addressing these, but we could not afford to become complacent.

Evidence of Progress General Assessment Salisbury High School has been transformed from a “deficit model school at significant risk” to a very dynamic and successful school with many achievements. It now has a strong, highly inclusive culture that is focused on success for all through an enriching teaching and learning program. There is a commitment by the whole school community, including parents, to this vision and to sustaining it in all facets of school life. “Together we will do all that we can to help young people be as successful as they can be” is included in the Salisbury High School’s promotional material. The school today has “Pathways to Success” and “Always Aspire” (to the satisfaction of its past students) as its mottos, with clearly promoted and articulated shared values. Its aim has changed somewhat to reflect its higher expectations and its inclusivity of our students with disabilities “to successfully place every student in higher or further education, training, employment or community and service.”

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In partnership with parents and the community, the school seeks to develop young global citizens who have high personal integrity, are motivated, purposeful and enterprising, take pride in their own cultural and linguistic heritage, contribute to the well being of others, manage change with confidence and have successful transitions and pathways to life beyond school. The International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program provided us with a vehicle to invigorate our staff and “raise the bar,” and as a result provides for explicit assessment and high order thinking skills. Our Year 8–10 curriculum is now documented, and there is much professional learning and sharing of practice, including with primary (elementary) teachers. In the senior school we have seen a significant increase in the number of students obtaining their first choice of university course (in 2006, of the 24 students who applied to go to university, 21 were successful). We also have the largest number of students (199 in 2005) in the region taking up nationally accredited Vocational Education and Training courses ranging from Horticulture, Electronics, IT, Hospitality, Retail, Hair and Beauty, Construction, Financial Services. Our students with disabilities are also supported with individual transition pathways into the community. We now have far more efficient and effective organization and management systems with well thought out roles and responsibilities. We have developed a more effective, simplified way of obtaining better information from more than 30 feeder schools about our incoming Year 8 students by using technology designed by the school. In 2006, we have an organizational structure with clearly understood roles and responsibilities. The school now has one deputy, six assistant principals and the Business Manager in its executive team. Our executive members have distinctive personalities, strengths and expertise and are open to change and opportunity. Their positive attitudes tend to be contagious. They realize that negativity can be crippling and attempt to discourage or drive it out, although occasionally when one has a particularly hard day, another “lifts” them. Our “can do, will do” approach motivates others and acts as a form of organizational energy that helps to keep the school moving and improving. This positive orientation is not unthinking optimism, but is based upon a realistic appraisal of the situation checked against multiple measures. We have learned to find ways to concentrate our energies on educational leadership and not to become distracted and “bogged down” by the administrative demands of the school, although they need to be addressed. We deal with many issues concurrently and know when to consult and to build consensus and when to be decisive and to act alone. As a leadership team, we are relentless in our quest for enhanced student achievement, allowing nothing to get in the way. Staff believe that all students can learn, although not necessarily at the same rate. To that end we collect, analyze and interpret a range of data and information about our students. There is nothing like a set of data as a starting point to engage whole staff, a learning area, a year level and project teams in critical dialogue about student learning and pedagogical practices. Strategies to support and engage targeted groups and innovative practices focused on learning are valued and encouraged as leaders and teachers take up the challenge of helping every student be successful. Everyone feels that he or she can make a difference to students’ lives and the success of the organisation. When that happens people feel centred and that gives their work meaning.

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Despite our achievements, we still have more work to do. We would like to provide better diagnostic information on individual student progress. We have increased our post-compulsory retention rates but would like to see more of our students striving for higher Year 12 results and better achievement in certain targeted groups. We need to ensure that all students have opportunities for meaningful participation at school and provide better support to students who are struggling. Although we have improved school-home relationships, we need to increase the involvement by certain community groups. Although our school suspensions/expulsions have decreased, staff would like to see more respectful student–teacher and student–student relationships. To that end our current priorities include working out ways to build respect and to improve restorative practices. Staff are being trained as facilitators to provide the tools and skills for students and staff. We would like to see students develop a better understanding of the negative effects of drug and alcohol abuse. Although we have seen the best staff retention yet, there is still some way to go to ensure high quality teaching and learning by all teachers. On the other hand, new staff have said that they appreciate the care, support and flexibility that is provided as they settle into their new work. We have learnt to work around the system to recruit staff (teaching and non-teaching) with desired expertise and who want to be here. Many staff have commented on the warm, collegiate and mutually supportive relationships. This has enabled us to face difficulties together. For example, we were overwhelmed by the way the school community came together as a tight-knit family after a Salisbury train-bus collision in 2003, to comfort the grieving and support each other (one of the four people who died was one of our students, and the train driver was the father of one of our students). The strength and support of the school community also helped me to rise above two cancer scares and allowed me to take minimal time away from work. Staff wellbeing is a priority and our recent Psychological Survey showed staff rated the following as the most important: sharing successful practice; health and wellbeing; balancing life and work; and learning how to support your colleagues. This is what we all need to keep doing.

Indicators of Success Indicators of success include: ● ●

● ● ● ● ● ●

High Demand Schools project: 32 feeder schools with a waiting list in Year 8 Many successful initiatives (e.g., student led action teams, Active 8, targeted intervention strategies, Boys and Career Education Lighthouse Projects, Reconciliation Youth Ambassadors Ball, Best School in Salisbury Christmas Parade) SWD Basketball Carnival Youth Opportunities: 11 schools Registered Training Organization Strong ICT program: 1:2 computers, Local CISCO academy Rock Eisteddfod for 20 years Strong Sports Program

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Literacy and Numeracy Awards Many individual student and staff awards for example, NiETA, SA Young Filmmakers, Mix Website, Robotics, Rock Eisted dfod, Math, Cake Decorating, Athletics Successful pathways for students and known destinations Increased numbers in university pathway High staff and student retention Strong community support High parent satisfaction National Award for Quality Schooling: School Leadership 2003 The Australian (Newspaper) Best Schools Awards: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Australian Business Excellence Award: Bronze Award 2004 An IBO school 2005

In addition to being asked to present to a variety of forums, we have frequent state, interstate and international visitors and the school is happy to share its practices. We also have established very good relationships and networks with our local and broader community and are regularly acknowledged. The school is seen by many as an “oasis of optimism” and has now a very good reputation in South Australia.

Conclusion I consider myself fortunate: coming to work inspires and motivates me. Interacting with parents, students and staff is just so uplifting, because there is a strong sense of “us” which we thrive on. We share our struggles and our pains, and when someone has a success, we all celebrate. My faith, my childhood confrontations with discrimination, my deep belief in the value of education, and my more recent health scares have all worked to strengthen my personal values. Having a shared set of values which underpins our work makes leading a school community like Salisbury High School a great pleasure. I want to see staff and students enjoy being here, learning together, achieving together. Recently, one small incident illustrated the way we support each other. We hold whole school assemblies three times a term. At one of these, three boys got up to sing for the first time. They were so nervous that we all felt it. Then the two students who were masters of ceremonies spontaneously went to the microphone and encouraged the whole school to cheer them on and to clap to the music as they sang. As we all got behind the boys we could see their confidence grow visibly as they belted out the song. It was awesome! As a principal reflecting on my own experience, I have come to see that my main role is to promote, build and protect an ethos in which members of the school community are committed to each other and to achieve success for all. I have found that building a school community in which we care for each other and strive for success for all requires a constancy of purpose on my part. I draw energy for this task from the enthusiasm and dedication of my staff and colleagues. But as Gandhi said: “There they go. I must run and catch up with them, because I am their leader!”

Afterword LEARNING FROM THE PAST TO REFRAME THE FUTURE

51 SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVEMENT IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: REFRAMING FOR THE FUTURE

Tony Townsend

The task of this chapter is to provide a synthesis of what has gone before it, to try and use the massive amount of data and opinion contained in these 50 chapters to provide the reader with a possible course of action for the future, one that is based on a world view of the research, rather than what seems to happen at the moment, which is determining the direction and nature of education based on the private and often ideological positions of a few politicians. For the past 20 years the world has been beset by school reform. We have had open space classrooms, the public/private debate, charter schools and school charters, selfmanagement, early literacy and numeracy programs, curriculum reform to encourage pathways and a plethora of design programs under the guise of school improvement. Much of this has been driven by, or referenced to, the school effectiveness research. Many countries now have national literacy and numeracy goals, America has No Child Left Behind (see http://www.nclb.gov) and many other countries have similar “statements of purpose” from national, provincial or state governments. Standardized testing, which 20 years ago was mostly only used at the end of school to help societies determine the post education options for young people (except in the USA, where the use of standardized testing was turned into an art form – I say art form because there is no science that suggests it makes any difference to student learning), now are being implemented at regular intervals in many countries. Few, if any, of these changes have seemed to work, if recent evidence can be believed. Nearly a decade ago Codding (1997, p. 15) argued: … almost none of the widely advocated reforms – modular scheduling, open space, individualized instruction, different school governance experiments, vouchers, charter schools, the various curriculum reform initiatives – have survived or changed student performance. Little, it seems, has changed in the period since then in the United States, although other countries seemed to have made some progress as shown by the international 933 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 933–962. © 2007 Springer.

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comparative studies referred to in this handbook. These have compared one country’s standing with that of other countries related to the learning of students and have included the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study – TIMMS (see http://nces.ed.gov/timss/index.asp) and the Programme for International Student Achievement – PISA, conducted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (see http://www.pisa.oecd.org/) that tested student literacy in reading, science and mathematics. Table 1 provides a comparison of some of the actual scores for reading and mathematics performance for the data collected in the TIMSS study. The TIMMS study collected data from Grade 8 students starting in 1995 and for Grade 4 students starting in 1999. Table 2 provides a comparison of some of the scores for reading, mathematics and science literacy for the data collected in the PISA study. The PISA study collected data in Reading, Mathematics and Science literacy in 2000 and again in 2003 and will further data will be reported in 2007. Although many more countries have been involved in these studies, I have only included the data from countries that have been involved in both studies on each occasion the data was collected. The tables show that, in the countries identified, student performance has not really increased over time and that the progress of students from Grade 4 to Grade 8 has actually seemed to go backwards in some cases. The PISA study provided a detailed analysis of reading performance in 2000 and mathematics performance in 2003, which categorized students into different levels of performance. In reading these went from level one, being virtually illiterate, to level five, where people were able to read and manipulate language concepts at a high level. Table 3 shows the percentages of students that are performing at the various levels of reading literacy in different countries. Table 4 shows the percentages of students that are performing at the various levels of mathematical literacy. In mathematics, these went from level one, as being barely able to use even simple mathematical concepts, to level six, where people were able to interpret and manipulate mathematical concepts at a high level.

Table 1. Mean scores for reading and mathematics for grade 4 and 8, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMMS) TIMSS Mathematics Grade 4

Japan Australia USA New Zealand Canada

Science Grade 8

Grade 4

Grade 8

1999

2003

1995

2003

1999

2003

1995

2003

567 495 518 469 550

565 499 518 496 506

581 509 492 501 510

570 505 504 494 531

553 521 542 505 529

543 521 536 523 500

554 514 513 511 510

552 527 527 520 531

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Table 2. Mean scores for reading, mathematics and science literacy for 15 year old students, Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) PISA Reading

Japan Australia USA New Zealand Canada

Table 3.

Science

2000

2003

2000

2003

2000

2003

522 528 504 529 534

522 525 495 522 528

557 533 493 537 533

534 524 483 523 532

550 528 499 518 529

548 525 491 528 519

Percentages of students at various levels of reading literacy, PISA 2003

Finland Korea Canada Australia Liechtenstein New Zealand Japan Ireland Sweden Netherlands Hong Kong Belgium USA

Table 4.

Mathematics

Mean

% below level 1

% at level 1

% at level 2

% at level 3

% at level 4

% at level 5

543 534 528 525 525 522 522 515 514 513 510 507 495

1 1 2 4 3 5 7 3 4 2 3 8 7

5 5 7 8 8 10 12 8 9 9 9 10 13

15 17 18 18 19 19 21 21 21 23 20 18 23

32 34 31 28 30 26 28 32 30 31 35 26 28

33 31 29 27 28 24 23 26 25 26 27 26 21

15 12 13 15 13 16 10 9 11 9 6 13 9

Percentages of students at various levels of mathematical literacy, PISA 2003

Hong Kong Finland Korea Netherlands Liechtenstein Japan Canada Belgium Switzerland Macao Australia USA

Mean

% below level 1

% at level 1

% at level 2

% at level 3

% at level 4

% at level 5

% at level 6

550 544 542 538 536 534 532 529 527 527 524 483

4 2 3 3 5 5 2 7 5 2 4 10

7 5 7 8 8 9 8 9 10 9 10 16

14 16 17 18 17 16 18 16 18 20 19 24

20 28 24 23 22 22 26 20 24 27 24 24

25 26 25 23 23 24 25 21 23 24 23 17

20 17 17 18 18 16 15 18 14 14 14 8

11 7 8 7 7 8 6 9 7 5 6 2

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The PISA study shows, on average, girls outscored boys by around 32 points (or 6 1/2%) and there were also substantial differences in the performance of people from various socio-economic groups, although this varied from country to country. These measures of improvement have driven much of the change in education over the past decade but suggest that the changes have had minimal impact in many of those countries.

What Have We learned? The 50 chapters of this handbook have covered a wide range of issues and topics, many of which impact more on some countries and regions than others, but when the chapters are looked at in their entirety, there are a series of key themes that might be considered as coming through and might be used to guide research and practice in the future. Each of the themes has some sub-themes that have been referred to by various authors. The major themes and sub-themes that have emerged during the course of this volume might be categorized as: The impact of change and globalization ●

Responding to rapid change and increasing diversity (Beare, Chapter 2; MacBeath, Chapter 4; Cheng & Tam, Chapter 13; Lasky et al., Chapter 31; Tam & Cheng, Chapter 40; Rowe, Chapter 41)

Definitional issues ●

●

●

●

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● ●

Context issues (MacBeath, Chapter 4; Thrupp et al., Chapter 6; Reynolds, Chapter 26) Disconnect between what is measured and what students need (MacBeath, Chapter 4; Bogotch et al., Chapter 5; Rowe, Chapter 41) Has school effectiveness run its course? (Teddlie & Stringfield, Chapter 8; Kochan, Chapter 27) How can the term “effectiveness” be applied in non-western countries? (Kyriakides, Chapter 3; Avalos, Chapter 10; Pan, Chapter 14; Fleisch, Chapter 18; Azimi, Chapter 21; Mingat, Chapter 24; Taylor, Chapter 29; Walker et al., Chapter 36; Kennedy, Chapter 43) The intersection of school effectiveness and school improvement (MacBeath, Chapter 4; Teddlie & Stringfield, Chapter 8; Stoll & Sammons, Chapter 11; Creemers, Chapter 12; Reynolds, Chapter 26; Kochan, Chapter 27) Evidence Based Improvement (Fancy, Chapter 17; Lewis, Chapter 49) Input-Output vs. the “Black Box” (Levacic, Chapter 22; Kochan, Chapter 27)

Political issues ●

Political involvement and use of school effectiveness research (Bogotch et al., Chapter 5; Thrupp et al., Chapter 6; Stoll & Sammons, Chapter 11; Volansky, Chapter 19; Mingat, Chapter 24; Kochan, Chapter 27; Di Gropello, Chapter 28; Day & Leitch, Chapter 38; Tam & Cheng, Chapter 40; Rowe, Chapter 41)

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Local management and school effectiveness (Kyriakides, Chapter 3; Cheng & Tam, Chapter 13; Pan, Chapter 14; Daming, Chapter 15; Caldwell, Chapter 16; Guven, Chapter 20; Marshall, Chapter 30) School system effectiveness (Caldwell, Chapter 16) Choice and School Effectiveness (Ungerleider & Levin, Chapter 23) Models of funding to support effectiveness (Levacic, Chapter 22; Ungerleider & Levin, Chapter 23; Mingat, Chapter 24; Spinks, Chapter 25)

Learning improvement issues ●

●

●

From school effectiveness to classroom effectiveness (Kyriakides, Chapter 3; Sackney, Chapter 9) Focus on disadvantaged groups (Kyriakides, Chapter 3; Bogotch et al., Chapter 5; Daming, Chapter 15; Taylor, Chapter 29; Lasky et al., Chapter 31) Local impact on effective schools (Sackney, Chapter 9; Pan, Chapter 14; Fancy, Chapter 17; Di Gropello, Chapter 28; Schaffer et al., Chapter 39; Chrispeels et al., Chapter 42; Paphitis, Chapter 50)

Professional development issues ●

● ●

●

Leadership strategies for improving effectiveness (Daming, Chapter 15; Marshall, Chapter 30; Moos & Huber, Chapter 32; Marzano, Chapter 33; Silins & Mulford, Chapter 35; Walker et al., Chapter 36; Murphy, Chapter 37) Fostering relationships (Leithwood, Chapter 34) Professional development and school effectiveness (Walker et al., Chapter 36; Day & Leitch, Chapter 38; Schaffer et al., Chapter 39; Chrispeels et al., Chapter 42; Kennedy, Chapter 43; Deves & Lopez, Chapter 48) Teacher Education and school effectiveness (Tam & Cheng, Chapter 40; Kennedy, Chapter 43; Jacinto & Freytes, Chapter 46)

International issues in school effectiveness ●

●

The role of the developed world in supporting other countries (Murillo, Chapter 5; Avalos, Chapter 10; Guven, Chapter 20; Mingat, Chapter 24; Deves & Lopez, Chapter 48) The impact of culture on school effectiveness and improvement (Cheng & Tam, Chapter 13; Daming, Chapter 15; Walker et al., Chapter 36; Creemers et al., Chapter 45; Mok et al., Chapter 46; Jacinto & Freytes, Chapter 46; Bamford, Chapter 47; Lewis, Chapter 49)

It may be useful to the reader to consider these major issues and the impact they have on education.

The Impact of Change and Globalization It is clear that globalization has become a major change force in many aspects of our lives. This seems to have come about because of the breaking down of state and national barriers brought about by the ease of communication and travel in the latter part of the

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twentieth century. Around a century ago local communication within communities through radio was just starting to be developed and international communications were virtually unheard of except through the written word. Such is the speed of development in communications that we now are able to watch events live across the globe, from sporting events to current affairs to the new international fundraising events organized, not by politicians, but by rock stars and film stars. If we have access to computing equipment and the internet technology, it is possible to find out where colleagues work in many parts of the world and contact them within minutes, using google or other browsers, it is possible to communicate with family members across the world, free of charge, using skype or something similar, and it is even possible to see an aerial view of where you might be traveling, online and before you even leave your home. International travel has now made tourist destinations of places that were previously impossible to visit because of cost or cultural barriers. Even space travel is now a tourist option (at least for the wealthy). One can book air flights, hotel accommodations and activities for many parts of the world from one’s office or lounge room, rather than having to wait in line at one’s local tourist agency. International finance is now routed at light speed from one place to another. Bills in Australia or England can be paid while sitting at one’s computer in Hong Kong, or the USA, or Europe. Now companies from almost every country have offices in many other countries, following what was known as the McDonaldization or the Coca-Colarization of the world. However, given the changes in the ways in which companies operate, every single branch office (or place or service) must run at a profit if it is to remain in existence. Banks, and many other agencies that were developed to “serve” local communities, are disappearing because profit, rather than service, determines what will be offered. Not so long ago, an Australian telephone monopoly closed the only telephone box in a small country town, because it was not “profitable,” leaving those residents without a personal telephone having to travel 50 miles to the next closest one. Issues of the environment, human welfare, religion, safety and security, social and cultural interactions are all now impacting on the whole world rather than on single countries or regions. The “war on terror” has changed the way people travel around the world, has changed the way migration is handled and changed the way some people of the world look at, and treat, people who look or act “different” to themselves. All of these have had substantial impact on the lives of ordinary people. These issues have impacted on education as well, sometimes to the good and other times, to the detriment of those involved. It is clear that the people in the age groups represented at school have advanced much further that their elders in relation to accepting and using the new technologies. With the advent of video and CD and then DVD, and then the mobile phone technology, music, film and other forms of entertainment and knowledge are immediately available wherever you are. Communication and learning have now been transformed into hand-held devices. What happens in a classroom sometimes is unable to complete with the entertainment and connections that students can have as soon as they leave the room. History might now be learned from blockbuster movies, science knowledge can be downloaded from the net. Teachers who pride themselves on being up to date by using google and emails are being outstripped by their students, who are now using the next generation of interactive

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technologies. Knowledge is now updated minute by minute, through access to avenues such as MySpace or YouTube, or is even created in new formats based on personal experiences through Wikipedia. Although much of this knowledge might be personalized, perhaps biased and even perhaps wrong, everyone can contribute to the creation and transmission of knowledge and this has changed the power and information relationships previously dominated by teachers. Teachers who hold themselves up as the fount of knowledge will be a thing of the past and teachers who are able to support their students, not only to access this new form of knowledge, but also to analyze it for veracity and relevance, will be the way of the future. However, despite the substantial impact of globalization and change, most of the processes and procedures of learning are honed in the classroom, and it is in the classroom where the skills to be able to cope successfully in a globalized, rapidly changing world should be addressed. Yet much of what does occur in the classroom is still much the same as what has always happened in the classroom. It is the classroom that is becoming out of step with the world, not the other way around. Unless the globalizing issues that have been brought forward in the last couple of decades are used as learning tools in the classroom, then what happens in the classroom will become increasingly irrelevant as students seek their knowledge elsewhere. There is now a far greater exchange than ever before of knowledge related to education, as this handbook demonstrates and there are far more personal connections being established between educational agencies and individuals that have helped to develop what we might call world’s best practice. The spread of the self-managing school and the use of accountability are two instances of where countries in one part of the world see what other countries have done and emulated it, often with improvements that have come about by the earlier iterations of the reform feature. The Hong Kong Education and Manpower Bureau has taken this activity to the level of world’s best practice for managing system change, by not only sending its officers to other parts of the world to find what they consider best practice, but then bring the people who implemented those practices in the other countries back to Hong Kong to help them implement these practices in their system. The benefit of doing this is obvious. Not only does the person who was involved in the first iteration have the best knowledge about the practice, but they will also have the benefit of finding out what the pitfalls were and can perhaps overcome many of these before they occur. Now the EMB has people from all over the world employed as consultants to establish a range of education systems that they consider will keep them at the forefront of educational achievement. Strangely, other systems, including many states or school districts in the United States, rarely look outside their own country when considering how to change education for the better.

Definitional Issues There has been much discussion of context in this handbook with the critics of school effectiveness research arguing that this has not been considered enough and the supporters of school effectiveness research arguing that the focus has changed in recent times. The difficulty seems to have emerged mostly because of the political use of the

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research for what might be considered to be ideological rather than educational purposes, by using only those things that can be measured quantitatively, rather than the more fine-grained analysis that takes specific context into account. It seems that the problem of taking context into account for politicians is that it creates a complex argument for what the data say, something politicians, who prefer simple “sound bite” solutions to what are essentially complex problems, don’t need or want. As Kochan indicates in her chapter “policymakers prefer school performance measures they can understand, and many contend that regressed scores are unnecessarily complicated to interpret or to explain to the public.” However, there are some context issues that various countries around the world seem to now be taking into account and it is useful here to look at some of the contexts that we might associate with the standardized testing regime. Table 5 considers a couple of context issues that seem now to be used in various parts of the world to disaggregate the data, at least to a minimal level. Two that now seem to be used are considerations of whether or not the language of instruction is spoken at home and a poverty consideration. Internationally, we might consider the percentage of the population of countries that are foreign born on the one hand and the socio-economic conditions of countries on the other. Both of these are used as mechanisms for identifying groups within communities that might suffer some disadvantage when being tested by a sole mechanism, which most standardized tests are. I have included in this table most of the countries that are referred to in this book that have been involved in the international testing programs. Table 5 shows that seven countries scored a mean of more than 500 for all three areas tested, reading, mathematics and science, Korea, Finland, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands and Ireland. Of these Canada, New Zealand and Australia all have a substantial proportion of foreign born people (although most of these would come from other parts of the developed world where the first language is the same as the language of instruction) which suggests that the percentage of the population that comes from other countries should not, in itself, impact on the ability of the nation to educate its population. The countries indicated all have small to moderate populations, which might indicate that large countries may have difficulty in educating all of their population, but Japan, which might be considered as also being on the list of successful nations, has a substantial population (over 100 million), which suggests that large countries too are able to have high levels of success in this form of testing. It is clear that all the successful countries fall within the “developed” definition, which indicates substantial industrialization and a standard of living that is fairly high on world standards. Given this, one might expect that most “less-developed” nations would struggle on this form of assessment and, indeed, this is the case. This suggests that the level of development of society and the economy may be more critical than either population size or composition in determining the ability of a country to educate its population in the areas being measured. This calls into question the value of such measures as the development of a society is more than simply the level of performance on a standardized test. The use of such international comparative measures may lead some societies to consider themselves superior to others, which in the long run does no one any good, if our underlying goal is to provide a high quality education to all

5.8 5.0 8.4 13.1 10.8 9.9 9.7 11.9 10.6 8.2 17.5 14.7 17.5 16.0 16.6 20.7 21.8 31.3 33.7 40.4 49.0 47.1 17.3

20.7 24.4 21.0 23.6 22.6 16.3 12.5 18.6 12.4 5.2 16.3 10.1 15.0 13.4 16.0 16.0 9.6 3.7 5.5 1.3 1.2 2.1 14.1

% below % above 400 600

546 545 527 529 525 527 506 507 538 529 550 484 494 511 485 506 490 494 434 425 410 393 503

Mean

9.2 5.7 12.0 13.5 11.6 11.1 13.1 15.6 8.2 8.5 9.7 22.7 19.3 16.6 21.3 18.8 21.2 18.6 38.6 37.6 48.7 56.2 17.9

28.1 29.2 21.0 23.7 23.7 24.5 15.8 21.4 27.8 19.9 33.4 10.8 14.7 22.5 12.9 19.9 14.5 13.5 5.7 2.5 1.4 2.1 17.6

% below % above 400 600

Science scores

542 544 532 523 524 538 503 509 550 527 534 514 483 511 495 503 466 468 423 417 385 356 500

Mean

541 508 510 528 528 531 500 487 NA NA 526 496 451 502 459 498 483 NA 487 NA 444 NA NA 549 516 502 515 509 531 508 492 NA NA 506 501 463 508 454 484 473 NA 489 NA 461 NA NA

Adjusted Adjusted for GDP1 for ESCS2

Mathematics scores

48.8 5.2 33 4.0 20.2 16.5 4.0 9.0 6.9 0.5 127.4 5.4 300 60.9 4.6 82.4 58.1 142.9 70.4 64.6 107.5 188 NA

Population (millions)3

NA 2.9 18.8 19.5 23.6 10.6 10.4 11.8 NA NA 1.5 6.2 12.1 5.6 7.0 8.9 3.4 7.8 NA NA NA NA NA 22,600 31,000 33,900 25,300 31,600 30,300 41,100 29,800 34,000 22,000 31,600 34,800 41,600 29,600 42,800 30,100 28,100 11,000 8,400 8,600 10,000 6,300 NA

% foreign GDP born4 US$3

25.0 21.6 23.8 NA 25.4 22.9 27.3 20.1 NA NA 21.7 24.0 30.5 25.1 21.8 25.1 26.6 38.7 30.7 32.4 35.6 31.3 NA

Top 10%3

2.9 4.2 2.8 NA 2.0 2.5 2.0 3.7 NA NA 4.8 2.0 1.8 2.8 4.1 3.6 2.1 1.7 2.3 2.8 1.6 0.7 NA

Bottom 10%3

Household income by share

2

Gross Domestic Product per capita in US equivalent dollars. PISA index of economic, social and cultural status index (ESCS) taking into consideration native students vs. students with an immigrant background (first generation or non-native students) who speak a language at home that is different from the language of instruction. 3 Source: CIA World Factbook website (https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html). 4 Source: Global Data Center (http://migrationinformation.org/).

1

525 521 514 508 506 503 501 496 494 491 487 479 479 476 475 471 455 428 426 396 389 384 477

Mean

Reading scores

PISA 2003 scores and socio-economic conditions

Korea Finland Canada New Zealand Australia Netherlands Ireland Sweden Hong Kong Macao Japan Denmark USA France Norway Germany Italy Russian Fed Turkey Thailand Mexico Brazil Average

Table 5.

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people. It may be better to reinterpret what “high quality” means than to maintain a system that automatically discriminates against certain groups because of characteristics beyond their control. Of course, the same argument applies within countries as well as across countries, and many of the measures being used to judge performance can be called into question because they actively discriminate against certain cultures, certain language backgrounds and certain social groupings. A broader set of measures may lead to totally different outcomes. Each of the countries on the list above demonstrates what might be considered as an average spread of wealth, with the top 10% of the population consuming between 20 and 25% of the country’s resources and the lowest 10% of the population consuming between 2 and 4% of the resources (a factor of around 8 or 10 to 1). In comparison, the United States economy seems to have more in common with some of the less developed nations on the list, such as Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, Turkey and the Russian Federation, where the top 10% of the population consumes over 30% of the country’s resources and the lowest 10% of the population consumes less than 2% of the resources (a factor of over 15 to 1). It could be argued from this that the US economy might be closer to a “third world” economy than it is to a developed economy. This may also be a factor as to why the United States, given its wealth and level of development performs less well than other countries on the international tests being conducted. An internal review of the performance of US states (such as those undertaken by NAEP tests or by the Goals 2000 project) confirms that the richer states outperform the poorer states on such tests, which further points to the relationship between wealth and performance, one connection that school effectiveness research was trying to overcome. What this data suggests is that context, including language (and culture), wealth and development may be significant features to consider when making a more refined analysis of performance. These issues, although described nationally, can equally be applied locally to individual schools or even students. The school effectiveness research has now developed methods to do this, but many of these have been ignored by the same politicians who were willing to grasp the less discriminating research 20 years ago.

Political Issues What this handbook indicates is that the last 20 years of reform has had only marginal impact on increasing student achievement in many parts of the world. At best we might argue that some schools and some students have profited from the changes but that others are in the same place or are even worse off than they were before the recent reforms, such as No Child Left Behind, were implemented. Codding’s statement of a decade ago continues to ring true as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) demonstrates in the United States. Table 6 indicates the changes in scores over the period covering the implementation of No Child Left Behind. Table 6 indicates there has been around a 5% improvement in reading at Grade 4, virtually no improvement in reading at Grade 8 and in Mathematics, there has been around 9% improvement at Grade 4 and 5% at Grade 8, despite both federal and state resources being targeted towards disadvantaged groups in the USA (Black, Hispanic, Free or Reduced Lunch). When one considers that on international testing such as

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NAEP scores in reading and mathematics, 2000 to 2005 Reading

Mathematics

Grade 4

All students Males Females White Black Hispanic Free/reduced lunch

Grade 8

Grade 4

Grade 8

1998

2005

1998

2005

2000

2005

2000

2005

213 210 215 223 192 192 195

217 214 220 228 199 201 203

261 253 268 268 242 241 245

260 255 266 269 242 245 247

224 225 223 233 203 207 208

237 238 236 246 220 225 225

272 273 271 283 243 252 253

278 278 277 288 254 261 261

TIMMS and PISA, the average US student remains substantially behind students in other countries, it could be argued that No Child Left Behind has not been the solution that was required or promised to the American community. I would suggest that there are two factors at play here that need to be considered in the US context, ones that perhaps do not exist in many other countries. The first of these is population size and the impact that has on educational provision. If we look at the top six countries in reading literacy the PISA study, the USA is around 75 times larger than Finland and New Zealand, around 15 times larger than Australia, 10 times larger than Canada, 6 times larger than Korea and two and a half times larger than Japan. The absolute numbers of students in schools are likely to be of the same proportion. For instance, Australia has around 4 million students in total and the USA has around 65 million. In any given year Australia graduates around 300,000 students and the US graduates around 5 million. If we look at Table 3, we find that there are 9% of American students at level 5, or approximately 450,000 students at the highest level of performance. So the US turns out a group of outstanding students that are one and a half times as large as the total Australian graduating class, about the same as the total graduating class in Canada and four times larger than Finland and New Zealand combined. When we then add this number of world class students (who emerge year after year from the US system) to the level of resources available to them once they graduate, it becomes clear why the US is so dominant in almost every field of human endeavor. However, the down side to this is that 20% of US students are at or below level 1, which means they are virtually illiterate. This figure translates into approximately 13 million students in the United States that continue to struggle in their schooling, and it is this figure that has not improved over time, despite all of the attention given to the problems. This brings us to the second factor that can be considered in this context, namely the structure of the US economy. As mentioned previously, the American wealth distribution more closely resembles a less-developed country than the developed ones. The minimum wage in the USA ($5.15 per hour) has been virtually stagnant (or may have even gone backwards in real terms) for more than 20 years and there are substantial proportions of the community working two or more jobs at the minimum wage in order

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to survive. Recent figures (Eurostat, 2006) indicate that the American minimum wage is approximately 60% of those in Europe and approximately 6 million Americans are at this level of wage and many more are not much better off (or are not identified as being on the minimum wage because they have more than one job). At the other end of the scale the wealthy in the USA are taxed at a rate much lower than many other countries. The top income tax rate in the USA is 35%, but this only cuts in after the individual is earning more than $335,000. The highest income tax rates for individuals in the other countries are either higher in percentage terms or cut in at a much lower level of income. In Finland the top rate is 32.5% but this is for everything over the US equivalent of $76,000. In the USA, this income would draw 28% tax. In Canada the top rate is 29% but this is for everything over the US equivalent of $102,000. In the USA, this income would draw 28% tax. In Japan the top rate is 37% but this is for everything over the US equivalent of $155,000. In the USA, this income would draw 33% tax. In Australia the top rate is 47% and this is for everything over the US equivalent of $74,000. In the USA, this income would draw 28% tax. In Korea the top rate is 38.5% but this is for everything over the US equivalent of $86,000. In the USA, this income would draw 28% tax. In New Zealand the top rate is 40.3% but this is for everything over the US equivalent of $40,000. In the USA, this income would draw 25% tax. Comparatively, the very wealthy in the United States are very well off. These two factors, when taken together suggest that the USA has the resources to do much better than it currently does, but perhaps does not have the political will that other countries do to ensure higher levels of achievement for those at the bottom end of the scale. Much of the reform movement in the United States since No Child Left Behind has come at a time when there are diminishing resources in education. The value systems of other countries, and the need to ensure that many more of the graduates are internationally competitive might create the differences that we see in the international testing activity. In short, other countries can’t afford to have the profile that the United States does and if the United States chose to change its profile of education there might be subsequent pressure for it to change others parts of society too. It would seem that if substantial improvement is to occur there has to be something other than rhetoric that drives it. What this handbook has provided are some pointers as to what some of these things might be.

Learning Improvement Issues Currently, in many countries, learning is driven by the content of the curriculum and the accountability system. This has led, in many cases, both in Western and non-Western countries, to a hierarchical, compliant model of learning. It has been argued that many of the decentralizing activities that have occurred in the past two decades have effectively become a recentralization of the power base. Whoever controls the curriculum (content), the assessment (accountability) and the finances (resource base) controls what happens in schools. We have seen both state (provincial) and national governments taking more control of content and assessment through national curriculum, national standards and national testing and they have maintained their control on resources. In recent times, in many countries where state governments have the major responsibility for schools,

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federal governments have become more interventionist, often tying resources to specific conditions as a mechanism for bending states to their will. We see school superintendents being placed in charge of overseeing compliance to national or state policies, school principals charged with ensuring that these are followed locally and teachers implementing and following a set curriculum and implementing test preparation to ensure that the school is not sanctioned for poor performance. Schools where students have the skills to perform well on the tests have time to implement other types of learning. For schools where students struggle to achieve, education has been reduced to a minimalist set of knowledge based on what will be tested. We have also seen a stagnation of the resource base for schools over the past few years. At the local level it is becoming more and more difficult to make ends meet, largely because far greater levels of resources are being used for the accountability activity at all levels. It could be argued that all of the reform effort on an international front has led to minimal improvement, not because of the paucity of funding, but because of where funding is directed. The educational reform effort in the past decade has seen any additional resources directed at changing structures (larger school districts or other units of organization, changing the relationships between schools and authorities, focus on curriculum issues, particularly literacy and numeracy, leadership development and so on). Comparatively few resources have been directed at changing classrooms, teachers or students, which is the actual site of student learning. Teacher Education has remained largely unchanged despite massive changes in our understandings of how students learn (brain research, multiple intelligences, etc.) and massive changes in the diversity and motivational needs of students. We have seen in this volume (Spinks) a model of funding that starts with the student and is controlled by the people closest to the student (i.e., the school). There is now a substantial body of research that suggests that this might be the way forward, however, shifting resources to the school and classroom in a time of fixed budgets will mean this money has to be saved elsewhere. Victoria, Australia for instance, did this in developing its self-managing school philosophy by slimming down both central and regional offices. Now more than 90% of the total education funding in the state is directed at the school. In comparison, there are many states in the United States where less than 50% of the funding ends up in the school, as districts, bussing, free and reduced lunches and other features that do not exist in other systems, soak up the funds. If student learning is to be the object of what schools do, then Wang, Haertel, and Walberg (1993/1994) provide us with a useful analysis. They analyzed 179 chapters, conducted 91 research syntheses, interviewed 61 educational researchers, and considered 11,000 findings related to student learning. They identified 28 areas grouped into the following 6 categories, listed in order of comparative importance for impacting on student learning: ● ● ● ●

Student Aptitude Classroom Instruction/Climate Context Program Design

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School Organization State/District Characteristics

The following specific characteristics are listed in order of their importance to student learning: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) (14) (15) (16) (17) (18) (19) (20) (21) (22) (23) (24) (25) (26) (27)

Classroom management Metacognitive processes Cognitive processes Home environment/parental support Student/teacher social interactions Social/behavioural attributes Motivational/affective attributes Peer group Quantity of instruction School culture Classroom climate Classroom instruction Curriculum design Academic interactions Classroom assessment Community influences Psychomotor skills Teacher/administrator decision making Parent involvement policy Classroom implementation and support Student demographics Out of class time Program demographics School demographics State level policies School policies District demographics

If we look at the top five elements that contribute to student learning, it becomes obvious that it is what happens in the classroom and the home that is critical to an individual student reaching their potential. What happens at the school, district or system level will have minimal impact. In early 2003, I was asked in a television interview in Michigan, what I thought about No Child Left Behind and my response was “The best you can hope for is zero impact.” My reason for saying this is that a national slogan and its associated policy will have little or no impact on students unless it is targeted in a way that supports students’ individual learning. Although there has been an attempt to do this the best we can say is that some schools are doing better and others are doing worse. Many are much the same as they were prior to the introduction of the law. As the data from the NAEP studies has indicated, my rather pessimistic prediction was pretty accurate.

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The student’s ability to learn, the way in which the classroom is organized and managed and the relationships between student, teacher and parent are the keys to learning. The recent brain research shows that at its most basic, learning is simply a matter of electrical and chemical exchanges in the brain. The signals coming in from our senses trigger certain connections in the brain and it is the pathway of neurons that creates our thinking. Of course, which neurons are used is a product of our previous learning, our environment and our beliefs about the world. From this perspective, what we think is a product of who we are. What the brain research suggests is that the ability to learn is universal and is similar in people from various cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. However, what is learned is the distinguishing feature of success in school. Thus, any failure of the student to achieve is a more a product of there being a mismatch between what is being taught and what is being learned rather than there being some students who “cannot learn.” Mahatma Gandhi once said: No child fails to learn from school. Those who never get in learn that the good things in life are not for them. Those who drop out early learn that they do not deserve the good things in life. The later dropouts learn that the system can be beaten, but not by them. If we are concerned about helping students to learn then there are three major issues for educators. The first is having an appropriate curriculum for a rapidly changing world, to ensure that it is relevant to both the student and the society, the second is to engage every student in the curriculum as without engagement, little is learned and the third is to enable the student to build a positive relationship to learning, and the people who are involved in their learning, so that they can become a lifelong learner. In some respects it is building a positive relationship to learning that is most important, after all, students will spend less than 3% of their lifetime in school. It might also be argued that under the current system of accountability, with structured curriculum based on specific standards and the continuous testing of student knowledge, that building a positive relationship to learning is the thing we spend the least time on in classrooms.

Professional Development Issues The past decade has seen massive changes in education provision at the state, system and school levels through various restructuring activities, but few that have tried to change what happens in classrooms. Yet as Ashenden (1994, p. 13) argues: The greatest single weakness in these reforms is that they stop at the classroom door. The classroom is the student’s workplace. It is, in essence, a nineteenthcentury workplace – much more humane and interesting but recognisably the same place. It is an inefficient and inequitable producer of the old basics and simply incompatible with the new. The research in this handbook indicates that about 40% of the variance in student achievement can be linked to what happens in the classroom and around 10% can be

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linked to the school, which indicates around 50% is linked to the students themselves. Since the student is a product of their personal achievement potential (heredity) and their past experiences (environment) then we need to maximize our understanding of these two things. What we need to consider in future research is moving the locus of effectiveness from the school and classroom to the students themselves, where real achievement is based. Part of that activity is to change the ways in which teachers view students, themselves and the relationship between them. As Fancy pointed out in this volume, 80% of students identified their relationship with their teacher as the critical influence over their learning, whereas 60% of teachers considered home and family background as the major influence. However, when teachers were confronted with the evidence and also supported with professional development they recognized the power they had to make a difference for students. Research emphasizes the importance of focusing on both family and community influences and the effectiveness of teaching practice, however, it may be relatively easier to change teaching practice than it is to change many of the influences in a child’s home or social background. It becomes obvious that there needs to be a substantial review of the theory of teacher education. At the moment it could be argued that teacher education is based on a series of theories that no longer work in the globalized world. The time has come for new theories to be built that take into account the recent theories of learning (e.g., the brain research), recent theories of knowledge transmission and social progress, a review of curriculum, and so on. No longer can teacher education argue that it is preparing educators of the future when it uses the outmoded theories of the past. The recent accountability activity that has influenced schools has also now become an issue for teacher education. With Colleges of Education becoming increasing accountable for their graduates and threats of sanctions against Colleges if the students their graduates teach do not pass the standardized tests being delivered, the focus of the curriculum of teacher education has become increasingly narrowed in the same way that the curriculum of schools has been. With most of the time spent on learning how to deliver the curriculum of schools, there is little time left over for studying the components of the teaching and learning process. The use of science and theory building, experimentalism and testing, and reviewing the outcomes, something proposed as the way in which humans learn by Dewey nearly a 100 years ago, has been replaced by rote learning and memorization, but to what purpose? In the United States, this has led to a “textbookdriven” curriculum in schools which is now being matched at the undergraduate teacher education level. The role of the teacher is increasingly becoming one of delivering the content required and the role of the principal is being reduced to ensuring that teachers do. This leads to teachers becoming more technical in their performance when for many students, artistry is required. Many relationships between teachers and students are reduced to hierarchical, impersonal transactions of knowledge. Looking at ways to change this may be one major step forward in the decades ahead, but may not be as easy as it sounds. As Schlechty (2006, p. 222) points out: … the kinds of innovations required will likely exceed the present social system’s capacity to sustain them. These changes will necessarily be disruptive and will require changes in systems as well as changes in the technical skills and understandings of individual men and women.

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He goes on to suggest that if such innovations do not ultimately change the system, then two alternatives will emerge; they will either be expelled or domesticated. This has been the fate of many previous innovations and the situation becomes clearly one where only radical change that can sustain itself can make any difference in the longer term. Research on radical changes and their impact on student performance becomes a further item of research. Perhaps we can only consider something effective if it is sustained over time.

International Issues There are two major components to this area, first, how we can ensure that there is an appropriate curriculum that students are able to learn and second, how we can make sure that every student on the planet has access to it. The first is an issue of cultural sensitivity and appropriateness, particularly when Western countries are supporting the educational development programs of other countries and the second is the level of responsibility that the west has in supporting countries that are currently struggling to educate their populations. On the first of these, we in the west wonder why many young people fail to see the relevance of what they are taught, why they become difficult to teach and why they drop out. The truth of the matter is that students are not any more or less involved with the curriculum than their parents were. The curriculum of today is perhaps no more or less relevant than it was when their parents went to school, but in their parents’ time people were able to get jobs that didn’t require high qualifications; jobs in service agencies, in factories, on the land. Now those jobs are limited or non-existent and the jobs that are available to those who drop out have very limited economic earning potential. Perhaps it is time for us to refocus our attention as to what the curriculum is intended to do. For someone like me, who has been lucky enough to see education systems in operation all around the world, similar curriculum offerings happen everywhere. Thus the curriculum in Australia is similar to perhaps 90% of the content areas in the curriculum in China, in South Africa, in the USA, the UK and Fiji. Not only is it similar now, but it always has been. Michael Barber in the United Kingdom has argued that if we replaced technology studies in the curriculum of today with classical studies, then the curriculum of 1900 and 2000 would seem almost the same. It would seem to me that perhaps we should consider having a curriculum that, for at least 50% of the time, focuses on what makes us human, that is, the human skills that are common to people no matter where they live. Perhaps 20% of the time the curriculum should focus on what makes us American, or Australian or Chinese, and for 30% of the time focuses on the specific content that is important to us at the time. In other words, the first 50% of the curriculum could be considered the global curriculum, because it would be equally relevant to students, no matter where they lived. This in itself would be a huge savings to many countries that expend much of their resources trying to maintain a curriculum that is relevant. If half of the curriculum was universal and timeless, then reviewing it might occur less often. Twenty per cent of the time would be spent on issues of relevance to us as a nation, our history, our geography, our political systems, which wouldn’t change much over time. Thirty per cent of our time would be spent on the content knowledge that helps us to become employable, that

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prepares us for university, and so on. This content would change as times change, with the introduction of computer studies being the perfect example. Thus we might have to review the content curriculum on a regular basis, the national curriculum perhaps once in a while and the global curriculum hardly ever. Currently, and in the past, schools have taught content, and hoped that the human skills have been developed. What I am proposing here is that we focus on the development of human skills and we use the content to frame this discussion. The second issue is a much broader and politically sensitive concern. How can western societies support countries who are more concerned with access for students not currently being educated, rather than effectiveness of those that are in the system already, and at the same time be sensitive to the cultural differences that exist in many parts of the world? This issue really goes beyond the scope of this book as it moves fairly and squarely into the political realm. However, what we might suggest is that if the money being spent on the war on terror had instead been spent on supporting Education for All, then the outcomes for both the countries that spent the money and the countries where the money was spent may have been much more acceptable.

The Way Forward I want to spend this last section identifying some possible future avenues for school effectiveness and school improvement research that have emerged in my thinking while reading the preceding chapters. I think there are some things that might reframe what we do as researchers, leaders and policy makers in education. It is time to engage in new theory building about education. Almost everything that we do and think today is confined and constrained by the baggage of the past. We are a product of our experiences, but our experiences, individually and collectively, seem to not prepare us as well as we need. Three and a half decades ago Alvin Toffler (1970) identified “future shock” as being the social, emotional and cultural dislocation we feel when change comes too quickly for us to assimilate it. If this was true 35 years ago, imagine what he would say now. What we can say is that there are many issues, social, cultural, financial, technological and environmental, that now impact, not only locally, but globally as well. We are starting to understand the importance of making decisions at various levels, local, national and international yet integrating these decisions, and the issues that need to be considered in making them, across the levels. If we track the history of change in education we could argue that, since it first developed into an organized and sustained human activity a couple of thousand years ago, the focus of education has changed from individual provision (through tutors or masters, from Socrates through to the early forms of education for the children of the wealthy) through local provision (state, county or religious systems of education, which started around the 1870s) to national provision (with federal governments focusing on, national goals, national curriculum and national accountability systems), which is occurring in many parts of the world right now. Hedley Beare’s (2000) metaphors for education suggest that we have moved over this period through the preindustrial age (where education was for the few who were rich and privileged), and the

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post-industrial age (where we saw schools as factories) to the current enterprise-based system of education (where we see schools as businesses). We have moved from the education of the few, to education of the many and now are approaching education for all, at least in most western systems of education. However, if we go beyond simple provision of education to measure the quality or outcomes of these changes, then we can say that we have been successful in providing a high quality education to only a percentage of those that attended. So even though we might be providing an education to everyone, there is one further step to go, to a place where ALL people are educated to HIGH LEVELS OF ACHIEVEMENT. If we are to add to Beare’s metaphors, we might need to move to a “community” metaphor of education, where education is seen as a community experience, where people work together for the betterment of themselves, each other and the community as a whole. To do this the focus must become global. All people must succeed. This challenge has been characterised (Townsend, 1998, p. 248) as: We have conquered the challenge of moving from a quality education system for a few people to having a quality education system for most people. Our challenge now is to move from having a quality education system for most people to having a quality education system for all people. Interestingly enough, to have a global focus, every person on the globe must have the skills and attitudes necessary to take us to the next level of development. Thus to really embrace a global perspective, we must again focus on the individual. The wheel has come a full circle, with the difference this time being the provision of a high quality education for all people rather than just a few. It is clear from many chapters in this book, that reinvigorating our connections with communities (and we might interpret community as including local, national, regional and international) is seen as being a major step forward. Back in the 1970s the community education movement exhorted that we “Think Globally and Act Locally,” but it is now obvious that we can no longer take such a narrow focus. Perhaps the catchcry for twenty-first Century learning will be to “Think and Act both Locally and Globally.” Given this I think there are a number of avenues that might be considered for future research, policy and practice considerations: ●

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Redefining the concept of effectiveness to consider contextual issues that occur at various levels of education; Redefining the measurement of effectiveness to consider broad, rather than narrow, outcomes, based on the reality of people’s experiences of the world; Redefining the structures and implementation of schooling in ways that take into account the complexity of the experience; Redefining the experience of schooling for students based on what we now know about learning, about the impact of context and about the changes brought about by globalization and technology; Redefining teacher education to consider the issues of effectiveness identified above for the professional education and development of teachers and school leaders.

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Redefining the Concept of Effectiveness Given that context is so critical to performance, at the international, national and local levels, perhaps it is time to rethink the definition of what effectiveness means and who it applies to. It may well be that effectiveness might be interpreted differently at different levels, which suggests that we might consider what effectiveness means for school systems (states or even nations), for communities, for schools, for classrooms and for students. At the education system level we might consider the principles expressed by the United Nations’ Education For All (UNESCO, 2006) as being the first step, namely: Goal 1 Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children. Goal 2 Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to, and complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality. Goal 3 Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life-skills programmes. Goal 4 Achieving a 50% improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults. Goal 5 Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls’ full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality. Goal 6 Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills. Although these are goals that were directed towards supporting the provision of education for countries that are less-developed, more developed countries around the world might have difficulty in demonstrating that all six goals are being accomplished. It is clear that it will take more than slogans and accountability regimes for issues of access and equity to be addressed. Perhaps it is now time to hold politicians, systems and authorities accountable and responsible for delivering these goals. Here educational researchers must accept the responsibility they have to ensure not only that their research is valid and honest, but also to ensure that the theories they develop from their data are not taken over for political purposes, as it could be argued that early school effectiveness research has been. Researchers not only have a responsibility to report honestly on research, but to ensure that others do as well and to make it clear when others use their research and theories dishonestly. This involves an acceptance by researchers that they have a responsibility for what they say. An international study that considers what countries do to promote educational achievement, both inside and outside of the education framework, may well shed light on the factors that can deliver high quality education to all (or the vast majority) of citizens within a given country. What

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are the political and social conditions within a country that lead to high achievement and how might these be supported in countries that do not currently have them? It is also clear from the chapters in this volume that the role of “the local” in school effectiveness must also be addressed. Rather than holding schools accountable by themselves, the idea of community effectiveness might be an area for future consideration. Under these circumstances communities would need to be more active in supporting and directing what happens to schools within that community and we are starting to see programs such as the Networked Learning Communities program (which followed Education Action Zones) in the United Kingdom looking at these issues. However, if communities are going to be judged for effectiveness then they are also likely to demand some say in the criteria for judgment. Given the context issues we have identified, community effectiveness cannot be determined solely by test scores or the percentage of students who go on to higher education, because communities need a range of services provided and a range of educational backgrounds for the people delivering those services. We may well see a redefinition of community effectiveness as something like an effective community is one where all students will be studying in a higher education institution, undertaking further formal training or will be employed fulltime within 6 months of leaving school. A definition such as this one provides more options for communities to be judged as being effective and will ensure that the curriculum and other activities offered within schools will enable a range of skills to be developed. This might be seen as a much better set of outcomes for schools in areas where the comprehensive testing regime hasn’t worked and hasn’t improved achievement over the years. How often does a student need to be tested and failed before he or she decides not to bother any more … . “I know what the result will be so why bother trying?” There are some systems of education that have adopted a multiple pathways approach to success in education where attending university or college is not the only “successful outcome” and where students are provided with work skills in practical settings. It is interesting to note that when literacy and numeracy is taught in conjunction with these practical settings, in many cases students actually improve their literacy and numeracy skills because they are linked to real world experiences. School and Classroom effectiveness might still be defined as currently, except with the broader view of “community effectiveness,” the range of subjects and skills being judged might be widened and a much more fine grained analysis of the context in which students work might be used in the assessment. As David Reynolds has argued, the politicians seized on a blunt policy and a blunt instrument that was a product of research two decades ago. The research has moved on but the policy and instrument have not changed. School effectiveness researchers are now much more capable of contextual analyses, but these have not yet been translated into the policy format in many school systems. There is a further responsibility of researchers to ensure that the new methods are used fairly and in ways that promote learning for all and to speak up when the old methods are being used in ways that prevent fine-grained analyses from being conducted. This suggests that researchers have a responsibility to speak to more than other researchers, but to be actively involved in both policy and practice discussions to make sure that the theories being constructed and the policies and practice being developed from them are the best they can be.

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Finally, if effective schools are the product of having many effective classrooms (and teachers) then effective classrooms are also likely to be the product of having many effective students. We may give some consideration as to how we might define an effective student. This is not as easy as it sounds, because an effective student implies something more than simply passing tests, especially if we wish to consider that memorization is not the same as learning. It is possible in the current context of accountability, for us to believe that a “good” student is one that is successful in assessment activity and is compliant to the rules and procedures of the school. Yet many of the people who have shaped the scientific, social, economic and political world we live in were not seen as “successful” students. We may need to consider a broader definition that includes factors other than simply passing the test and obeying the rules.

Redefining the Measurement of Effectiveness In redefining how we measure effectiveness in educational systems, perhaps the best starting point is to consider the skills and attitudes that we want young people to have in our communities in the future. Townsend and Otero (1999) discussed the starting points for what they call a global curriculum and suggested it should be what the curriculum hopes to provide in terms of student needs. They argued that an education charter for the Third Millennium should be based upon four pillars: ●

●

● ●

Education for survival (once the whole curriculum, now the building block for everything else); Understanding our place in the world (how my own particular talents can be developed and used); Understanding community (how I and others are connected); and Understanding our personal responsibility (understanding that being a member of the world community carries responsibilities as well as rights).

These four pillars join to create a new set of critical learning elements, a set of “Third Millennium” skills and attitudes. Townsend and Otero construct a list of elements that might help to form a new “human curriculum” for the future. They are not meant to be all-encompassing because individual schools need to design a program that suits their own circumstances. The four pillars lead to a curriculum that includes not only the content areas being delivered in today’s classrooms but the skills that are required for human beings to operate in a rapidly changing world. The ability to plan, think critically and creatively, work with others and make decisions about your future, be aware and appreciate yourself and others from your own and other cultures, recognize your value and responsibilities as a citizen, become a life-long learner that has a value system, the leadership skills and commitment to build a better life for yourself, your family and the community, both local and global, may be, in the end, of more value to our development as a society than learning trigonometry or when a particular event in history occurred. This is not suggesting that the current curriculum be overturned or thrown out, but that teachers of the specific subject areas should consider how to develop the human skills while teaching their subject areas. For instance, how might an English teacher incorporate “global awareness” or “teamwork” into their classes? How might a physics

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teacher do the same thing? The underlying rationale is that to improve student achievement in standardized tests, we have to spend less time focusing on memorizing for the test and more time focusing on increasing learning by the student. Two different areas of research might emerge from such a consideration. The first would be to conduct research with the goal of constructing a meaningful instrument that would allow teachers, schools and school systems to measure the successful achievement of a set of goals accepted by a school (or the system) as providing a broadly based education for students and the second would be to establish how a broadly based educational program impacts on the narrow standards currently being tested.

Redefining the Structures and Implementation of Schooling The various chapters of this handbook and the research mentioned within them suggest that the closer that educational decision-making comes to the student, the greater the impact those decisions will have on student learning. Yet the last decade has seen much more intervention from national governments than ever before, sometimes by tying funds to specific programs or outcomes. This suggests that what has happened in the past decade at the national level may have negatively impacted on any local improvements that may have been undertaken. It may well be that there have been substantial innovations undertaken at the school level that may have provided the platform for student improvement in a variety of ways but that these were undermined by national decisions that created the wrong sets of conditions for improvements to occur. Decisions that may have had such an impact include the conditions associated with the No Child Left Behind legislation, where the impact of high stakes testing and the associated financial penalties led many school systems to spend most of their time preparing for the test and precious little time preparing students for the lives that most of them would in fact lead. After a very short time many of the US state governments opted out of the No Child Left Behind activity arguing that the cost involved in administering the system and the impact that it had on the students was far higher than what the US government was providing to comply with the system. We might ask the question of what is the point of high stakes testing at Grade 3 or even Grade 8, when students because of their unique characteristics of maturity, the classes they actually took, the days they missed when they may have been absent, or because of different cultural or social backgrounds, will all be at different points on a scale. So what? There is a completely different argument that might be mounted at the end of the schooling, where a variety of agencies may be seen as alternative avenues for people leaving school. Thus the SAT, or standardized high school completion examinations run by various states or systems have the purpose of helping the society (and perhaps the student) to select viable options for their future study or career. What options does the grade three student have after failing one of these tests? They don’t get to leave school and work, they don’t even get an alternative curriculum in many cases. They simply get the knowledge that they are a failure and can’t do what others can. How often does this need to happen, before the student no longer tries? It might be argued that those education systems where high stakes testing has not yet taken hold and those education systems where decisions about what happens in

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schools is made at the school level have made more progress than those that seem to have a hierarchical top-down method of decision-making. The self-managing school model (see Caldwell & Spinks, 1988, 1992, 1998) seems to have the best chance of promoting high levels of achievement, but only if substantial resources and the ability to control the school’s destiny are passed down to it. With support systems such as the Networked Learning Communities in the United Kingdom and a strong focus on leadership, then much can be done. As suggested by Steve Marshall in this handbook, “leadership is a key, vision is a driver, relationships are the glue that binds teams of people together and learning enables them to work innovatively and interdependently.” It is interesting to note that most countries have a series of levels of decision-making about schools with national governments at the top, state (or provincial) governments at the next level, regions, school districts or local authorities at the third level and schools at the fourth level, however, countries vary as to how many of these are actually used and how many of these are used from either strong or weak positions. New Zealand for instance, has nothing between the national government and the schools themselves, so the school has substantial decision-making control, the United Kingdom has the national government, local education authorities and schools, but the power of the local education authorities has been progressively weakened since 1988. Canada has the national government, provincial government, school districts and schools, but the national government has little role in decisions, and Australia has the national government, states, regions and schools, with the federal government trying to become more interventionist but with very little funding that goes to the states to act as a carrot or a stick, so states control what happens and regions are simply support systems for both the state and the school. However, the United States has the federal government, state government and school districts all impacting on schools with various policies and regulations. Given these scenarios, there are two levels of decisions in New Zealand, two powerful and one weak in the UK, two powerful and two weak in Canada and Australia and three powerful and one weak in the USA. However, in the other four countries, the school level is one of the powerful decision-makers, whereas in the USA the school is the weakest decision-making level. However, the impact of these relationships have not yet been researched in any meaningful way to establish exactly what proportion of student variance might be linked to national, state, or district decisions. We know that around 60% of variance is linked to either classroom or school level activity, but the other 40% is unaccounted for. A secondary area of research within this general area could look at the impact of having many different levels of decision-making (e.g., can we judge that New Zealand with two levels – and thus a single strong connection – is more efficient and effective than the United Kingdom, with three levels, and one strong and one weak connection which in turn is more efficient and effective than Canada and Australia, with four levels but with one strong connection and two weak ones and the United States with four levels but two strong and one weak connections?). If we find that most (or perhaps nearly all) of the 40% of the variance in student achievement is associated with either student innate ability, or student family and community background and virtually none of it is associated with anything decided outside of the school, this would be a strong argument for most of the resources, decisions and

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activity to be centered on the school and classroom where the greatest impact can be made. What one must also recognize here is that structural change occurs over time. Perhaps one of the major problems that has occurred in the past two decades has been the desire shown by politicians for “a quick fix.” If sustainable improvement for substantial numbers of students is to be achieved, ideology must be taken out of the question and a sustained and bi-partisan approach must be adopted. Longitudinal research into the impact of sustained approaches by states or nations may help us to establish protocols for long term improvement processes that might be shared with other systems. To do this we need to find systems or countries where sustained improvement has occurred over a period of a decade or more and to establish the process and structural changes that were made that might have led to this improvement. Of course, the difficulty of this in the current climate is that it is easier to mandate something and then blame others for it not happening. The simplistic approach to measuring the effectiveness of schools adopted by governments around the world in the first decade of the twenty-first century suggests that this approach may prevent real improvement from occurring in the near future.

Redefining the Experience of Schooling for Students Michael Barber (1997) talks about the students who are the “disappeared,” the “disaffected” and the “disappointed.” There are some students who, no matter how hard teachers try, seem to be impossible to reach. Some students are identified as “good learners” and others are considered to be “non-learners.” There is no such thing as a non-learner, but there are students who learn things that are different (sometimes in contradiction) to what teachers are teaching. Every day in the classroom, the student is learning, even if it is just a reconfirmation that they don’t want to be in school. Every morning in every school in the world, there are two groups of students who bring different understandings of what their day will be like. For the first group, they are going to a place they enjoy (school) to work with people they like (teachers) to do something of value (learning) that will bear fruit in the future. The second group are going to a place that they hate, to work with people they think hate them, to do something they don’t believe they can do for a future they don’t have. It is pretty clear, which group of students will be successful and which group won’t. The work of Randall Clinch with students who are struggling to succeed at school has been given a high level of national publicity in Australia. Put simply, the activity is aimed at developing a skill-driven process that empowers individuals to integrate their thinking, feeling and acting in order to lead productive and rewarding lives. In Clinch’s words, “the main skill I am endeavouring to develop in young people is the capacity to choose their own thoughts. Clarity of thought leads to peace and inner strength. What they do with this skill is up to them, but they are unlikely to find hope or any sense of future without it” (Clinch, 2001). The underlying assumptions revolve around the use of either habitual or intelligent behavior. Habitual behavior occurs when a person picks up the “vibes” that he senses in the environment, then habitually responds in the same way that he has previously. It is a simple matter of stimulus-response without thought. The stimulus triggers our memories and our imagination, our memories of what happened in the past and our imagination of

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what might (or is likely to) happen in the future, based on that stimulus. The brain research tells us if we respond to a particular stimulus in a particular way, there is a greater tendency to do the same thing the next time that stimulus appears. We become habitually responsive. The emotional response to the stimulus depends on how we see ourselves and the world outside and this can become predominantly positive (optimist) or predominantly negative (pessimist). An optimistic student can deal with or withstand the infrequent negative things that happen, but a pessimistic student sees things as just one more issue sent to trouble them and then seems to be always in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, with intelligent behaviour there has been a thoughtful response to the environment. In this instance, the student has been taught to reinterpret, or reframe, the environment and the subsequent perceptions, emotions and actions, by asking appropriate questions that support and strengthen them, even in situations that might initially be interpreted as threatening. The Clinch process trains teachers and parents to develop intelligent behaviour in their students or children. Clinch argues that all our responses to the external world are determined by our two base level emotions, which he identifies as “love” and “fear.” If we love something we respond in a completely different way than if we fear something. He argues all our important memories are available to use and that questions allow us to access those memories at will. By asking the right questions we can create positive feelings, which are much more likely to elicit positive behavior. But by asking the wrong questions (questions that lead people to think about negative aspects of their lives) we generate the situations that lead to inappropriate behavior. Clinch argues that to make every student a learner we need to develop four positive concepts, “learning,” “teacher,” “school” and “future.” The concept of learning needs to be “the ability to gain knowledge and the ability to do something today I couldn’t do yesterday.” The concept of teacher becomes “someone who facilitates or shares the learning.” The concept of school is that of “a place of learning.” The concept of future is “something that hasn’t happened yet, but I am looking forward to.” Future research into the use of positive questioning by teachers might help us to unlock the key to universal learning.

Redefining Teacher Education The current accountability policies have led to a reshaping of teacher behavior, sometimes to the detriment of learning. There seems to be four different basic components of teacher behavior, based on two different forms of knowledge transmission. The first form of transmission relates to the content being transmitted and the second is the process by which it is transmitted. In terms of content, information can be either offered as specific pieces of knowledge or facts (e.g., two plus two equals four) on the one hand, or larger pieces of information which might be considered as developing concepts (such as the concept of addition) or developing processes (such as a mechanism for performing addition). In terms of the process of transmission, information can be delivered by either telling (providing the knowledge) or asking (seeking to find the knowledge). Together, these create four different methods of distributing information, which all

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teachers use all of the time. However, each individual method leads to a different form of learning activity by the student, as below. If a teacher: ● ● ● ●

tells students to learn facts, it leads to memorization tells students about concepts/processes, it leads to unquestioned beliefs asks students about facts, it leads to knowledge development asks students about concepts/processes, it leads to understanding.

Figure 1 describes a model that identifies four quadrants based on teachers either telling or asking and focusing on either specific information or facts or the development of concepts and processes. We know that all teachers will spend a proportion of their teaching time in each of the four quadrants, however, it may be that spending more time in some quadrants than in others may a impact on the level of learning that the student achieves. An interesting future research project would be to consider this impact. We now know a great deal about learning and how teachers might need to behave to engage students. Increasing student engagement involves teachers increasing their knowledge about how students learn, and we now have many areas of knowledge that help us do that, for example, the various types of intelligence, such as emotional intelligence, (Goleman, 1995), spiritual intelligence (Zohar & Marshall, 2000) and multiple intelligence (Gardner, Kornhaber, & Wake, 1996) and the brain research. We also know that students will learn much better if they have their parents and the community actively supporting them and the schools in which they learn. Increasing student engagement also involves changing our focus from curriculum to people. This refocusing means moving from the current situation where many students are isolated learners, learning the facts until the exam is over and then forgetting them forever, to becoming global self-regulated learners. Through engagement where students are helped to form concepts about the world, and through introspection, where they examine the values implicit in these concepts, they become “global-self regulated learners” (Otero, Chambers, & Sparks, 2000), where instead of needing teachers, the students need someone able to help them construct their learning environment.

Teachers asking

FA Knowing

AC Understanding Concepts/ processes

Facts FT Memorizing

CT Believing

Teachers telling Figure 1.

A model for different types of learning

Increasing student engagement involves teachers taking the time to communicate with young people. We know that effective communication is never easy in any arena of living. Yet we continue to maintain the argument that classrooms of 20–25 can be effective. We still act as though we believe that message sent is message received when it comes to classroom instruction. One of the most important things to remember about human development is that our personal view of the world is completely unique. Our view of the world is filtered by who we are, where we come from and what we believe in. Thus, although we might be looking at the same thing as others are looking at, we will see something different than what they do, and although we might listen to something that is being listened to by others, we will hear something different from them. In the classroom, this means that every time a teacher says something, it is likely that there are 20 or more different perceptions of what has been said. What this suggests is that the focus of teacher education needs to move from the technical to the artistic, to look at the teacher as a facilitator of learning rather than a director of content. Innovative approaches to the development and support of teacher education programs that lead to less reliance on the text and more reliance on being able to read student needs and capabilities and support students to maximize those capabilities need further support. The past decade or so has sought to narrow the role of the teacher to one that simply delivers what others have determined that students need. In a rapidly changing world, we need to return to Dewey’s notion of education becoming an ever widening spiral of connections between past, present and future experiences. To do this, a completely new breed of teachers, perhaps ones that work outside of the place called school, is required.

A Final Word What this handbook has determined is that the education of the world’s children cannot be left to any single group. Education as it is currently constructed has too many connections to a colonial past. As Mahatma Gandhi (http://www.infed.org/thinkers/ et-gand.htm) once said The real difficulty is that people have no idea of what education truly is. We assess the value of education in the same manner as we assess the value of land or of shares in the stock-exchange market. We want to provide only such education as would enable the student to earn more. We hardly give any thought to the improvement of the character of the educated. The girls, we say, do not have to earn; so why should they be educated? As long as such ideas persist there is no hope of our ever knowing the true value of education. Although the education of girls may have improved in some parts of the world, in the last fifty years, can we say the same for the poor, the culturally different or those that are not aligned to the market view of education? Teachers cannot do it by themselves, principals cannot and parents cannot. Even communities in various parts of the world struggle to get it right. However, collectively,

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and I think this handbook demonstrates this, we have many of the answers we need. Educational researchers now have an vital role to play in this process. They have the opportunity now to take education to its next level of development, by using the massive gains that have occurred in human research in the past few decades and to use this data to establish a new theory of education, one that encompasses the planet as being the base for human development. Such a theory is just waiting to be found and accessing it would have profound impact on the next 100 years of development. We have recognized that learning is, if nothing else, a human activity. We start when we are born and we stop when we die. We will do it either with outside support or not. We cannot help but do it because that is the nature of the human being. However, we can do it so much more productively in the company of others and with purpose and direction. What we need is an opportunity to put them all together and see what we have. Education is much too complex to reduce to any single recipe, no matter how palatable that might be. However, we have seen some of the ingredients that will make a difference. The ingredients include people, resources, systems and leadership. We have been given some pointers as to how they can be used. It is possible to achieve both “high excellence” (when all students maximize their potential to learn) and “high equity” (when environmental circumstances do not detract from any child maximizing their potential), as shown by Finland in the OECD PISA studies (2000, 2003). We must establish partnerships and listen to the people who are actively engaged in the implementation of education. We must join together to convince politicians and the wider community that there is a better way, that we have not yet got it right, but that we can get it right, and that the value of getting it right far outweighs the cost of getting it right. We are still confronting, as a global community, issues of inequity, intolerance and indifference to those in need. To overcome these problems we need to consider ways of educating the world community towards sustainable peace, social justice, economic prosperity and environmental stability. Minzey (1981) said “Education reform has been moving the toys around in the toy box, when what we need is a whole new box.” Perhaps now is the time for stepping back and looking at what that box might be.

References Ashenden, Dean (1994) “An odd couple? Social justice. Performance indicators.” A public lecture sponsored by the Victorian State Board of Education, Melbourne, Australia. Barber, M. (1997). The learning game. London: Victor Gollancz. Beare, H. (2000). Creating the future school. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Caldwell, B. J., & Spinks, J. M. (1988). The self-managing school. London: Falmer Press. Caldwell, B. J., & Spinks, J. M. (1992). Leading the self-managing school. London: Falmer Press. Caldwell, B. J., & Spinks, J. M. (1998). Beyond the self-managing school. London: Falmer Press. Clinch, R. (2001). Secret kids’ business. Melbourne: Hawker-Brownlow. Codding, J. (1997). “Designing highly effective programs for successful schools”. A keynote presentation at the Successful Schools Conference, Melbourne, June 3. Eurostat. (2006). “Minimum wages in the EU25: Statutory minimum wages varied by one to eleven across the EU in January 2006”. Available: http://epp.eurostat.cec.eu.int/pls/portal/docs/PAGE/PGP_PRD_CAT_ PREREL/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2006/PGE_CAT_PREREL_YEAR_2006_MONTH_07/313072006-EN-AP2.PDF (downloaded November 24, 2006)

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Gardner, H., Kornhaber, M., & Wake, W. (1996). Intelligence: Multiple perspectives. Fort Worth, TX; Toronto: Harcourt Brace College Publishers. Goleman, D. (1995). Emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books. Minzey, J. D. (1981). “Community education and community schools.” An address at the State College of Victoria, Frankston, Australia. Otero, G. Chambers-Otero, S., & Sparks, R. (2000). Relational learning. Melbourne: Hawker Brownlow. OECD (2000) School factors related to quality and equity – PISA 2000 available from http://www.pisa. oecd.org/document/35/0,2340,en_32252351_32236159_34669667_1_1_1_1,00.html OECD (2003) Learning for tomorrow’s world – first results from PISA 2003 available from http:// www.pisa.oecd.org/document/55/0,2340,en_32252351_32236173_33917303_1_1_1_1,00.html Schlechty, P. (2006). Understanding the normative system. The Jossey-Bass Reader on Educational Leadership. 2nd edition. (Chapter 16). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. Toffler, A. (1970). Future shock. New York: Bantam Books. Townsend, T. (Ed). (1998). “The primary school of the future: Third world or third millennium?” In The primary school in changing times: The Australian Experience. London and New York: Routledge. Townsend, T., & Otero, G. (1999). The global classroom: Engaging students in third millennium schools. Melbourne: Hawker Brownlow. UNESCO. (2006). EFA Global Monitoring Report downloaded on November 26, 2006 from http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID
51465&URL_DO
DO_TOPIC&URL_ SECTION
201.html Wang, M. C., Haertel, G. D., & Walberg, H. J. (1993/1994). “What helps students learn?” Educational Leadership, Winter, 74–79. Zohar, D., & Marshall, I. (2000). SQ: Connecting with our spiritual intelligence. London and New York: Bloomsbury.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Senior Editor: Tony Townsend is Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida. Previously he was an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. He has been President of the Australian Association for Community Education (1986), President of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (1999–2001), and the International Council on Education for Teaching (2003–2006). From 1987 to 1996 he was Regional Director of the International Community Education Association’s Pacific Region. He has been visiting professor at universities in South Africa, Canada, Macau and Michigan. In 2005 he was the Australian Council for Educational Leaders’ Travelling Scholar, presenting to Educational Leaders in eight of Australia’s states and territories. He has been Chair of the Conference Managing Committee for numerous national and international conferences. He has presentations in the areas of school effectiveness and improvement, leadership, community education, policy development and school and community administration in over 30 developed, and developing, countries and this will be his eighth authored or edited book. Regional Editors: Beatrice Avalos – Bevan is currently, the Chilean National Research Coordinator in the IEA Study on Teacher Education (TEDS), based at the Curriculum and Evaluation Unit, Ministry of Education, Chile, and is also professor in the Policy Studies Master’s Programme, University Alberto Hurtado, Chile. Between 1994 and 2003 she was coordinator of programs in the Chilean Ministry of Education directed to the improvement of teachers and teaching in secondary education and teacher education institutions. She has journal and book publications on teacher education and schooling in Chile and Latin America, educational policy in developing countries and gender issues. She has worked and taught in universities in Britain, Canada and Papua New Guinea and has carried out consultancies among other institutions for the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, UNESCO, PREAL, European Community. She has worked in Bangladesh and several Latin American countries on issues related to school improvement, teacher professional development and teacher education. Brian J. Caldwell is Managing Director of the Melbourne-based consultancy Educational Transformations and Professonial Fellow at the University of Melbourne where he 963 T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 963–972. © 2007 Springer.

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served as Dean of Education from 1998 to 2004. He is an associate director of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (UK), supporting its project in International Networking for Educational Transformation (iNet). He is co-author with Jim Spinks of four books on self-managing schools: The Self-Managing School (1988), Leading the Self-Managing School (1992), Beyond the Self-Managing School (1998) and The Student-Focused Self-Managing School (2007). Re-imagining Educational Leadership was published in 2006. He has received the highest awards of the two leading professional associations in Australia: Australian Council for Educational Leaders (Gold Medal) and Australian College of Educators (College Medal). Yin-Cheong Cheng is the President of the Asia-Pacific Educational Research Association (APERA) (www.apera.org). He is also the Head of the Asia-Pacific Centre for Education Leadership and School Quality of the Hong Kong Institute of Education. Previously, he was professor in the Department of Educational Administration and Policy of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Professor Cheng has published 18 academic books and nearly 200 book chapters and academic journal articles internationally in the area of educational management, reform, leadership and paradigm shift. Some of his publications have been translated into Chinese, Hebrew, Korean, Spanish, Czech, Thai and Persian languages. He has also been invited to give nearly 50 keynote/plenary presentations by national and international organizations in different parts of the world. Brahm Fleisch is Associate Professor in the Division of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies in Wits School of Education, Johannesburg, South Africa. His research and teaching interests include education effectiveness/improvement, educational finance, and systemic change. From 1995 to 2000, Professor Fleisch was the director of large urban school district in the Gauteng province. During his time in the public service, he initiated a number of innovative school improvement projects. Professor Fleisch is the author of a number of publications in the areas of educational change, education and the law, school improvement and educational finance. His book, Managing Educational Change: The State and School Reform in South Africa (Heinemann) provides a comprehensive account of educational transformation in South Africa since 1994. He has recently articles and book chapters have focused on the role of districts in school improvement, gender and learner achievement, teacher costs and effective schools, contextual factors associated with school improvement and has recently completing on a four-year multi-method study of accountability and school improvement. As a founding member of the SADC Centre for Education Policy, Planning and Management, Professor Fleisch has worked with education planners and policy makers from Sierra Leone, Malawi, Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland, Lesotho, Mauritius, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Lejf Moos is an Associate Professor of Education and Director of the “Research Programme on Professional Development and Leadership” at The Danish University of Education, Copenhagen, Denmark. He has done research in Denmark as well as international projects in school leadership and professional development and is a member of a number of international networks. He is Vice President of NERA (Nordic Educational Research Association), board member of the EERA (European Research Association) and President of ICSEI (The International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement).

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Louise Stoll is a Past President of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and School Improvement and Visiting Professor at the London Centre for Leadership in Learning at the Institute of Education, University of London, and at the University of Bath where, until June 2003, she was Professor in Education and Director of the Centre for Educational Leadership, Learning and Change. Louise’s work focuses on building capacity for improvement. She has co-directed and been involved in many projects including Creating and Sustaining Effective Professional Learning Communities in England; Effective School Improvement, an 8-European country study; and Improving School Effectiveness in Scotland. Publications include: Professional Learning Communities: Divergence, Depth and Dilemmas (2007) co-edited with Karen Seashore Louis; It’s About Learning (and It’s About Time) with Dean Fink and Lorna Earl (2003); No Quick Fixes: Perspectives on Schools in Difficulty co-edited with Kate Myers (1998); Changing Our Schools with Dean Fink (1996); and School Matters with Peter Mortimore and colleagues (1988). Sam Stringfield is a Distinguished University Scholar and Director of the Nystrand Center for Excellence in Education at the University of Louisville. He is a founding Co-Editor of the Journal of Education for Students Placed At Risk (JESPAR), and is currently serving as the acting chair of the Educational and Psychological Counseling Department. He chairs the Grawemeyer Education Award Committee. Stringfield has co-authored or edited eight books, including Integrating educational systems for successful reform in diverse contexts (2006), Educating At Risk Students (2002), World class schools (recently re-printed in Chinese), and Bold plans for school restructuring (1996). He has authored or co-authored over 120 articles, chapters, and technical reports, and over two dozen grants and contracts that have received funding in excess of $13 million. His research focuses on designs for improving programs within schools, for improving whole schools, for improving systemic supports for schools serving disadvantaged schools, and international comparisons of school effects. Kirsten Ewart Sundell is the Associate Director of the Nystrand Center of Excellence in Education at the University of Louisville. She is also the Managing Editor of JESPAR, and the co-editor or co-author, with Sam Stringfield, of multiple books on career and technical education, at-risk educational issues, the Grawemeyer Award in Education, and equity issues. Her research interests include comprehensive school reform, data use, systemic change, and at-risk and educational equity issues. Wai-ming Tam is Assistant Professor of Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests include school violence, disadvantaged families and students, parent-school-community relations, professional development of teachers and organizational development of schools. He specializes in applying multi-level regression analysis to study community effects and using action science discourse analysis to study defensive routines used by teachers in schools. Nick Taylor has a Masters degree in Geology from Rhodes University and a PhD in Mathematics Education from the University of the Witwatersrand. He taught mathematics and science at high school level for 10 years between 1975 and 1984. He then

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became a subject advisor in Soweto, where he spent 4 years running in-service training courses and providing in-school support to teachers. In 1989 he joined the Education Policy Unit at Wits University, from where he co-ordinated the National Education Policy Investigation (NEPI), under the auspices of the National Education Coordinating Committee. He is CEO of JET Education Services, a non-profit organization involved in project management, research and evaluation of education programmes. His interests include research on schooling and he has coauthored two books on this subject: Getting Learning Right (1999) and Getting Schools Working (2003). Charles Teddlie is the Jo Ellen Levy Yates Distinguished Professor in the College of Education at Louisiana State University. He has been a Co-Principal Investigator on several major research studies including the Louisiana School Effectiveness Study, the International School Effectiveness Research Project, and the ongoing International System for Teacher Observation and Feedback project. Professor Teddlie has over 140 publications, including: The International Handbook of School Effectiveness Research (co-edited with David Reynolds) and the Handbook of Mixed Methods in the Social and Behavioral Sciences (co-edited with Abbas Tashakkori). He has lectured on school effectiveness research and educational research methodology in numerous countries including China and Russia. Chapter Authors: Carrie A. Andrews, Former Teacher, Teacher Leader, Mentor, and recent Ph.D. graduate from UCSB is now working as an educational consultant while raising two active young boys. Her research interests are in the areas of teacher leadership and school development. Azam Azimi is a Biology Teacher in Majlesi High School, Ministry of Education, Tehran Department of Education, District No.15. Her interests include experimenting innovative and effective ways of teaching biology. David Bamford has worked in schools in the United Kingdom and Chile. Currently he is the headmaster of St. Paul’s School in Viña del Mar, Chile. He is a founding member of the Latin American Heads Conference (LAHC) and is its current executive. Hedley Beare is Emeritus Professor at the University of Melbourne. He wrote Creating the Future School (2001) and How we envisage schooling in the 21st century (2006). He was Senior Fulbright Scholar (Oregon and Stanford), Harkness Fellow (Harvard), and President of ICSEI. Gert Biesta is Professor of Educational Theory at the School of Education and Lifelong Learning, University of Exeter, UK. Ira Bogotch is a Professor and Program Leader of the School Leadership Faculty in the Department of Educational Leadership at Florida Atlantic University. He is the Associate Editor of the International Journal of Leadership in Education and serves on the editorial board of Urban Education and Educational Administration Quarterly. Ceri Brown is a Research Officer at the Institute of Education, University of London.

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Janet H. Chrispeels is Professor in Education Studies at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and co-directs the UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership with California State University, San Marcos. Her research interests are in the areas of effective schools, system change, and school/family/community partnerships. Bert Creemers is Professor in Education at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands and currently dean of the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences. His research interest is educational effectiveness at the teaching learning level and the classroom-school interface. Amanda Datnow is an Associate Professor of Education at the USC Rossier School of Education. Her research focuses on the politics and policies of school reform, particularly with regard to the professional lives of educators and issues of equity. Christopher Day is Professor of Education and Co-Director of the Teacher and Leadership Research Centre in The University of Nottingham (T.L.R.C.), UK. Her research centres on school composition effects in primary schools, and in particular the effects of pupil mobility. Rosa Devés is a Professor in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Chile and head of its graduate school. She is Correspondent Member of the Chilean Academy of Sciences and has published extensively in her field. Roberta Devlin-Scherer teaches courses in Instructional Theory and Contemporary Assessment at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. Having been a trainer for the Stallings’ Active Teaching and Learning and Learning to Teach in Inner City Schools programs, she has had an enduring commitment to the study of teacher effectiveness. Emanuela di Gropello is a Senior Economist in the Human Development Department of the World Bank. She has worked extensively in Latin America on the decentralization and financing of education. She published several papers and books, including the latest “Meeting the Challenges of Secondary Education in Latin America and East Asia.” Howard Fancy was the Chief Executive of New Zealand’s Ministry of Education from 1996 to 2006. Before that he was Chief Executive of the Ministry of Commerce and Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. In these roles he led the design and implementation of a range of major reforms. Daming Feng is Associate Professor, East China Normal University and research fellow at the National Institute of Reform and Development for Basic Education. His academic interests include school effectiveness and improvement in disadvantaged schools, cultures in different educational leadership contexts. Ada Freytes Frey currently is a Researcher at the CEIL-PIETTE in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has worked and published jointly with Claudia Jacinto on issues relating to secondary education. Margarita González is Director of Research and Evaluation for the Center for Educational Leadership at the University of California Santa Barbara. She has authored

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several articles and book chapters on district reform, leadership, English learners and family involvement. I˙ smail Güven is Associate Professor of the Faculty of Educational Sciences, Ankara University. His main subject areas are comparative education, history of education and teacher training. Philip Hallinger is Chief Academic Officer of the College of Management, Mahidol University and formerly Professor of Leadership and Organizations at Vanderbilt University. He has written extensively on leadership, leadership development, educational change and reform, and problem-based learning. Stephan Gerhard Huber is Head of the Institute for Management and Economics of Education (IBB) of the Teacher Training University of Central Switzerland (PHZ). Claudia Jacinto is currently coordinator of redEtis (network on education, work and social inclusion) in Latin America; based in Argentina. She is a researcher at IIEP/UNESCO and CONICET-IDES in Argentina. Kerry Kennedy is Acting Dean of the Faculty of Professional and Early Childhood Education at The Hong Kong Institute of Education. His areas of research interest are curriculum policy and theory and civic education. Susan Kochan is employed by the Center for Child Development at the University of Louisiana – Lafayette, where she evaluates school reform implementation. She was previously employed by the Louisiana Department of Education (LDE) as a research analyst with the state school accountability program and as an internal evaluator. Leonidas Kyriakides is Assistant Professor in Educational Research and Evaluation at the University of Cyprus. His main research interests are the development of a dynamic perspective of educational effectiveness, the establishment of differentiated models of educational effectiveness, the evaluation of student progress and teacher effectiveness and the application of effectiveness research to the improvement of educational practice. Susan G. Lasky is an Assistant Professor in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisville. Her areas of specialization are in policy, systemic reform, and school-family partnerships. She has worked in evaluation at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, where she acquired her doctorate, and at the Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University. Ruth Leitch is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she has, until recently, been head of the School, prior to which she headed up the division for the Continuing Professional Development of teachers. Kenneth Leithwood is Professor of Leadership and Policy Studies at OISE/University of Toronto. He has researched and written extensively about education policy as well as the nature, causes and consequences of successful school and district leadership. He is currently engaged in large-scale studies of educational leadership in Canada, the United States and England.

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Shing-On Leung is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, University of Macau. His research interests are educational measurement and Goodness-of-fit of sparse 2**p contingency tables, and latent variables models. Rosalind Levacic is Professor of Economics and Finance of Education at the Institute of Education, University of London. Her research interests are school funding systems, financial and resource management of schools, financial decentralisation and the relationship between school resourcing and student outcomes. Ben Levin is Canada Research Chair in Education Policy and Leadership at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. His career also includes substantial service in government, most recently as Deputy Minister of Education for the Province of Ontario. Jenny Lewis is CEO of the Australian Council for Educational Leaders (ACEL) and formerly principal of Noumea Primary School, recognised internationally for its innovative approach to professional learning and pedagogical reform. She is a board member of Teaching Australia. Patricia López currently heads the National Programme for Improvement of Science Teaching at the Chilean Ministry of Education. She also teaches at the Alberto Hurtado University in Santiago, Chile. Ruth Lupton is a Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Education, University of London. Her research centres on issues of poverty, place and education. John MacBeath is Professor of Educational Leadership at the Faculty of Education in Cambridge and President of the International Congress on School Effectiveness and Improvement. His research interests are in leadership, school self-evaluation and school improvement. Steve Marshall is Director, Department for Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills, Welsh Assembly Government. Steve, as the nation’s senior education official, is responsible for leading in all aspects of education and training in Wales. When he wrote the chapter, he was the Chief Executive of the South Australian Department of Education and Children’s Services. Robert J. Marzano is Senior Scholar at Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning. His duties include translating research into programs and practices as well as working with schools and districts involved in school reform. Alain Mingat is a Professor at the University of Burgundy and a researcher at the Economics of Education Research Institute (Institut de recherche sur lˆaéconomie de lˆaéducation – IREDU). He also consults for the World Bank. Luis Mirón is Professor of Social Theory and Educational Policy in the Department of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois, USA. Magdalena Mo-Ching Mok is Professor and Director of Centre for Assessment Research and Development at The Hong Kong Institute of Education. Professor Mok has published extensively in the areas of educational measurement, assessment, and self-directed learning.

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Phillip Moore is Associate Vice President (Curriculum and Quality Assurance) at The Hong Kong Institute of Education. His areas of research interest are educational psychology especially text processing (with visuals), motivational and strategic aspects of human learning, strategy training for more effective learning, and learning and instruction in industrial contexts. Bill Mulford is a Professor and Director of the Leadership for Learning Research Group at the University of Tasmania, specialising in educational leadership, effective implementation of educational change, and school effectiveness and improvement. He is an ACEL Gold Medallist. Joseph Murphy is Associate Dean and Professor of Education at Peabody College of Education of Vanderbilt University. He has also been a faculty member at the University of Illinois and The Ohio State University, where he was the William Ray Flesher, Professor of Education. F. Javier Murillo is an Educational Researcher and Associate Professor of Research Methods of Education at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain). He is the General Coordinator of the Laboratory for Assessment of Quality of Education in the Latin America and Caribbean Region of UNESCO and is the Coordinator of the Iberoamerican School Effectiveness and Improvement Network (RINACE). Hui-Ling Pan is Professor, Graduate Institute of Educational Administration and Policy and Department of Education, Taiwan Normal University. She was the Director of the Center for Educational Research, and now is the Deputy Director of the Center for Research of Educational Evaluation and Development. Her research interests include school effectiveness and improvement, educational research and evaluation, gender and education. Helen Symeonakis Paphitis is Principal of Salisbury High School in Adelaide. She was a member of the National Review Committee for Teachers and Teaching Education and is a board member of the Carrick Institute of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. Haiyan Qian is Ph.D. Candidate of the Department of Educational Administration and Policy at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Gerry Reezigt is an Educational Researcher at the Inspectorate of Education in the Netherlands. Her research interests are educational effectiveness, special needs education and school safety. David Reynolds is Professor of Education at the University of Plymouth and Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Exeter. He has published widely in the areas of school effectiveness, school improvement, teacher effectiveness and more recently learning problems, and founded with Bert Creemers, the journal School Effectiveness and School Improvement. Ken Rowe is the Director of the Learning Processes and Contexts Research Program at the Australian Council for Educational Research. He has a deep interest in teacher

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and school effectiveness, the overlap between education and health, and multilevel structural equation modelling. Larry Sackney is a Professor of Educational Administration at the University of Saskatchewan. His research interests include school effectiveness, learning communities, knowledge management, school reform, system restructuring, and school improvement. Pam Sammons a Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham and part of the Teacher and Leadership Research Centre. Her research over the last 25 years has focused on educational effectiveness and improvement, leadership and equity in education including pre-school influences, as well as primary and secondary school studies. Gene Schaffer is a Professor in the Department of Education at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. His interests include teacher and school effectiveness as well as international education. Peter Wen-Jing Shan is Professor and Dean, Faculty of Education, University of Macau. Professor Shan has published extensively in fields of moral education, curriculum and instruction, and comparative education. He has supervised over 90 doctoral and master students since 1993. Halia Silins is Associate Professor in the School of Education at the Flinders University of South Australia. She is widely published in the areas of leadership and organizational learning with extensive experience as an educator and staff developer. Jim M. Spinks is Co-director with Marilyn Spinks of All Across the Line, a consultancy that specialises in aligning the resourcing of schools with the nature, needs and aspirations of students to optimise outcomes through personalising learning. They are former school principals. Martin Thrupp is Professor of Education at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. His research interests include developing more socially and politically contextualised approaches to school reform, the influence of social class on school processes and the impact of market, managerial and performative education policies. Charles Ungerleider, a Professor of the sociology at The University of British Columbia and Director of Research and Knowledge Mobilization for the Canadian Council on Learning, served as Deputy Minister of Education in British Columbia. Ami Volansky is Researcher and Lecturer from Tel Aviv University, School of Education. He specializes in centralization and decentralization processes in education systems, education policy with emphasis on higher education, school leadership and school effectiveness. He is a former Deputy Director General at the Ministry of Education for Policy Planning and Assessment. Allan Walker is Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Administration and Policy at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is also Associate Director of the Hong Kong Centre for the Development of Educational Leadership (http://www3. fed.cuhk.edu.hk/ELDevNet).

INDEX

605, 608, 617, 618, 620, 635, 636, 638, 650, 651, 652, 653, 654, 655, 712, 715, 719, 720, 727, 728, 729, 731, 732, 735, 742, 744, 752, 755, 758, 767, 768, 770, 773, 774, 775, 776, 777, 778, 790, 799, 815, 835, 843, 861, 874, 877, 887, 901, 903, 909, 913, 918, 919, 921, 922, 929, 939, 944, 948, 952, 953, 955, 956 Achievement orientation 233 Action research 104, 105, 178, 210, 272, 283, 329, 709, 710, 716, 738, 910, 912 Activism 104, 105 Activity systems 99 Adding value 14, 33, 62, 454, 467 Additivity 97 Adequate yearly progress (AYP) 152, 494, 495, 496, 563, 730 Advisory committees 233 Affective outcomes 46 Alberta 174, 176, 414, 415, 416, 418, 422 Alberta’s Initiative for School Improvement (AISI) 175 Alignment 11, 22, 318–319, 453, 454, 544, 736, 743, 789, 906, 924 Alternative schools 418, 788 American Psychological Association 839, 845 Anderson G. L. 282, 588 Annual Measurable Objectives (AMOs) 563 Apartheid 347, 523, 524, 531 Appropriation 22, 96, 860, 861, 862 Area characteristics 119 Argentina 22, 78, 80, 84, 184, 188, 189, 192, 505, 506, 513, 514, 859, 866, 869, 897 Asia 5, 6, 8, 10, 18, 19, 20, 21, 104, 243, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252,

Academic achievement 260, 330, 562, 605, 638, 655, 815 Academic Performance Index 788, 790 Accelerated Schools 95, 105, 150, 281 Accountable/accountability 6, 11, 14, 15, 18, 20, 37, 44, 69, 71, 96, 100, 118, 147, 148, 149, 152, 167, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 228, 247, 248, 251, 255, 256, 257, 271, 281, 291, 310, 313, 316, 334, 346, 357, 364, 370, 406, 411, 413, 418, 419, 420, 474, 483, 485, 488, 491, 492, 493, 494, 495, 496, 498, 503, 504, 505, 506, 507, 509, 510, 511, 513, 514, 515, 516, 517, 525, 548, 553, 561, 562, 563, 564, 565, 568, 569, 570, 579, 580, 585, 586, 627, 628, 660, 661, 662, 663, 664, 665, 671, 684, 709, 712, 729, 730, 732, 739, 740, 742, 756, 759, 760, 773, 789, 802, 831, 879, 882, 888, 904, 909, 913, 921, 939, 944, 945, 947, 948, 950, 952, 953, 954, 958 Achievement 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 24, 32, 34, 36, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 51, 57, 62, 67, 70, 71, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 96, 97, 101, 105, 122, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 144, 157, 158, 167, 168, 169, 170, 173, 174, 177, 178, 180, 184, 186, 188, 192, 209, 215, 216, 225, 226, 227, 230, 231, 232, 233, 247, 251, 269, 271, 274, 277, 281, 295, 297, 313, 318, 319, 325, 326, 328, 329, 330, 331, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 342, 344, 346, 348, 356, 357, 365, 416, 419, 423, 440, 451, 453, 456, 457, 460, 461, 465, 467, 471, 472, 474, 476, 478, 479, 480, 487, 492, 493, 494, 495, 496, 513, 543, 544, 549, 550, 552, 554, 562, 598, 599, 601, 603,

973

974

Index

253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 308, 659, 660, 670, 751, 752, 754, 757, 758, 759, 760, 761, 763, 764, 765, 807, 810, 816, 821, 839, 840, 841, 856 Asia-Pacific 19, 20, 660, 670, 751, 752, 754, 757, 758, 759, 760, 764, 765, 839, 840, 841 Asian Development Bank 810, 811, 812, 817 Asian financial crisis 813 Asian region 660 Assessment 23, 37, 39, 46, 48, 51, 78, 79, 97, 149, 170, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 189, 192, 197, 247, 251, 260, 261, 262, 263, 328, 331, 332, 333, 354, 356, 359, 360, 365, 367, 369, 381, 386, 387, 404, 406, 420, 422, 437, 440, 445, 472, 488, 492, 493, 510, 511, 526, 529, 533, 535, 601, 609, 626, 661, 708, 714, 715, 716, 718, 719, 720, 729, 740, 744, 754, 755, 763, 770, 771, 775, 789, 801, 814, 815, 817, 820, 834, 842, 872, 875, 879, 887, 888, 898, 899, 906, 909, 923, 924, 928, 940, 944, 953, 954 for learning 170, 331, 422, 816 of learning 331 methods 37, 381, 763 Attainment levels 65, 208, 216, 463 Attendance 24, 63, 67, 113, 224, 351, 367, 372, 418, 463, 464, 477, 491, 513, 515, 563, 651, 798, 867, 880, 899, 900, 918, 923, 925 Attitude change 63 Attitudes to learning 397 Attrition 620, 621, 624 Australia 7, 10, 11, 23, 29, 30, 31, 37, 40, 225, 245, 246, 254, 274, 307, 308, 309, 310, 318, 319, 320, 342, 451, 452, 453, 454, 455, 457, 472, 473, 474, 479, 542, 543, 544, 547, 552, 553, 554, 555, 580, 653, 655, 771, 778, 780, 905, 909, 917, 919, 920, 930, 938, 940, 943, 944, 945, 949, 956, 957 Australian Council for Educational Research 309, 655 Australian Education Council 29 Australian Schools Commission 309, 310 Autonomy 18, 84, 96, 146, 197, 216, 227, 257, 258, 271, 272, 274, 275, 276, 283,

327, 342, 352, 353, 356, 405, 406, 415, 420, 472, 508, 509, 513, 516, 517, 585, 586, 589, 591, 623, 625, 627, 638, 684, 685, 688, 689, 691, 692, 708, 759 norm 689 Baby boom 27, 28 Background factors 58, 61, 209, 768, 770 Basic education 80, 82, 188, 189, 192, 246, 346, 365, 367, 368, 369, 370, 376, 377, 380, 381, 952 Basic Education Program 370, 372, 377 Basic skills 44, 47, 368, 475, 476, 769 Behavior 3, 43, 44, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 113, 122, 123, 196, 209, 224, 232, 233, 464, 476, 477, 478, 548, 550, 553, 554, 583, 585, 711, 712, 714, 720, 723, 827, 835, 903, 906, 958 Belarus 228, 229 Belgium 228, 229, 233, 234, 235, 720, 826 Beliefs 22, 48, 64, 65, 114, 261, 272, 296, 299, 330, 333, 334, 335, 336, 382, 553, 566, 567, 569, 570, 589, 610, 611, 617, 618, 669, 682, 692, 696, 707, 708, 712, 723, 738, 777, 845, 853, 860, 891, 904, 907, 908, 909, 919, 947, 959 Bellfield Primary School 317 Benchmarking 246, 256, 317, 779, 874 assessments 97 Benin 432 Best Evidence Syntheses (BES) 331, 332 Best practice 112, 171, 175, 318, 455, 459, 478, 482, 487, 547, 549, 551, 714, 939 Big Five model 44 Bilingual education 82, 83, 188, 567 Black box 13, 71, 96, 97, 98, 99, 106, 397, 533 Blasé, J. 281, 282, 588, 620, 700 Blueprint for Government Schools 320, 451, 452 Bolivia 80, 82, 83, 184, 186, 187, 188, 193, 195, 507, 508, 514, 515, 516, 517, 897, 899 Bottom-up approaches 171, 319, 581, 636, 654 Brazil 78, 79, 80, 81, 104, 184, 191, 192, 194, 195, 196, 506, 508, 513, 514, 515, 897, 899, 942

Index British Columbia 174, 178, 415, 420, 422, 423 Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka 485, 562 Brunei 752, 808 Budget reform 541 Building capacity 9, 171, 175, 178, 411, 471, 554 Bullying 32, 63, 326, 755 Burnout 17, 616, 619, 620, 627 Burundi 428, 439 Business community 233, 898 Cameroon 430, 432, 443 Canada 13, 132, 167, 168, 169, 172, 173, 174, 176, 178, 179, 274, 308, 411, 412, 413, 414, 415, 416, 417, 418, 419, 420, 422, 423, 472, 473, 489, 616, 940, 943, 944, 956 Capacity 14, 22, 23, 35, 37, 49, 62, 65, 82, 118, 133, 170, 171, 172, 176, 177, 178, 179, 191, 212, 214, 215, 272, 276, 278, 310, 312, 315, 317, 318, 341, 342, 346, 348, 352, 353, 367, 369, 384, 388, 401, 426, 427, 428, 442, 443, 447, 452, 467, 473, 477, 479, 491, 493, 513, 514, 515, 533, 535, 542, 547, 549, 550, 552, 553, 554, 561, 563, 564, 565, 568, 569, 571, 589, 616, 617, 656, 659, 663, 664, 683, 694, 695, 715, 744, 768, 772, 780, 781, 789, 813, 818, 820, 826, 839, 842, 854, 856, 863, 866, 888, 889, 891 Capacity building 23, 65, 171, 179, 212, 215, 428, 536, 554, 555, 564, 565, 567, 570, 780, 781, 889 Care group 918, 923 Caribbean 79, 184, 185 Case studies 34 Central African Republic 428 Chad 428, 432, 437, 438 Challenging goals and effective feedback 601 Change agents 135, 141, 261, 581, 682, 711, 717 Change Capacity Decade 283 Charter schools 37, 174, 418, 495, 933 Chicago School 33 Childhood, early 82, 83, 253, 326, 346, 420, 543, 952

975

Chile 22, 23, 37, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 84, 184, 185, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 196, 198, 318, 506, 510, 513, 514, 515, 517, 518, 859, 869, 887, 889, 897, 898, 901 China 11, 18, 19, 33, 37, 246, 247, 248, 252, 253, 254, 256, 257, 258, 259, 271, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 661, 665, 667, 668, 752, 754, 758, 763, 807, 813, 817, 818, 819, 841, 949 Choice 13, 61, 96, 99, 101, 152, 188, 189, 191, 208, 367, 412, 415, 416, 417, 419, 425, 433, 434, 444, 445, 454, 493, 509, 512, 562, 655, 727, 741, 775, 814, 832, 853, 923, 926, 927, 936 and diversity 209 Citizenship 189, 253, 254, 386, 488, 550, 587, 720, 918 education 812, 813 City Academies 209 Civility norm 691 Class size 113, 224, 395, 397, 398, 400, 403–404, 405, 415, 436–437, 615, 768, 775, 779 Class structures 28 Classroom curriculum design 604 Classroom instruction 119, 234, 625, 629, 656, 731, 960 Classroom management 18, 168, 600, 603–604, 723 Climate 9, 17, 34, 38, 51, 60, 68, 82, 83, 84, 138, 139, 157, 168, 169, 175, 179, 198, 227, 230, 232, 233, 351, 360, 365, 396, 416, 457, 460, 474, 488, 498, 557, 558, 598, 625, 629, 653, 654, 656, 686, 769, 865, 866, 867, 921, 924, 957 Club of the Young Science Researcher 388 Cognitive outcomes 46, 99, 100, 494, 718 Coleman, J. S. 9, 15, 32, 69, 77, 93, 137, 138, 139, 140, 223, 260, 486, 487, 529, 728, 729, 730, 768, 769, 771, 789, 799 Report 15, 32, 77, 136, 137, 138, 485, 486, 488, 498, 727 Collaborative inquiry 709, 722 Collective responsibility 215, 328, 465, 551, 569 Collective teacher efficacy 618 Collegiality 550, 602

976

Index

Colombia 78, 80, 193, 195, 196, 198, 507, 508, 510, 514, 515, 516, 517, 897, 899 Commitment 17, 24, 59, 60, 77, 84, 134, 136, 171, 172, 178, 179, 191, 197, 216, 300, 356, 358, 359, 377, 388, 421, 547, 551, 583, 588, 616, 617, 619, 623, 625, 626, 627, 629, 631, 653, 669, 670, 692, 694, 707, 710, 711, 712, 714, 715, 717, 719, 720, 721, 723, 731, 735, 780, 812, 813, 862, 875, 879, 894, 898, 899, 900, 906, 907, 912, 918, 922, 925, 927, 954 Communication 17, 66, 98, 99, 188, 192, 296, 327, 328, 336, 366, 370, 386, 389, 390, 475, 545, 547, 553, 561, 564, 567, 571, 579, 583, 584, 587, 588, 590, 601, 602, 605, 610, 626, 663, 736, 764, 779, 797, 799, 802, 862, 865, 874, 877, 883, 906, 937, 938, 960 Community empowerment 352 focus 637, 639, 646 involvement 248, 251, 255, 256, 309, 310, 601, 652, 661, 745, 927 of leaders 172, 585, 588, 906 of learners 171, 177, 588 participation 195, 256, 508, 714 partnership 255 of practice 99 of professional practice 681 support 23, 887, 890, 930 Community Managed Schools Program 194 Compensation deficit 97 Competence-based curriculum 271 Competition 27, 33, 168, 248, 249, 253, 254, 275, 389, 411, 418, 428, 430, 514, 628, 751, 755, 758, 759, 761, 765, 818, 925 Complexity 16, 24, 51, 66, 114, 256, 258, 262, 263, 510, 579, 580, 592, 597, 623, 638, 710, 718, 721, 723, 752, 758, 830, 863, 867, 951 theory 666 Compliance norm 688 Comprehensive 6, 13, 17, 21, 51, 57, 71, 97, 115, 143, 176, 177, 189, 227, 232, 234, 250, 252, 254, 260, 262, 263, 274, 310, 348, 359, 360, 387, 452, 473, 475, 489, 491, 492, 514, 526, 554, 586, 604,

616, 662, 666, 681, 710, 723, 732, 735, 741, 744, 754, 756, 761, 764, 771, 779, 827, 830, 832, 835, 872, 913, 952, 953 Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) 9, 131, 141, 143, 148, 150–151, 153, 562, 566, 567 Comprehensive School Reform Demonstration (CSRD) 732 Compulsory education 12, 83, 253, 270, 289, 290, 303, 364, 367, 368, 371, 376, 377, 752, 819, 862 Compulsory Education Act 289 Compulsory Education Law 272, 273 Confidence 11, 22, 132, 211, 215, 282, 294, 295, 296, 298, 307, 328, 329, 332, 333, 352, 416, 477, 496, 529, 611, 629, 656, 714, 730, 739, 756, 844, 850, 852, 854, 856, 872, 875, 895, 919, 928, 930 Conflict role 698 Congo 432 Conservatism norm 691 Constructivist 187, 584, 590, 763 paradigm 839 Consumers 33, 207, 272, 277, 418, 474 Content knowledge 174, 533, 558, 713, 735, 794, 893, 949 Content-oriented curriculum 271 Context factors 831 Contextualization agenda 111, 112, 113, 114, 121, 123 research 118 Contextualized multiple intelligence (CMI) 261, 262 Contingency 97, 115, 116, 227, 655 Continuing Professional Development (CPD) 19, 84, 191, 667, 668, 669, 707, 708, 709, 710, 711, 712, 713, 714, 715, 716, 717, 718, 719, 720, 721, 722, 723, 755, 867, 896 Continuous improvement 23, 24, 176, 178, 179, 543, 544, 549, 554, 555, 581, 856, 910, 919, 924 Cooperation 23, 24, 281, 369, 382, 383, 387, 479, 548, 583, 585, 586, 589, 590, 591, 603, 610, 779, 800, 801, 888, 897, 898, 899 Cooperative Research Project 313, 314, 317 Coordination meetings 860, 861 Costa Rica 192, 505

Index Cost-effectiveness 343, 764 Council for Fundamental Change in Education 380 Council for National Schools 380 Council of Chief State School Officers 491, 729 Council of Ministers of Education 173, 419 Creativity 100, 357, 358, 390, 551, 582, 755, 756, 813, 817, 820, 872, 875, 881, 888 Creemers, B. P. M. 4, 10, 21, 43, 47, 50, 51, 111, 116, 131, 132, 148, 169, 223, 224, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 234, 235, 236, 237, 475, 558, 580, 711, 769, 771, 775, 825, 826, 827, 831, 936, 937 Critical friend 7, 60, 64, 68, 69 Critical Race Theorists 104 Critical reflection 587, 888 Cuba 184, 192, 197 Cultural context 10, 273, 280, 301, 302, 344, 661 identity 380, 758, 759, 765 norms 661, 664 perspective 270 sensitivity 280, 670, 949 Culturally diverse classrooms 43 Culture, of inquiry 552 Curriculum 3, 11, 12, 13, 18, 23, 39, 43, 48, 49, 62, 67, 96, 120, 133, 139, 146, 174, 177, 186, 187, 188, 190, 191, 193, 197, 198, 214, 215, 216, 226, 228, 233, 248, 261, 262, 263, 270, 277, 282, 297, 313, 315, 327, 329, 331, 332, 333, 334, 335, 336, 337, 344, 345, 346, 366, 369, 370, 373, 374, 377, 381, 390, 406, 407, 411, 419, 420, 421, 452, 453, 454, 461, 465, 472, 476, 478, 483, 524, 526, 528, 533, 534, 536, 543, 544, 549, 552, 565, 570, 598, 600, 601, 627, 638, 660, 661, 664, 671, 687, 689, 692, 708, 719, 720, 729, 738, 741, 742, 744, 754, 755, 756, 757, 770, 774, 775, 778, 789, 791, 794, 827, 841, 860, 874, 876, 879, 884, 887, 888, 890, 891, 897, 909, 910, 918, 919, 925, 926, 928, 944, 945, 947, 948, 949, 950, 953, 954, 955, 959 delivery 29, 326, 328, 527 design 246, 275, 276, 462, 603, 604 designers 275

977

development 10, 30, 169, 189, 247, 260, 271, 272, 275, 276, 278, 279, 291, 371, 376, 771, 815, 816 frameworks 36, 274, 278 implementers 275 reform 21, 27, 132, 134, 229, 274, 275, 276, 277, 752, 758, 759, 807, 810, 811, 812, 813, 814, 815, 817, 818, 820, 842, 922, 933 Curriculum Development Corporation 30 Curriculum-specific tests 139 Cyprus 46, 49, 228, 229, 234, 235 Czech Republic 405, 406 Dakar Framework 386 Decentralization 15, 187, 194, 200, 229, 235, 251, 257, 272, 273, 307, 309, 312, 313, 316, 319, 321, 336, 345, 352, 353, 358, 365, 503, 504, 505, 506, 507, 509, 510, 511, 513, 514, 516, 517, 518, 580, 661, 663, 665, 683, 759, 763 Decentralization and school-based management 257–258 Decision-making 20, 77, 82, 87, 102, 146, 186, 213, 224, 271, 272, 273, 277, 307, 309, 310, 313, 321, 327, 334, 352, 353, 369, 406, 513, 516, 517, 545, 552, 563, 565, 586, 588, 654 autonomy 503, 504, 517 Decontextualization 635 Deep learning 179, 553 Deficit perspective 113 Democratic awareness 100 Democratic citizenship 586 Democratic leadership 585–588 Democratic schools 586, 587 Department for Education and Skills (DfES) 118, 208, 213, 214, 452, 716 Department of Education and Children’s Services 451, 542, 543, 544, 545, 547, 548, 549, 550, 552, 553, 554, 555, 917 Deregulation 270, 271, 274, 277, 816 Development planning 59, 60, 64, 65, 66, 260, 478 Devolution 95, 207, 307, 309, 310, 406, 708 Different learning needs 41 Differentiated effectiveness 42, 50, 51, 52, 234 Dinaledi II project 528, 532–533, 535, 536

978

Index

Direct effects 157, 230, 315, 474, 651 Direct instruction 47, 732 Disaggregate data 97 Disparity, of outcomes 452 Dissemination Efforts Supporting School Improvement (DESSI) 136, 151, 153 Distributed leadership 18, 95, 301, 302, 581, 584, 637, 638, 646, 650, 653, 655, 664, 682, 731 Diverse needs 247, 251, 254, 259, 669 Diversity 5, 14, 21, 39, 81, 118, 153, 172, 188, 217, 270, 309, 310, 330, 332, 336, 355, 418, 438, 469, 510, 656, 662, 664, 752, 757, 807, 817, 842, 896, 936, 945 and choice 209 Doctors without Borders 107 Drop out 28, 32, 77, 565, 652, 865, 947, 949 Dungan, S. 281, 588 Early childhood education 253, 541 Early intervention 67, 177, 179 Ecology of schooling 169 Economic contexts 167, 715, 810 Economic development 184, 252, 370, 426, 427, 432, 445, 542, 752, 760 Economic instrumentalism 21, 817, 820 Economic productivity 662 Ecuador 82, 83, 196, 197 Edmonds, R. 4, 5, 9, 33, 34, 93, 105, 137, 138, 140, 141, 145, 155, 158, 168, 223, 224, 487, 580, 716, 717, 728, 730, 769, 776, 789, 825 Edmonton Public School District 418 Educated person 102 Education, purpose of 8, 98, 100 Education Action Zone (EAZ) 525, 526 Education and Manpower Bureau 260, 669, 754, 939 Education Basic Law 272, 273 Education Commission 257, 755, 815, 816, 842 Education enterprise 15, 28 Education For All (EFA) 300, 342, 385, 386–387, 390, 429, 950, 952 Education Index 807, 808 Education Key Stages 207–208 Education Maintenance Allowance 317 Education production function 13, 395, 396, 397, 399, 400, 403, 404, 405

Education quality 84, 247, 256, 257, 259, 376 Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) 176 Education Reform Act 313 Education Reform Law 187 Education Review Office (ERO) 327, 328, 329, 331, 334 Education spending 198, 208, 407, 413, 414, 415, 416 Education vouchers 759 Educational changes 136, 169, 170, 171, 231, 249, 252, 259, 270, 271, 283, 416, 460, 826 Educational decision-making, xiii Educational Development Index (EDI) 184 Educational effectiveness, generic models 42 Educational Effectiveness Research (EER) 41, 42, 45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 223, 234 Educational goals 22, 93, 251, 381, 582, 584, 585, 587, 590, 831, 832 Educational leadership 157, 225, 229, 233, 235, 255, 259, 260, 282, 319, 555, 569, 580, 582, 583, 631, 665, 769, 828, 928 Educational outcomes 33, 41, 99, 151, 169, 225, 234, 258, 395, 411, 419, 438, 474, 510, 549, 655, 768, 772, 775, 780 Educational policy 5, 52, 227, 228, 230, 233, 235, 352, 412, 419, 423, 436, 437, 445, 446, 560, 561, 780, 863, 865 domains 560 Educational processes 9, 106, 137, 139, 217, 473, 506, 508, 516, 517, 583, 584, 592, 654, 732 Educational products 9, 137, 138 Educational provision 12, 27, 71, 807, 820, 885, 943 Educational reform 16, 70, 93, 134, 149, 183, 228, 229, 247, 259, 261, 262, 272, 451, 452, 542, 557, 560, 566, 569, 570, 571, 608, 615, 617, 655, 662, 860, 945 Educational situations, understanding of 99 Educational standards 207, 360, 755, 922 EDUCO program 194, 508, 509 Effective for what 8, 93, 97, 99, 100, 106 Effective for whom 8, 93, 97, 106 The Effective Resource Allocation in Schools Project (ERASP) 310, 319 Effective school, key characteristics 208

Index Effective School Improvement Project (ESI) 21, 229, 825, 826, 827, 828, 830, 831, 833, 835 Effective school practices 557 Effective Schools for the 21st Century (ES21) 733 Effective Schools Reform Initiative 789, 791 Effective schools research 3, 137, 140, 141, 142, 144, 148, 154, 155, 168–169, 173, 226, 487, 557, 788 Effective teaching 42, 43, 44, 47, 51, 98, 99, 141, 208, 230, 330, 332, 333, 335, 336, 337, 436, 476, 526, 603, 620, 710, 731, 796 Effectiveness 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 33, 35, 36, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 86, 87, 93, 95, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 105, 106, 114, 115, 116, 137, 145, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 168, 170, 171, 173, 183, 207, 210, 211, 212, 213, 215, 217, 223, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 234, 235, 236, 237, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 251, 253, 257, 259, 262, 263, 269, 270, 271, 274, 287, 288, 289, 295, 299, 300, 307, 312, 314, 316, 318, 319, 321, 325, 331, 332, 333, 335, 341, 342, 343, 346, 356, 358, 359, 360, 361, 364, 365, 370, 377, 385, 389, 390, 396, 397, 407, 462, 471, 472, 473, 474, 475, 476, 477, 478, 479, 485, 487, 489, 491, 498, 515, 517, 523, 533, 549, 551, 552, 555, 565, 580, 597, 607, 635, 636, 637, 638, 660, 663, 682, 687, 707, 708, 709, 710, 711, 712, 713, 714, 715, 717, 718, 719, 721, 722, 723, 727, 728, 729, 730, 733, 741, 742, 752, 754, 760, 764, 765, 767, 768, 769, 770, 771, 772, 774, 777, 778, 779, 780, 787, 794, 801, 802, 825, 826, 832, 834, 835, 855, 856, 872, 882, 894, 903, 936, 937, 939, 942, 948, 950, 951, 952, 953, 954, 957 Efficacy 17, 77, 200, 310, 359, 616, 617, 618, 625, 626, 628, 629, 631, 667, 669, 673, 715, 721, 723, 769, 859, 862, 865, 869

979

Efficiency 33, 40, 51, 71, 77, 97, 149, 169, 184, 185, 192, 207, 251, 274, 279, 326, 342, 366, 369, 396, 397, 406, 407, 417, 425, 438, 439, 445, 446, 447, 462, 506, 508, 509, 510, 511, 514, 516, 597, 752, 765, 817, 859 Egalitarian norm 689, 690, 691 Eight-Year Study 132, 133, 134 El Salvador 184, 194, 508, 509, 510, 513, 515, 516, 517 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) 141, 148, 150, 485 legislation 30 Empirical study 34, 78, 616, 673, 771, 856 Employment options 28 Empowerment 10, 11, 105, 228, 257, 273, 277, 279, 280, 317, 352, 361, 365, 372, 478, 581, 585, 591, 625, 654, 655, 879 Endogeneity 398, 399, 400, 401, 403, 406, 407 Engagement 17, 18, 136, 172, 175, 176, 216, 326, 330, 332, 543, 550, 553, 606, 616, 620, 625, 627, 628, 636, 650, 651, 652, 653, 654, 655, 715, 889, 894, 922, 947, 959, 960 with profession 336 England 8, 47, 49, 57, 59, 67, 69, 70, 71, 114, 119, 189, 207, 210, 211, 214, 216, 217, 313, 318, 319, 354, 400, 405, 451, 452, 454, 455, 457, 462, 475, 710, 714, 716, 719, 721, 736, 826, 938 English Language Learners (ELLs) 557, 788 Enhance internal school effectiveness 246, 262 Enrolment pressure 28 Ensuring education quality 251, 256 Enterprise Education 24, 919 Environment 12, 23, 34, 44, 47, 52, 83, 101, 113, 138, 155, 168, 169, 170, 177, 188, 196, 197, 198, 218, 224, 233, 246, 247, 248, 251, 252, 254, 258, 259, 260, 261, 263, 272, 279, 280, 281, 283, 317, 328, 352, 364, 365, 383, 396, 397, 457, 459, 460, 477, 517, 547, 552, 553, 554, 558, 592, 600, 602, 604, 605, 627, 628, 636, 650, 651, 652, 653, 654, 661, 662, 667, 690, 728, 755, 757, 758, 774, 780, 810, 812, 815, 839, 843, 845, 854, 855, 856, 864, 865, 866, 867, 879, 896, 898,

980

Index

903, 904, 907, 908, 909, 910, 913, 918, 919, 920, 926, 938, 947, 948, 957, 958, 959 Equal educational opportunity 755 Equality 20, 52, 146, 223, 228, 253, 309, 351, 354, 418, 684, 690, 759 Equality of educational opportunity 30, 32 Equality of Education Opportunity Survey (EEOS) 485, 486, 487, 488 Equity 12, 14, 41, 42, 49, 50, 51, 52, 76, 77, 86, 87, 145, 149, 169, 170, 186, 192, 209, 217, 228, 254, 290, 326, 342, 343, 369, 406, 417, 425, 438, 443, 445, 446, 447, 452, 456, 457, 458, 494, 495, 510, 511, 515, 516, 523, 550, 557, 562, 564, 571, 586, 730, 768, 859, 862, 866, 868, 869, 887, 888, 910, 922, 952, 961 Equity ideal 140 Eritrea 432, 437 Ethnic minority 208 European Union 363, 721, 880 Evaluation 23, 52, 79, 80, 81, 82, 112, 168, 171, 200, 211, 213, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 232, 234, 235, 246, 247, 281, 294, 312, 327, 331, 333, 358, 360, 372, 386, 402, 422, 462, 467, 475, 482, 508, 510, 515, 527, 528, 529, 534, 584, 654, 661, 670, 673, 711, 712, 713, 715, 716, 717, 718, 719, 720, 723, 731, 732, 736, 741, 756, 769, 819, 827, 831, 834, 852, 854, 855, 864, 872, 873, 874, 875, 881, 882, 884, 890, 896, 898, 912, 913, 924 framework 827 Evidence base 123, 213, 320, 325, 331, 333, 547 Evidence Based Leadership in Action 23, 903 Examination performance 58 Excellence 14, 33, 40, 177, 289, 452, 455, 456, 457, 494, 548, 571, 698, 734, 735, 817, 872, 881, 919, 922, 952, 961 Excellence in Cities (EiC) 401, 402 Expectations 4, 16, 19, 34, 100, 113, 114, 115, 139, 146, 147, 168, 169, 170, 208, 224, 247, 251, 254, 255, 256, 257, 271, 273, 288, 293, 296, 297, 299, 301, 302, 316, 318, 321, 329, 335, 346, 353, 453, 454, 459, 460, 461, 462, 464, 465, 467, 480, 488, 495, 552, 591, 605, 617, 629,

654, 671, 673, 690, 692, 699, 700, 712, 715, 723, 729, 742, 743, 752, 760, 769, 777, 779, 791, 799, 818, 881, 893, 909, 913, 918, 921, 927 Expenditure per pupil 395, 396, 397, 399, 401, 402, 403, 436 Extended Schools 67, 217 External involvement 212, 214, 256 Externally initiated changes 627 Extracurricular activities 119, 376, 387, 421 Facilities 29, 186, 198, 246, 260, 279, 288, 294, 295, 299, 367, 368, 370, 371, 374, 383, 390, 396, 415, 532, 625, 758, 811, 926 Feminist 104, 105 Field experiences 190, 374 Fifteen Thousand Hours study 32, 209, 217 Finland 452, 473, 826, 835, 940, 943, 944, 961 First-order change 17, 607 Fiscal capacity 426, 427, 445 Five factor model 4, 224, 226, 769 Focus on learning 34, 212, 317, 334, 553, 557, 907, 913 Followership norm 688 Follow-Through Classroom Observation Evaluation (FTCOE) 135, 136 Formal linkages 16, 561, 564 France 70, 228 Free market 33 Freire, P. 104 French Immersion 418 Full service schools 67 Funding 28, 29, 30, 103, 113, 135, 150, 193, 194, 195, 248, 262, 276, 288, 289, 290, 292, 299, 301, 308, 310, 319, 334, 341, 342, 347, 364, 397, 401, 406, 411, 413, 414, 415, 417, 421, 426, 428, 429, 430, 438, 446, 454, 457, 458, 464, 466, 467, 473, 489, 493, 523, 543, 562, 565, 566, 568, 695, 721, 732, 734, 772, 927, 937, 945, 956 models 13, 14, 33, 254, 453, 455, 459, 564 Gambia 432, 439 Gauteng Department of Education 525 General Certificate of School Education 773

Index General Certificate of Secondary Education 60, 70, 400–401, 402 Ghana 345, 432 Global budget 430, 455 Global warming 38 Globalization 10, 16, 20, 24, 171, 248, 249, 250, 253, 261, 262, 269, 270, 271, 276, 277, 280, 376, 390, 580, 758, 759, 764, 765, 812, 936, 937, 939, 951 Goals 2000 602, 729, 942 Government, role 325, 326, 414 Government expenditures 32 Grade-level teams 20, 21, 787, 789, 790–791, 797, 799, 800, 802, 803 Greece 720, 826, 832 Group facilitation training 797 Group norms 797 Group size 99, 493, 738, 918 Grouping practices 635 Guaranteed and viable curriculum 600 Guatemala 184, 186, 189, 508 Haiti 184, 186 Halton Project 68 Handbook of Research on Teaching 727, 728 Hanushek, E. 33, 820 HARPS Project 121–123 Hawke, G. 326, 327 Headstart 223 Her Majesty’s Inspectorate 59 Hierarchical compliance 661 High expectations 4, 34, 66, 84, 138, 168, 169, 170, 273, 278, 300, 301, 476, 535, 551, 553, 558, 625, 728, 769, 921, 922, 927 High poverty schools 112, 116, 119 High Reliability Schools (HRS) 152, 732, 733, 736, 744 High-poverty urban contexts 730 High-Priority Schools 788 High-stakes 113, 156, 485, 493, 498, 524, 627, 955 Higher education 70, 210, 253, 342, 363, 369, 384, 385, 432, 437, 524, 668, 671, 755, 756, 771, 772, 780, 843, 953 Higher-order thinking 47, 48, 664 Holistic, ecological perspective 180 Holistic focus 196

981

Home environment 101, 233, 600, 604–605, 650–651 Home learning 71 Home–school relationships 67, 728 Homogeneity, assumptions of 330, 332 Honduras 80, 508, 517 Hong Kong 10, 18, 19, 22, 246, 247, 248, 252, 253, 255, 256, 257, 258, 259, 260, 261, 263, 313, 661, 662, 664, 665, 668–670, 674, 752, 754–755, 758, 760, 761, 763, 807, 812, 813, 814, 815, 817, 818, 819, 820, 839, 840, 841, 842, 843, 844, 845, 849, 850, 852, 853, 854, 855, 856, 857, 938, 939 Hong Kong Institute of Education 669, 755 Human Development Index 78, 808 Iberoamerican School Effectiveness Study (IIEEE) 86 Identity 17, 20, 57, 62, 184, 199, 352, 380, 434, 552, 590, 711, 723, 759, 765, 813, 856, 882, 885, 908 Ideological linkages 16, 561, 566, 569–570 Illiteracy, eradication of 186 Imbewu Project 524, 529, 535 Immigrant or refugee status 113 Impact 9, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 32, 34, 52, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 66, 67, 76, 83, 84, 98, 115, 117, 119, 122, 131, 132, 134, 137, 139, 140, 141, 149, 150, 152, 153, 156, 158, 167, 168, 170, 171, 174, 175, 176, 177, 180, 209, 210, 213, 216, 310, 314, 315, 316, 325, 344, 347, 352, 354, 356, 358, 359, 369, 374, 396, 397, 400, 401, 402, 404, 406, 407, 418, 422, 436, 438, 441, 442, 443, 444, 446, 447, 459, 471, 472, 474, 475, 485, 498, 503, 510, 511, 514, 516, 517, 518, 524, 529, 537, 541, 549, 551, 560, 561, 590, 603, 605, 608, 609, 610, 621, 626, 636, 650, 655, 663, 665, 671, 673, 681, 682, 686, 697, 708, 710, 711, 713, 714, 715, 716, 717, 718, 719, 720, 721, 722, 723, 731, 745, 768, 774, 797, 798, 802, 811, 812, 832, 836, 860, 875, 887, 890, 894, 898, 936, 937, 938, 939, 940, 942, 943, 946, 949, 950, 951, 955, 956, 957, 959, 961 Implementation Decade 283

982

Index

Improvement culture 22, 833–834 Improvement initiatives 183, 247, 341, 347, 621, 638, 779 Improvement outcomes 22, 831, 834–835 Improvement plan 177–178, 478–479, 525, 599, 736 Improvement processes 22, 23, 213, 229, 272, 480, 581, 659, 828–830, 831, 834, 909, 957 Improvement programs 81, 141, 155, 215, 235, 471, 779, 827, 830 Improving school effectiveness project (ISEP) 7, 57, 59–64, 211, 212 In Loco Parentis 32 Incentives 19, 27, 112, 192, 193, 196, 352, 364, 365, 367, 372, 390, 395, 406, 407, 415, 422, 446, 515, 517, 535, 564, 692, 697, 724, 761, 820 Independent schools 28, 30, 57, 308, 403 India 19, 37, 246, 247, 252, 256, 752, 757–758, 759, 760, 761, 764, 807, 817 Indicators 32, 63, 65, 97, 117, 121, 137, 178, 184, 208, 213, 233, 248, 257, 274, 294, 307, 320, 326, 333, 335, 337, 369, 401, 462, 486, 488, 489, 490, 498, 508, 515, 525, 541, 562, 661, 662, 818 Indigenous 113, 269, 283, 308, 317, 341, 342, 453, 656, 760, 917 children 185, 188 language 184 Indirect effects 18, 230, 400, 618, 619, 645, 646, 648, 652, 665, 770 Individual differences 29, 41, 44, 227 Individual learning programs 903 Individualization in education 261 Induction 19, 719, 729, 733, 734, 735, 763, 922 Industrial relations 327, 541 Ineffective teaching 147, 731 Inequality 41, 70, 112, 116, 531, 537, 859, 863 in education 41, 118, 257, 488 Inequitable reform 635 INet 37 Informal linkages 16, 561, 562, 565–567, 571 Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) 190, 192, 198, 260, 261, 262, 331, 365, 368, 369, 370,

371, 377, 389, 395, 462, 463, 464, 552, 880, 888, 923, 925, 929 Information technology (IT) 36, 248, 249, 250, 251, 260, 628, 661, 754, 757, 758, 816 Initiative in Primary Education 352, 353 Input–output studies 137, 138, 768 Inputs 8, 13, 20, 32, 33, 52, 71, 96, 138, 343, 346, 395, 396, 397, 425, 433, 435, 436, 437, 438, 440, 441, 442, 443, 445, 446, 447, 486, 770 Inquiry, culture of 546, 547 Inquiry learning 664 Inquiry-Based Science Education (ECBI) 23, 887 In-service teacher education 30, 36, 190, 377, 754, 755 Inspectorial system 31 Institute of Education, University of London 57, 59, 210, 213 Institutional Education Projects (PEI) 193 Institutional management 865 Instructional conversations 792, 796, 802 Instructional focus 4, 34, 138 Instructional goals 21, 801 Instructional leadership 34, 146, 583–584, 628 Instructional practice 45, 175, 421, 569, 615, 791, 794, 797, 798, 799 Instructional reform 21, 807, 810, 813, 814, 818, 820 Instructional strategies 45, 600, 603 Instructional team leader 681 Intake characteristics 111, 115, 487, 488, 491, 494, 770 Integral leadership 583 Integrated curriculum 43, 271, 816 Integrative leadership 590–592 Intellectual capital 11, 319, 550, 790, 792, 811, 905 Intelligence 43, 44, 59, 233, 263, 296, 298, 605, 711, 959 Intelligent accountability 179, 921 Interamerican Development Bank 186, 194, 196 Interdependence 336, 548, 549, 550, 553, 555, 558, 587, 684, 692, 792 Interdisciplinary/department teams 787 Interface effectiveness 248, 257, 262

Index Internal school effectiveness 245, 246, 262 International Baccalaureate 418, 884, 922, 923, 928 International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 34, 40, 154, 169, 226, 235, 319, 826 International School Effectiveness and Improvement Centre (ISEIC) 210, 213 International School Effectiveness Research Project 229, 237 International School Improvement Project (ISIP) 209, 832 International standards 33, 102, 480, 871, 872 Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (INTASC) 729 Iran 12, 379, 380, 381, 382, 383, 386, 389, 390 Islamic Republic of Iran 380, 381, 386, 389, 390 Student Organization 387 Islamic Revolution 380 ISO 9000, 872 Israel 351 Italy 720, 826 Japan 19, 33, 37, 252, 253, 254, 255, 259, 261, 479, 661, 662, 665, 738, 752, 755–756, 756, 759, 764, 807, 839, 841, 940, 943, 944 Jencks, C. 9, 32, 138, 140, 223, 727, 730, 768, 769, 771 Job satisfaction 17, 616, 618, 619, 620, 626, 627, 628 Karmel Report 29, 309 Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) 564 Key Learning Areas 815 Key schools 11, 288, 289, 290, 301, 303, 752 Khanyisa Education Support Program 535 Knowledge construction 283, 479 Knowledge management 24, 178, 179, 880, 905, 910, 911, 912 Knowledge society 179, 186, 368, 812, 913 Knowledge-based economy 248, 250, 253, 276–277, 813, 817 Kolb’s experiential learning theory 45

983

Korea 19, 660, 661, 662, 664, 752, 756, 759, 760, 761, 764, 807, 839, 940, 943, 944 Language minority students 557 Large-scale achievement tests 97 Latin America 6, 21, 23, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 183, 184, 185, 186, 191, 192, 195, 197, 198, 199, 200, 341, 347, 503, 504, 510, 518, 859, 871, 882, 899 Latin American Heads Conference (LAHC) 871, 872, 873, 875, 876, 878, 879, 880, 882, 883, 884 Leaders 7, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 24, 34, 60, 66, 112, 114, 158, 179, 218, 225, 228, 232, 235, 246, 251, 252, 254, 255, 256, 257, 259, 260, 261, 262, 278, 288, 289, 291, 293, 294, 295, 301, 302, 313, 316, 317, 318, 319, 369, 388, 452, 541, 542, 543, 544, 547, 549, 550, 551, 552, 555, 561, 566, 567, 568, 569, 570, 580, 581, 582, 583, 584, 585, 586, 588, 589, 590, 592, 598, 615, 621, 629, 631, 638, 650, 652, 653, 654, 655, 656, 659, 660, 662, 663, 664, 665, 666, 667, 669, 670, 671, 672, 673, 681, 682, 684, 685, 686, 687, 688, 689, 690, 691, 692, 693, 694, 695, 696, 697, 698, 699, 700, 723, 735, 743, 779, 789, 800, 802, 803, 884, 889, 897, 904, 908, 913, 918, 920, 921, 928, 950, 951 Leaders in Education Program (LEP) 495, 666, 667 Leadership 4, 6, 11, 16, 17, 18, 19, 23, 24, 33, 58, 66, 83, 84, 93, 96, 100, 102, 114, 115, 118, 135, 138, 146, 149, 151, 152, 153, 157, 158, 168, 169, 170, 172, 173, 175, 177, 179, 193, 195, 199, 209, 215, 216, 224, 225, 229, 233, 251, 256, 259, 277, 278, 282, 288, 293, 294, 295, 299, 301, 302, 303, 316, 317, 345, 348, 352, 353, 355, 358, 359, 361, 370, 422, 453, 457, 458, 459, 477, 527, 534, 536, 548, 550, 552, 553, 558, 565, 568, 570, 579, 580, 581, 582, 583, 584, 586, 587, 588, 589, 590, 591, 592, 597, 598, 599, 608, 610, 611, 616, 628, 629, 630, 631, 632, 636, 637, 638, 639, 646, 650, 651,

984

Index

652, 653, 654, 655, 656, 659, 660, 661, 663, 664, 665, 666, 667, 668, 669, 670, 671, 673, 681, 682, 683, 684, 685, 686, 687, 688, 689, 690, 691, 692, 693, 694, 695, 696, 697, 698, 699, 700, 708, 711, 712, 715, 718, 719, 723, 728, 729, 731, 733, 735, 738, 740, 757, 769, 801, 828, 834, 868, 876, 881, 887, 889, 890, 903, 905, 906, 907, 908, 910, 911, 913, 919, 920, 922, 923, 924, 945, 954, 956, 961 style 99, 585 succession 551 teams 212, 732, 789, 790, 799, 802, 897, 899, 927, 928 Leadership for Organisational Learning and Student Outcomes (LOLSO) 17, 316, 636, 638, 639, 654, 655, 656 Leadership Team Model 732 League tables 13, 39, 71, 208, 709 Learned intelligence and background knowledge 605 Learning and teaching 8, 10, 18, 20, 22, 24, 34, 59, 60, 64, 65, 66, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 106, 169, 170, 172, 174, 175, 179, 180, 192, 197, 198, 200, 212, 218, 234, 246, 247, 248, 251, 260, 261, 262, 292, 294, 295, 297, 298, 299, 313, 316, 317, 330, 336, 337, 376, 386, 389, 390, 396, 454, 455, 456, 459, 460, 462, 465, 471, 472, 476, 477, 478, 483, 526, 536, 553, 558, 564, 565, 566, 568, 569, 570, 581, 583, 584, 585, 588, 592, 615, 616, 621, 623, 628, 652, 653, 654, 655, 659, 661, 662, 667, 670, 687, 708, 710, 712, 713, 714, 715, 716, 719, 733, 736, 737, 740, 754, 758, 759, 760, 763, 767, 771, 772, 775, 776, 779, 780, 797, 800, 817, 835, 839, 840, 880, 889, 890, 894, 897, 907, 911, 918, 919, 922, 924, 927, 929, 948 Learning climate 4 Learning community 20, 158, 167, 171, 172, 175, 177, 178, 179, 180, 215, 332, 656, 666, 708, 763, 765, 799, 800, 894, 895, 896, 904, 906, 913 Learning contexts 4, 5, 197, 673, 856 Learning difficulties 43, 113, 191, 301, 772, 778, 899, 900, 922 Learning opportunities 99, 186, 213, 262, 389, 495, 553, 557, 625, 673, 694, 708,

712, 714, 733, 816, 817, 842, 889, 903, 918, 927 Learning organization 551, 581, 585, 646, 650, 654, 653, 834, 905, 913, 924 Learning outcomes 274, 328, 332, 337, 451, 740, 774, 852, 859, 910 Learning programs 29, 31, 37, 548, 673, 907, 922 Learning resources 192–194, 197, 198, 351, 396, 397, 459, 624 Learning Support Centres 402 Learning to learn 233, 296, 553, 914 Learning-style 44, 45, 922 Legitimacy norm 687 Leone, S. 432 Lesson study 479–480, 737–739, 801 Liberalized curriculum 21, 817, 818, 819, 820 Library 29, 462, 874, 883, 911 Life chances 28, 41, 207, 209, 451, 781 Lifelong education 253 Lifelong learning 249, 261, 271, 368, 369, 670, 672, 710, 720, 842, 856, 887 Lifelong professional development 251, 258 “Like” schools 36, 318, 580 Limited English Proficient 495, 557 Linguistic diversity 560 Linkages 16, 152, 173, 308, 315, 347, 557, 558, 560, 561, 562, 563, 564, 565, 566, 567, 569, 570, 571, 604, 711, 732, 733, 927 Literacy 47, 103, 177, 208, 211, 216, 214, 308, 317, 329, 331, 334, 346, 347, 367, 370, 381, 387, 402, 403, 465, 526, 534, 541, 543, 552, 627, 715, 760, 773, 778, 779, 830, 889, 903, 906, 911, 923, 930, 933, 934, 943, 945, 952, 953 Literature 16, 45, 86, 94, 95, 97, 112, 116, 117, 131, 138, 142, 144, 146, 153, 154, 156, 167, 169, 170, 171, 173, 175, 178, 179, 190, 198, 216, 231, 269, 287, 299, 303, 310, 316, 318, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 384, 396, 403, 471, 474, 476, 479, 514, 557, 560, 562, 571, 584, 601, 603, 610, 615, 628, 635, 636, 652, 670, 681, 686, 687, 688, 695, 696, 697, 699, 700, 717, 718, 723, 733, 770, 775, 776, 778, 789, 799, 818, 844, 845, 856, 862, 906, 920 Local authority 59, 60, 69, 216

Index Local education authorities (LEAs) 29, 112, 119, 159, 207, 210, 211, 213, 214, 355, 360, 361, 398, 400, 401, 455, 477, 561, 563, 956 Local implementation 134 Local management 207, 313, 542, 544 Localization 10, 249, 261, 269, 270, 271 Long term focus 336 Longitudinal model 154–155, 493–494 Louisiana School Effectiveness Study 488, 730, 731 Low performing schools 208, 536 Low-SES students 43, 52 Macau 22, 839, 840, 841, 842, 843, 844, 845, 849, 850, 852, 853, 854, 855, 856 Mainland China 11, 18, 19, 246, 247, 248, 253, 287, 288, 289, 300, 665, 667–668, 752, 754, 758, 760, 761, 763, 764, 839, 841 Major Project of Education in Latin America and the Caribbean 185 Malawi 428, 432, 438 Malaysia 19, 246, 251–252, 253, 255, 257, 258, 663, 664, 666, 752, 757, 758, 760, 761, 763, 807, 813, 817 Mali 428, 437, 440, 443 Malnutrition 82, 83 Management 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 24, 31, 33, 37, 58, 60, 64, 75, 84, 112, 113, 119, 141, 149, 168, 170, 179, 183, 185, 186, 188, 190, 191, 194, 195, 196, 198, 215, 224, 228, 229, 233, 247, 248, 251, 255, 256, 257, 259, 262, 263, 271, 272, 273, 279, 280, 281, 287, 288, 289, 313, 315, 316, 317, 318, 321, 327, 328, 334, 336, 342, 345, 347, 351, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 365, 369, 371, 375, 386, 389, 390, 406, 438, 443, 446, 447, 458, 461, 462, 463, 465, 475, 477, 482, 495, 504, 507, 508, 509, 510, 514, 516, 517, 518, 524, 527, 528, 533, 534, 535, 536, 542, 544, 563, 565, 579, 580, 582, 583, 584, 585, 588, 590, 591, 592, 600, 602, 603, 604, 608, 624, 629, 636, 652, 653, 655, 663, 665, 668, 684, 693, 699, 714, 715, 723, 731, 754, 759, 763, 801, 818, 820, 826, 827, 843, 845, 854, 855, 859, 861, 864, 865, 866, 868, 872,

985

873, 877, 879, 880, 895, 905, 910, 911, 912, 918, 920, 922, 924, 926, 928, 937 technology 258, 260 Managerial governments 635 Managerial prerogative norm 18, 688 Mandated reforms 729 Market economy 27, 254 Market forces 255 Market-based reforms 207 Market-oriented public service delivery 112 Market-oriented reform 313 Mauritania 428 Meaning Decade 283 Melbourne 313, 317, 777 Mentor teachers 272, 375 Mentoring 24, 292, 293, 369, 464, 465, 467, 625, 628, 666, 672, 734, 735, 743, 755, 908 Mentors 282, 402, 568, 666, 671, 733, 734, 906 Metacognition 48, 855 México 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 184, 185, 186, 191, 192, 193, 505, 506, 514, 515, 518, 567, 889, 899, 942 Middle schooling 288, 290, 294–300, 541, 743, 779 Military government 5 Millennium Development Goals 184, 200, 429 Mixed methods research 210 Monitoring education quality 257 Monitors 93, 177, 388, 896–897, 899, 900, 901 Moos, L. 16, 68, 579, 584, 586, 590 Moral and civic education 812, 816 Moral judgments 102 Moral purpose 551, 552, 570, 709, 717, 723, 908 Morale 17, 36, 67, 169, 353, 390, 541, 550, 554, 616, 620, 623, 625, 626, 905, 918, 924 Motivation 62, 82, 193, 214, 226, 233, 276, 282, 295, 296, 369, 390, 549, 585, 586, 599, 606, 618, 665, 671, 710, 712, 714, 715, 718, 776, 843, 844, 845, 849, 850, 852, 856, 861, 878, 899 to learn 63 “Moving” school 478 Mozambique 428, 437, 439, 443 Multi-cultural education 226

986

Index

Multi-level analysis 46 Multilevel modeling/models 81, 139, 144, 157, 320, 770 Multiple intelligence 365, 664, 959, 249, 253, 714, 945 Mutual adaptation 135, 277 National Advisory Council for Teacher Education 373, 375 National assessment 191, 356, 419 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 151, 488, 495, 942, 946 A Nation at Risk 149, 488, 560, 729 A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century 149, 735 Nation-building 252 National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) 734, 735, 794 National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) 333 National Child Development Study (NCDS) 399, 400 National College of School Leadership (NCSL) 209, 216 National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) 740 National curriculum framework 36, 207, 274, 297, 325, 327, 353, 360, 462, 758, 832, 884, 888, 944, 950 National development 252, 253, 662, 663, 754 National Education Development Project (NEDP) 375 National evaluation 79, 80, 81, 197 National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy 316 National Pupil Database (NPD) 400–402, 405 National Qualifications Framework (NQF) 328 National School Improvement Network (NSIN) 210 National Teacher Networking Program (NTNP) 291 National unity 252 National visions 250, 251–252 Nationally certified teachers 735 Nelson, L. 586

the Netherlands 34, 132, 224, 225, 226, 228, 229, 231, 232, 235, 236, 404, 406, 472, 473, 474, 475, 479, 580, 826, 828, 832, 835, 940 Networked learning communities 551, 708, 710, 722, 953, 956 Networking 37, 71, 178, 215, 216, 249, 261, 262, 263, 319, 365, 549, 672, 897 New American Schools 37, 150, 731 New Brunswick 415 New community schools 67, 71, 211, 216, 217 New Labour government 114 New Public Management (NPM) 112, 113, 580 New Zealand 11, 37, 114, 119, 313, 318, 325, 326, 329, 330, 331, 332, 334, 336, 580, 775, 940, 943, 944, 956 Newfoundland and Labrador 177, 415 Nicaragua 194, 508, 509, 510, 513, 514, 515, 516, 517 Niger 428, 440 900 Schools program 191, 192 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) 9, 15, 140, 152, 153, 154, 158, 159, 167, 308, 485, 492, 494, 495, 496, 524, 562, 563, 570, 730, 741, 789, 803, 933, 942, 943, 944, 946, 955 Non-academic student outcomes 638 Non-cognitive student outcomes 636 Non-English speaking backgrounds 317, 927 Non-formal education 363 Non-government schools 308, 310, 903 Noninterference norm 689 Normal Schools 189 Norms 18, 20, 146, 272, 331, 380, 467, 589, 590, 602, 603, 618, 628, 656, 659, 661, 664, 682, 685, 686, 687, 688, 689, 690, 691, 692, 700, 788, 799, 800, 801, 808, 867 Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory 732 Norway 228, 229, 404 Noumea Primary School 903 Nova Scotia 177, 415 Numeracy 47, 103, 208, 211, 214, 216, 308, 317, 327, 331, 333, 334, 402, 403, 465, 526, 541, 543, 552, 767, 773,

Index 774, 889, 906, 911, 923, 930, 933, 945, 952, 953 OECD 13, 57, 174, 184, 313, 319, 326, 365, 369, 375, 376, 395, 399, 406, 426, 428, 431, 432, 452, 471, 580, 624, 707, 710, 720, 767, 768, 839, 888, 961 Oettingen, A. von 586 Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) 208, 214, 402, 475 One size fits all 29, 41, 50, 112, 113, 474, 483, 735, 918 One-child policy 752 Ontario 68, 176, 413, 414, 415, 416, 417, 418, 422, 423, 620 Open-plan schools 29 Orderly and safe climate 34 Ordinary schools 288, 289, 295, 297, 300, 301 Organizational and professional culture 682 Organizational change 24, 97, 112, 371, 377, 542, 546, 716, 718 Organizational contexts 682 Organizational effectiveness 116, 555, 619 Organizational factors 224, 227, 234, 473 Organizational learning (OL) 316, 585, 636, 637, 638, 639, 645, 646, 650, 651, 652, 654, 655, 827, 907, 913 Organizational management 112, 188 Organizational structure 18, 149, 584, 588, 629, 681, 682–685, 695, 780, 877–878, 928 Organizational theory 96 Organizational-educational management 584–585, 591 Osinga, N. 4, 228, 231 Outcomes 4, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 22, 23, 27, 33, 35, 36, 37, 41, 46, 48, 51, 52, 57, 59, 62, 67, 71, 96, 99, 100, 101, 102, 112, 116, 132, 135, 137, 138, 151, 152, 155, 167, 168, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 209, 210, 211, 212, 214, 216, 217, 224, 225, 227, 231, 232, 233, 247, 255, 257, 274, 278, 287, 298, 303, 313, 314, 315, 319, 327, 328, 330, 331, 332, 333, 335, 337, 343, 366, 369, 395, 396, 397, 407, 411, 419, 420, 421, 423, 425, 438, 441, 443, 445, 446, 447, 451, 452, 453, 454, 455, 457, 459, 460, 462, 463, 464, 465, 467,

987

479, 483, 486, 490, 492, 495, 498, 514, 518, 524, 533, 542, 543, 544, 545, 547, 548, 549, 550, 554, 557, 562, 563, 564, 568, 583, 590, 592, 621, 636, 638, 646, 651, 652, 653, 654, 655, 660, 661, 662, 664, 668, 671, 682, 711, 713, 714, 717, 718, 721, 723, 724, 740, 744, 767, 768, 770, 772, 774, 775, 776, 778, 779, 780, 787, 789, 800, 815, 826, 831, 833, 834, 835, 836, 840, 850, 852, 853, 855, 856, 868, 888, 903, 904, 905, 906, 908, 909, 910, 913, 924, 942, 948, 950, 951, 952, 953, 955 Outcomes-based education 524, 533, 909 Outlier schools 32, 137, 730 Output measures 232 Panama 897, 899 Paraguay 184, 191, 193, 505 Parent satisfaction 36, 930 Parent Teacher Association 327, 727 Parental and community involvement 248, 251, 255–256, 601–602, 927 Parental choice 33, 100, 207, 248, 254, 404, 411, 418 Parental engagement 179 Parental participation 142, 255, 352, 369, 517 Parental support 119 Parents 13, 22, 31, 32, 33, 39, 40, 51, 58, 60, 64, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 101, 102, 121, 136, 149, 158, 172, 174, 175, 178, 179, 187, 188, 193, 194, 196, 199, 207, 213, 235, 246, 247, 248, 255, 257, 272, 273, 275, 277, 278, 281, 283, 297, 309, 312, 327, 329, 331, 334, 335, 352, 367, 370, 379, 381, 386, 390, 397, 398, 403, 404, 405, 415, 417, 418, 419, 422, 429, 430, 442, 446, 456, 457, 474, 476, 478, 509, 515, 516, 524, 534, 557, 562, 563, 585, 589, 601, 602, 605, 615, 619, 624, 626, 628, 629, 638, 646, 655, 661, 662, 727, 730, 745, 754, 757, 759, 767, 779, 818, 830, 852, 854, 855, 860, 866, 878, 880, 883, 893, 899, 901, 905, 907, 909, 911, 913, 918, 920, 921, 924, 927, 928, 930, 949, 958, 959, 960 Participatory action research (PAR) 104, 105

988

Index

Passivity 22, 860, 863, 864 Pedagogy 104, 172, 190, 248, 261, 262, 297, 299, 332, 372, 374, 384, 385, 453, 454, 461, 462, 465, 528, 533, 544, 553, 664, 687, 708, 728, 791, 794, 865, 878, 904, 906 Peer coaching 736, 738 People’s Republic of China 288, 841 Per pupil spending 404, 433, 434, 435, 437, 440, 446 Performance assessment 770 Performance data 58, 157, 208, 213, 214, 656 Performance indicators 474, 818 Per-pupil expenditures 138 Personal characteristics 41, 42, 44, 46, 47, 48, 51, 52, 686 Personalization, of learning 452 Personality 42, 44, 45, 46, 47, 52, 591, 852, 856, 876 Personnel 27, 28, 173, 194, 289, 291, 293, 351, 354, 356, 385, 406, 436, 477, 506, 527, 535, 564, 566, 567, 568, 569, 570, 667, 696, 698, 732, 734, 873, 882 Peru 81, 184, 191, 197, 198, 897, 899 Picot 326, 327 PIRLS 208, 365, 406 Planning xiii, 22, 35, 64, 68, 97, 119, 141, 169, 172, 176, 177, 178, 190, 213, 250, 252, 254, 256, 302, 309, 312, 314, 346, 351, 352, 358, 360, 365, 369, 370, 371, 383, 384, 386, 387, 388, 389, 390, 415, 454, 459, 460, 461, 462, 463, 465, 466, 467, 477, 479, 506, 507, 527, 536, 541, 544, 545, 548, 549, 551, 554, 564, 568, 570, 582, 611, 617, 624, 625, 628, 669, 693, 696, 711, 712, 718, 736, 738, 740, 741, 743, 834, 835, 836, 840, 845, 852, 853, 855, 859, 875, 878, 880, 881, 896, 897, 923 Plurality 524–536 Policy development 6, 36, 249, 263, 329, 544, 545 Policy initiatives 59, 171, 175, 313, 730, 741, 791 Policy makers 3, 15, 21, 34, 50, 52, 57, 95, 96, 113, 114, 135, 137, 207, 210, 211, 249, 254, 259, 260, 319, 320, 321, 331, 364, 370, 390, 433, 472, 473, 474,

483, 487, 488, 491, 492, 495, 498, 503, 663, 671, 709, 730, 744, 780, 813, 819, 820, 940, 950 Populations 6, 102, 112, 113, 152, 175, 184, 185, 186, 187, 191, 192, 195, 200, 354, 390, 444, 488, 490, 530, 560, 562, 617, 745, 862, 865, 940, 949 Portfolio career 38, 39 Portugal 86, 720, 826, 841 Post-war reconstruction 27, 28 Poverty 112, 113, 116, 119, 137, 138, 153, 157, 186, 215, 217, 363, 367, 370, 371, 386, 390, 419, 428, 515, 534, 535, 557, 562, 564, 567, 608, 734, 745, 754, 863, 865, 867, 868, 893, 940 Power 15, 20, 33, 41, 64, 95, 103, 104, 105, 107, 173, 194, 214, 257, 270, 272, 273, 277, 278, 280–281, 330, 353, 354, 355, 479, 552, 566, 569, 581, 586, 588, 589, 655, 661, 667, 683, 684, 688, 741, 742, 759, 764, 778, 779, 819, 853, 918, 939, 944, 948, 956 Practice versus research 34 Praxis 76 Preservice training 729 Pressure, to improve 831 Primary education 184, 186, 231, 366, 367, 374, 377, 380, 381, 384, 386, 428, 429, 430, 431, 432, 435, 436, 437, 439, 440, 443, 444, 812, 817, 952 Primary school curricula 29 Prince Edward Island (PEI) 177, 193, 415 Principal leadership 33, 152, 598, 599, 660 Principal practices 17, 629, 631 Prior attainment 49, 61, 113, 115, 209, 396, 399, 400, 401 Prior learning 328 Privacy norm 689 Private enterprise 27, 33, 580 Private schools 122, 195, 326, 373, 405, 417, 507, 759, 899 Privatization 255, 354 Problem solving 45, 329, 365, 477, 479, 542, 545, 548, 592, 618, 661, 813, 820 Production function 8, 13, 77, 80, 83, 343, 345, 396, 397, 398, 399, 400, 403, 523, 529, 533 Professional development 19, 20, 23, 24, 50, 58, 64, 65, 114, 142, 151, 152, 173,

Index 175, 176, 178, 187, 190, 191, 195, 197, 199, 258, 259, 273, 276, 291, 293, 315, 325, 329, 330, 331, 333, 334, 335, 370, 375, 415, 473, 475, 479, 481, 518, 541, 547, 548, 561, 565, 568, 569, 584, 603, 625, 626, 636, 654, 656, 661, 662, 664, 665, 668, 694, 696, 697, 707, 708, 710, 711, 713, 716, 717, 719, 720, 721, 722, 723, 729, 732, 733, 735, 736, 737, 738, 741, 744, 751, 772, 777, 778, 779, 780, 787, 788, 789, 790, 791, 796, 797, 800, 801, 803, 819, 867, 868, 878, 879, 880, 887, 889, 890, 895, 896, 901, 907, 911, 922, 948 Professional identity 707 Professional learning 20, 215, 334, 422, 546, 625, 655, 656, 671, 694, 708, 711, 713, 719, 722, 763, 765, 907, 908, 922, 923, 928 Professional learning communities (PLCs) 763, 895 key characteristics 215 Professional learning program 548, 907, 908, 922, 923 Professional norms 684, 685, 686, 687 Professional practice 42, 105, 330, 681 Professionalism 19, 24, 31, 96, 217, 271, 272, 334, 377, 602, 653, 660, 670, 681, 683, 689, 707, 708, 709, 712, 720, 769, 780, 875, 880, 908, 924 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 174, 184, 237, 308, 404, 406, 420, 422, 452, 453, 472, 480, 624, 751, 850, 934, 936, 943, 961 Progress 6, 7, 8, 12, 14, 18, 20, 24, 25, 42, 43, 50, 52, 61, 62, 63, 67, 94, 95, 96, 97, 99, 111, 113, 117, 119, 152, 155, 170, 177, 178, 184, 185, 187, 197, 199, 208, 209, 212, 227, 228, 236, 258, 262, 277, 287, 296, 297, 298, 301, 313, 329, 331, 337, 347, 379, 381, 396, 400, 401, 406, 431, 441, 462, 464, 465, 467, 471, 480, 481, 488, 491, 492, 493, 496, 498, 550, 554, 561, 563, 567, 584, 620, 626, 653, 663, 665, 673, 710, 739, 740, 767, 774, 776, 777, 778, 779, 811, 815, 818, 855, 877, 879, 880, 882, 883, 889, 898, 899, 919, 921, 923, 924, 925, 933, 934, 948, 956

989

Progressive Education Association 133 Project learning 842 Property taxes 413, 414 Public opinion 137, 416, 421 Public/private 933 Pupil achievement, measures of 4, 34 Pupil attainment 61, 65, 216, 395, 397, 398, 399, 400, 401, 403, 404, 405, 407 Pupil characteristics 119, 396, 398, 401, 442 Pupil involvement 212, 213, 224 Pupil progress 4, 5, 170, 396, 406, 710 indicators 208 Pupil-centred classrooms 524 Qualifications framework 325 Quality assurance (QA) 59, 248, 256, 257, 260, 262, 369, 661, 662, 673 Quality Teacher Program (QTP) 772 Quantitative research 34, 120, 121, 225 Quebec 413, 415, 418 Racial diversity 560 Rand Change Agent Study 135 ‘Raw’ attainment data 65 Reading 14, 25, 27, 43, 61, 62, 168, 174, 176, 184, 192, 208, 230, 232, 233, 278, 295, 329, 379, 400, 406, 422, 488, 493, 494, 524, 527, 529, 530, 533, 534, 536, 543, 605, 606, 610, 615, 617, 618, 667, 730, 776, 778, 789, 790, 801, 803, 816, 843, 934, 940, 942, 943, 950 Reagan, R. 27, 32, 33 Reality of interventions, co-constructed nature 152 Recurrent expenditure 429 Red Iberoamericana de Investigación sobre Cambio y Eficacia Escolar (RINACE) 75, 86 Reflection on practice 792 Reflective practices 653, 709 Reflective practitioner 20, 708, 710, 760, 761, 763 Reform agenda 12, 494, 541, 564, 669, 756, 758, 761, 813, 814, 816, 817, 818, 819, 820, 821 Reform implementation 174, 263, 358, 561, 564, 570, 818 Relational linkages 16, 561, 566, 567–569 Relationship building 104

990

Index

Resistance 12, 22, 261, 302, 414, 690, 693, 800, 820, 860, 862, 868 to change 371, 620, 621 Resources 24, 59, 279, 369, 385, 445, 451, 452, 637, 695, 737, 831, 832, 876, 887, 889, 890, 897, 925 Retention 17, 18, 24, 177, 196, 457, 543, 619, 625, 636, 638, 653, 654, 655, 734, 820, 859, 860, 861, 865, 866, 918, 925, 926, 929 rates 177, 196, 543, 638, 929 Right work 597, 599, 600, 601, 602, 604, 606, 607, 608, 611 Risk taking aversion 691 Romania 405 Rosenbusch, H. S. 584, 590, 591 Rote learning 664, 948 Rutter, M. 4, 5, 9, 32, 41, 59, 99, 153, 168, 209, 224, 487, 580, 598, 769, 825 SACE 652 Safe and orderly environment 602 Saskatchewan 173, 177, 415, 418, 422 School Improvement Program (SSIP) 173 Scheerens, J. 4, 5, 48, 75, 111, 115, 116, 131, 144, 148, 169, 227, 231, 232, 345, 396, 475, 580, 635, 654, 769, 770, 773, 787, 827 Scheerens model 234 School accountability systems 485, 488, 492, 494 School administration 31, 82, 83, 273, 277, 278, 326, 327, 590 School and area characteristics 112 School autonomy 12, 75, 87, 235, 257, 351, 352, 353, 355, 360, 361, 396, 404, 406, 407, 508, 510, 516, 517, 638 School based management (SBM) 12, 149, 194, 248, 257–258, 271, 273, 280, 281, 307, 316, 317, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 360, 361, 655, 661, 754, 820 School boards 31, 173, 176, 177, 178, 327, 414, 415, 416, 418, 863 School capacity 215, 315, 367, 744 School change 19, 21, 52, 132, 133, 135, 140, 146, 149, 150, 151, 346, 348, 660, 682, 729, 732, 733, 906, 907

School characteristics 119, 120, 137, 142, 167, 168, 225, 230, 233, 278, 357 School charters 248, 933 School climate 4, 51, 68, 93, 139, 175, 351, 360, 365, 396, 557, 558, 656, 921, 867 School context 117, 118, 120, 123, 146, 400, 401, 404, 406, 660, 711 effects 145 School councils 150, 309, 418, 516, 646 School culture 22, 78, 169, 170, 278, 280, 549, 582, 585, 615, 660, 685, 686, 687, 688, 697, 711, 734, 865, 866, 903 School Development Plan 59, 248, 872, 876, 881, 883, 909 School Development Program 602, 732 School education, goals and objectives 246 School education, quality of 768 School effectiveness xiii, xvi, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 37, 40, 41, 42, 46, 48, 49, 50, 57, 59, 61, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 95, 96, 99, 100, 111, 114, 115, 118, 120, 131, 141, 147, 153, 154, 156, 159, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 173, 175, 178, 179, 198, 207, 208, 209, 210, 211, 212, 217, 223, 225, 226, 227, 228, 230, 235, 236, 245, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 253, 254, 256, 258, 259, 261, 262, 263, 269, 270, 271, 287, 288, 301, 302, 303, 308, 313, 315, 317, 318, 319, 320, 341, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 361, 363, 364, 370, 372, 380, 386, 389, 390, 396, 397, 399, 411, 471, 474, 476, 481, 485, 486, 487, 488, 489, 491, 498, 499, 523, 532, 533, 557, 580, 583, 635, 636, 638, 650, 654, 655, 656, 659, 660, 665, 711, 718, 723, 729, 730, 731, 732, 733, 739, 741, 745, 751, 760, 768, 769, 770, 776, 778, 780, 789, 826, 827, 933, 936, 937, 939, 942, 950, 952, 953 correlates of 224 movement 33, 34–35, 58, 81, 272, 307, 310, 342, 825 School Effectiveness and School Improvement 5, 6, 93, 154 School Effectiveness Research 5, 59, 115 School Effectiveness Research (SER) 5, 6, 12, 42–49, 78, 85, 100, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 131, 132, 135, 136, 137, 138,

Index 139, 140, 141, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 151, 152, 153, 154, 156, 157, 158, 167, 208, 210, 224, 226, 269, 270, 271, 343, 345, 396, 397, 399, 485, 487–488, 498, 580, 711, 730, 768, 769, 770, 780, 825, 933, 939, 942, 952, 953 School effects 4, 41, 49, 58, 61, 76, 81, 117, 143, 144, 145, 156, 169, 209, 211, 227, 228, 229, 230, 343, 405, 487, 660, 727, 729, 768, 773, 774, 775, 965 consistency and stability 48 and improvement research 137, 138, 557 School empowerment 353, 358, 359, 361 School environment 4, 23, 113, 169, 177, 196, 197, 198, 224, 281, 365, 755, 758, 867, 868 School ethos 59, 64, 66, 227, 717 School evaluation 42, 68, 184, 228, 281, 406, 836 School external evaluation 256, 872, 873, 898, 924 School factors 3, 78, 79, 81, 82, 117, 138, 198, 224, 227, 231, 465, 480, 555, 654, 768, 825, 832 School global budgets 455 School governance 602, 669, 754, 756, 763 School governing councils 194 School governors 68, 415 School improvement xiii, xiv, 4, 8, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 24, 34, 40, 41, 60, 65, 68, 71, 78, 81, 93, 95, 97, 106, 111, 117, 118, 123, 131, 132, 136, 141, 146, 148, 149, 151, 152, 153, 155, 156, 159, 168, 170, 171, 173, 175, 178, 179, 180, 183, 192, 193, 195, 197, 199, 207, 209, 210, 211, 212, 213, 215, 223, 224, 225, 228, 230, 236, 245, 246, 247, 259, 260, 269, 270, 272, 280, 281, 283, 288, 294, 295, 299, 300, 301, 302, 303, 307, 308, 313, 317, 318, 319, 320, 341, 342, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 348, 359, 360, 361, 364, 370, 372, 380, 389, 411, 420, 421, 422, 423, 452, 460, 471, 474, 475, 481, 487, 488, 491, 523, 530, 532, 533, 535, 536, 551, 553, 558, 563, 566, 599, 615, 616, 621, 627, 631, 632, 636, 654, 655, 659, 660, 665, 669, 671, 673, 708, 711, 714, 717, 719, 729, 731, 732, 733, 740, 742, 744, 778, 787, 789, 800, 827, 828,

991

830, 831, 832, 833, 834, 835, 836, 887, 904, 906, 913, 918, 919, 921, 933, 936, 950 performance, between school differences in 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 169, 226, 235, 499, 825, 826 teams 150 School Improvement Partner (SIP) 69 School Improvement Research (SIR) 117–118, 131, 132–134, 135, 136, 140–141, 148–153, 155, 167 School level processes 22, 832, 835 School Management Initiative (SMI) 257, 313 School mission 728, 909 School mixture of students from different SES backgrounds 4 School monitoring 248 School performance 4, 71, 83, 112, 117, 136, 159, 209, 248, 255, 320, 334, 359, 406, 475, 485, 487, 488, 491, 492, 493, 494, 495, 498, 515, 531, 636, 653, 745, 940 monitoring 136, 485, 488–493, 498 School policy 52, 299, 353, 421, 599, 602, 692, 711, 715, 872, 879 School practitioners 33, 258, 259, 260 School processes 4, 59, 117, 119, 138, 155, 183, 193, 198, 209, 228, 246, 396–397, 472, 488, 490, 866 School reform 3, 6, 12, 16, 17, 27, 28, 33, 37, 95, 114, 132, 133, 134, 148, 150, 152, 153, 154, 159, 170, 185, 235, 248, 252, 257, 259, 261, 262, 278, 279, 280, 281, 313, 345, 354, 422, 489, 524, 526–528, 558, 560, 561, 562, 566, 569, 571, 597, 599, 611, 654, 697, 742, 768, 789, 904, 906, 933 School report cards 491, 492, 499 School resources 75, 84, 138, 224, 395, 397, 398, 399, 400, 404, 407, 454–455, 457, 458, 529, 789, 926 School restructuring 146, 148, 149, 150, 152, 154, 250, 495, 638, 652, 693, 754, 907 School Review 871, 872, 873, 874, 883–884 School self-evaluation 23, 51, 52, 59, 60, 68, 208, 213–214, 233, 248, 256, 482, 843, 872, 873, 874, 888, 900, 921

992

Index

School size 156, 224, 280, 401, 625, 636, 645, 646, 648, 649, 650, 652 School strategic planning 462, 465, 611, 661, 897, 898, 899, 906, 907 School transformation 34, 258, 660 School vision 487, 582, 757 School-based curriculum 29, 272, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279 School-based innovations 30, 906 School-based management 12, 194, 248, 251, 257–258, 271, 273, 280, 281, 307, 313, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359, 360, 652, 655, 661, 754, 820 School-improvement grants 365 Schooling, political context of 111 Schooling purpose 636 SchoolMate 911, 912, 913 SchoolPLUS 177, 422 Schools, disadvantaged 11, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 297, 299, 300, 301, 303, 317, 347, 402, 752, 905 Schools Commission 30, 66, 309, 310 Schools Council 30 Schools of the Future (SOF) 36, 313, 314, 315 Schools, in challenging circumstances 208 Science laboratories 29, 80, 105, 290, 365, 372 Scotland 7, 57, 59, 60, 67, 69, 70, 211, 216, 217 Scottish Education Department 59, 68 Second International Mathematics Study (SIMS) 773 Secondary colleges 31, 38 Second-order change 17, 274, 607–608, 609–611 Self-concept 18, 139, 397, 620, 639, 643, 645, 646, 648, 650, 651, 652, 653, 655, 850 Self-directed learning 22, 839–840, 842, 843, 844, 854 Self-esteem 43, 63, 139, 196, 463, 620, 712, 718, 719, 756, 854, 856, 894, 901 Self-evaluation 23, 51, 52, 59, 60, 66, 68, 208, 209, 212, 213, 214, 233, 248, 482, 843, 872, 873, 874, 888, 900, 921 Self-learning 262, 839, 842, 854, 855, 856 Self-management 10, 11, 257, 258, 307, 313, 315, 317, 318, 321, 327, 353, 386, 390

Senge, P. M. 65, 153, 558, 914 Senior Certificate (SC) 524, 525, 526, 527, 528, 531, 532, 535, 537 Share of public spending 426, 427, 435 Shared governance 277 Shared knowledge 24, 787, 792, 908 Shared leadership 153, 588, 660, 663, 682, 683, 684, 685, 686, 687, 688, 689, 691, 692, 693, 695, 697, 698, 906 Similar schools comparison grouping 491 Singapore 10, 18, 33, 246, 247, 252, 253, 254, 256, 257, 258, 259, 261, 662, 663, 665, 666–667, 752, 761, 763, 764, 807, 813, 814, 815, 818, 839 Singapore Principals’ Executive Centre 666 Single parent families 317 Site-based management 149, 272, 579, 602, 731 Site-embedded professional development 787 Smart School 377, 389, 757, 758 Social and cultural capital 789 Social class 32, 49, 83, 113, 115, 121, 217, 476 Social class mix 4 Social complexity 112 Social development 209, 248, 382, 383, 663, 752 Social equality 252, 759 Social inequality 116, 443, 523, 537 Social justice 49, 100, 107, 113, 586, 918, 961 Social mix 62 Social mobility 271 Social Network Analysis 157 Social research 101 Socio-economic indicators 119 Socio-economic status 3, 32–33, 42, 43, 49, 52, 63, 115, 116, 119, 136, 137, 145, 146, 155, 156, 158, 167, 225, 230, 232, 269, 294, 308, 310, 317, 354, 356, 442, 476, 477, 530, 531, 558, 570, 636, 643, 646, 647, 648, 649, 650, 651, 652, 656, 727, 740, 777 Socio-emotional support 792, 793 Sørhaug, T. 589 South Africa 15, 37, 342, 343, 346–348, 523, 524, 526, 527, 529, 530, 531, 532, 534, 535, 536, 537, 949

Index South Korea 33, 246, 247, 248, 252, 253, 254, 255, 257, 258, 259, 261, 807 Spain 86, 235, 720, 826, 830 Special Administrative Region (SAR) 665, 754, 842 Special measures 208, 216, 401 Special Strategies Studies 150, 151, 474, 730 Specialist schools 401 Specialist Schools and Academies Trust 37 Sputnik 132, 134 Stability 48, 49, 84, 137, 144, 151, 156, 168, 211, 227, 229, 230, 236, 237, 570, 751, 765, 770, 811, 812, 813, 814, 961 Staffing Policies 637 Stakeholders 23, 24, 68, 172, 175, 176, 177, 178, 209, 210–211, 218, 247, 248, 252, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 259, 260, 262, 277, 294, 302, 319, 361, 458, 488, 491, 492, 543, 558, 566, 567, 569, 570, 584, 586, 588, 591, 592, 662, 663, 664, 694, 709, 711, 719, 731, 779, 818, 819, 820, 874, 883, 927 Standardization 96, 816, 864 Standardized tests 20, 80, 138, 139, 158, 294, 295, 297, 440, 510, 515, 728, 770, 910, 933, 940, 948, 955 Standards 19, 20, 33, 67, 97, 102, 123, 152, 153, 199, 207, 208, 216, 226, 247, 249, 251, 256, 262, 274, 297, 307, 313, 315, 326, 328, 331, 333, 359, 360, 361, 365, 366, 372, 375, 390, 420, 451, 453, 463, 471, 473, 480, 488, 491, 492, 493, 494, 495, 496, 513, 523, 524, 526, 541, 542, 544, 549, 552, 568, 570, 590, 600, 601, 604, 626, 627, 653, 685, 688, 691, 707, 709, 713, 720, 721, 729, 735, 736, 738, 739, 740, 741, 743, 744, 760, 769, 770, 772, 775, 777, 778, 779, 780, 787, 789, 872, 874, 879, 891, 909, 913, 922, 940, 944, 947 Standards and Effectiveness Unit 114, 208, 475 Standards for Educational Accountability Systems 496, 497 Standards-based accountability (SBA) 492, 524–526, 570, 709 Standards-based reform 152, 153 State Education Agencies (SEAs) 561, 563 Status model 493

993

Strategic alliances 195, 461, 466, 921 Strategic leadership 16–18, 282, 542 Strategic planning 462, 465, 611, 661, 897, 898, 899, 906, 907 Streaming 29 Strengthening Education in Mangere and Otara (SEMO) 329, 332, 336 Stress 17, 19, 31, 44, 84, 100, 158, 200, 611, 616, 617, 619, 623, 624, 625, 626, 627, 628, 629, 631, 698, 741, 780, 818, 819, 843, 875 Structural equation modeling 157, 230, 236, 313, 770 Structural linkages 16, 561, 562–564 Structural supports 693 ‘Stuck’ schools 477, 498 Student achievement 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, 20, 36, 37, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 78, 79, 82, 83, 84, 96, 97, 115, 117, 119, 120, 135, 136, 138, 139, 144, 153, 156, 157, 167, 168, 170, 177, 178, 223, 230, 232, 234, 313, 316, 325, 329, 331, 332, 333, 335, 440, 451, 474, 480, 486, 487, 491, 510, 541, 549, 551, 557, 597, 598, 599, 603, 611, 617, 619, 620, 624, 635, 636, 652, 713, 727, 728, 729, 731, 732, 735, 739, 744, 768, 773, 775, 779, 787, 788, 801, 802, 906, 918, 921, 928, 942, 947, 955, 956 Student aptitude 43, 945 Student aspiration 454, 459 Student background 42, 47, 48, 49, 121, 138, 223, 233, 234, 236, 604, 635, 713, 777 Student learning 15, 18, 43, 44, 51, 52, 95, 102, 167, 168, 171, 172, 174, 175, 176, 178, 180, 247, 274, 313, 315, 332, 344, 365, 369, 435, 440, 441, 442, 443, 445, 446, 447, 454, 455, 459, 460, 461, 462, 466, 467, 479, 480, 491, 494, 498, 513, 541, 557, 562, 563, 569, 615, 616, 617, 618, 625, 627, 628, 631, 656, 659, 660, 673, 692, 693, 712, 713, 718, 722, 728, 732, 733, 735, 737, 738, 739, 740, 741, 743, 744, 768, 772, 774, 778, 780, 787, 791, 796, 797, 798, 799, 800, 802, 803, 826, 878, 904, 905, 909, 912, 922, 923, 925, 928, 933, 945, 946, 955 Student outcomes 3, 4, 14, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 37, 52, 115, 151, 170, 224,

994

Index

232, 233, 234, 235, 237, 313, 316, 317, 325, 330, 369, 419, 421, 422, 423, 442, 446, 447, 453, 465, 467, 473, 487, 488, 543, 551, 553, 563, 636, 627, 636, 638, 646, 651, 652, 654, 655, 713, 716, 742, 775, 820, 826, 832, 834, 835, 836, 888, 889, 909, 912, 919, 920 Student Parliament 388 Student performance 18, 232, 247, 258, 372, 411, 462, 473, 486, 494, 495, 532, 541, 565, 624, 628, 713, 730, 735, 740, 744, 797, 908, 911, 912, 934, 949 Student personal characteristics 44–47 Student personalized planning 462 Student progress 4, 5, 24, 46, 170, 601, 637, 653, 728, 736, 769, 910, 921, 929 Student retention 22, 541, 652, 653, 865, 867, 930 Student–teacher ratios 400 Students’ attitudes 46, 608, 778 Sub-Saharan Africa 14, 341, 342, 343, 346, 425, 426, 427, 428, 432, 438, 440, 445 Success 4, 7, 23, 32, 37, 39, 44, 52, 58, 68, 83, 101, 132, 133, 135, 137, 138, 147, 152, 177, 178, 180, 183, 213, 215, 270, 274, 276, 278, 296, 297, 299, 303, 318, 329, 330, 334, 335, 347, 348, 353, 359, 369, 386, 413, 461, 467, 474, 513, 516, 536, 543, 548, 550, 552, 557, 558, 581, 583, 598, 605, 610, 611, 632, 635, 654, 655, 656, 667, 718, 728, 730, 731, 732, 736, 739, 740, 742, 743, 745, 751, 754, 777, 789, 819, 830, 833, 839, 844, 845, 850, 852, 853, 854, 874, 876, 877, 884, 907, 910, 913, 918, 920, 921, 922, 927, 928, 929, 930, 940, 947, 953 Success for All 150, 152, 281, 479, 732, 777, 918, 927, 930 Successive groups model 493 Suicide rates 755 Supply and demand 764 Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution 380 Survey 27, 32, 50, 80, 138, 139, 158, 168, 172, 248, 273, 276, 288, 291, 296, 299, 300, 314, 326, 329, 331, 404, 406, 429, 440, 471, 472, 474, 478, 524, 554, 636, 639, 655, 718, 788, 790, 797, 799, 842, 844, 852, 906

Sustainability 20, 23, 71, 179, 348, 517, 518, 551, 552, 718, 760, 903, 905, 908–910, 913 Sustainable leadership 172, 178, 179 Sweden 225, 227, 229, 405, 406, 720 System reform 27, 368, 541, 544, 673 Systemic approach 179, 597, 890–899 Systemic change 19, 152, 354, 788, 895 Systems theory 16, 542, 545, 584 Taiwan 10, 22, 246, 247, 252, 253, 254, 255, 258, 261, 269, 270, 271, 272, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 280, 281, 282, 283, 481, 661, 663, 664, 665, 666, 763, 764, 807, 814, 816, 817, 819, 839, 840, 841, 842, 843, 844, 845, 849, 850, 852, 853, 854, 855, 856 Target setting 214, 452 Targeted Initiatives 457 Targets 13, 14, 16, 112, 151, 171, 176, 191, 195, 208, 214, 246, 247, 290, 329, 342, 359, 364, 366, 368, 371, 372, 387, 390, 402, 407, 434, 440, 446, 451, 452, 453, 454, 457, 461, 462, 463, 464, 465, 466, 467, 477, 482, 487, 488, 492, 494, 506, 515, 516, 524, 525, 526, 529, 533, 535, 536, 537, 581, 661, 664, 668, 669, 708, 732, 740, 744, 757, 832, 842, 852, 853, 873, 889, 923, 928, 929, 942, 946 Tax dollars 28, 30, 32 Te Kotahitanga project 330, 332, 336 Teacher as researcher 209 Teacher behavior 42, 43, 212, 224 Teacher certification 754, 756 Teacher collaboration 199, 788, 861 Teacher competence 368, 481 Teacher development 6, 13, 19, 191, 275, 289, 290, 291, 292, 298, 300, 345, 365, 372, 523, 528, 714, 732, 733, 737, 740, 745, 787, 924 Teacher differentiated effectiveness 45, 46 Teacher education 19, 20, 23, 24, 28, 38, 186, 189, 190, 191, 192, 259, 291, 364, 373, 375, 376, 377, 380, 383–385, 661, 694, 719, 720, 721, 729, 733, 737, 738, 740, 741, 751, 752, 754, 755, 756, 757, 758, 759–764, 765, 775, 841, 867, 868, 888, 948, 951, 958, 960

Index Teacher effectiveness 7, 42, 43, 47, 82, 136, 146–147, 224, 236, 314, 316, 475, 476, 717, 728, 729, 730, 767, 771, 779, 787, 794 Teacher effectiveness research (TER) 6, 42–49, 136, 141, 142, 147, 153, 479, 728 Teacher evaluation 42, 80, 475, 711, 729 Teacher induction 734 Teacher knowledge 713, 719, 735, 802, 904 Teacher leadership 18, 19, 146, 153, 158, 212, 639, 646, 650, 652, 664, 681–700, 735, 740, 741, 966 Teacher learning 20, 152, 625, 708, 709, 710, 712, 713, 722, 737, 787, 788, 791, 796, 797, 799, 800, 802, 803 Teacher morale 199, 620, 628 Teacher professionalism 36, 191, 720, 722, 772, 777, 778, 779, 780, 787 Teacher–pupil, relationships 197 Teacher qualifications 20, 247, 661, 760–761 Teacher quality 84, 246, 251, 258–259, 635, 661, 713, 719, 728, 733, 761, 767, 771, 774, 775, 778, 780, 787 Teacher recruitment and retention 119, 273, 367, 618, 733–734, 777, 778 Teacher retention 618, 733–734 Teacher Review Committee 272, 273, 277, 278, 280, 281 Teacher salaries 195, 415, 445, 626, 775 Teacher status 3, 760, 762 Teacher support 63, 152 Teacher time 199, 436 Teacher unions 207, 354, 360, 415, 518, 545, 684 Teacher Work Samples (TWS) 740–741 Teacher workload 279, 301, 303, 623 Teachers, as agents of change 271 Teachers, as knowledge producers 708 The Teachers Act 272, 273 Teachers’ Association 272, 273, 277, 278, 279, 280, 281 Teachers’ knowledge 174, 385, 735, 790, 791 Teachers’ work 18, 616, 618, 624, 629, 643, 645, 646, 648, 650, 651, 652, 653, 654, 655, 688 Teaching and administration norm, comparison 687

995

Teaching and learning 8, 10, 18, 20, 22, 24, 34, 59, 60, 64, 65, 66, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102, 103, 106, 169, 170, 172, 174, 175, 179, 180, 192, 197, 198, 200, 212, 218, 234, 246, 247, 248, 251, 260, 261, 262, 292, 294, 295, 297, 298, 299, 313, 316, 317, 330, 336, 337, 376, 386, 389, 390, 396, 454, 455, 456, 459, 460, 462, 465, 471, 472, 476, 477, 478, 483, 526, 536, 553, 558, 564, 565, 566, 568, 569, 570, 581, 583, 584, 585, 588, 592, 615, 616, 621, 623, 628, 652, 653, 654, 655, 659, 661, 662, 667, 670, 687, 708, 710, 712, 713, 714, 715, 716, 719, 733, 736, 737, 740, 754, 758, 759, 760, 763, 767, 771, 772, 775, 776, 779, 780, 797, 800, 817, 835, 839, 840, 880, 889, 890, 894, 897, 907, 911, 918, 919, 922, 924, 927, 929, 948 interaction 98, 99 Teaching standards 627, 772, 777, 780 Team teaching 29, 149, 274, 279 Technical and Further Education (TAFE) 28, 30, 927 Temporal linkages 16, 561, 570 Tertiary Education Commission 30 Test measures 96 Thailand 248, 252, 255, 256, 258, 387, 663, 664, 666, 807, 813, 817, 839, 942 Thatcher, Margaret 10, 27, 32, 33 Theoretical models 230 Thinking Schools, a Learning Nation 252, 666, 815 Thinking style 42, 45, 46, 47, 52 Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) 80, 174, 185, 208, 237, 308, 365, 404, 405, 406, 420, 472, 635, 751, 898, 934 Time-on-task 4, 136, 728, 343 Time-related stressors 695 Title I 148, 150, 562, 730 Tomorrow’s Schools 313, 327, 334, 335 Top-down approach 216, 271 Top-down measures 581 Total quality management (TQM) 256, 301, 365 Transactional leadership 582–583

996

Index

Transformational leadership (TL) 170, 282, 583, 585, 591, 638, 650, 651, 652, 653, 655 Trust 281, 316, 336, 347, 360, 569, 589, 590, 629, 653, 655, 698, 700, 792, 799, 866, 905, 912, 917, 921, 922 Turkey 12, 363, 364, 365, 366, 368, 369, 370, 373, 374, 376, 377, 942 Uganda 345, 432 Under performing schools 487, 525, 788 Unemployment 70, 226, 326, 327, 472, 537, 917 UNESCO 79, 80, 82, 184, 185, 186, 192, 193, 197, 300, 387, 426, 427, 720, 952 UNICEF 78, 82, 198, 199 United Kingdom 9, 10, 13, 29, 30, 34, 37, 40, 59, 69, 70, 112, 116, 117, 121, 123, 132, 134, 142, 144, 148, 152, 168, 207, 223, 224, 225, 229, 246, 399–402, 403, 406, 419, 452, 455, 472, 475, 479, 480, 481, 489, 627, 708, 721, 773, 832, 879, 949, 953, 956 United States 8, 9, 15, 19, 27, 32, 34, 40, 42, 50, 67, 77, 114, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136, 137, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 158, 159, 167, 168, 169, 174, 223, 224, 229, 246, 274, 281, 308, 411, 412, 414, 415, 417, 419, 420, 474, 479, 485, 486, 488, 489, 491, 492, 494, 498, 524, 557, 560, 562, 565, 599, 616, 625, 627, 720, 727, 729, 730, 732, 733, 738, 739, 741, 768, 933, 939, 942, 943, 944, 945, 948, 955, 956 Universal access 186, 683, 812 Unrealized capacity 67 Urban poor 140 Uruguay 22, 23, 79, 184, 189, 190, 193, 505, 859, 866, 867, 871, 881–883 ‘Value-added’ 3, 14, 59, 61, 62, 65, 71, 117, 208, 211, 213, 320, 481, 494, 530, 779, 811, 906, 909, 911, 913 data 65 Value-added models 494

Values 17, 19, 21, 22, 106, 118, 172, 174, 179, 189, 215, 269, 272, 276, 277, 283, 296, 298, 299, 302, 309, 310, 328, 330, 343, 357, 358, 405, 411, 458, 462, 464, 478, 542, 547, 548, 553, 562, 567, 569, 571, 585, 586, 589, 591, 611, 619, 628, 630, 652, 654, 655, 656, 659, 663, 664, 669, 671, 673, 682, 683, 685, 689, 692, 696, 715, 717, 723, 756, 778, 810, 812, 813, 818, 819, 820, 842, 845, 850, 852, 854, 859, 860, 872, 892, 907, 908, 918, 919, 921, 927, 930, 959 Variance 11, 57, 61, 63, 81, 138, 140, 144, 223, 227, 230, 232, 233, 236, 316, 397, 427, 432, 439, 441, 442, 445, 480, 481, 486, 487, 493, 647, 768, 771, 773, 774, 775, 776, 798, 799, 845, 947, 956 Venezuela 78, 79, 84, 195, 897, 899 Victoria 30, 36, 309, 310, 312, 313, 315, 317, 318, 319, 320, 451, 452, 454, 455, 456, 458, 459, 462, 545, 778, 945 Victorian Quality Schools Project 771, 773, 775 Vision 2020 251, 252, 663 Visioning 907 Vocational education 253, 368, 369, 379, 919 Vocational training 188, 364, 368, 927 What Matters Most: Teaching for America’s Future 734 Whole school improvement 22, 24, 479, 913, 919 Whole system reform 544 Working class 28, 70, 113, 116, 294 World Bank 81, 186, 194, 344, 363, 364, 365, 367, 368, 371, 372, 375, 376, 377, 429, 503, 511, 812, 817 World’s best practice 33, 36, 939 World-Class School 248–249 World Development Report (WDR) 503 Writers’ Workshop 794, 796, 799 Youth culture

859, 865, 867

Zambia 428, 432, 439, 440 Zimbabwe 346, 428

SPRINGER INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOKS OF EDUCATION 1. Kenneth Leithwood, Judith Chapman, David Corson, Philip Hallinger, and Ann Hart: International Handbook of Educational Leadership and Administration. 1996 ISBN 0-7923-3530-9 2. B.J. Fraser and K.G. Tobin: International Handbook of Science Education. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-3531-7 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

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13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

B.J. Biddle, T.L. Good, and I.L. Goodson: International Handbook of Teachers and Teaching. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-3532-5 A.J. Bishop, Ken Clements, Christine Keitel, Jeremy Kilpatrick, and Collette Laborde: International Handbook of Mathematics Education. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-3533-3 Andy Hargreaves, Ann Leiberman, Michael Fullan, and David Hopkins: International Handbook of Educational Change. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-3534-1 David Aspin, Judith Chapman, Micheal Hatton, and Yukiko Sawano: International Handbook of Lifelong Learning. 2001 ISBN 0-7923-6815-0 G.R. Norman, C.P.M. van der Vleuten, and D.I. Newble: International Handbook of Research in Medical Education. 2002 ISBN 1-4020-0466-4 Kenneth Leithwood and Philip Hallinger: Second International Handbook of Educational Leadership and Administration. 2002 ISBN 1-4020-0690-X Thomas Kellaghan and D.L. Stufflebeam: International Handbook of Educational Evaluation. 2003 ISBN 1-4020-0849-X A.J. Bishop, M.A. (Ken) Clements, Christine Keitel, Jeremy Kilpatrick, and F.K.S. Leung: Second International Handbook of Mathematics Education. 2003 ISBN 1-4020-1008-7 J.P. Keeves and Ryo Watanabe: International Handbook of Educational Research in the Asia-Pacific Region. 2003 ISBN 1-4020-1007-9 J.J. Loughran, Mary Lynn Hamilton, Vicki Kubler LaBoskey and Tom Russell: International Handbook of Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices. 2004 ISBN 1-4020-1812-6 N. Bascia, A. Cumming, A. Datnow, K. Leithwood, D. Livingstone: International Handbook of Educational Policy. 2005 ISBN 1-4020-3189-0 J. Weiss, J. Nolan, J. Hunsinger, P. Trifonas: International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments. 2006 ISBN 1-4020-3802-X J. Cummins, C. Davison: International Handbook of English Language Teaching. 2007 ISBN 0-387-46300-3 L. Bresler: International Handbook of Research in Arts Education. 2007 ISBN 978-1-4020-2998-1 T. Townsend: International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement. 2007 ISBN 978-1-4020-4805-0 J.J.F. Forest and P.G. Altbach: International Handbook of Higher Education. 2006 ISBN 978-1-4020-4011-5

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