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.

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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 life-
time. It was, however, just the start of another career, this time of sparkling scholar-
ship. 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
vi Dedication

The scholarship of Hedley Beare in the twenty-first century opened with the publi-
cation 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 groun-
ded 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 log-
ically 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, tech-
nology, 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 edu-
cation, 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 inno-
vation 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 effective-
ness 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 20 Years of ICSEI: The Impact of School Effectiveness and
School Improvement on School Reform 3
Tony Townsend
2 Four Decades of Body-Surfing the Breakers of School Reform:
Just Waving, Not Drowning 27
Hedley Beare
3 Generic and Differentiated Models of Educational Effectiveness:
Implications for the Improvement of Educational Practice 41
Leonidas Kyriakides
4 Improving School Effectiveness: Retrospective and Prospective 57
John MacBeath
5 School Effectiveness Research in Latin America 75
Javier Murillo
6 “Effective for What; Effective for Whom?” Two Questions
SESI Should Not Ignore 93
Ira Bogotch, Luis Mirón, and Gert Biesta
7 Pursuing the Contextualisation Agenda: Recent Progress and
Future Prospects 111
Martin Thrupp, Ruth Lupton, and Ceri Brown

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 131
Charles Teddlie and Sam Stringfield
9 History of the School Effectiveness and Improvement Movement
in Canada over the Past 25 Years 167
Larry Sackney
vii
viii Table of Contents

10 School Improvement in Latin America: Innovations over

25 Years (1980–2006) 183
Beatrice Avalos

Europe
11 Growing Together: School Effectiveness and School
Improvement in the UK 207
Louise Stoll and Pam Sammons
12 Educational Effectiveness and Improvement: The Development
of the Field in Mainland Europe 223
Bert P. M. Creemers

Asia and the Pacific

13 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Asia: Three Waves,
Nine Trends and Challenges 245
Yin-Cheong Cheng and Wai-ming Tam
14 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Taiwan 269
Hui-Ling Pan
15 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Mainland China 287
Daming Feng
16 The Maturing of a Movement: Tracking Research, Policy and
Practice in Australia 307
Brian Caldwell
17 Schooling Reform: Reflections on the New Zealand Experience 325
Howard Fancy

Africa and the Middle East

18 History of the School Effectiveness and Improvement
Movement in Africa 341
Brahm Fleisch
19 School Autonomy for School Effectiveness and Improvement:
The Case of Israel 351
Ami Volansky
20 Recent Initiatives in School Effectiveness and Improvement:
The
. Case of Turkey 363
Ismail Güven
21 Recent Initiatives in School Effectiveness and Improvement:
The Case of the Islamic Republic of Iran 379
Azam Azimi
 Table of Contents ix

Section 3 Resources, School Effectiveness and Improvement

22 The Relationship Between Student Attainment and School Resources 395
Rosalind Levačić
23 Accountability, Funding and School Improvement in Canada 411
Charles Ungerleider and Ben Levin
24 Cost and Financing of Education and Its Impact on Coverage and Quality
of Services and Efficiency and Equity in Sub-Saharan African Countries 425
Alain Mingat
25 Resources and School Effectiveness and Improvement 451
Jim Spinks

Part Two
Section 4 Accountability and Diversity, School Effectiveness and
Improvement
26 School Effectiveness and School Improvement (SESI): Links with the
International Standards/Accountability Agenda 471
David Reynolds
27 Evolution of School Performance Research in the USA: From School
Effectiveness to School Accountability and Back 485
Susan Kochan
28 Education Decentralisation and Accountability Relationships in
Latin American and the Caribbean Region 503
Emanuela Di Gropello
29 Equity, Efficiency and the Development of South African Schools 523
Nick Taylor
30 Policy Perspective on School Effectiveness and Improvement at the
State Level: The Case of South Australia 541
Steve Marshall
31 Diverse Populations and School Effectiveness and
Improvement in the USA 557
Sue Lasky, Amanda Datnow, Sam Stringfield, and Kirsten Sundell

Section 5 Changing Schools Through Strategic Leadership

32 School Leadership, School Effectiveness and School Improvement:
Democratic and Integrative Leadership 579
Lejf Moos and Stephan Huber
33 Leadership and School Reform Factors 597
Robert J. Marzano
x Table of Contents

34 The Emotional Side of School Improvement: A Leadership Perspective 615

Kenneth Leithwood
35 Leadership and School Effectiveness and Improvement 635
Halia Silins and Bill Mulford
36 Leadership Development for School Effectiveness and Improvement
in East Asia 659
Allan Walker, Philip Hallinger, and Haiyan Qian

Section 6 Changing Teachers and Classrooms for School Improvement

37 Teacher Leadership: Barriers and Supports 681
Joseph Murphy
38 The Continuing Professional Development of Teachers: Issues of
Coherence, Cohesion and Effectiveness 707
Chris Day and Ruth Leitch
39 The Evolving Role of Teachers in Effective Schools 727
Eugene Schaffer, Roberta Devlin-Scherer, and Sam Stringfield
40 Teacher Education and Professional Development for
Sustainable School Effectiveness 751
Wai-ming Tam and Yin-Cheong Cheng
41 School and Teacher Effectiveness: Implications of Findings from
Evidence-Based Research on Teaching and Teacher Quality 767
Ken Rowe
42 System Supports for Teacher Learning and School Improvement 787
Janet H. Chrispeels, Carrie A. Andrews with Margarita González
43 Curriculum Reforms and Instructional Improvement in Asia 807
Kerry Kennedy

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 825
Bert P. M. Creemers, Louise Stoll, Gerry Reezigt, and the ESI Team
45 Self-Directed Learning as a Key Approach to Effectiveness of Education:
A Comparison among Mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan 839
Magdalena Mo-Ching Mok, Yin-Cheong Cheng, Shing-On Leung,
Peter Wen-Jing Shan, Phillip Moore, and Kerry Kennedy
46 Coming and Going: Educational Policy and Secondary School Strategy
in the Context of Poverty – Latin American Case Studies 859
Claudia Jacinto and Ada Freytes
 Table of Contents xi

47 The School Review Process: The Case of the British Schools in

Latin America 871
David Bamford
48 Inquiry-Based Science Education and Its Impact on School Improvement:
The ECBI Program in Chile 887
Rosa Devés and Patricia López
49 Creating New Schools Using Evidence Based Solutions – A Case Study 903
Jenny Lewis
50 Best Practice in Secondary School Improvement: The Case of
Salisbury High School 917
Helen Paphitis

Afterword Learning from the Past to Reframe the Future

51 School Effectiveness and Improvement in the Twenty-First Century:
Reframing for the Future 933
Tony Townsend

About the Contributors 963

Index 973
PREFACE

This book celebrates twenty years of the International Congress for School Effective-
ness 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 inter-
ested 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 consti-
tuted 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
xiv Preface

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 con-
gresses 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 effective-
ness 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.
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. Confe-
rences 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 con-
sidered 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 effec-
tiveness 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, symboli-
cally and culturally – than the less effective ones.” There was a greater degree of con-
sistency 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 devel-
oping practical means for school improvement, but there are some important distinc-
tions 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.
4 Townsend

School effectiveness is concerned with results. Researchers try to describe certain

variables for school success in measurable terms. On the other hand, school improve-
ment 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 necessar-
ily 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.
 20 Years of ICSEI 5

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 con-
text 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 Differ-
ence 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, devel-
oped western countries, where the school effectiveness research and school improve-
ment 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 develop-
ing 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 effec-
tiveness 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
6 Townsend

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, “Socio-
logical and political concerns about school effectiveness research: Time for a new
research agenda” Thrupp (2001) and “Countering the critics: Responses to recent criti-
cisms 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 propo-
nents 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
 20 Years of ICSEI 7

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 rele-
vant 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 longitudi-
nal 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 mecha-
nism for improvement but are rejected out of hand by others. But what is also impor-
tant 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.
8 Townsend

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 coun-
tries, 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.
 20 Years of ICSEI 9

In Chapter 8, Charles Teddlie and Sam Stringfield provide an overview of the ante-
cedants 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 pro-
vide 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 under-
researched, 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 build-
ing 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 educa-
tional 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 teach-
ers 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
10 Townsend

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 argu-
ment 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 develop-
ment 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 globaliza-
tion 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
 20 Years of ICSEI 11

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 ‘supervi-
sion’ 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 con-
flict 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 prac-
tice in Australia. He identifies five stages from early development to impending matu-
rity 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 enter-
prise 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 accounta-
bility. 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 strength-
ening 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
12 Townsend

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 agen-
cies and other external grants and on external understandings of school effectiveness and
improvement as many projects are driven by academics from countries supporting edu-
cation 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 parti-
cipation in compulsory education, second to try and improve the quality of what hap-
pens 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 provi-
sion 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 effec-
tiveness and progress in education might mean. As with Turkey, we see a country that
 20 Years of ICSEI 13

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 improve-
ments 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 Levačić 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 iden-
tified 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
14 Townsend

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 estab-
lish 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 administra-
tors. 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 consis-
tent outcome of the late 1990s until the present time has been the focus on accounta-
bility 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 meas-
ures 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 compar-
atively new discipline, the early research, with comparatively unsophisticated goals and
outcomes was seized upon by politicians and education systems that, in turn, deve-
loped relatively unsophisticated policy responses to the issues facing them. He further
 20 Years of ICSEI 15

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 understand-
ing 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 under-
standing 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 connect-
ing 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 per-
forming moderately as a means of improving the economic proficiency of the country.
16 Townsend

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 out-
lines 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 pro-
vide 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 dif-
ferent structures, different mechanisms for preparing school leaders and different ways
of identifying how much responsibility the leader will take in decisions and implemen-
tation. 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 demo-
cratic 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
 20 Years of ICSEI 17

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 com-
munities 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 con-
siders 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 devel-
oping 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 men-
tioned are not fostered. He discusses five broad categories of organizational condi-
tions, 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 direc-
tion-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 lead-
ership characteristics of a school are important factors in promoting systems and struc-
tures 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
18 Townsend

schools as learning organizations: Trusting and Collaborative Climate; Taking Initia-

tives and Risks; Shared and Monitored Mission; and, Professional Development and
argue that school level factors such as leadership, Organizational Learning and teach-
ers’ work have a significant impact on non-academic student outcomes such as par-
ticipation 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 princi-
pals now need to respond to conflicting demands of promoting participation and col-
laboration 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, organiza-
tional 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 conser-
vatism. These norms, when taken together, suggest that in many cases, neither teachers
 20 Years of ICSEI 19

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 sys-
tems 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 ongo-
ing 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 educa-
tion 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
20 Townsend

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 crite-
rion 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 class-
rooms. 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
 20 Years of ICSEI 21

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 edu-
cation. “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 get-
ting 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 acknowl-
edged, infrastructure and access issues represent pre-conditions for successful curricu-
lum reform. From an economic perspective, the main characteristic has been the
“liberalization” of curriculum. The state has co-opted progressivist principles to sup-
port 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 sug-
gests 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 cre-
ating 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 effec-
tive school improvement or as a ready-made toolbox for the implementation of improve-
ment in schools.” The framework was developed by investigating the relationship
22 Townsend

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 inte-
grate 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 impor-
tance 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 learn-
ing and draw implications for teaching and learning from the results. They used a
model with three components, the prior cognitive, motivational, and volitional condi-
tions of the learner, the learning actions; and the outcomes of the learning and four
linking processes, planning, monitoring, and feedback leading to first- and second-
order 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 self-
confidence 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 pol-
icy 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 teach-
ers and school heads and where school actors do not commit themselves to their imple-
mentation, 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.
 20 Years of ICSEI 23

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 self-
improvement 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 “contin-
uous 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 partner-
ship 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,
24 Townsend

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 con-
tained 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 hand-
book, 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 effective-
ness, 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 refram-
ing and redefining the field of school effectiveness and improvement, including
redefining the way in which we look at effectiveness, redefining how we measure effec-
tiveness, 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
 20 Years of ICSEI 25

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 chap-
ters 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 simi-
lar 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 differ-
ent situations create different experiences for people as they move through the educa-
tion 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.

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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 move-
ments 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 econ-
omy, 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.
28 Beare

The waves of school reform over the second half of the twentieth century were fash-
ioned 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 insurmount-
able 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.
 Just Waving, Not Drowning 29

The Funding Crisis

When I returned from overseas study in 1970, I found that the South Australian Director-
General 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 argu-
ments 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 magnifi-
cently 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 facil-
ities. 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
30 Beare

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 short-
lived 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 accept-
able standard of resourcing. It was called “equality of educational opportunity,” mean-
ing 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 school-
based 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.
 Just Waving, Not Drowning 31

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 rep-
resented 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 hear-
ing 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 impres-
sion 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.
32 Beare

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 accu-
rately 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 achieve-
ment 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 espe-
cially 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 capital-
ize 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 neighbor-
hoods. 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 govern-
ment expenditures on both sides of the Atlantic, on the premise that you cannot keep
 Just Waving, Not Drowning 33

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 satisfac-
torily 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 effective-
ness. 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 (effec-
tiveness) 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 compet-
itiveness 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
34 Beare

classrooms (instructional leadership). The effective school also had a broadly based and
pervasive instructional focus; it concentrated on its educational program first and fore-
most (focus on learning). As a third quality, the school provided an orderly and safe cli-
mate 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 eval-
uating the school (planned achievement levels). It was admittedly a fairly simple five-
point 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 pro-
duced 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 evi-
dence, 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 criti-
cisms from hard-nosed scientific rationalist approaches and to assemble research evi-
dence 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.
 Just Waving, Not Drowning 35

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 bureau-
cracy 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 speci-
fied 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 independ-
ently 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
36 Beare

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 sys-
tems. 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 diplo-
mas in education, they sponsored the understanding among teachers that in-service edu-
cation 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 intro-
duction 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 edu-
cation resulting not merely in a certificate but in a degree. In order to function intelli-
gently 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 col-
lecting 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
 Just Waving, Not Drowning 37

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 disen-
gaged 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 non-
European 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
38 Beare

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 institu-
tion. 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
 Just Waving, Not Drowning 39

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 pre-
determined, 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 indi-
vidual 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
40 Beare

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 mecha-
nism 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 appro-
priate 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, gen-
eralized and specialized prior knowledge, interests and motives, socio-economic back-
ground, 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 mak-
ing 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 improve-
ment 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.
42 Kyriakides

Such conceptualisation of effectiveness has led to a simplistic dichotomy between effec-

tive 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 orches-
tration 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 back-
ground (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 promot-
ing progress of different groups of students according to their personal characteris-
tics; 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 implica-
tions 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 dif-
ferent SES and ability levels. Some evidence demonstrates that low and high ability
 Models of Educational Effectiveness 43

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, instructional-
method 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 dif-
ferent 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 effec-
tiveness research yields more powerful main effects than interactions, and the inter-
actions 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 pro-
vide 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 class-
room 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 capi-
talise 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.
44 Kyriakides

Early research into teacher effectiveness has also demonstrated that teachers’ class-
room 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 per-
sonality 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 aca-
demic 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 dif-
ferences 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).
 Models of Educational Effectiveness 45

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, think-
ing, 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 inter-
est, 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 frame-
work 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 effective-
ness 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 sug-
gests 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 stu-
dents 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 inter-
ventions compatible with those preferences was beneficial to their academic achieve-
ment. 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
46 Kyriakides

unstructured, teaching methods. However, one study conducted in Cyprus has investi-
gated teacher differentiated effectiveness in relation to student personal characteristics
(Kyriakides, 2005a). An element in this study was investigating whether generic teach-
ing 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 admin-
istered 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 adminis-
tered 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 men-
tal 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 (execu-
tive 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 statisti-
cally 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 sup-
ports the importance of investigating teacher differentiated effectiveness in relation to
 Models of Educational Effectiveness 47

student personal characteristics. However, it is important not to overestimate the dif-

ferentiated nature of teacher effectiveness. This study has shown that most variables
measuring teaching skills (e.g., practical application opportunities, giving informa-
tion, 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 stu-
dent 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 proj-
ects 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 stu-
dent 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 stu-
dents 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 demon-
strated that if students need new information, they are likely to need group lessons featur-
ing 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 assign-
ments 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
48 Kyriakides

higher order thinking. A number of approaches have been developed aimed at improv-
ing 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 measur-
ing 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 dif-
ferences 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 two-
thirds 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
 Models of Educational Effectiveness 49

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 eth-
nic 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 differ-
entiated 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 differenti-
ated effectiveness. First, studies investigating differentiated teacher and school effective-
ness 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 text-
books 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’ dif-
ferent 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 dis-
cussion 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
50 Kyriakides

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 impor-
tant 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 dif-
ferent 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 causal-
ity. 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 class-
room and student level which reveal the importance of investigating differentiated
effectiveness (Campbell et al., 2004). Therefore, researchers should establish models
 Models of Educational Effectiveness 51

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 effec-
tiveness, 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, there-
fore, useful tools for teacher and school self-evaluation of quality and equity in effec-
tiveness. 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 differentia-
tion 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 rep-
resent 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 effec-
tive (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
52 Kyriakides

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 indi-
vidual student learning needs as defined by their background and personal character-
istics 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, pol-
icy 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 pur-
poses. 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 differenti-
ated 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 differenti-
ated effectiveness illustrates ample opportunities for promoting differentiation in
practice, policy-makers and teachers can use the main findings of research into differ-
entiated 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.
 Models of Educational Effectiveness 53

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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 inde-
pendent 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.
58 MacBeath

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 signifi-
cant 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 perform-
ance 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 power-
ful 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.
 Improving School Effectiveness 59

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 effec-
tiveness work. At local authority level councils began to put into place quality assur-
ance 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 counter-
parts 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 out-
comes 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.
60 MacBeath

A Question of Design
The research design was to sample 80 primary and secondary schools on a representa-
tive 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 gath-
ering 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 character-
istics 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 addi-
tional 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
 Improving School Effectiveness 61

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 attain-
ment. 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 tra-
ditional 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 rela-
tionship 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 con-
trolling for prior attainment and background, value-added results revealed statisti-
cally 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
62 MacBeath

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 curricu-
lum. 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 socio-
economic 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 entitle-
ment has an effect on the achievement of individual pupils over and above the influ-
ence 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.
 Improving School Effectiveness 63

A Question of Attitudes
As the Gow and Macpherson studies showed, and as Thrupp’s critique revealed, atti-
tudes to school are not only important drivers of attainment but are also highly infec-
tious. 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 individ-
ual 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, nonethe-
less, 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
64 MacBeath

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 var-
ious 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 ques-
tionnaire had been administered, perhaps colored by recent events or events in
prospect. Working systematically in groups through the data, problematising and dig-
ging 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 collab-
orative 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
 Improving School Effectiveness 65

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 ques-
tion 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, whole-
class 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 hid-
den complexities of school life and classroom culture. Interview transcripts were ana-
lyzed 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 possi-
ble 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 power-
ful 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 improv-
ing, 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
66 MacBeath

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) a learning school,
(2) high expectations,
(3) ownership of change,
(4) shared goals,
(5) effective communication,
(6) focus on pupil learning,
(7) effective leadership,
(8) home-school partnership,
(9) positive relationships,
(10) 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 self-
evaluation 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 class-
room, 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
 Improving School Effectiveness 67

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 out-
comes 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, joined-
up 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.
68 MacBeath

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 encour-
aged 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 self-
evaluation 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 chal-
lenge was needed and appropriate. The Project provided a useful testbed for examin-
ing 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
 Improving School Effectiveness 69

also to be reflected in the European Project mentioned above where the Icelandic crit-
ical 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 author-
ity 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 effec-
tiveness 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 pre-
school 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 poor-
est 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 schizo-
phrenia, 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.
70 MacBeath

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 school-
ing 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:
● 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 house-
holds 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 work-
less 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.
 Improving School Effectiveness 71

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 depro-
fessionalised 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 sustain-
ability, 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 inspec-
tion 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.”
72 MacBeath

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.

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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 ambi-
tious 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 effec-
tiveness 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 involve-
ment 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 igno-
rance. 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.
76 Murillo

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 struc-
tured 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 effective-
ness 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 unde-
niably 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 sub-
ordinating 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, adminis-
trators, and policy-makers rather than communicate to a wider academic audience.
 School Effectiveness-Latin America 77

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 disadvan-
taged 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 dropping-
out 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 effec-
tiveness and productivity perspectives. However, while both approaches share a com-
mon 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 popular-
ity 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 econom-
ics 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.”
78 Murillo

Intimately Related to the Development of Education and Educational Research

Finally, there is a clear relationship among the number and quality of school effective-
ness studies carried out in each country, the extent of the country’s educational devel-
opment, 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 effec-
tiveness 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, particu-
larly 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 stu-
dent achievement;
(6) work that is focused on the analysis of the school culture from an ethnographic
perspective.
 School Effectiveness-Latin America 79

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 effec-
tiveness, 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 effec-
tiveness 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
80 Murillo

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 under-
standing 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 elab-
orate 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:

● 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, Beltrǎo, Farińas, 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
 School Effectiveness-Latin America 81

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 achieve-
ment 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 con-
trolled 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
82 Murillo

teachers can be considered as being remarkable. The motivation and innovative capac-
ity 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 organiza-
tions 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:
● 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 situ-
ated 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 associ-
ated with educational achievement. Also, the study of Arancibia and Álvarez (1991)
who analyzed teacher factors that directly or indirectly affect students’ achievement.
 School Effectiveness-Latin America 83

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’ achieve-
ment 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’ achieve-
ment. 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 pre-
school 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
84 Murillo

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 adminis-
trators. 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) enti-
tled: 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 rel-
evant 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 cli-
mate, 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 qual-
ity, including their initial preparation and working conditions.
Almost all the studies in Latin America stress the importance of management of finan-
cial and material resources as factors directly related to student achievement and, there-
fore, 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 85

Table 1. School effectiveness factors according to selected studies carried out in Latin America

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

School factors
School climate X X X X X X X X
Infrastructure X X X X X X
School resources X X X X X X X X
School financial management X X X X X
School Autonomy X X
Teamwork X X X X
Planning X X X X X
School community
involvement X X X X X X
Shared goals X X X X X X X
Leadership X X X X X

Classroom factors
Classroom climate X X X X X X X
Classroom quality and resources X X X X X X
Teacher-student ratio X X
Teacher planning (work in the
classroom) X X X X X
Curricular resources X X X
Didactic methods X X X X X X
Student assessment and follow-up X X X X X

Factors related to the school staff

Teacher qualifications X X
Professional development X X X X X
Stability X X X X
Experience X X X X
Teachers working conditions X
Involvement X X X X X
Teacher-student relationship X X X X
High expectations X X X X X X
Positive reinforcement 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.
86 Murillo

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 stud-
ies 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 spe-
cific 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.
 School Effectiveness-Latin America 87

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, know-
ing 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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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 effective-
ness, 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 para-
digmatic assumptions of SESI; for, it is our belief that only by confronting the sub-
stance 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.
94 Bogotch, Mirón, and Biesta

Based on our own reviews and research, we view SESI today as being at a concep-
tual 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 summa-
rize 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 adminis-
trative 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, Luyten, Visscher,

Chapman, Stoll, and Witziers (2005)
and Russ (2004)

Strong administrative leadership Seminal studies of Teaching and learning Political ideology
within-school effects
on student learning
High expectations for students Replication studies Effective distributed Theoretcial
with more sophisticated leadership limitations
methods
Orderly school climate Shift toward school Information rich Methodological
improvement environment flaws
Teaching and monitoring International Positive school
of basic skills comparisons culture
Learning environment
Continuous professional
development
 Effective for What; Effective for Whom? 95

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 advo-
cacy 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 con-
text, people, or politics. Therefore, it stands as a strength of SESI that it has shown
methodological transparency and has continuously asked reflexive questions pertain-
ing 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 limita-
tions, 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 re-
analyses 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 disadvan-
taged 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 teach-
ing 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 post-
2001. 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
96 Bogotch, Mirón, and Biesta

appropriation of decisions by central authorities and the mandated adoption of standard-

ized 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, proce-
dural, 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 instruc-
tion. 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 meas-
ures 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, out-
puts, with minimal attention paid to the proverbial “black box.” The earliest research
designs and methods depicted the organization through correlations of multiple inde-
pendent variables leading or predicting outcomes on a single or multiple dependent
variables.
During the early phase of SESI research, the individual within a school organiza-
tion, 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 complexi-
ties 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 supe-
rior 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 achieve-
ment 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, dis-
tricts, states, and nations, narrowing subject areas taught in the curriculum, and refo-
cusing instruction for extended periods of time on teaching students the efficiencies of
test taking. Policymakers claim that these were all unintended consequences. But that
 Effective for What; Effective for Whom? 97

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, dis-
trict, 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 applica-
bility 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 improve-
ment 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 dis-
tricts, practice exams given throughout the year serve as benchmark assessments
within a school. The demands for real time applicability, however, are met by effi-
ciency 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 organiza-
tional 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 look-
ing particularly at alternative research approaches that do not rely upon a technologi-
cal model (i.e., producing knowledge through research and then implementing it), but
98 Bogotch, Mirón, and Biesta

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 inter-
action, 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 ensu-
ing meaning, will be completely idiosyncratic. The reason why simply presenting stu-
dents 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
 Effective for What; Effective for Whom? 99

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 com-
munities 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 particu-
lar 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, leader-
ship 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 opportu-
nities 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 can-
not be understood in causal terms. Education is, in other words, not a perfect technol-
ogy. 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 impor-
tant 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 “effec-
tive 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 broad-
ening 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 behav-
ioural 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
100 Bogotch, Mirón, and Biesta

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 ques-
tion 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 dis-
cussions 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 “out-
comes”; 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
 Effective for What; Effective for Whom? 101

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 judg-
ments 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 ques-
tion 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 partic-
ular 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 environ-
ment 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 strate-
gies. 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)
102 Bogotch, Mirón, and Biesta

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 ulti-
mately 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 cen-
tral. Similarly, how scientific knowledge is rendered intellectually and socially legiti-
mate 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 econ-
omy. 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 minor-
ity 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, politi-
cally, 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 meas-
ures 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
 Effective for What; Effective for Whom? 103

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 sur-
face 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
104 Bogotch, Mirón, and Biesta

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 schol-
ars 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 acknowl-
edges, 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 prac-
titioners 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 marginal-
ized people, be they women, racial minorities, and in one unprecedented case, poor stu-
dents 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 individ-
ual 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 interac-
tions across the organization.
From the inception of participatory action research (PAR), Fine, Tuck, & Zeller-
Berkman (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
 Effective for What; Effective for Whom? 105

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 knowl-
edge production gleaned through more conventional forms of action research.
Thus, in the struggle to fight the spread of AIDS, and the exposure of human geno-
cide 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.
106 Bogotch, Mirón, and Biesta

While SESI has moved slowly towards new understandings of within school dynam-
ics 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 recog-
nize 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 incor-
porates 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 par-
ticipants. SESI researchers, working alone, have not exposed the barriers to profes-
sional 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, ignor-
ing 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 mis-
sion attractive to different and powerful publics (Holly, 1986). As a result, SESI
 Effective for What; Effective for Whom? 107

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 rela-
tionships 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, educa-
tional 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 crit-
icism 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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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 con-
siderable 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 con-
tribution 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 seek-
ing 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 dam-
aging 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 find-
ings and the political use made of SESI would be to pursue what we call the contextu-
alisation 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.
112 Thrupp, Lupton, and Brown

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 con-
textualised 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 illus-
trate 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 limita-
tions 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, market-
oriented 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 differ-
ences 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
 Pursuing the Contextualisation 113

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 under-
standing 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 mar-
ginalised 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 unchal-
lenging 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 unhelp-
ful. 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 fund-
ing 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,
114 Thrupp, Lupton, and Brown

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 con-
nections 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 situa-
tion 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 peo-
ple 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 effective-
ness 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
 Pursuing the Contextualisation 115

limitations of a comprehensive “recipe” approach to effectiveness in schools with dif-

ferent intake characteristics. Hallinger and Murphy (1986, p. 347) for instance, found
that for the most part, schools of different SES have quite different effectiveness cor-
relates. “High and low SES effective schools [are] characterised by different patterns of
curricular breadth, time allocation, goal emphasis, instructional leadership, opportuni-
ties for student reward, expectations for student achievement and home-school rela-
tions.” 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 rela-
tively 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 dis-
advantaged 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 pre-
vious 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 sum-
marising 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 intercorre-
lated 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
116 Thrupp, Lupton, and Brown

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 correla-
tions 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 stu-
dents in middle class British schools in the same district … . Similarly well doc-
umented 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 work-
ing 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 uni-
versally 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,
 Pursuing the Contextualisation 117

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 through-
out 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 perform-
ance 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-exami-
nation 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
118 Thrupp, Lupton, and Brown

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 prob-
lem 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 dif-
ferent 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 account-
ability 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 conven-
tional 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 con-
stituencies and like many other educational terms be subject to having their depth and
critical intent stripped out in less than searching analyses.
 Pursuing the Contextualisation 119

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 com-
position 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 com-
pliant 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 composi-
tion 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 charac-
teristics (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 differen-
tiated school system, reported low pupil esteem and aspirations, difficulties in secur-
ing 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
120 Thrupp, Lupton, and Brown

to describe school context, and about the suggestion that differences in student achieve-
ment 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 effec-
tiveness 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 influ-
ential 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 composi-
tion, for example, schools with larger numbers of moderately poor pupils com-
pared with schools with smaller numbers of moderately poor pupils (based on
Thrupp et al., 2002, p. 488).
 Pursuing the Contextualisation 121

The HARPS Project

The authors are currently involved in a study that incorporates the above characteris-
tics 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 character-
istics, 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 proj-
ect 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 subse-
quently 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 hap-
pened. 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 major-
ity 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
122 Thrupp, Lupton, and Brown

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 mod-
els. 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 rela-
tionship 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
 Pursuing the Contextualisation 123

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 chil-
dren’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 partic-
ular 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 gen-
eralisability (Teddlie et al., 2000). Rather we would suggest that a broader range of con-
textual 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 avail-
able 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 complexi-
ties through context variables, successful school improvement also needs an under-
standing 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 improv-
ing 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 explana-
tion for compositional effects. This is an interesting hypothesis but not one which precludes composi-
tional 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.
124 Thrupp, Lupton, and Brown

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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 Improve-
ment 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 with-
out 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 develop-
ment 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, includ-
ing brief explorations of the similarities, variations, and intersections of U.S. and inter-
national forms of school effects and school improvement research.
131
T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 131–166.
© 2007 Springer.
132 Teddlie and Stringfield

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 under-
stand 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 “reform-
ing 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.
 A History of School Research in the USA 133

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 non-
traditional 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 previ-
ously 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, follow-
up 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 col-
lege. 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” meas-
ures. However, the group’s failures to anticipate these challenges clearly presaged
134 Teddlie and Stringfield

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 con-
cepts 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 exten-
sive 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 aca-
demics 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 perfunc-
tory 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, educa-
tional reforms are finally evaluated not for their theoretical elegance but for their
ability to produce predictable, observable results in actual settings.
 A History of School Research in the USA 135

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 edu-
cational 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 incor-
poration. 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 imple-
mentation 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
136 Teddlie and Stringfield

student achievement. Additionally, variations of the Stallings’ time-on-task instru-

ments 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 devel-
oped 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 inter-
vention 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 chil-
dren’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
 A History of School Research in the USA 137

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:
● Effective schools research. This research is concerned with the processes of effec-
tive 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 best-
known findings from SER come from these studies.
● School effects research. This research involves the study of the scientific proper-
ties of school effects (e.g., the existence and magnitude of school effects, the
consistency and stability of school effects). The initial studies involved the esti-
mation 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 tradi-
tion 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 elemen-
tary schools because researchers believed that success stories in these environments
would dispel the belief that schools made little or no difference. Weber (1971) con-
ducted the first reasonably rigorous, extensive case studies from the period. After a rig-
orous, 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 charac-
terized 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.
138 Teddlie and Stringfield

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 char-
acteristics (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 some-
thing 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 stud-
ies conducted during this time within a sociological framework known as the “status-
attainment 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),
 A History of School Research in the USA 139

(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 asso-
ciation 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 stu-
dent-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 psycholog-

ical 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
140 Teddlie and Stringfield

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 con-
secutive 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 annu-
ally 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 indi-
cating 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 disadvan-
taged groups. Edmonds and his colleagues were no longer interested in just describ-
ing 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.
 A History of School Research in the USA 141

School change agents took Edmonds’ five correlates and translated them into improve-
ment 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 high-
water 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
142 Teddlie and Stringfield

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 char-
acteristics of effective schooling. Sammons, Hillman, and Mortimore (1995) reviewed
the SER literature in the United Kingdom 5 years later and derived 11 factors that over-
lapped 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 143

Table 1. The processes of effective schools

Original correlate Effective schools process Sub-components of the process

1. Strong principal leadership
2. Pervasive and broadly
understood instructional
focus
3. Safe and orderly school
climate
4. High expectations for
student achievement
5. Student achievement data
used for evaluating program
success
1. The processes of effective
leadership
2. Developing and maintaining
a pervasive focus on learning
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
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

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 research-
tested, 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
144 Teddlie and Stringfield

period. Following the lead of Aitkin and Longford (1986) from the United Kingdom,
statisticians and researchers in the United States began developing multilevel mathe-
matical 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 aggrega-
tion/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 simi-
lar 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):
● 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 achieve-
ment 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 flu-
ency 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 sci-
entific properties is beyond the scope of this chapter, we will address here the relevance
of context effects to the effective schools research base.
 A History of School Research in the USA 145

Table 2. Scientific properties (foundational issues) of school effects

Scientific property of school effects Questions posed by the SER issue

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)
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 pro-
ducing 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.
146 Teddlie and Stringfield

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 & Brownlee-
Conyers, 1992). Several of these sources emerged from writings on shared decision-
making 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,
 A History of School Research in the USA 147

SER-oriented researchers in the United States began explicitly including classroom obser-
vations 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 grow-
ing 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 vis-
its. 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.
148 Teddlie and Stringfield

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 link-
ing 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 even-
tually 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.
 A History of School Research in the USA 149

The Restructuring Movement

The primary messages associated with the school restructuring era were (1) that previ-
ous 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 restructur-
ing, (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:

● 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).
150 Teddlie and Stringfield

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:
● 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 dispari-
ties between schools serving affluent and economically disadvantaged communi-
ties (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 disadvan-
taged 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 com-
pleted 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
 A History of School Research in the USA 151

to data gathering, and (2) the sites chosen for the study were nominated as being rela-
tively strong implementations of their respective reforms.
Findings from Special Strategies replicated prior research in highlighting the impor-
tance of site-level leadership and high-quality professional development. The authors
further concluded that:
● 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 imple-
mentation 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 spe-
cific 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 fur-
ther 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, meaning-
ful improvement is possible. Long-term National Assessment of Educational
Progress (NAEP) analyses clearly demonstrate the national-level stability of edu-
cational 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 impor-
tance of context in SER.)
152 Teddlie and Stringfield

(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 restructur-
ing, 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:
● 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 pro-
grams 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 sys-
temic 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
 A History of School Research in the USA 153

(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) pro-
vided 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 improve-
ment 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
154 Teddlie and Stringfield

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 find-
ings 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 effec-
tiveness researchers need to generate more activity in three general areas associated
with the two branches of SER described earlier in this chapter:
● 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
 A History of School Research in the USA 155

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 district-
level effects in as many wide-ranging topic areas as diverse states choose to
measure.
(2) Continued exploration of the processes associated with effectiveness in school-
ing (effective schools research). There are nine processes and 25 sub-
components 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:
● 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 out-
comes 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 improve-
ment 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 effec-
tive schooling plus Glickman, Gordon, and Ross-Gordon’s (2001) characteris-
tics of improving schools. Rich found evidence for several of the effective and
improving practices at the school, and his research provided evidence for pos-
itive 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
156 Teddlie and Stringfield

(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 mid-
dle-SES schools are less likely to be labeled “ineffective” by state-mandated high-
stakes testing, because the performance of the students at these schools is above
the state minimum requirements. For instance, we studied a less effective middle-
SES 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 middle-
SES 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 intro-
duce 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 pro-
grams in the two sets of schools. Lasky et al. (2005) recently introduced such a
research program through a foundation-funded randomized field trial of effec-
tive 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 mul-
tilevel analysis of a longitudinal national database. D’Agostino (2000) con-
cluded 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 achieve-
ment. 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 non-
experimental studies of principal effects by presenting three competing
 A History of School Research in the USA 157

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, princi-
pals in secondary schools have very different jobs than principals in elemen-
tary 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 effec-
tiveness 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:
● 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 incompe-
tent 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 perform-
ance, 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.
158 Teddlie and Stringfield

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 recipro-
cal 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.
(7) 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.
(8) 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.
(9) 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-experi-
mental 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).
(10) 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 ven-
ture 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 power-
ful tools. Given that greater use of achievement data was one of Edmonds’
 A History of School Research in the USA 159

(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 perfor-
mance 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 effec-
tiveness and school improvement research in the United States. We have discussed
common and divergent themes between the two, suggested multiple potentially fruit-
ful 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 dissemi-
nating 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 refer-
enced 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 sam-
pling 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 contempo-
rary 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.
160 Teddlie and Stringfield

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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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 Improve-
ment 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 school-
ing 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 leg-
islation 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 impos-
sible 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.
168 Sackney

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 educa-
tion. 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 differ-
entiated 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 psycho-
logical 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 prac-
tices 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 expecta-
tions 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
 History of the School Improvement in Canada 169

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 repre-
sented a search for achievement gains that were unusually high, mostly in urban ele-
mentary 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 effec-
tiveness 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 educa-
tional change and school improvement strategies (Fullan, 1982, 1991, 1992, 2003).
The “ecology of schooling” and the concept of “school culture” as a way of under-
standing 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, strengthen-
ing 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.
170 Sackney

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 syn-
opsis of the most common factors associated with effective schools. The 11 factors
were: professional leadership, shared vision and goals, a learning environment, concen-
tration 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 focus-
ing 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
 History of the School Improvement in Canada 171

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 effec-
tiveness 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 tran-
scendence or merging of the two paradigms” (pp. 13–14).

The new paradigm represents:

● 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 prac-
tice 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 sec-
tion 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;
172 Sackney

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, reflec-
tive, 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:
● 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 diver-
sity 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 organiza-
tional 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 devel-
opment 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 implemen-
tation by school jurisdictions and provincial governments.
 History of the School Improvement in Canada 173

Educational Governance
Canada is a federation of ten provinces and two territories. Under the Constitution, leg-
islative, executive, and judicial powers are shared or distributed between the federal gov-
ernment 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 chil-
dren 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 Saskat-
chewan, as elsewhere in Canada, the Ministry set up the Saskatchewan School Improve-
ment 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 imple-
mentation. 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
174 Sackney

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 perform-
ance of 13- and 14-year-old students in 38 countries, showed Canada placing third.
In 2000, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) con-
ducted 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 nei-
ther problem can be solved independently of the other. Another limitation of early
reforms was that many did not adopt a systemic perspective. Hopkins (2001) con-
tended 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).
 History of the School Improvement in Canada 175

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 improve-
ment 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.
176 Sackney

(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 proj-
ects 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 meas-
ures (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 improv-
ing 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.
 History of the School Improvement in Canada 177

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 stu-
dents, 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 prac-
tices 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 interven-
tion, 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 par-
ent 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 learn-
ers” (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, monitor-
ing, 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
178 Sackney

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 self-
assessment and peer assessment process, and a formal reporting process. As part of the
planning model, the Department of Education will prepare a summary school improve-
ment 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, monitor-
ing, 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 vari-
ous 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, adminis-
trators, parents, and community members. Third, inquiry and reflection are key activi-
ties 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.
 History of the School Improvement in Canada 179

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; lat-
eral 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 effective-
ness 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 cul-
tural 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 inte-
gration 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 bet-
ter data for improving instruction. A number of Canadian school districts are jointly work-
ing 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 commu-
nity 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 kinder-
garten, and early intervention programs. I see this trend continuing in the future. Such
180 Sackney

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 relation-
ships among the various components of schooling. We recognize that a holistic, eco-
logical 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.

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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, edu-
cational 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 situa-
tions 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 hand-
book and how the issues those authors address refer to what is said in this chapter.

183
T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 183–204.
© 2007 Springer.
184 Avalos

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 compo-
sition (African, European, Indigenous, and Japanese origins). Country income differ-
ences 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 lan-
guage and another 12% only spoke an indigenous language (Albó, 1999). A similar sit-
uation 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 unsat-
isfactory 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 evalu-
ation 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 stud-
ies (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
 School Improvement in Latin America 185

2 1
3 1
5 1
6 0
1
9 5 9
13 17 19 22
20 26
28
30 30
26 29
33
21 28 28 53 22

23 23 20 16 12
6
Argentina Brazil Chile Mexico Peru OECD
Below Level 1 Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5

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 stud-
ies also perform well below the international mean (Ministerio de Educación, 2004a).
While the above descriptions refer to the average situation of Latin American coun-
tries, similarly to many other parts of the world, within-country learning results and edu-
cational attainment differ among the socio-economic groups, the rural–urban divide and
the indigenous populations vis-à-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 analy-
sis 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 edu-
cation services.
186 Avalos

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 con-
centrated on expanding facilities for increased access of excluded populations to school-
ing: 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; educa-
tion 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 (ECLAC-
UNESCO, 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 improve-
ment 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 school-
ing. However, equity was equally central to these reforms. Governments that intro-
duced reforms in these areas in the nineties did so with the purpose of broadening
 School Improvement in Latin America 187

Table 1. Education and school improvement actions in the 1990s

Change areas Countries

Education Reform Laws Argentina, Bolivia, Panama

Curriculum reform and improvement
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
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
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; modernisa-
tion 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
188 Avalos

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 chil-
dren 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 under-
stand 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 adminis-
tration 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 flex-
ible interpretation and is geared to the achievement of a wide range of competencies
(cognitive, procedural and attitudinal). Its organisation in “chapters, blocks and con-
tents” 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 cur-
riculum areas at this level are the natural sciences; economics and organisational man-
agement; humanities and social sciences; production of goods and services; and
communication, arts and design. Parallel to this “polimodal” school, the technical-pro-
fessional 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, environ-
ment, tourism, administration and similar areas (Decibe, 2001).
 School Improvement in Latin America 189

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 fol-
lowing 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 imple-
mented 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 lan-
guages and codes (mother tongue, mathematics) technology and English, and
with a somewhat still moderate degree of openness and choice. The [the curric-
ula] 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 crite-
ria (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 prob-

lematic 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 chap-
ter 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.
190 Avalos

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, sti-
mulated 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 sec-
ondary 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 open-
ing 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 care-
fully selected from a cadre of university graduates in the different subject areas and
prepared in a special pedagogy course during the summer preceding their appoint-
ment. They are contracted on a full time basis of which half is used in teaching activi-
ties 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 gov-
ernment. The low dropout level suggests that there will be a regular flow of well-
prepared 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
 School Improvement in Latin America 191

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 develop-
ment 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 characteris-
tics that they target disadvantaged groups, that they offer special preparation for teach-
ers, 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 imple-
mentation, especially the teacher development component (see de Andraca, 2003 &
Tatto, 2004).
The Acceleration Programs address one of the greatest problems of Brazilian edu-
cation 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 spe-
cially 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
192 Avalos

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 disad-
vantaged 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 con-
clude that while affirmative action programs are an important contribution to learn-
ing 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., insuffi-
cient 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 educa-
tion 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 pro-
motion 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 expo-
sure, and an indication of this was the country’s participation in the IEA SITES M2
 School Improvement in Latin America 193

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
194 Avalos

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 chil-
dren, 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 supervi-
sion 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, set-
ting 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 relat-
ing 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’ insuffi-
cient 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.
 School Improvement in Latin America 195

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 pro-
duced their own schemes for improvement. Also, all over Latin America there are non-
government 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 educa-
tion 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 reach-
ing 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 establish-
ment 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 pre-
school 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 com-
munities 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
196 Avalos

preventive strategies (health and nutrition), monetary incentives for parents to keep
their children in school and preschool programs. All these seem to concur in produc-
ing good results in terms of higher retention rates and completion of schooling in the pre-
scribed 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 pub-
lic 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 natu-
ral 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 over-
all 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 self-
esteem or lack of affection, as well as family factors such as economic problems, con-
flicts, 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.
 School Improvement in Latin America 197

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 effec-
tive 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
198 Avalos

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 app-
ear 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 suffi-
cient 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 insuf-
ficient attention and understanding of how teachers would and could receive these
reforms (Bellei, 2001). More recent studies of the implementation of the new curricu-
lum 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 effective-
ness 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
 School Improvement in Latin America 199

study documents how this happened and concludes that the reforms stimulus and con-
tributions 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):
● 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 commu-
nity, the Ministry of Education or others).
The results of the study not only help to see what are the factors that make for improve-
ment (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 con-
tinued 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 under-
standing 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
200 Avalos

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 expe-
riences 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 struc-
tural 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 enrol-
ment), 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
 School Improvement in Latin America 201

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).
12. 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 rela-
tively stable.
13. 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.
14. Supported by the Jesuit Order though managed mostly by lay contracted staff.
15. Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Perú and Venezuela.
16. These results are not observed in all the countries where Fe y Alegría operates but in all of them some
of these are present.
17. 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 depart-
ment of a private organization, the project in Ecuador by DNI (International Defence of Children) and
the one in Chile, by a private NGO.
18. As measured by the UNESCO–OREALC (1998) assessment of learning results in Latin America.
19. My translation.
20. For a description of this longstanding program see www.ibe.unesco.org/publications/monographseries.htm
21. See also the article of Murillo in this Handbook on research production in the field of school efficacy
and improvement.
22. 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.

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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 profes-
sional interests (teacher unions and Local Education Authorities) and increase the role
of “consumers” (parents and pupils) by emphasizing market-based reforms. The inten-
tion 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.
208 Stoll and Sammons

and assessments linked to four Key Stages of education (at ages 7, 11, 14 and exami-
nations at age 16). These set expectations for the level of attainment in the core
subjects of English, mathematics and science. Accountability was increased by pub-
lishing 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 effec-
tiveness research (Sammons, Hillman, & Mortimore, 1995) identified “key character-
istics 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 year-
on-year increases in education spending also took place from 1998 onwards and “edu-
cation, 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 intro-
duced. 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.
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in the UK 209

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 recogni-
tion 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 per-
formance, 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 study-
ing school effects (Mortimore, Sammons, & Thomas, 1994).
Meanwhile, during the 1980s, school improvement was practitioner-oriented, evi-
denced 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.
210 Stoll and Sammons

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 out-
comes 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 teach-
ers and other educational professionals (e.g., Stoll & Harris, 2006). To further this,
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in the UK 211

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 presen-
tations 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 num-
ber 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 educa-
tion 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,
212 Stoll and Sammons

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 develop-
ment 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 character-
istic 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 chal-
lenging 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 leader-
ship 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, com-
petence 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 effec-
tiveness 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 research-
based 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
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in the UK 213

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 profes-
sional 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 design-
ing 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 improve-
ment 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 initiat-
ing enquiry with teachers, planning action in the light of data and reviewing the inter-
vention’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 dia-
logue which develops a community approach to enquiries into learning between them
and their teachers. From research and development experiences around re-engaging dis-
affected 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 dif-
fering 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 for-
mats 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
214 Stoll and Sammons

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 eval-
uate improvement projects. There are concerns, however, that overemphasizing meas-
urement 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 self-
generated 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 sup-
port 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 particu-
lar acknowledgement that when dealing with schools in difficulties, there are extra sen-
sitivities 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 con-
trolled 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 condi-

tions 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)
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in the UK 215

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 opportu-
nities; and ensuring interrelationships and synergy between all the component parts
(Stoll & Bolam, 2005). Recent English research highlights potential for capacity build-
ing 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 profes-
sional 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 pro-
fessional 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 contin-
ues 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:
● 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 com-
mitted 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 else-
where, 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 exam-
ple, have researchers focused their attention upon improving “failing” or “ineffective”
schools (e.g., Gray, 2000; Harris & Chapman, 2001; Reynolds & Teddlie, 2001; Stoll &
216 Stoll and Sammons

Myers, 1998). A literature review (Muijs, Harris, Chapman, Stoll, & Russ, 2004)
revealed a number of common elements to improving and effective schools in socio-
economically 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 “devel-
opment 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 net-
work attachment, which is correlated with an intermediate outcome of changes in think-
ing 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 improve-
ments 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 dif-
ference: “should not … be used as an excuse for societies being complacent about such
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in the UK 217

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 dur-
ing 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 effective-
ness field in a concern with the promotion of equity and strong links with practition-
ers 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 empha-
sis 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 impor-
tance 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
218 Stoll and Sammons

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 net-
works 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 under-
standing 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 equal-
ity 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 compa-
rable 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 educa-
tional practitioners and Brookover, Beady, Flood, and Schweitzer (1979) the educa-
tional 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.
224 Creemers

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 character-
istics of schools and classrooms. School change projects were based on these corre-
lates 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 correla-
tional 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 stud-
ies 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 regard-
ing “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 improve-
ment 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.,
 The Development of the Field in Mainland Europe 225

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 tradi-
tion of school effectiveness and school improvement. The projects took as the effec-
tiveness 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 character-
istics and the effectiveness of schools among school leaders and teachers of 22 educa-
tional 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 question-
naires are not suited for the Dutch situation.
The country report also refers to the first studies of Van de Grift (1987) into the rela-
tionship 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
226 Creemers

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 operationali-
sations 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 teaching-
learning situation. In this respect, a distinction should be made between instruc-
tional 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 relation-
ship 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 unem-
ployment 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 prob-
lem 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 edu-
cational 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
 The Development of the Field in Mainland Europe 227

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 effec-
tiveness. 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 occu-
rred 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 stabil-
ity 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 the-
oretical 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).
228 Creemers

After the proceedings of the first two international conferences on school effective-
ness 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 confer-
ences. Incidentally, country reports about the development of educational effective-
ness 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 educa-
tional 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 effec-
tiveness (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 move-
ment 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 effec-
tiveness 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 effective-
ness 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
 The Development of the Field in Mainland Europe 229

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 analy-
sis of this cohort (Van Damme, De Fraine, Landeghem, Opdenakker, & Onghena, 2002).
In mainland Europe countries are rather different with respect to educational effec-
tiveness 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 curricu-
lum 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 considera-
tion 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 effec-
tiveness 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
230 Creemers

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 simi-
larly 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 simula-
tion studies that the multi-cohort design produces results of equal value as longitudi-
nal design. When the selection is not being taken into account, multi-cohort design
leads to conservative statements of school effects. The inadequate modelling of selec-
tion 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 ori-
ented 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 meas-
uring 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.
 The Development of the Field in Mainland Europe 231

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 Secondary level

Positive Negative Positive Negative

association association association association

Structured teaching/feedback 5 1
Teacher experience 3 1 1
Instructional leadership 2 1
Orderly climate 2 3 1
Student evaluation 5 0
Differentiation 2 0
Whole class teaching 3 0
Achievement orientation 4 4
Team stability/cooperation 3 3
Time/homework 4 4
Other variables 16 8
Average between school variance 9 13.5
Number of studies 29 13

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

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 con-
trolled 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 educa-
tional 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, change-
oriented schools, control-oriented schools and “strong comprehensive” schools. The prob-
lem 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).
 The Development of the Field in Mainland Europe 233

In Belgium – Flanders, the LOSO cohort study confirms largely the findings with
regard to student background characteristics like ability and home environment, class-
room characteristics like teacher and instructional characteristics and school organisa-
tional 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 coun-
tries. 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 con-
figurations (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 edu-
cational leadership, a smooth integration of the school leader and the middle manage-
ment, 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 practi-
cal 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 sub-
stantial 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, per-
formance 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 characteris-
tics, 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
234 Creemers

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 inter-
est 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 empha-
sises 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 class-
rooms 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 compre-
hensive 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 con-
ducted 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 stu-
dent-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).
 The Development of the Field in Mainland Europe 235

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 effective-
ness 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 evalua-
tion 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-oper-
ation of different participants such as school-leaders, teachers, parents, students
together and the support by internal and external advisors. Further educational improve-
ment takes place through specific projects like for example Improving Educational
Leadership (Huber, 2004) and specific strategies like school improvement through per-
formance feedback (Visscher & Coe, 2002). Educational effectiveness was more suc-
cessful in the evaluation of school reforms and improvement programs. The design of
the studies reflected the conceptual frameworks of educational effectiveness for exam-
ple, 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 eval-
uation 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 implementa-
tion 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
236 Creemers

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 theoreti-
cal 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 methodol-
ogy 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 some-
times 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 educa-
tional 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 stud-
ies 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
 The Development of the Field in Mainland Europe 237

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, prefer-
ably embedded in longitudinal, experimental and international studies.
● It is advocated to develop further theoretical models for studying educational effec-
tiveness. 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 stud-
ies 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).

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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 effective-
ness 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.
246 Cheng and Tam

3 Waves & Paradigm Shifts

World class school

Quality/competitive movements
Effective school school movements
movements

Q R
E
Quality Relevance
Effectiveness

1980s–1990s 1990s 2000s

Internal Interface Future
effectiveness effectiveness effectiveness

Figure 1. Three waves of school effectiveness and improvement

and characteristics of various educational reforms for school effectiveness and improve-
ment 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 educa-
tors 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
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Asia 247

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 out-
comes 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 sat-
isfy the increasing needs and expectations of the public. People began to doubt the
effectiveness of the improvement initiatives in meeting the diverse needs and expecta-
tions of parents, students, employers, policy-makers, and those concerned in the com-
munity. 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 interna-
tional 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 stake-
holders (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
248 Cheng and Tam

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 per-
ceived 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 educa-
tion 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 intro-
duced 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 infor-
mation technology (IT), the drastic shock of the economic downturn, and strong
demands for economic and social developments in international competition stimu-
lated 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 educa-
tional 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,
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Asia 249

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 con-
cerning contextualized multiple intelligences, globalization, localization, and individu-
alization (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 vari-
ous aspects of society (Cheng, 2003a). Unfortunately, many countries are still very dis-
appointed 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?
250 Cheng and Tam

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

Meso level
• Towards parental and community involvement in school education
2nd wave

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

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

 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Asia 251

At the meso level, increasing parental and community involvement in school educa-
tion 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 manage-
ment; 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:
● 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 tech-
nology 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 gov-
ernment put forward Vision 2020. This plan, developed during the 1980s, proposed
that Malaysia would transform itself from a commodity-export country to an industri-
alized and developed country by the year 2020. Education in general and schools in
252 Cheng and Tam

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 tech-
nical, 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
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Asia 253

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 inter-
national competition, some areas in Asia – such as South Korea, mainland China,
Hong Kong, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Singapore – are very concerned with the effective-
ness 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 edu-
cation 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 draw-
backs 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 funda-
mental structural change. For example:

(1) Given changes in educational aims and national vision, how can the restructur-
ing 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 educa-
tional aims and national visions. How can policy-makers identify those options
and understand which one is most appropriate for the country within the exist-
ing cultural, political, and economic constraints (Cheng, Ng, & Mok, 2002)?
(3) Reform of the school system is in fact a fundamental structural change, involv-
ing 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 dif-
ficulties and conflicts involved in review and reform, and then reach a rational,
feasible, and commonly acceptable plan for action (Cheng, & Cheung, 1995)?
254 Cheng and Tam

(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 meth-
ods 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 chil-
dren can pass the examinations and get the necessary qualifications for employ-
ment. 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
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Asia 255

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 edu-
cation 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 accord-
ing 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 privatiza-
tion. 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 expec-
tations 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 educa-
tion (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 stake-
holders in school education. Their experiences, resources, social networks, and knowl-
edge 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
256 Cheng and Tam

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 man-
agement, 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?
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Asia 257

(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 out-
comes 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 govern-
ment 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.
258 Cheng and Tam

(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 con-
sistent view (Sackney & Dibski, 1994). From the perspective of Cheung and
Cheng (1996), the linkage of SBM to educational outcomes should be strength-
ened 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 transforma-
tion 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 educa-
tional reforms in many areas of Asia to emphasize teacher quality and continuous life-
long professional development of both teachers and principals (Cheng, Chow, & Mok,
2004; Chen, Lim, & Gopinathan, 2003; Hallinger, 2003; Kennedy, 2003). Many policy-
makers understand that teacher quality is the key to school effectiveness and improve-
ment. 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 profes-
sional 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
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Asia 259

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 organi-
zations 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 develop-
ment 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 edu-
cational reforms in Asia (Birch & Maclean, 2001). Countries like Japan and Singapore
260 Cheng and Tam

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 facili-
ties, 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 teach-
ing. 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 empha-
sized 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 faci-
litating 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 com-
prehensive 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.
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Asia 261

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 seri-
ous 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 effec-
tiveness and improvement is a completely new issue for most policy-makers, educa-
tors, 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 par-
adigm 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 glob-
alizations 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 develop-
ments 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 glob-
alized, localized, and individualized in the coming years, with the help of IT and bound-
less multiple networking. Unlimited opportunities and various global and local sources
will be created for lifelong learning and development of both students and teachers.
262 Cheng and Tam

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 para-
digm 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 stu-
dents’ CMI (see Cheng, 2001e). Without them, such a major shift in learning and
teaching is impossible. How, then, can teachers be prepared to develop them-
selves as globalized, localized, and individualized CMI teachers, and facilitate
their students becoming CMI leaders and citizens? Also, how can they help trans-
form 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 assess-
ment. How can students’ learning and teachers’ teaching be well placed in a
globalized, localized, and individualized context? How well can students’ learn-
ing opportunities be maximized through ICT application, and networking of
teachers in educational reforms? How well can students’ self-learning be facili-
tated 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, policy-
makers, and scholars to understand the paradigm shifts in conceptualizing and imple-
menting 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 effec-
tiveness. 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
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Asia 263

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 inter-
nal, 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 imple-
mentation, 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 chal-
lenge 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 fruit-
ful. 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 prac-
tice; 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 criti-
cal 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).
264 Cheng and Tam

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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 regu-
late 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 improv-
ing 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.
270 Hui-Ling Pan

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 effective-
ness 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 mal-
function. Pupils suffer from the pressure of entering higher-level schools after the
nine-year compulsory education requirement. Education has become a tool for prepa-
ration of the school entrance examination. Centralization of educational administra-
tion 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 edu-
cation. The Council on Education Reform affiliated with the Executive Yuan was estab-
lished 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 direc-
tions were proposed: deregulating education, helping every student to learn, broadening
the channels for student recruitment, promoting educational quality, and establishing a
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Taiwan 271

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 effec-
tiveness 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 content-
oriented curriculum. This indicates that the conception of school effectiveness nowa-
days 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 large-
scale 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 decision-
making 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 implemen-
tation 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 frag-
mented “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 orien-
tation, accountability, democratic participation accompanied with professionalism
272 Hui-Ling Pan

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 restructur-
ing of school management, the new Grade 1 to Grade 9 Curriculum emphasizes the
development of school-based curriculum so that teachers may embody their profes-
sional role.
A number of initiatives were launched by the government to advance teachers’ capac-
ity, 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 num-
ber 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.
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Taiwan 273

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’ Asso-
ciation, 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 narrow-
mindedness 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 func-
tion 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 expecta-
tions 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
274 Hui-Ling Pan

are not as serious as they were previously. Several studies indicate that the develop-
ment 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 predeces-
sor. The more broadly defined outcomes-driven curriculum establishes the ends of edu-
cation 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 cur-
riculum planner. This policy demands not just first-order changes, which are initiatives
for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of what is currently done, without dis-
turbing 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 cul-
ture 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
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Taiwan 275

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 estab-
lished 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 cur-
riculum 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 inter-
actions 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 curricu-
lum 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 Strat-
egic 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 con-
sciousness. 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.
276 Hui-Ling Pan

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 teach-
ers, 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 sec-
ond 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
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Taiwan 277

situations caused by the knowledge-based economy and by globalization. Through the

model, teachers reflect the local values they possess to counteract the negative self-
concepts 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 grass-
roots 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 opposi-
tion 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 demo-
cratic 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
278 Hui-Ling Pan

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 leader-
ship. 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 Curri-
culum 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 cur-
riculum 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.
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Taiwan 279

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: rele-
vance, 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 tech-
nology, 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 teach-
ers. 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 empow-
erment than did their secondary counterparts. And there is no significant relationship
280 Hui-Ling Pan

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 domes-
tic 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 inter-
actions 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 criti-
cized (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
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Taiwan 281

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 facil-
itating 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 teach-
ing 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.
282 Hui-Ling Pan

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 relation-
ship. 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 postmod-
ern 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 leader-
ship (Sergiovanni, 1992), empowering leadership (Blasé & Anderson, 1995; Short &
Greer, 1997), educational leadership (Caldwell, 1993; Marsh, 2000), strategic leader-
ship (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.
 School Effectiveness and Improvement in Taiwan 283

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, con-
sultants, parents, and communities: what is the meaning of education reform? The
Change Capacity Decade is devoted to inspiring teachers, principals, and school admin-
istrators 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 educa-
tion 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, schoolteach-
ers 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.

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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 effec-
tive 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 effec-
tive 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 effective-
ness 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 expe-
riences 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.
288 Feng

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 strate-
gies at the site level. Finally, to develop effective strategies at the site level, an individ-
ual 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 con-
sidering 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).
 School Improvement in Mainland China 289

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 estab-
lish 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 prob-
lem 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 docu-
ment 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 qual-
ity 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 eco-
nomy 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
290 Feng

(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 foun-
dation had provided disadvantaged schools in 852 less developed counties with
approximately US$1.6 billion (Li, 2003, p. 251). In another development, the govern-
ments in coastal cities tended to establish special foundations themselves for local dis-
advantaged 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 disadvan-
taged schools. To emphasize equity in the nine-year compulsory education and to pro-
vide 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 dis-
tricts 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 pol-
icy 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
 School Improvement in Mainland China 291

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 solu-
tions 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 govern-
ment, to help the leaders and officers at the system level who are concerned about dis-
advantaged 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 disad-
vantaged 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 devel-
opment 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 work-
shops 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
292 Feng

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 promis-
ing 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 sub-
jects gets uneven development in different schools in a district. Usually, a high-
performing 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 inter-
district 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 dis-
tricts 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 inter-
district 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 high-
performing 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).
 School Improvement in Mainland China 293

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 high-
performing school located in another district. This is accomplished through the coordi-
nation 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 disadvan-
taged schools in another district. These meetings occur once a week, and the teachers
give guidance and advice on their teaching and their professional development, accord-
ing 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 dis-
trict 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 sta-
tus 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 2-1 Level 3-1 Level 4-1

Level 1-2 Level 2-2 Level 3-2 Level 4-2
Level 1-3 Level 2-3
Level 1-4 Level 2-4
294 Feng

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 per-
formance 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 evalua-
tion 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 govern-
ment (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, work-
ing-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):
● 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 learn-
ing 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.
 School Improvement in Mainland China 295

● 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):
● 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 ordi-
nary 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 pass-
ing 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 pro-
fessional researchers from the local research institution of education. The project
296 Feng

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):
● 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 confi-
dence 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 opportu-
nities 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:
● 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 grad-
uates 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
 School Improvement in Mainland China 297

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 expecta-
tions 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 EXCEL-
LENT achievement in that test. Thus, expectations should start from the current status
of individual students rather than from the general requirements of the national cur-
riculum standards. Keeping in mind the progress of individual students, the expecta-
tions 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 class-
room 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 diffi-
culty 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 inter-
active 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
298 Feng

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 feed-
back. 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 teach-
ing mirrored by this ten-minute period and find ways for the teacher’s further improve-
ment 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).
 School Improvement in Mainland China 299

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 spe-
cial 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 atmos-
phere 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 inter-
nal 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 disadvan-
taged. 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:
● Guiding values and beliefs is a set shared assumptions for learners and educators,
learning and teaching, failure and success, and the essential purposes and func-
tions 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.
300 Feng

● 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 govern-
ment 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 dis-
advantaged schools but also for ordinary schools as well. First, the effectiveness of dis-
advantaged schools should be given necessary attention. According to the 1990 World
Declaration on Education for All, all children, “shall be able to benefit from educa-
tional 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 dis-
advantaged schools.
Second, the initiatives and efforts backed by fiscal policy at system level are indis-
pensable for endeavors in school improvement, particularly in disadvantaged schools.
Yet, these initiatives and efforts are only external factors. They will not work automati-
cally 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 infor-
mation from the results of psychological tests, questionnaires, and surveys. For exam-
ple, in many international studies, “high expectations for students” has been identified
 School Improvement in Mainland China 301

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 disad-
vantaged schools. However, the scope of application is rather limited. Given policy-
makers’ 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 disadvan-
taged 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 underper-
forming 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 improve-
ment 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
302 Feng

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 prin-
cipal 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 gen-
tleman, 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 distrib-
uted 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 leader-
ship 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 learn-
ing 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 prac-
tice of school effectiveness and improvement, employ leadership approaches or strate-
gies 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.
 School Improvement in Mainland China 303

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 realiza-
tion 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 appro-
priate 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 develop-
ment 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 dis-
advantaged 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 work-
load 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 cul-
tural 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 accompa-
nied 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
304 Feng

for normal operation; (2) most students coming from working-class families and having lower motiva-
tion 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 qual-
ity 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.

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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 decentral-
ization to the school level of authority and responsibility to make decisions within a cen-
trally-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 effec-
tiveness; 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 coher-
ence 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.
308 Caldwell

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 educa-
tion 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 (elemen-
tary) 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, Train-
ing and Youth Affairs.
Across the country, about 70% of students attend schools owned and operated by gov-
ernment. 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 per-
forming students are among the widest in participating countries, especially in differ-
ences 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 terri-
tories has its policy counterpart to No Child Left Behind (USA), Every Child Matters
(UK) and Nurturing Every Child (Singapore).
 The Maturing of a Movement 309

Australia has traditionally been considered to have a highly centralized system of edu-
cation. 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 excep-
tions 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 ele-
vated 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 oper-
ation 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 inequal-
ities of provision between regions, whether they are States or smaller areas … .
[Interim Committee for the Australian Schools Commission, 1973, pp. 10–11]
310 Caldwell

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 gov-
ernment and non-government schools, most of which called for local decision-making.
The intention was to improve access to schooling, reduce disparities in funding, encour-
age 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 foun-
dation 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 knowledge-
able 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 under-
taken 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 vol-
ume, for Australia and elsewhere. Table 1 contains the list. Senior officers in depart-
ments 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 improve-
ment in areas in which they had been deficient. A second review of literature resulted
 The Maturing of a Movement 311

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.
Decision-making 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.
Leadership 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.
Resources 1. There are adequate resources in the school to enable staff to teach effectively.
2. The staff has motivated and capable teachers.
Outcomes 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.
Climate 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.

(Continued)
312 Caldwell

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.
Outcomes 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.

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, teach-
ers 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
 The Maturing of a Movement 313

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-and-
effect 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 manage-
ment, 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; Levačić,
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 objec-
tive. Significantly, in the context of the chapter, school effectiveness and school
improvement had moved on; there was a much sturdier data base on student achieve-
ment 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 decen-
tralized to schools for local decision-making, extending to staff, but within a centrally-
determined 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, princi-
pals and scholars at the University of Melbourne, including several with skills in struc-
tural 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 attrib-
utes 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”).
314 Caldwell

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 fos-
tered 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 else-
where 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 atti-
tudes 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 0.359
resource 0.230
allocation
benefits 0.364
Confidence in Curriculum and
0.420
attainment of learning benefits
SOF objectives

0.173
0.388 0.226

CSF curriculum Curriculum

support improvement
0.309
due to CSF

Figure 1. Explanatory regression model showing interdependent effects among factors influencing per-
ceived 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.
 The Maturing of a Movement 315

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 devel-
oped 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 cur-
riculum 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 capaci-
ties associated with self-management led in identifiable ways to gains in student
improvement. Robust methodologies and a better data base were helpful. The next
316 Caldwell

stage in the maturing of the movement, as illustrated in the context of the self-
managing 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 prin-
ciple 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 class-
room 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 pro-
mote improved teaching and learning by involving teachers and the school com-
munity 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
 The Maturing of a Movement 317

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, condi-
tions 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 out-
standing 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
318 Caldwell

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 circum-
stance 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 socio-
economic 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 opera-
tions of self-managing schools and the roles of their leaders were changing in signifi-
cant 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 oper-
ating 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.
 The Maturing of a Movement 319

(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 height-
ened 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 pol-
icy that characterized the earlier stages of the school effectiveness and school improve-
ment 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 ear-
lier 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 cap-
ital, 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 stakehold-
ers (policymakers, practitioners and researchers) have been engaged on each occasion.
320 Caldwell

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.
Outcomes 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.

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 com-
missioned an analysis of school performance across Australia that utilizes state-of-the-
art 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.
 The Maturing of a Movement 321

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 time-
consuming 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 evi-
dence-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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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 effec-
tiveness 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 com-
munities 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 approxi-
mately 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 Māori, Pacific or Asian.
325
T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 325–338.
© 2007 Springer.
326 Fancy

Less than 3% of schools are private schools. There are also around 90 Māori
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 aver-
ages 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 com-
bination 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 compul-
sory sector (Hawke, 1989) reflected concerns that:
● 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.”
 Reflections on the New Zealand Experience 327

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 argu-
ment 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 pre-
cisely 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 Māori language, each
curriculum area was also available in the Māori language.
Schools were required to ensure their students developed core skills including those in
communication, numeracy, information, problem-solving, along with self-management
328 Fancy

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 rein-
force 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 cur-
riculum 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 tech-
nology, 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 con-
fidence 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 sys-
tem 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 deliv-
ery, governance, performance issues or to replace a school’s board with a commis-
sioner. 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.
 Reflections on the New Zealand Experience 329

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 communi-
ties. 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 rel-
evance 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 inter-
national 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
330 Fancy

Māori was also becoming much louder and more critical about the failure of main-
stream 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 diver-
sity 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 Māori achievement in mainstream schools. The
project team interviewed some 100 Māori 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.
● 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 back-
ground 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 com-
munities 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 differ-
ent 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 capa-
bilities 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
 Reflections on the New Zealand Experience 331

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 learn-
ing 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 par-
ticipation 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 Māori. These tools are
called “asTTle,” Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning. These tools:
● link to an underlying achievement continuum in each curriculum area;
● are available for teachers to assemble electronically into tests that suit the learn-
ing needs of their students;
● electronically generate results that provide useful feedback about students’ achieve-
ments 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 dis-
seminating 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 interna-
tional and New Zealand studies from the perspective of identifying the influences that
332 Fancy

Families &
Communities
0–20.9% of
About 40–65% variance in
of variance in outcomes
outcomes Quality
Educators, Physical
teaching
teacher education resources & Leadership
Outcomes
and research organisation
16–60% of infrastructure
variance in
outcomes

Learner
participation &
involvement

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 per-
spective 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 appro-
priate 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 effective-
ness 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 influ-
ences 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 implic-
itly 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.
 Reflections on the New Zealand Experience 333

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 stu-
dents earn credits through both external and internal assessments that assessed achieve-
ment 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 qualifi-
cation structure a wider range of achievement than was the case previously. As imple-
mentation proceeds a new challenging agenda is emerging relating to the educational
coherence of different pathways, the need for different supports for students and teach-
ers, 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 stan-
dards 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 frame-
work 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 grow-
ing 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:
● 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.
334 Fancy

● 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 influ-
ence 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 embed-
ded. 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 insuffi-
cient supports for implementation. The sequential changes to curriculum saw teach-
ers 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 hind-
sight this was inadequate, both in terms of its duration and its means of delivery.
 Reflections on the New Zealand Experience 335

In practice many teachers spent a lot of time internalising the intended learning out-
comes 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 explic-
itly 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 edu-
cation 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.

● 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 dif-
ference 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, stu-
dents, communities and government are not only well informed but are also
informed in ways that strengthens their roles and the value gained through differ-
ent 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 expe-
riences 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
336 Fancy

contributing to a student’s learning. The SEMO and Te Kotahitanga projects demon-

strate 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 engage-
ment 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 under-
stood and building them does take time and does require a sustained focus. Assump-
tions 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 com-
munities 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 empha-
sis 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 com-
plex. It requires committed effort to invest in building shared understandings, strong
and trusting relationships, and good understandings of respective roles and relation-
ships. 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 edu-
cation 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
 Reflections on the New Zealand Experience 337

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 great-
est 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.

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9 and Year 10 Māori students in mainstream classrooms. Report to the Ministry of Education.
Wellington NZ: Ministry of Education.
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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 proj-
ects 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, pol-
icy-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 jour-
nals, 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 agen-
cies 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 interven-
tion 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.
342 Fleisch

This chapter explores reasons why an indigenous school effectiveness and improve-
ment 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 effec-
tiveness 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 insti-
tutions 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 spear-
headed 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 orig-
inally and has remained university-based academic researchers. No such critical mass has
emerged among university researchers based in Africa. This is unsurprising given the gen-
eral 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 simi-
larly 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 com-
peting concerns in the sector. While the low quality of education offered to many chil-
dren 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).
 History of the School in Africa 343

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 nar-
rowness 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 ethnographic-
informed 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 quantita-
tive 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 Sub-
Saharan 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 inter-
ventions. Riddell (1998) notes that within this research, “only infrequently were cost-
effectiveness 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.
344 Fleisch

While the Fuller and Clarke review was certainly not exhaustive as school effective-
ness 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 pub-
lished 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 achieve-
ment 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 cog-
nitive 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 mean-
ing by Soweto teachers, quite different from its actual meaning and use elsewhere
in the southern African region. Unless these local meanings, activated by class-
room 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 exclu-
sively 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 summa-
tion 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 centrally-
driven 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 educa-
tion processes received more attention in the 1980s, it is the cultural context that
 History of the School in Africa 345

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 production-
function 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 emer-
gence of decentralization as a reform theme and its links to school improvement
paralleled similar developments in developed countries. The various kinds of decentral-
ization reforms in education came in the wake of growing recognition of the weak-
nesses of many central governments in low-income African countries. Some of these
decentralization efforts concentrated on the development of districts and district edu-
cation officers, others on clustering schools to make specialized services more afford-
able; 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 con-
tributed significantly to the knowledge in the field. Important insights have been docu-
mented 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 schol-
ars 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 con-
vincingly shown that rural primary school heads face a range of profound constraints
346 Fleisch

linked to the geographic isolation and cultural and gendered expectations. These con-
straints severely limit their potential to contribute to school improvement. Oduro and
other scholars (see e.g., Crossley, Chisholm, & Holmes, 2005) working within the cul-
turalist 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 sit-
uation. 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 account-
ability within education systems and is increasingly becoming the forum where experi-
ences 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 move-
ment 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 polit-
ical 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
 History of the School in Africa 347

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 educa-
tion 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 man-
agement levels and within and between service providers (Fleisch, 2002).
It was only after the first democratic election in 1994, when tensions and contradic-
tions 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 establish-
ment of the Joint Education Trust (JET). With a mandate to spearhead research and pro-
gram 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 knowl-
edge-base and recent empirical evidence, many of these initiatives attempted to combine
systemic intervention design features (working at the levels of the learner, classroom,
348 Fleisch

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 con-
tested nature of schooling, Taylor has identified the weak central government as man-
ifest 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 sustai-
ned 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 pro-
vided 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.
 History of the School in Africa 349

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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 atten-
dance 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 cen-
tralizing 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 devel-
oped gradually and systematically. The state determined – by law, regulation, circulars
and procedures – all matters and concerns, including pedagogic issues such as curric-
ula, 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, disci-
plinary 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.
352 Volansky

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 mini-
mal freedom to launch their own school-based initiatives or to engage in shared decision-
making 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 cen-
tralization 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 princi-
pals’ 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 re-
stratification 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,
 The Case of Israel 353

Initiative in Primary Education, recommended encouragement of teacher-led initiatives

and identified the need for a platform for addressing the widespread apathy, weari-
ness, 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 elec-
tive 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 sec-
ond 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 Possi-
ble 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 activi-
ties. 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 real-
ity in the previous two decades were carefully studied by Ministry of Education offi-
cials 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
354 Volansky

Schools. At the conclusion of its deliberations in 1993, the Steering Committee’s rec-
ommendations 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 alloca-
tion 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 com-
munities, and that the proposal would broaden the gap between advantaged and disad-
vantaged 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 sim-
ilar 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, dis-
carded: 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 school-
based management meant a serious reduction in their power and authority over the
 The Case of Israel 355

schools. That is, the move towards a new formula for public budget allocation left offi-
cials 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 wor-
ries 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 prin-
cipals 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 author-
ity 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 school-
based 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 dis-
crepancies 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 pol-
icy. 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
356 Volansky

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 pedagogi-
cal 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 teach-
ers’ commitment to the teaching profession and to students’ academic achieve-
ments 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 man-
agement 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:
● 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.
 The Case of Israel 357

70
68 68
67 67 67 68
66 66
66

64

61 62

60

58

56
English Science Hebrew/Arabic Maths

Traditional management School-based management

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 mean-
ing 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 find-
ings 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
358 Volansky

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 empower-
ment 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
 The Case of Israel 359

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 develop-
ment 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, particu-
larly 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 recommenda-
tions stressed that the school-based management reform, along with further steps lead-
ing 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: exten-
sion 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
360 Volansky

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: “turn-
ing 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 effec-
tiveness 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 Jeru-
salem, 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,
 The Case of Israel 361

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 determi-
nation. 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 rea-
son 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 explana-
tions 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 recommenda-
tions, but only about the ability of the government and the Ministry of Education to suc-
cessfully 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 educa-
tion 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 improve-
ment 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
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Educational Management, 7(6), 6–17.
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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 enrol-
ment 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 over-
all 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 sys-
tem 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.
364 Güven

institutions. Also, there are two-year pre-bachelor degree programs that offer vocational
training. The Higher Education Council (YÖK) governs all Turkish universities. Non-
formal 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 educa-
tion 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 sub-
stantial 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 materi-
als and equipment, and recruit additional teachers. As a result, enrollment in compul-
sory 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 (Hoşgör, 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 dif-
ference in learning and in overall school effectiveness. There was no consensus, how-
ever, 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 per-
formance 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
 The Case of Turkey 365

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 intelli-
gence approaches in education, more democratic modeling for school climate, open-
doors 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, differen-
tial school construction projects according to regions, workshop rooms and skills prac-
tice 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 pro-
gram. More careful planning for utilization of the additional funds and existing infra-
structure 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, reorgani-
zation of the central ministry structure and its related general directorates, empower-
ment 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 remunera-
tion 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 compar-
ative measures, place Turkey well behind most of its counterparts on student learning
achievement1 (Berberoğlu, 2004).
In Turkey, the primary aim of education reform was to enhance education opportu-
nities 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
366 Güven

following the law’s enactment, Turkey increased the supply of primary education class-
rooms 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 pol-
icy 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 impor-
tant 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.
 The Case of Turkey 367

● 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 distance-
learning 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 com-
pulsory 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 class-
room 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 chil-
dren 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 edu-
cation 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 dis-
advantaged areas. MONE also planned to experiment with new teacher recruitment
and assignment policies which were currently administered centrally, in order to iden-
tify 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.
368 Güven

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 poten-
tial 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 tradi-
tional 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) enroll-
ing 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 voca-
tional 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 develop-
ment, 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.
 The Case of Turkey 369

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, equip-
ment 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 over-
all 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 perform-
ance 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 pri-
vate 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 imple-
ment 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 require-
ment for the success of reforms. The government has undertaken a number of impor-
tant 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
370 Güven

support for teachers’ professional development. MONE has developed a number of

in-service training courses for managers addressing education planning, communica-
tion, 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 teach-
ing to a new student active learning approach, MONE has commissioned the develop-
ment 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 imple-
ments 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 qual-
ified 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 edu-
cation reform mentioned above. No new formal accountability mechanisms were
 The Case of Turkey 371

introduced. The education system remained centrally managed and operated. The
MONE maintained its existing structure with minor modifications. The one organi-
zational change MONE of Education undertook was with regards to the ICT direc-
torate. 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 popu-
lation 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 gov-
ernment 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 compul-
sory 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 infor-
mation 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 develop-
ment, 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 con-
struction 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 enhanc-
ing 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 infrastruc-
ture have saved the reform effort from becoming too unidimensional. These had
directed attentions and resources towards addressing qualitative and organizational
372 Güven

issues, such as the need for incentives and support for teacher development, reorgani-
zation of the central ministry structure and its related general directorates, empower-
ment 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 remuner-
ation of teachers and other educational staff, and on new recruitment, and additional
staff training to expand the provision and quality of schooling (MEB, 2003a). How-
ever, 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 partici-
pation 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 per-
formance for low-income students has been supported and expanded through the
Program. The MONE used its network of girls’ vocational schools and adult educa-
tion centers to make and provide school uniforms and meals to poor students. The
program was actively supported through donations from the public. Evidence illus-
trates 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 meet-
ings. 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.
 The Case of Turkey 373

Reform in Teacher Education

The first Turkish teacher training institution, known as the Darulmuallimin, was estab-
lished in 1848. While many different models of teacher training have been imple-
mented 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 pre-
school (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, stu-
dents 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) pro-
grams. 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 fac-
ulty members, especially from the Departments of Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry,
History and Western Languages, were transferred from the colleges of letters and sci-
ences, 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 adminis-
trative position in education faculties. The new departments or the new positions in edu-
cation 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
374 Güven

pedagogy. Education faculties were graduating students who resembled graduates of col-
leges 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 experi-
ence 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 prepa-
ration were sent out to schools. Many of these new teachers were given temporary gradu-
ation 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 sec-
ondary 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
 The Case of Turkey 375

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 edu-
cation 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 mate-
rial 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 (Karagözoğlu, 1991). It was administered by
the Higher Education Council and the British Council provided technical assistance.
The goals of the project were:
● 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 mas-
ters and doctoral studies. For each subject, the government would restrict the uni-
versities and the number of graduate student advisors. The subject of theses and
376 Güven

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 addi-
tion, 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 educa-
tion programs as the elementary (6–8 level) and secondary (9–11 level) schools pro-
grams. 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 qual-
ity 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 sec-
ondary 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, cur-
riculum 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 collabora-
tion 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 global-
ization. The future of Turkey depends on how well it can integrate with the world econ-
omy 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 mod-
ernize its educational system. The most important efforts have been made at the basic
 The Case of Turkey 377

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 educa-
tion, 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 organisa-
tions 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 organ-
isations 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 fac-
ulties in the universities have been reorganized to support changes in the basic educa-
tion 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 read-
ing literacy test, Turkey scored 28th.

References
Akyüz, Y. (2004). Türk eğitim tarihi (Başlangıçtan 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.
Berberoğlu, 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.
Hoşgör, Ş. (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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Karagözoğlu, G. (1991). Teacher education reform in Turkey. Action in Teacher Education, 13, 26–29.
MEB. (2003a). Tebliğler Dergisi. Millı̂ eğitim bakanlığı. Bilgi ve İletişim Teknolojisi Araçları ve Ortamlarının
Eğitim Etkinliklerinde Kullanımı Yönergesi, 66(2554), 663–668.
MEB. (2003b). National education at the beginning of 2003. Ankara: MEB Publications, National
Education Ministry.
MEB. (2003c). 2004 Mali Yılı Bütçe Tasarısına İlişkin Rapor [Government Proposal for the 2004 Fiscal Year
Education Budget]. Ministry of National Education APKYayinlari; Ankara.
MEB. (2004). National education at glance beginning 2004. Ankara.
MEB-Ankara Üniversitesi. (2002). İlköğretim Okullarının Sosyal Etkilerinin Değerlendirilmesi Araştırması
[Social Impact Assessment of Primary Education Schools]. MEB Projeler Koordinasyon Merkezi
Başkanlığı, 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 İlhan 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). Eğitim fakülteleri öğretmen yetiştirme programlarının yeniden düzenlenmesi. Yüksek
Öğretim 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 estab-
lished, 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’ profes-
sions, 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 cen-
turies 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.
380 Azimi

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 edu-
cational 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 tak-
ing 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 sys-
tem 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
 The Case of the Islamic Republic of Iran 381

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 educa-
tion with the participation of the private sector.
Pre-university Cycle is a one-year course for students who complete their upper sec-
ondary 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 liter-
acy 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
382 Azimi

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.

Moral goals:
● 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:

● 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.

Cultural & artistic goals:

● 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 coun-
tries with emphasis upon contemporary culture.

Social goals:
● Fostering the spirit of Protection of the dignity and health of family relations
based on Islamic ethics.
● Actualizing the social & economic justice of Islam.
 The Case of the Islamic Republic of Iran 383

● 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.

Physical goals:
● 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.

Economic goals:
● 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 meth-
ods 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 offi-
cially 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.
384 Azimi

At present, 12 teacher training programs are offered in these centers, including math-
ematics, 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 pro-
grams. Students who study in these programs have to take courses in pedagogy and edu-
cation 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 techni-
cians. 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 gradu-
ates 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.
 The Case of the Islamic Republic of Iran 385

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 techni-
cal 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 cen-
ters 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, train-
ing 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 govern-
ment 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
386 Azimi

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:
● Bringing the subject to the Cabinet for approval underscoring the need for inclu-
sion 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 representa-
tives from relevant Ministries and organizations based on government approval.
● Drawing up the EFA National Plan to be approved by the Government and to com-
municate it to the Management & Planning Organization, all ministries end adminis-
trative 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.
 The Case of the Islamic Republic of Iran 387

● 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 organiz-
ing 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 chil-
dren, 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 educa-
tional 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 characteris-
tics 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 coun-
cil, 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:
● 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 mem-
ber 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.
388 Azimi

The grouping activities accomplished through various programs including camp-

ing expeditions, artistic, cultural and sport events and the organizing of different
forums for discussion of educational matters, intellectual pursuits and social aff-
airs. 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 mon-
itors the activities and young scholar-centered programs run by its 29 provincial
branches. This network encompasses 400 camps and 1,200 centers nationwide. At pres-
ent, 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 Parlia-
ment 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 partici-
pation 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 rep-
resentatives 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 mem-
bers 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:
 The Case of the Islamic Republic of Iran 389

● 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 infor-
mation 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 imple-
mentation of ICT in schools. The Bureau for Information and Communication Techno-
logy 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 some-
thing about it is perhaps not because of external pressure such as global economic com-
petition 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.
390 Azimi

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 facili-
ties, lack of facilities and equipment for technical and vocational educational institu-
tions, 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 inci-
dental 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, respon-
sibility, 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 popu-
lation. 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.
 The Case of the Islamic Republic of Iran 391

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 Levačić

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 imme-
diate 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 edu-
cation, 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 exist-
ing 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 empir-
ical evidence for European countries on the relationship between school resources and
pupil attainment. The theoretical framework used in the research reviewed is the educa-
tion 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 meas-
urable 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 evi-
dence 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.
396 Levačić

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 man-
age 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 effec-
tiveness and education production function literature (Glewwe, 2002; Reynolds &
Teddlie, 1999; Scheerens, 1997, 1999; Willms, 1992). In the basic model, pupil out-
comes (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 meas-
ure the impact of resource inputs, the pupil input variables that affect educational attain-
ment must be controlled for.
Resource inputs are utilized through various school processes, which should con-
tribute 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 dif-
ferent 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
 Student Attainment and School Resources 397

effectiveness researchers have endeavoured to find school process variables that are
associated with more effective schools, referring to these as “school effectiveness corre-
lates.” 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 atti-
tudes 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 pos-
sible 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 attain-
ing, select better resourced schools. Alternatively, the influence of pupil attainment
on resourcing is inverse when governments practise compensatory funding, allocat-
ing more revenue per pupil to schools with higher concentrations of socially dis-
advantaged 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)

398 Levačić

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  coeffi-
cient(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 independ-
ent variables. This condition is violated if there are omitted variables that affect attain-
ment 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 inde-
pendent 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 abil-
ity 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
 Student Attainment and School Resources 399

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 cor-
related 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 attain-
ment. 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 fail-
safe 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 effective-
ness 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 method-
ological 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 vari-
ables 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, con-
tinuing 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
400 Levačić

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 sub-
sequent examination results. However, the studies report on education production func-
tion 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, Levačić, & Vignoles, 2006; Levačić,
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 expendi-
ture at LEA level as resource variables. The NCDS studies have a relatively large num-
ber 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 Levačić et al. (2004) have used
these data to investigate the impact of resources on pupil attainment in English second-
ary 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
 Student Attainment and School Resources 401

(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 con-
tains 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 aver-
age 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 num-
ber 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 sci-
ence at KS3. The coefficient on the pupil teacher ratio was negative; hence a reduc-
tion 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
402 Levačić

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 expen-
diture per pupil and a reduced pupil-teacher ratio had a statistically significant pos-
itive 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 pro-
grams 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 addi-
tional resources were the Literacy and Numeracy strategies for primary schools. These
brought in dedicated daily “hours” for literacy and maths and structured teaching pro-
grams. 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, con-
trolling 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.
 Student Attainment and School Resources 403

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 stud-
ies used multilevel modelling which corrects for bias in standard errors due to cluster-
ing 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 indi-
vidual attention to pupils in smaller classes but the studies did not succeed in identify-
ing 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 suffi-
ciently 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 evi-
dence 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 func-
tions: “In Europe, there is nothing to match the US literature, and not even the litera-
ture 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.
404 Levačić

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 fac-
tors, 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 endoge-
nous 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 back-
ground 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 contrast-
ing 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
 Student Attainment and School Resources 405

within state schools in any given country. Private schools clearly have more auton-
omy 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 back-
ground 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 teach-
ers’ 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.
406 Levačić

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-mak-
ing 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 vari-
ous 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 account-
able for pupil performance is widely advocated (and criticised) as a way of giving princi-
pals 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 treat-
ment 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 equa-
tions 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 deci-
sions 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.
 Student Attainment and School Resources 407

Conclusion
The endogeneity of school resources, in the absence of social experiments which ran-
domly 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 nat-
ural settings so that identifying a causal impact of resources requires one or more instru-
mental 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 disad-
vantaged 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 institu-
tional 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 attain-
ment 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 subse-
quent increase in the present value of life time income suggest that the additional cost in teac-
her 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 dissem-
inate 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 cog-
nitive 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 regis-
ter 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.
408 Levačić

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 cor-
rection 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.
Levačić, 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.

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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 any-
thing, 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 juris-
dictions, 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, struc-
tural 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.
412 Ungerleider and Levin

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 ele-
mentary 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 educa-
tion 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 is a residual power Provincial legislatures have

education of the states
Influence of Moderate
state/provincial
departments of education
Federal presence in Federal department of
education education; direct funding;
federal laws affecting
education
Governmental form Representative democracy
Status of faith-based No state support for
schools faith-based schools
Status of private No state support of private
schools schools
Dominant pattern of Locally determined property
school board funding 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
exclusive law-making power
Strong
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

Source: Ungerleider (2005b).

 School Improvement in Canada 413

Developments in education also need to be seen in the context of broader social pol-
icy 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 exam-
ple, 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

30
Billions of dollars

25

20

15

10

0
56 55
58 57
60 59
62 61
64 63
66 65
68 67
70 69
72 71
74 73
76 75
78 77
80 79
82 81
84 83
86 85
88 87
90 89
92 91
94 93
5
–9
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
54

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.
414 Ungerleider and Levin

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 them-
selves 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, con-
trolling 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 differ-
ing 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 strug-
gling 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.
 School Improvement in Canada 415

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 cir-
cumstances. In all cases, the changes were difficult to make and badly received by teach-
ers 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 provin-
cial 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 responsibil-
ities of the various agencies and organizations involved in elementary and secondary
education. These included the amalgamation of school boards, the introduction of per-
formance planning and performance “agreements,” the use of “results-based” incen-
tives 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 Newfound-
land from 27 to 11. New Brunswick eliminated school boards entirely in 1996 but rein-
troduced 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
416 Ungerleider and Levin

provincial policy direction, school boards still faced much of the local pressure regard-
ing 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 budg-
ets 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 educa-
tion 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 increa-
ses 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 reason-
ably 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 com-
plexities of political positioning, neo-liberal) policy (Levin, 2001). Regardless of its
label, the principal tenets of this viewpoint are:
 School Improvement in Canada 417

● 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 regula-
tion 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 advan-
tages to parents and to develop specialized programs to attract more – and more aca-
demically 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
80,000
Alberta
Students

Saskatchewan
60,000
Manitoba
NFLD
40,000
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.
418 Ungerleider and Levin

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 lan-
guage 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 self-
governing 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 pro-
grams 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 includ-
ing 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 expe-
rienced by groups like doctors and police officers (Bottery, 1998). Nonetheless, for an
institution that had been used to broad public support without much formal accounta-
bility, the change to public education was wrenching.
 School Improvement in Canada 419

Worries about the outcomes of schooling were part of, and even substantially
inspired by, a broader discussion of the importance of educational outcomes for eco-
nomic competitiveness, as well as for a range of other important outcomes like employ-
ment, 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 sig-
nificant increase in public expenditures for education. The prospect of unbridled eco-
nomic 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 diffi-
cult. 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 chil-
dren 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 valid-
ity. 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 dif-
ferent 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
420 Ungerleider and Levin

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 prior-
ities. 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 certi-
fication 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 certifica-
tion 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 lan-
guage arts (English or French) and mathematics, but no two provinces had the same test-
ing 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
 School Improvement in Canada 421

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 conse-
quences for students, not just through strikes but also through reduced teacher partici-
pation 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 stu-
dents 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
422 Ungerleider and Levin

effort and investment rather than being a matter of just having to put the right incen-
tives 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 sup-
ported a program of school- and district-based instructional change with careful eval-
uation 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 signifi-
cant 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 opti-
mistic 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.
 School Improvement in Canada 423

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 individualis-
tic 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 deci-
sions and more resources – continue, Canada’s public school are likely to improve, pro-
viding 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.

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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 identifi-
cation 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 pri-
vate 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.
426 Mingat

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 allo-
cated 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 =
. GDP
EDRES = . 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 coun-
try 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 judg-
ment 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 (describ-
ing 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
 Cost and Financing of Education 427

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 mod-
ern sector of their economy and better administrative structures), but the country spe-
cific 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 eco-
nomic 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 rela-
tively easy or difficult circumstances vis-à-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 vari-
ance 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 coun-
tries 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 edu-
cation 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 state-
ments 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 indi-
vidual 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.
428 Mingat

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 mobi-
lization 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 coun-
tries 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 coun-
tries 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 edu-
cation 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 educa-
tion 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 cap-
ital expenditure (in particular classroom construction) and capacity building activities;
 Cost and Financing of Education 429

this has evolved over the last 10 years with increasing financing of recurrent expendi-
ture, 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 esti-
mated; but most household surveys do not have a module of expenditure.
Another difficulty with private financing of education is to identify which expendi-
ture 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 school-
ing, 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 representa-
tive of the region, this does not mean that these data have no interest. A first observa-
tion 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

Spending for the sector Spending for primary

Countries (billion LCU) education (billion LCU)

Private Public Private/ Private Public Private/

total (%) total (%)

Mauritania, 2004 3.9 12.4 24 2.2 6.3 26

Mali, 2003 9.2 82.0 10 6.1 29.0 17
Cameroon, 2002 185 207 47 49.0 66.0 43
Togo, 1999 10.7 26.4 29 8.4 16.0 34

LCU
Local Currency Units.

Source: World Bank Education Country Status Report for the four countries.
430 Mingat

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 trade-
off 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 con-
cerns 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 dif-
fers across the different countries of the region. Thus, it is not easy to conduct an inter-
national 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
 Cost and Financing of Education 431

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 approx-
imately 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 analy-
sis 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 lev-
els 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 edu-
cation 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 % of budget % of budget % of budget % of budget

per year for a 6.2 year per year for a 6.2 year
cycle cycle

Low income
countries 7.8 48.0 4.5 27.9 21.1
African 7.7 47.4 4.3 26.6 23.0

Middle income
countries 6.2 38.2 5.5 34.0 23.3
African 6.3 38.8 5.7 34.9 20.8
OECD countries 4.7 29.0 6.2 38.3 25.8

Source: UIS and World Bank and calculations by the author.

432 Mingat

This pattern is consistent with the fact that secondary education, and later higher edu-
cation, 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 second-
ary 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 refer-
ence 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 assump-
tion, 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 com-
pletion 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 coun-
tries sharing a similar structure of enrolments (6 years for primary and 7 years for sec-
ondary 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 recur-
rent 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 educa-
tion. In secondary and higher education, the respective ranges are much wider, from
 Cost and Financing of Education 433

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 % Secondary % Higher

education education education

Benin 55 27 17
Burkina Faso 60 21 19
Burundi 56 28 17
Cameroon* 45 43 12
Chad 51 29 20
C ôte d’Ivoire 43 34 22
Guinea 44 31 25
Mali* 40 45 15
Mauritania* 52 35 13
Niger 58 27 14
Rwanda* 48 19 33
Senegal 42 29 28
Sierra Leone 50 27 22
Togo 45 36 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 diffi-
cult to modify the distribution of public resources across levels of education, the inter-
national 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 qual-
ity 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
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 educa-
tional 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
Number of children enrolled

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
 Cost and Financing of Education 435

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 cho-
sen 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 use-
ful 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

Graph 2: Unit spending and GER at the primary

level in low income African countries
160 y = 287.54 x–0.492
140 R2 = 0.38
120
GER (%)

100
80
60
40
20
5 10 15 20
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.
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 aver-
age 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 pol-
icy 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 pur-
pose 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 docu-
ment 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 illus-
trate 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)
 Cost and Financing of Education 437

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

50 26.7 (1) 35.6 53.3 (2)

Expenditure per pupil for 100 30.0 40.0 60.0
goods and services (MU) 200 40.0 53.3 (4) 80.00 (3)
300 60.0 80.0 120.0

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, peda-
gogical material, in-service training for teachers, assessment of pupils and pedagogi-
cal 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 assess-
ment 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 spend-
ing 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 coun-
tries 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 (rela-
tively 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 text-
books). 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 buy-
ing 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 con-
ditions 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
 Cost and Financing of Education 439

population by the system, through the school life expectancy statistics (the average num-
ber 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 rang-
ing 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 repre-
senting the different countries of the region are widely scattered and the overall rela-
tionship 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 educa-
tion 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 discus-
sion when a country envisages increasing coverage and that the resources are not the sin-
gle 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.

Graph 3 : School life expectancy and public resources for the sector
14
School Life Expectancy (years)

y = 0.68 x + 3.88
12 R2 = 0.27
10
8
6
4
2
0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12
Public resources (% GDP)

Figure 3. School life expectancy and public resources for the sector
Source: UIS and World Bank ECSRs.
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 observa-
tion 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 learn-
ing 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 imple-
mented 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 legit-
imacy9 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 num-
ber 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
 Cost and Financing of Education 441

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 stu-
dents 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 essen-
tially 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 charac-
teristics, 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 repre-
sents 54.9% of that variance. Within this residual, two components can be distin-
guished: (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 38.6 55.7

Initial score 36.1 52.1
Personal and social characteristics 2.5 3.6
Schools inputs and
characteristics 6.5 9.4
Classes 1.7 2.5
Schools 1.6 2.3
Teachers 3.2 4.6
Total individual and logistic
factors 45.1 65.1
Teacher/Class Effect 24.2 34.9
Total accounted 67.3 100.0
Residual 32.7 -
Total 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 cog-
nitive 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 con-
sideration, 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 vari-
ability in the formal inputs14 (teacher’s academic credentials and training, class size,
modality of student grouping, characteristics of the school building, availability of text-
books 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
 Cost and Financing of Education 443

of inputs). Errors in measurement in the school inputs variables may produce an under-
estimation 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 circum-
stances prevailing in the systems of primary education in low income African coun-
tries, 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 impor-
tant, 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 day-
to-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 stud-
ied 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 pop-
ulations 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 expan-
sion 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 differ-
ences 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 dif-
ferences 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 serv-
ices, 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.

140 y = 28.08Ln(x) – 25.22

R2 = 0.39
120
Girls to boys ratio (%)

100

80

60

40

20
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140
Primary completion rate (%)

Figure 4. Gender equity vs. global coverage at the end of primary education, 2002
Source: UIS and World Bank ECSRs.
 Cost and Financing of Education 445

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 learn-
ing in the short term and capacities to contribute to the social and economic develop-
ment 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 deter-
mine 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 num-
bers . . . ?). 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 mir-
rors 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 mar-
ginally 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 transfor-
mation 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 govern-
ment in which (1) the contract is fuzzy, (2) what local actors do is crucial for the pro-
duction 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 char-
acterized 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 cover-
age 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 chil-
dren 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 educa-
tional 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 cover-
age, 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.
 Cost and Financing of Education 447

● 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-à-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 pre-
ferred. 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-à-vis
coverage and better management of the transformation of resources into student out-
comes 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 effi-
ciency 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 devel-
opment 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 coun-
tries 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.
448 Mingat

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 Systèmes 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, suggest-
ing 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 absen-
teeism 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.
 Cost and Financing of Education 449

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 èmes 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 Systèmes 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, Côte-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 com-
pleting Year 12 of secondary education in comparison with their peers who either disen-
gage 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 success-
fully 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 stu-
dents achieving improved outcomes and the diminution of the disparity in achievement
between students.” In essence this expansion introduces the concept that it is unac-
ceptable 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.
452 Spinks

In England education reform is driven by the need for “all pupils to perform to the max-
imum 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, increas-
ing 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 vulner-
able 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 respec-
tive 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 gen-
eral, 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).
 Resources Effectiveness and Improvement 453

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) iden-
tifies 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 fail-
ing 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 out-
comes in educational jurisdictions not only throughout Australia but also in like coun-
tries. 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 socio-
economic 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 endeav-
our will have to be with respect to the first three quintiles. It is also recognised that the
Outcomes–Needs relation
100

80
Outcomes

60

40

20

0
1 2 3 4 5
Diminishing need quintiles

Current outcomes Expected outcomes

Figure 1. Outcomes – Needs relation

454 Spinks

effort and endeavour required increase exponentially as need increases. This relation-
ship 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 under-
way in Victoria for research into this area. The view held there is that student aspira-
tion 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 gath-
ered 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 iden-
tification 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 evi-
dence and guided by agreed principles. This review and redesign of school resource

Resource–Need relation
100

80
Resource relativities

60

40

20

0
1 2 3 4 5
Diminishing need quintiles

Additional Resource Relation Current Outcomes Expected Outcomes

Figure 2. Resource–Need relation

 Resources Effectiveness and Improvement 455

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 fac-
tor 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 occur-
rence, with early years typically around 1.3 decreasing to 1.0 in late primary but accel-
erating 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 des-
perately 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 redesign-
ing 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 analy-
sis 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 sys-
tems, is sponsorship by business and philanthropic organisations and parental contribu-
tions. The former is perhaps more prevalent in England while the latter is a significant
456 Spinks

Can include: Can

represent
Core student • The stages of learning and relativities between
learning them. 75–90%
• Translation into per student funding.
• A base amount relating to diseconomies of scale.

Can include:
Student focused funding

• Disabilities & impairments

Equity • Socio-economic status 5–10%
• Language background
• Isolated location
• Mobility
• Indigenous

• Targeted to specific schools or programs usually

for specified periods of time.
•
Government allocated funding

Targeted Often awarded through “bids” or submissions. 2–10%

Initiatives
• Can be closely related to political agendas.

Infrastructure Can include:

operation &
maintenance. • Utilities 3–5%
• Maintenance
• Minor development
TOTAL SCHOOL FUNDING

Infrastructure • Buildings and grounds major development. 0–??%

ownership.
School based funding

• Often targeted to specific initiatives.

•
Non-gov funding

Can be supplied “as cash or in kind.”

Specific • An increasingly important source of funding.
initiatives or • Parent contributions. 0–8?%
provisions

Figure 3. Possible school budget allocation categories and sources

factor in Victoria. These developments are not without controversies, particularly in rela-
tion 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 vari-
ations in proportions of the overall school allocation.
● The majority of resources are allocated by governments but with a growing impor-
tance 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.
 Resources Effectiveness and Improvement 457

● 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 guaran-
tee 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 tar-
geted 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 develop-
ment 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 trans-
formation of education. They not only include parent contributions but very impor-
tantly, 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 pro-
ceeds in a cost neutral environment. It is interesting that it is easy to gain unanimous
458 Spinks

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 pre-
eminence 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 opposi-
tion 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 prin-
ciples of equity and fairness to remove historical anomalies from school funding gained
her universal admiration.

Principle Description
Learning 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
 Resources Effectiveness and Improvement 459

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 imple-
mentation. 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 strat-
egy 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 equi-
tably, 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.

Strategy Guidelines for Funding Model Development and Implementation

● 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 educa-
tion 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 teach-
ing, and not through restricted financial analysis.
● Schools included should be representative of type, size, location and socio-
economic circumstance and be known to significantly, systematically and sus-
tainably 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 exem-
plary 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.
460 Spinks

AL
I ON S
T C AT ION
EN U AT
NM ED T
I RO P EC
NV EX
E
I AL
SOC
s
ce
ra cti T
e rp EN
M
b ett ing ON T
ing oo
l
V IR EN
rg ch M
me fs EN RON
E eo CA
L
VI
tur gy TI EN
Na lo I
ch
no POL M
IC
Te O NO
EC

Figure 5. The social/political/economic context of educational expectations

● 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 edu-
cational change, they work in unison with other change factors within the overall edu-
cation 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 aspira-
tions, needs, nature and numbers of students. Failure to do so will diminish the achieve-
ment 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 improve-
ment and does not alone guarantee improved outcomes. However, in the improvement
matrix, it is a critical element, particularly in underpinning change to achieve ever
 Resources Effectiveness and Improvement 461

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 insuf-
ficiently 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 activi-
ties 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 curricu-
lum, 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 Support programs

Values
School specialisation
and
purposes STUDENT Interdisciplinary
PERSONALISED learning
Implementation
PLANNING
Discipline-based
learning
Physical, personal
and social learning
THE THE
STUDENT STUDENT’S
LEARNING OUTCOMES
STRANDS and
Implementation DOMAINS
plus
SUPPORT
PROGRAMS
SCHOOL
Expectations STRATEGIC DESIGN
for PLANNING and
learning ACCESS

A student-focused planning model for the future

Figure 6. A student-focused planning model for the future

462 Spinks

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 evalua-
tion. The student and his/her characteristics are also considered in relation to the
school and governing body statements of values, purposes and expectations for learn-
ing. 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 cur-
riculum and pedagogy to the characteristics and expectations for learning of the
student and including planned monitoring and possible related actions. School strate-
gic 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 identi-
fied 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 cur-
riculum 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 cur-
riculum. 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 relation-
ship 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
 Resources Effectiveness and Improvement 463

exceeds availability, then the relationships to targets and priorities inform the balanc-
ing 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 com-
plex 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 achiev-
able 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 sub-
stance 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 high-
est 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 car-
ers, and representatives from the Department of Children’s Welfare as his legal guardians.
464 Spinks

Strategic Intention 2
It is an expectation that all students will achieve a minimum standard of outcomes suf-
ficient 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 inten-
sification 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:
● 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 includ-
ing English, Maths, Science and ICT.
● Five subject awards at C level (benchmark standard) by the end of Year 10 includ-
ing 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 con-
tinually 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 encourag-
ing 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
 Resources Effectiveness and Improvement 465

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 achieve-
ment 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 presenta-
tion, literacy and numeracy.
The school has also developed effective networks with industry and Kyle was pro-
vided 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 “jig-
saw” together with the whole possibly exceeding the sum of its parts in relation to essen-
tial 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.
466 Spinks

Strategic Intention 9
Meeting the future outcome targets for students requires schools to avidly seek to iden-
tify and encompass emerging better practices. Forming strategic alliances or networks
with other schools or entities may assist in these processes by sharing expertise, expe-
rience 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) $5,800
Student in a high needs school $500
Year 7–9 student in a very high needs school $1,750
Year 7–8 student identified at exceptional risk $3,000

Breakfast Program:
nutrition, presentation, Communication
literacy and numeracy Design, Creativity &
Technology
Mentor Program:
ICT
Linking personal
Interdisciplinary Thinking
aspiration to real life
experience and support learning

Support programs

Discipline-based Physical, personal

learning 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

 Resources Effectiveness and Improvement 467

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 con-
tinued 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 student-
focused 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 achiev-
ing his subject target levels.
His personalised learning plan has succeeded in adding value to the learning out-
comes of a highly at risk student. The possibility of Kyle proceeding to positively
participate in society is greatly increased.

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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” quali-
tative 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.
472 Reynolds

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 substan-
tial 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:
● 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
 School Effectiveness-European Survey 473

(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 profes-
sional 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 partic-
ular 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 coun-
tries with selective tri-partite systems (the Netherlands) as well as those with compre-
hensive 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 descrip-
tion 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 effective-
ness being more judgemental as to whether standards have been attained, by 2000 both
SE and SI were united in (Hopkins & Reynolds, 2001):
● 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
474 Reynolds

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 there-
fore 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 influ-
encing the climate of educational opinion by:
● 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 dis-
cern. 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 effective-
ness 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 pol-
icy 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 com-
munity, so impact has been correspondingly minimal. In the Netherlands, by contrast,
 School Effectiveness-European Survey 475

there has been a very large research orientated SESI community, with major contribu-
tions 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 relation-
ships in the Netherlands between teacher evaluation, staff development, teacher
improvement and school improvement. Unfortunately, strong links between effective-
ness research and improvement are also absent in the Netherlands.” Only in the influ-
ence 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:
● 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 devel-
oped 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
476 Reynolds

enjoying different improvement trajectories over time (Gray et al., 1999) revealed inter-
esting 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 improve-
ment through a sophisticated program involving the generation of a discourse concern-
ing “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 con-
cerning 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:

● 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 chil-
dren can achieve or “lesson structure”), certain factors apply only in certain environ-
mental contexts. At classroom level, an example might be that the factor of
“proceeding in small steps with consolidation if necessary” is important for all chil-
dren 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:
● 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);
 School Effectiveness-European Survey 477

● 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:
● Requiring extended reasoning;
● Posing questions that require associations and generalisations;
● Giving difficult material;
● The use of projects that require independent judgement, discovery, problem solv-
ing 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 struc-
ture 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 evi-
dence (see Hopkins, Harris, & Jackson (1997) and Reynolds (1996) for early specula-
tions 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 curricu-
lar and organisational issues, in order to build the confidence and competence to con-
tinue. These include:
● 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 environ-
ment, 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, collabora-
tion 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);
478 Reynolds

● 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, exter-
nal 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 associ-
ated 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
 School Effectiveness-European Survey 479

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 instruc-
tion. 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 out-
comes, 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 responsi-
ble 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 teach-
ers 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, class-
room 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) men-
tioned 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
480 Reynolds

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 iden-
tifying the kinds of changes that will improve student learning in the classroom
and, once the changes are identified, of sharing this knowledge with other teach-
ers 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. Percentage of variance at the school, classroom and pupil levels

School Class Individual

Year 1 3.5 11.2 85.3

Year 2 3.7 14.5 81.6
Year 3 5.1 21.8 73.1

Year above is the year of the study itself.

 School Effectiveness-European Survey 481

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 sys-
tem is more marked than that of many other societies (see the extreme right hand col-
umn 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 pre-
existing variation;
● the effects of recent increased pressures in education leading to enhanced diffi-
culties 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

Intake to end Intake to end End Year 1 to End Year 1 to Intake to

Year 1 A1 Year 1 B1 with end Year 2 A2 end Year 2 B2 end
unconditional background unconditional with background Year 2C
model covariates model covariates

USA 0.35 0.29 0.37 0.20 0.25

UK 0.21 0.11 0.22 0.07 0.10
Taiwan 0.03 0.02 0.07 0.04 0.04
Norway 0.13 0.04 0.11 0.06 0.08
Hong Kong 0.18 0.10 0.02 0.02 0.05
Netherlands 0.16 0.08 0.17 0.04 0.15
Ireland 0.09 0.00 0.11 0.01 0.12
Australia 0.18 0.13 0.22 0.16 0.04

Source: Reynolds et al., 2005.

482 Reynolds

improvement knowledge base suggests that gains vary more within improvement proj-
ects 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 practition-
ers 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 remain-
der 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 second-
ary school or the “year” level in a primary school. Targeting these means that pol-
icy 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 improve-
ment 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 strate-
gically. Targeting sub-groups within the school could get round that;
 School Effectiveness-European Survey 483

● 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, undevel-
oped 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 unso-
phisticated, 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, pow-
erful 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
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force). London: DfEE.
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net.gov.uk/docbank/index.cfm/id
1204 (Accessed: 24 January 2003).
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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 disadvan-
taged 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 moni-
toring 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, reli-
gions, and income levels. The authors of the Equality of Education Opportunity Survey
(EEOS) – which is better known today as the “Coleman Report” – found what then-
President 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.
486 Kochan

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 intu-
itive 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 per-
formance, with only “a small fraction of differences in student achievement” appar-
ently 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” conclu-
sion tended to drift into one of two research tracks: the first focusing on the identifi-
cation 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 effectiveness
School
improvement
School accountability activities

Figure 1. Evolution of school effectiveness, school indicators, and school accountability in pursuit of
school improvement

Table 1. Comparison of school indicators, school accountability, and school effectiveness research

School effectiveness School indicators School accountability

Purpose 1. To test the theory that To report summary To measure the

schools “cannot make
a difference” in student
learning outcomes
already shaped by family
background.
2. To develop models of
“effective schooling.”
measures of school progress that schools
performance on an make toward
annual basis in order to: performance standards
1. drive policy decisions, and trigger
2. inform school consequences for
improvement activities, schools whose
and/or progress exceeds or
3. build competition falls short of
to improve. expectations.
 School Performance Research in the USA 487

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 evi-
dence 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 effec-
tive 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 con-
trol. 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 rea-
sons. First, policymakers prefer school performance measures they can understand, and
many contend that regressed scores are unnecessarily complicated to interpret or to
488 Kochan

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 unad-
justed 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 meth-
ods they use to gather school process information have been adopted for school improve-
ment 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 compet-
itiveness 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 inade-
quacies in the collection and analysis of education data. Corporate America was heav-
ily 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 indi-
cator 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 oppor-
tunities since the EEOS. The report was largely responsible for triggering a decade-
long 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.
 School Performance Research in the USA 489

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 inten-
sive 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 com-
prehensive 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 gath-
ering, 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 Canada/Scotland United Kingdom

Porter (1991) Willms (1992) Fitz-Gibbon (1996)

Inputs
Student background (general) Age at entry Prior achievement
Teacher quality (general) Sex Prior attitudes
Fiscal and other resources SES Gender
Parent, community norms • Mother’s/father’s occupation Ethnicity
• Mother’s/father’s education ELS status
• Family composition SES
• Number of siblings
Race/Ethnicity
EL Status

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
Ecology and milieu: Alterable classroom
• Class/school/district size variables
• Per-pupil expenditures Alterable school
Segregation management variables
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

(Continued)
490 Kochan

Table 2. (Continued )

United States Canada/Scotland United Kingdom

Porter (1991) Willms (1992) Fitz-Gibbon (1996)

Instructional leadership of principals:

• Shaping attitudes
• Behaviors
• Establishing policies
• Procedures

Outputs/outcomes
Achievement Academic achievement: Achievement
Participation • Math Attitudes toward school
Attitudes, aspiration • Reading Attitudes toward school
• Language arts subjects
• Science Aspirations
Personal and social: Quality of life indicators
• Self-concept
• Focus of control
• Participation in sports
• Physical fitness
• Participation in extra-
curricular activities
Vocational:
• Work experience
• Skills in vocational subjects
• Attitudes toward work
• Post-school destinations

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 sam-
ples – often entire populations – of schools. Unfortunately, indicator researchers soon
found that the most important and insightful measures of instructional quality are dif-
ficult 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 pioneer-
ing NSF studies – to develop quantitative measures of such key instructional con-
structs 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 cumber-
some 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
 School Performance Research in the USA 491

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 per-
formance 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 sub-
scribed 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 sur-
faced 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 compari-
son grouping. In comparison grouping, schools are grouped on one or more variables
that have a demonstrated relationship with student achievement, such as the percent-
age 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
492 Kochan

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 tar-
gets 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 stan-
dards. 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 theoret-
ically can be accomplished without statistical adjustments. Unadjusted outcome meas-
ures 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: Accoun-
tability 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 indica-
tor 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, par-
ticularly 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
 School Performance Research in the USA 493

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 sanc-
tions 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 pro-
gram 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 per-
formance 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 per-
formance is measured at a very high level (as in state-level reporting), the large sam-
ple 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 unac-
ceptably 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
494 Kochan

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 lim-
itation 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 longitu-
dinal 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 stu-
dent 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 out-
come measure (e.g., whether school scores are based on achievement alone or a com-
posite 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 admin-
istration 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
 School Performance Research in the USA 495

the achievement gap between their highest and lowest performing students by specify-
ing 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 improve-
ment 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 manage-
ment, (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 unrealis-
tically 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 sanc-
tions to their performance monitoring systems; and they remain critical issues under
NCLB. Three years into NCLB accountability – as the first wave of chronically low-
performing 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 assess-
ments 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 indica-
tion 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
496 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 2005 NAEP Grade 4 Reading

AYP in 2004 (%) scores proficient or above (%)

Alabama 23 22
Florida 23 30
North Carolina 71 30
Mississippi 76 18
Louisiana 92 20
Texas 94 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 het-
erogeneous 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 associ-
ation 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).
 School Performance Research in the USA 497

Table 4. 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).

498 Kochan

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 descrip-
tions 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 effec-
tiveness 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 crit-
ical issues, but should not be treated as ends in themselves (Elliott, Ralph, & Turnbull,
1993; Special Study Panel on Education Indicators, 1991). Measurement error and indi-
cator incomparability were not major concerns because indicators informed policy
actions rather than triggering them. In today’s high-stakes accountability climate, how-
ever, 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 per-
formance 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 pro-
cesses, 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 rela-
tion 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 quantita-
tive 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
 School Performance Research in the USA 499

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 spo-
ken 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 (statis-
tics) 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
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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 accountabil-
ity framework recently developed by the 2004 World Development Report (WDR) (World
Bank, 2004). This framework focuses on accountability mechanisms between policy-
makers, 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 mecha-
nisms, extracting lessons which should be useful to the design of future reforms.
It is generally assumed that services will be provided more efficiently by sub-
national 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 frame-
work 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.
504 Di Gropello

The state

Policy-
Politicians
makers

Voice - Compact
politics

Coalition/ Management
inclusion
Client power
Teachers Schools
Non-poor Poor

Community
students Providers
parents
Schooling

Figure 1. The framework of accountability relationships, according to the WDR

(3) the “client power” relationship defined as the relationship of accountability con-
necting 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
 Decentralisation and Accountability Relationships 505

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 mod-
els are illustrated below in Figures 2–4 (where the most important accountability rela-
tionships 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 charac-
teristics 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 provin-
cial level (in two main stages, 1978 and 1992), Mexico, which did the same to the

The state Argentina

Brazil
Chile
National
Policy- Mexico
Politicians
makers

Compact

Voice -
politics
Compact

Voice Sub-national
government
policy-makers

Management
Non-poor Poor Client power
Teachers Schools

Students
parents Providers
community Schooling

Figure 2. The “sub-national government” model

506 Di Gropello

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 municipali-
ties 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 sys-
tems), 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 par-
ticular, some countries like Argentina and Brazil have transferred many more respon-
sibilities 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 responsibil-
ity 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 accountabil-
ity 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” rela-
tionship between the center and the provinces, states or municipalities has been tradi-
tionally 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
 Decentralisation and Accountability Relationships 507

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 decen-
tralization 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 decen-
tralization 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

The state
Bolivia
National colombia
Policy-
Politicians
makers

Compact

Voice -
politics Regional
policy-makers Compact
Voice
Compact

Voice Local
policy-makers
Management
Non-poor Poor
Teachers Schools
Client power

Students
parents Providers
community Schooling

Figure 3. The “sub-national shared responsibility” model

508 Di Gropello

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 coun-
tries. Colombia, for instance, put emphasis on all four relationships (both the depart-
mental and municipal governments are elected), with particular emphasis, however, on
the “compact” relationships. In particular, the country put in place an original accred-
itation 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 manage-
ment 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 commu-
nity 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 autono-
mization” consisted in a transfer of broad administrative responsibilities (teacher man-
agement, school maintenance, etc.) and to, a much lesser extent, some pedagogical
responsibilities to schools.
 Decentralisation and Accountability Relationships 509

The state El Salvador

Nicaragua

Policy-
Politicians
makers

Voice -
politics Compact

Non-poor Poor Management

Client power
Teachers Schools

Students Providers
parents
community
Schooling

Figure 4. The “school autonomization” model

These two models started after a civil war and, therefore, were also part of a pacifi-
cation 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 decentraliza-
tion process and, therefore, central to their functioning are the two following account-
ability 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 decen-
tralize to the councils the management of all funds, allowing them to manage all teach-
ers, 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 imple-
mentation of monthly transfers which include an efficiency element being allocated
510 Di Gropello

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 diffi-
cult 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 atten-
tion 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 stan-
dardized testing, either on a national or sample basis), the quality of the assessments
 Decentralisation and Accountability Relationships 511

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, educa-
tional 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’ decen-
tralization 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: Summary of findings with interpretation

“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)
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)
512 Di Gropello
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)
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.
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 over-
invest 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.
 Decentralisation and Accountability Relationships 513

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 pos-
itive 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 partic-
ularized 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 inter-
ventions 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
514 Di Gropello

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 particu-
larly 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 clear-
cut 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 respon-
sibilities 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 enroll-
ment, Colombia will adopt it after the failure of its overly complicated
formulae;
(c) use of hard budget constraints for local governments (and schools): the effi-
ciency of the municipal sector and its capacity to compete against the pri-
vate sector was weakened by the existence of soft budget constraints for
municipalities (and schools) in Chile. Soft budget constraints for munici-
palities 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);
 Decentralisation and Accountability Relationships 515

(d) use of per-capita spending targets instead of formulae attempting to meas-

ure 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 strengthen-

ing 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 cen-
tral and regional offices with specific coordination, supervision and support
tasks;
(b) development of evaluation systems through the introduction and systemati-
zation of standardized testing: Chile was, for instance, successful in intro-
ducing at the end of the 1980s a national standardized testing system, called
SIMCE, which allowed the government and all other actors involved in edu-
cation (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 indi-
cate that to create an effective accountability relationship between the commu-
nity 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 evi-
dence 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
516 Di Gropello

will be strengthened by the introduction of elected school councils with sub-

stantial responsibilities in service delivery (responsibilities in the hiring, firing
and monitoring of teachers will be particularly important), also implying sub-
stantial 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.

● 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 par-
ticularly 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 par-
ticularly effective by parents’ enhanced control of teachers, that is by the expres-
sion of “client power.” Does, therefore, the relative success of school autonomy
suggest that an education delivery model which enhances the “client power” rela-
tionship 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,
 Decentralisation and Accountability Relationships 517

an impact on the establishment of the overall legislative, administrative and finan-

cial 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 accounta-
bility 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 com-
plicated 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 sus-
tainability 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 “manage-
ment” accountability relationship, interpreted in a broader sense to include all
518 Di Gropello

cases of improved teacher management, needs to be given special emphasis in edu-

cation 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 decentral-
ized 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 sce-
nario 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 teach-
ers’ 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 mod-
ify 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 expe-
riences 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 519

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 cen-
tralized 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 monitor-
ing 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 edu-
cational 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 increas-
ingly 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 munic-
ipalities and private schools in the voucher program was voluntary. Chile, while decentralizing the man-
agement 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 com-
petition 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.
520 Di Gropello

14. This is the case of Brazil, for instance, where the FUNDEF reform was accompanied by the explicit tar-
get 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.

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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 standards-
based 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 dif-
ferentiated 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 develop-
ments can be said to be searching for more efficient ways of improving quality, particu-
larly 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.
524 Taylor

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 educa-
tion 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 devel-
opment. 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 teach-
ing 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, prin-
cipals 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 accom-
panies 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 gov-
ernment. 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 exemp-
tion rate dropped from 18 to 12% (see Table 1). This decline should not be surprising,
 Development of South African Schools 525

Table 1. Senior Certificate examination results, 1994–2005

Candidates Total passes Pass rate (%) University Exemption

exemption rate (%)

1994 495, 408 287, 343 58 88, 497 18

1995 531, 453 283, 742 53 78, 821 15
1996 518, 032 278, 958 54 79, 768 15
1997 555, 267 261, 400 47 69, 007 12
1998 552, 384 272, 488 49 69, 856 13
1999 511, 159 249, 831 49 63, 725 12
2000 489, 941 283, 294 58 68, 626 14
2001 449, 371 277, 206 62 67, 707 15
2002 471, 309 324, 752 69 75, 048 16
2003 440, 267 322, 492 73 82, 010 19
2004 467, 985 330, 717 71 85, 117 18
2005 508, 363 347, 184 68 86, 531 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
526 Taylor

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 proj-
ect 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. Never-
theless, the fact that the improvements shown by EAZ schools exceeded those of com-
parable 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 curricu-
lum, 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 pres-
sures 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 functional-
ity of districts and schools and improving classroom teaching in language and mathe-
matics. 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 Mean %

2000 2001 2002 2003

Numeracy 25.84 26.78 38.04 37.32

Literacy 52.58 50.23 57.22 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 class-
room 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 manage-
ment improved in project schools, although the general level of management
remained low.
● Two components of curriculum leadership at the school level also stood out: mon-
itoring curriculum delivery and support to teachers.
● At the classroom level significant improvements were noted in the degree of cur-
riculum 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 asso-
ciated with improved learner performance. Most notable was the effect of language-
across-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 imple-
mentation 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 Exemptions HG maths SG maths

% Pass
No % No % No % No % change

Total QLP 4167 18.3 1182 34.8 585 152.3 8741 137.5 14.0
Total SA 47314 16.7 16493 24.0 8466 47.0 46512 58.0 12.8
Difference* 1.6 10.8 105.0 79.0 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.
528 Taylor

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 improve-
ments 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, com-
parison 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 Exemptions HG Maths SG Maths HG Science SG Science

% Pass
No % No % No % No % No % No % change

Total
Dinaledi 876 10.4 613 29.7 476 94.6 484 14.6 467 64.4 44 1.8 3.6
Total SA 53511 19.3 16797 25.6 180 0.7 25691 26.3 –6063 –16.6 –6462 –7.8 9
Difference* –8.9 4.1 93.9 11.7 81.0 9.8 –5.4

* 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 529

Dinaledi Schools (N = 102) QLP Schools (N = 513)

45
500
40 450
35 400
Number of Schools

Number of Schools
30 350
25 2001 300 2000 2004
2004 250
20
200
15
150
10
100
5 50
0 0

+
5
0
5
0
5
0
5
10

+
5
0

–2

–3

–4
–1
–2
–2
–3
–3
–4
–4

46
1–

46

6–
6–

16

26

36
11
16
21
26
31
36
41

Pass intervals Pass intervals

Figure 1. 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 activ-
ities, visited classrooms to support and monitor the work of teachers, and saturated tar-
get 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 pro-
duction-function studies also appeared during the first decade of democratic govern-
ment. 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 production-
function studies identified a number of generally weaker and sometimes contradictory
relationships (Table 6), indicating that these factors are of less importance than socio-
economic 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.
530 Taylor

Table 5. Social factors associated with improved learning (Taylor, Muller, & Vinjevold, 2003)

Factor Thomas Crouch & Anderson, Simkins & Van der Berg Howie
(1996) Mabogoane Case, & Patterson & Burger (2002)
(2001) Lam (2001) (2003) (2002)

Race ++ ++ ++ ++
Parental education ++ ++ ++
Parental income ++ ++ ++
Settlement type +
Family structure +
Gender 0 0
Language ++ ++

Key: ++ denotes strong positive correlation, + relatively weak positive correlation, 0 no significant differ-
ence; 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 & Case & Case & Bot, Wilson, Van der Berg
Mabogoane Deaton Yogo & Dove & Burger
(2001) (1999) (1999) (2001) (2002)

Teacher qualifications + +
Facilities + +
Pupil: teacher ratios 0 ++ ++
Learning materials +

Key: ++ denotes strong positive correlation, + relatively weak positive correlation, 0 no significant differ-
ence; 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 devel-
opment during this period is that research findings have begun to provide policy les-
sons 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 quad-
ratic shape, with increasing value added to the scores at higher levels of socio-
economic 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

800

700
Average maths score

600

500

400

300
–4 –2 0 2 4
School’s average SES score

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 illus-
trated 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, pro-
ducing 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.
532 Taylor

Table 7. Distribution of high schools by performance in SC mathematics,1 2004 (Simkins, 2005)

Privileged* African Sub- Prop of Prop of HG

schools schools total total % math passes %

Top performing** 380 34 414 7 66

Moderately performing 254 573 827 14 19
Poor performing 600 4,277 4,877 79 15
Total 1,234 4,884 6,118

* 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 effec-
tiveness 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 per-
forming 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 pro-
grams 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
 Development of South African Schools 533

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 fur-
ther 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 pat-
terns 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 educa-
tional 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 Effective Practices

Home District and higher School Classroom

Language of Speak LOI Clear policy Policy for the Develop

instruction *PPP, Simkins guidelines Monitor school Plans for proficiency
and Patterson developing
(2003), Khanyisa proficiency in LOI
Time management Sign homework Monitor time Regulate time use Adjusting pace
*PPP, SACMEQ, management in *PPP, SACMEQ to pupil ability
Khanyisa schools *PPP, Reeves
Curriculum Assist with Construct and Monitor and support Teacher
coverage homework distribute curriculum planning and knowledge.
*PPP standards. delivery. Plan and
*QLP *PPP, QLP, complete
SACMEQ curriculum
coverage.
*PPP, Reeves,
SACMEQ, QLP
Reading & Read Distribute books Procure and manage Read and write
Writing *PPP, Khanyisa and stationery books & stationery *QLP
*PPP, SACMEQ,
QLP
Assessment Monitor results Quality assure and Quality assure tests. Assess. Provide
monitor results Monitor results. feedback.
*QLP *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).
534 Taylor

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 predomi-
nantly 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 recom-
mends mother-tongue instruction for at least the first three grades, but this may be over-
turned 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 perform-
ance 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 over-
all 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
 Development of South African Schools 535

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 sys-
tem. 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 sec-
tor 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 comple-
menting 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
536 Taylor

quintile of schools may not charge any fees: in compensation they will receive an addi-
tional 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 one-
and 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 cur-
rent 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 iden-
tified 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 prac-
tices 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 them-
selves: 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, provin-
cial 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 func-
tionality, and it is anticipated that these programs will provide lessons for the rest of
the system.
 Development of South African Schools 537

Conclusion
The South African school system consists of very small top and moderately perform-
ing 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 char-
acteristics 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 corpo-
rate donors to target those schools which exhibit at least moderate levels of function-
ality. 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 inter-
mediate 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 pass-
ing 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 prob-
lem 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 pro-
fessional 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 chil-
dren 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
538 Taylor

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 per-
formance 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.

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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, how-
ever, it has progressed through a cycle of growth that at the beginning of the millen-
nium 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 tra-
jectory 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 improve-
ment 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 improve-
ments. 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 under-
taken 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.
542 Marshall

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) compli-
mented organisational values. Third, I will emphasis the importance of support struc-
tures 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 organ-
isational 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, particu-
larly as major changes to the state’s system of local site management were being fore-
shadowed.

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 devel-
opment, 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.
 The Case of South Australia 543

Some Results
Three years on, DECS has attained significant success in a number of areas identified
as priorities by the government:
● 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 read-
ing 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 chil-
dren and students.
● Developing a culture within the organisation that emphasised and supported con-
tinuous improvement in relation to the engagement and wellbeing of learners and
staff.
● Putting in place strategies to enhance the capability of the workforce – in particu-
lar, 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
544 Marshall

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 opera-
tional 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 repre-
sentative and problem solver in the field, as well as a key conduit for policy imple-
mentation 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 stan-
dards 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 system-
wide transformation requires new capacities to be built at each level of the system and
across their relationships (Fullan, 2004, p. 8).
 The Case of South Australia 545

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 bet-
ter 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) necessar-
ily requires a different approach to communication, problem solving, resource alloca-
tion, 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 consid-
ered 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 class-
room 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 profes-
sional 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.
546 Marshall

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 pro-
fessional 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 profes-
sional learning) and at the state office level (e.g., in the form of policy change or provi-
sion of resources to meet emerging demands).
 The Case of South Australia 547

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 differ-
ent parts of the system, there is the potential that:
● 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 respon-
ding to the issues that are emerging from school-level inquiry into the system pri-
orities – 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 mecha-
nisms 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 val-
ues 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 out-
lined 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 behav-
iours within state office, schools and children’s services. They are the foun-
dation stone for our work and practice, providing focused and direction for all our
548 Marshall

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:
● 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 commit-
ted 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:
● 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 capaci-
ties of people have become a strong feature of the DECS calendar. One particu-
larly 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 respon-
sibility, sharing of resources and collegial support with problem solving and the
 The Case of South Australia 549

development of best practice. Networks of sites within and across districts and
including work units in DECS offices are essential for the harvesting and dissemina-
tion 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 contin-
ually 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, evi-
dence-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, knowl-
edge 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
550 Marshall

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 relent-
less 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:

● 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 dis-
trict 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 interven-
tion in order to have success? What is the data saying about learning and well-
being 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 dispo-
sitions for successful citizenship in the future. Collegiality in the form of
interdependence is the key – not contrived collegiality, but a form of collabo-
ration where the district is the vehicle for the sharing of intellectual capital and
 The Case of South Australia 551

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 sys-
tem 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 happen-
ing. 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 lead-
ership 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 understand-
ing and practice. Their ability to question and challenge team members and dis-
trict 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 sys-
tems 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 achiev-
ing 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
552 Marshall

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 learn-
ers 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 sys-
tem 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:
● 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 edu-
cation 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 iden-
tity, 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 signif-
icant legacy for the young people in our districts. Working with learners to iden-
tify 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
 The Case of South Australia 553

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 lower-
ing the gap” in relation to the vital work of districts. This was a fundamental prin-
ciple 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: teach-
ing 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 pro-
ductive 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 reac-
tions 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 opportu-
nities through innovation networks, encouraging the use of inquiry processes and
554 Marshall

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 prob-
lematic for people, particularly if there is a risk of negative consequences for ini-
tial 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 interdepend-
ent 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 rhetor-
ical, at best. At DECS I aimed to build a high performing organisation where individ-
uals 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 vari-
ables including elements such as strategy and planning, capacity building and direc-
tion. 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 con-
nected elements that work together to create a quality team environment and high
performance Figure 4.
For each person this means:
Empathy You know that your line manager and others understand and value
your work and the complex issues that you deal with every day
Engagement Working with others. You know that your work makes a positive
difference and your expertise is needed in your team
Clarity You know what your job is and how it connects with others and to
the whole of DECS
Learning You can participate in quality learning to do your work better and
achieve outcomes as the context changes for your team.
 The Case of South Australia 555

Clarity

Empathy Learning

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, dis-
trict 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 interde-
pendence 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 effec-
tive school practices, primarily focusing on racially and linguistically diverse districts
and schools. We then discuss the background of this project, describing how we con-
ducted 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 direc-
tions for future research.
The research base on school-level reform practices that lead to measurable improve-
ments in student learning in high-poverty, culturally diverse urban settings is quite large
(e.g., Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000; Teddlie, Stringfield, & Reynolds, 2000), yet few stud-
ies 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 nei-
ther 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.
558 Lasky, Datnow, Stringfield, and Sundell

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 coun-
terparts 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 tea-
cher 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 communi-
ties 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 con-
tinued 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 ques-
tion 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 repre-
sentations of the key domains of the education system and the types of linkages that
connect them). Understanding interdependence between organizations and individu-
als 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 discon-
nected 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 communi-
cating 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 559

Federal
government:
title I, Universities:
perkins/CTE,
NCLB, Intermediary organizations: School: research and evaluation,
blingual, professional development development,
outside expertise,
principal, teacher and principal initial
IDEA
(special education), develop capacity, goals and beliefs, training and professional
IES, courts beliefs, practice faculty cohesion, development
capacity,
ELL resources,
human and
material
State government: Local school district:
funding formulas, gathering and allocating resources Teachers:
Students:
resources, professional training,
curriculam curricula, academic behavior,
frameworks, professional
HR, attendance,
accountability development,
R&E, attitude,
schemes, gatekeepers, shared planning time,
ELL policies and ELL policies and Perceptions of: students, educational history,
resources resources school, district, reform 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
State & students
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

560 Lasky, Datnow, Stringfield, and Sundell

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 sup-
port 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 linguisti-
cally 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 gener-
ally limited our review to research that focused on the creation and systemic sustain-
ing 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 impe-
tus, 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 con-
nection 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
 Diverse Populations and School Effectiveness 561

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 commu-
nications crossing it. Linkages vary in their permanency, formality, adaptability, robust-
ness, 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 inter-
mediaries (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, behav-
iors, 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 con-
ceived 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 notifi-
cation 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 col-
leagues. 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 col-
leagues 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
562 Lasky, Datnow, Stringfield, and Sundell

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 linguis-
tically 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, dis-
trict, 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 for-
mulas 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 extrac-
tion, 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.
 Diverse Populations and School Effectiveness 563

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 require-
ment 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 over-
all 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 con-
secutive 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 attend-
ing 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 addi-
tional 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, dis-
trict, and school levels. Accountability systems are clearly salient linkages between
levels in the education system. They are also an expression of existing state and dis-
trict 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
564 Lasky, Datnow, Stringfield, and Sundell

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 struc-
tural 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 dif-
ferent 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 faci-
litate 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 Depart-
ment 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 moti-
vate school personnel to meet accountability benchmarks and goals. Rewards and sanc-
tions 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
 Diverse Populations and School Effectiveness 565

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 dis-
trict 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 stu-
dent 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 narrow-
ing the curriculum by teaching to tests; replacing the regular curriculum with test prep
material; losing teaching time to test preparation; or encouraging low-achieving stu-
dents 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 reconsti-
tution efforts for schools that have been sanctioned are mixed (Mintrop, 2004). On the pos-
itive 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 capac-
ity 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 account-
ability 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
566 Lasky, Datnow, Stringfield, and Sundell

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 secu-
rity, 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 administra-
tors, other school personnel, business owners, and local politicians. In some communi-
ties, 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 impor-
tant 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 fed-
eral levels had structural, formal, and temporal linkages that worked in concert with each
other, this was not enough to ensure Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) implementa-
tion 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 princi-
ples and enduring ideologies that were rooted in locals’ experiences of inter-generational
 Diverse Populations and School Effectiveness 567

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 link-
ages, 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 multi-
ple stakeholders and over time is essential for effective and sustained capacity building
568 Lasky, Datnow, Stringfield, and Sundell

to improve teaching and learning. Robust and enduring political alliances create a criti-
cal 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, dis-
tricts, or schools in need of additional resources to support improvement efforts. Improv-
ing 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 organi-
zations, businesses or other community organizations, or universities.
Learning partnerships focus on increasing the knowledge or skills of people in vary-
ing 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 implementa-
tion, 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 eff-
orts; hiring outside experts or vendors to provide professional development; or one-
shot conferences or sessions where people successful in a specific domain or skill
share their knowledge or expertise with others with less experience. The most promis-
ing 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 organiza-
tions responsible for designing, coordinating, and overseeing the improvement require-
ments 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
 Diverse Populations and School Effectiveness 569

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 ideo-
logical. 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 involv-
ing financially, racially, and linguistically diverse school systems. Throughout the edu-
cational 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
570 Lasky, Datnow, Stringfield, and Sundell

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 imple-
ment 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 possi-
ble 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 stake-
holders (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 pol-
icy 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 implemen-
tation 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 com-
plex 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
 Diverse Populations and School Effectiveness 571

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 struc-
tures, 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 rela-
tionship, 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 educa-
tional 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, sys-
tematic 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 con-
tents 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 prac-
titioners who provided comments on a draft of the monograph from which this chapter
was drawn.
572 Lasky, Datnow, Stringfield, and Sundell

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 sev-
eral 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 contin-
gencies. Another trend is that social relations are being lifted out of their local con-
texts of interaction into symbolic signs and expert systems as society becomes more
differentiated. Yet another trend is the continuous questioning and critique of knowl-
edge 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 input-
oriented system has not worked effectively enough. To reduce complexity (and obvi-
ously 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 authori-
ties. 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.

579
T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 579–596.
© 2007 Springer.
580 Moos and Huber

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. Globali-
zation has among other things meant a shift in public management strategies. Glo-
balization 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 associa-
tions 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 consid-
eration 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 ori-
ented 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 trans-
parency 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 impor-
tant 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 corrobo-
rated by findings of school effectiveness research in recent decades. Extensive empir-
ical 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 impor-
tance 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
 Democratic and Integrative Leadership 581

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 lead-
ership responsibilities, involvement in and knowledge about what goes on in the class-
room. 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 delega-
tion 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 insti-
tutionalised 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, cre-
ative, self-renewing schools that have sometimes been described as learning organisa-
tions. 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 con-
ditions necessary for the continuous development and increasing professionalisation of
582 Moos and Huber

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 interre-
lated, 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 alter-
natives for classifying school leadership tasks. Various approaches allocate school lead-
ership 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 colle-
giality, 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 neces-
sary 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 “super-
heroes 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 “monar-
chic,” “autocratic” or “paternal” executive of school has increasingly been seen as inap-
propriate, 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
 Democratic and Integrative Leadership 583

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 lead-
ership: 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 organ-
isational office proceedings and the administration of buildings, financial and per-
sonal 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 improve-
ment” be viewed and performed as a continuing process, different conceptions of leader-
ship 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 car-
rying 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 independ-
ent 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 manage-
ment 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 influ-
ence 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
584 Moos and Huber

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 activ-
ities like a suitable application of resources for teaching, agreement on goals, the
promotion of cooperative relationships between staff (e.g., cooperative lesson prepara-
tion), 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 prin-
cipal is not present, she/he is excluded from making decisions (of course she/he can con-
struct 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 inter-
actions between leaders and other agents. Leadership is therefore “an influencing rela-
tion” 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 communica-
tion 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 indi-
viduals 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 prereq-
uisites for education and support educational work? Hence, the influence of the organi-
sation on the teaching and learning process needs to be acknowledged. Administrative
and organisational structures have to be brought in line with educational goals. This
 Democratic and Integrative Leadership 585

does not only concern the structure of the school system or the management of the indi-
vidual 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 educa-
tional 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 par-
ents, that they practise acceptance of themselves and of others, that they support auton-
omy, and that they realize cooperation. This adjustment of educational perspectives
affects the school culture, the teachers’ behaviour, and the individual pupils, particu-
larly through the teaching and learning process on classroom level. Administrative and
structural conditions have to be modified accordingly, and be in compliance with edu-
cational principles. Thereby, the unbalanced relationship (which is historically condi-
tioned 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 def-
inition of “educational” which not only incorporates teaching and education processes
with pupils, but also with adults, as well as organisational learning. Organisational-
educational 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 respon-
sibility 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-transfor-
mational leadership.” If the school is supposed to become a learning organisation, this
implies the active, co-determining and collaborative participation of all. The old dis-
tinction 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 per-
sons from staff as possible. This also extends to the active participation of the pupils
in leadership tasks.
586 Moos and Huber

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 democrati-
sation of school. Therefore, cooperation or “cooperative leadership” is not just a lead-
ership 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 lead-
ership 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, knowl-
edgeable and caring citizens of their societies. Therefore, the purpose of schools is to
provide a comprehensive, liberal education with a responsibility to community – edu-
cation 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 prac-
titioners, 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 initia-
tive and constructive power is to exercise it. Power, as well as interest, comes by
 Democratic and Integrative Leadership 587

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 par-
ticipatory 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 becom-
ing autonomous, tension between perceived societal needs and individual free-
dom, 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 redistrib-
ution of social good including education, equalizing educational attainment and
opportunity, social democracy argues that protecting vulnerable classes of stu-
dents – 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
588 Moos and Huber

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 leader-
ship 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 transfor-
mation is to focus on the integrity of the organisation: the ability to be both a convinc-
ing 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 (invest-
ing 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 commu-
nity, 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.
 Democratic and Integrative Leadership 589

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 peo-
ple 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 situa-
tions 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, accept-
ance 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
590 Moos and Huber

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 involv-
ing 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: educa-
tional 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 coopera-
tion; 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
 Democratic and Integrative Leadership 591

others so that empowerment, true delegation, and independent actions can be facili-
tated; 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 “organisational-
educational 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, inte-
grating 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 organisa-
tional-educational management. Among those are the acceptance of other stake-
holders, 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 under-
standing 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 leader-
ship 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 person-
oriented (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 coop-
erative leadership as described above and focus on the different individuals and

The integrative leadership triangle

Focus on aims

Context

Integration of different roles Integration of all stakeholders

Figure 1. The integrative leadership triangle (Huber, 2004b, 2007)

592 Moos and Huber

groups involved as well as on the collaborative relationships among them. School

leaders need to be able to develop appropriate (context-task-person-oriented) pro-
fessional 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 con-
text 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, inte-
grating 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 out-
comes. 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 conse-
quently 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 put-
ting 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 instruc-
tions, as well as the everyday routines at school have to be brought in line with these
fundamental premises.

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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 begin-
ning 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, teacher-
level 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 spe-
cific 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 prob-
ably 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.
598 Marzano

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 sup-
porting it has been deemed equivocal. For example, at least one meta-analytic study
(Witziers, Bosker, & Kruger, 2003) reported that the relationship between principal lead-
ership 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 signifi-

cant 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 leader-
ship behavior and student academic achievement. This finding is quite discrepant from
 Leadership and School Reform Factors 599

that reported by Witziers et al. (2003). There are at least two reasons for this discrep-
ancy, 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 cor-
relation 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 behav-
iors 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 for-
mally or informally identifies something it will work on to maintain or (ideally) improve
student achievement. Harvard scholar Richard Elmore (2003) contended that the selec-
tion 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 stu-
dents – 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.
600 Marzano

Table 1. 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 student-
level 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 chan-
ges without access to extraordinary financial resources. By definition, then, some pow-
erful 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 fac-
tors 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 sequi-
tur, 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
 Leadership and School Reform Factors 601

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 phe-
nomenon, 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:
● 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 edu-
cation 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 gener-
ate the learning alluded to by Hattie (1992). Consequently, a school might select one
or more of the following action steps as the right work:
● Implement an assessment and record-keeping system that provides timely feed-
back 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.
602 Marzano

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:
● Establish vehicles for communication between schools and parents and the
community.
● Establish multiple ways for parents and the community to be involved in the day-
to-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 pro-
cedures 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:
● 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 rela-
tionships that are professional in nature while also being cordial and friendly. This fac-
tor also includes structures that allow teachers to be an integral aspect of the important
 Leadership and School Reform Factors 603

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:
● 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 man-
agement 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 instruc-
tional strategies have been promoted. For example, eight categories of general instruc-
tional 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 great-
est 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 class-
room management. The first is the design and implementation of classroom rules and
procedures. The second is the design and implementation of appropriate conse-
quences for violations of rules and procedures. The third element addresses the rela-
tionship 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 thwart-
ing 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.
604 Marzano

Other comprehensive models of classroom management action have been devel-

oped (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 con-
tent 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 class-
room 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 mul-
tiple 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 sim-
ilarities. 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 com-
plex 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 crit-
ical, 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.
 Leadership and School Reform Factors 605

Although the three factors listed in Table 1 are the products of environmental influ-
ences 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 sys-
tematic 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 parent-
ing 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 con-
ducive 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 activ-
ities. These experiences include field trips to historical sites, cultural events, plays, muse-
ums, 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 vocabu-
lary instruction in terms that are important to the academic subjects students encounter
606 Marzano

in school. The following action steps associated with this factor might be selected by a
school as the right work:
● 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 pro-
vide 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 stu-
dents. 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 con-
sequently 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 situa-
tions. If student motivation is its focus, a school might select one or more of the
following action steps as the right work:
● 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.
 Leadership and School Reform Factors 607

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 obvi-
ous step to take in a school or a district. Second-order change is anything but incre-
mental. 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 second-
order 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 con-
ceptualized 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
608 Marzano

situation. Unfortunately, at best this would prepare you for situations that are pre-
dictable 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 chil-
dren 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 incli-
nation to approach all changes as first order in nature, provides a plausible explanation
for the failed innovations chronicled by Cuban (1987). Perhaps these innovations rep-
resented second order changes in education but were managed and led in a manner
more appropriate to first order change. Consider, for example, open education identi-
fied 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 struc-
ture 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 sim-
ple physical change required alterations in scheduling protocols, the way teachers pre-
pared 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 second-
order 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 man-
agement. 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 lead-
ership 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 609

Table 2. 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, instruc-
tional, 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.
610 Marzano

(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 inno-
vation. 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 vision-
aries 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:
● 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 indi-
viduals 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 innova-
tion. 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
 Leadership and School Reform Factors 611

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 second-
order change is sometimes quite messy:

“Ready, fire, aim” is the more fruitful sequence if we want to take a linear snap-
shot 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 for-
tune, 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 mag-
nitude of change it represents. To date, some 2,000 schools have used the model pre-
sented 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.
612 Marzano

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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 ques-
tion and see what kinds of answers you get. Whether you ask parents, students, busi-
nesspeople, 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 sophis-
ticated 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
T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 615–634.
© 2007 Springer.
616 Leithwood

● 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 class-
rooms (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 sig-
nificant 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
 A Leadership Perspective 617

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:
● A decreased tendency to be critical of students’ incorrect responses and persist-
ence 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 class-
room;
● 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 lev-
els 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).
618 Leithwood

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 app-
raisal 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 defini-
tions 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 satisfac-
tion 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 satis-
faction 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.
 A Leadership Perspective 619

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 consider-
able 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 influ-
ence on each of these dimensions of commitment, there is, as yet, little warrant for con-
sidering 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 teach-
ers’ 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 activi-
ties, 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 actu-
ally 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
620 Leithwood

demonstrate increased absenteeism, a decline in classroom performance, and poor

interpersonal relations with colleagues and students. These teachers are less sympa-
thetic 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 deperson-
alized way and resort to victim blaming for low achievement or failure. Dworkin (1987)
summarized evidence indicating that high-achieving students placed with teachers suf-
fering 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 satisfac-
tion 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 exam-
ple, 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 often-
identified 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.
 A Leadership Perspective 621

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 inter-
national perspective on the issue, Macdonald (1999) cited a number of clearly negative
effects, including discontinuity of staff within schools engaged in systematic improve-
ment 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 teach-
ing 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 Teachers’ emotions

Classroom
Workload Volume
Perceived fairness 4, 5, 6
Total pupil load 5, 7
Class size 7
Amount of paper work 5
Burden of non-teaching duties 7
Total work time and its distribution 5, *
Workload Complexity
Teaching in area of specialization or certification 7
Student achievement levels 7
Motivation of students/misbehavior (–) 3, 5, 6, 7
Autonomy/lack of autonomy over classroom decisions 4, 5, 6, 7
Atmosphere conducive to learning 3
Availability of instructional resources (e.g., textbooks) 7, *
Composition of class (student diversity, split or multi grades) 1, 5

School
Culture
Clear, explicit, shared goals for judging performance 2, 4
Perception of role conflict (or role clarity) 4

(Continued)
622 Leithwood

Table 1. (Continued)

Organizational conditions Teachers’ emotions

Positive school atmosphere, friendliness of staff, disciplinary climate 1, 2, 3, 7

Sense of community/collaborative culture (or the reverse – isolation) 1, 3, 4, 5
Safe school environment 3, 6
High expectations for students 1
Academic pressure, a climate of achievement 1, 3
Perceived meaningfulness of the work 4
Structure
Time to allow for both preparation and collaboration 1, 3
Opportunity to work in teams (especially relatively small teams) 3, 4
Opportunities for ongoing professional learning 4, 6,
Participation in decision making 1, 2, 3, 5, 7
Lack of barriers to effective instruction 1
School size (small better than large) 7
School location (urban less desirable) 7
Quality of physical facilities 7
Institutional integrity (effective, stable programs) 4
Community relations
Local reputation of the school 3
Community support/relationships with parents 3, 7
School Operating Procedures
Quality of communication within school 3
Fit of school improvement plans with teachers’ view of school needs 1, 2
Regular performance feedback to school working groups 2,4
Flexible enforcement of rules 4, 5

District
Provision of well-designed in-service:
Differentiated for individual teachers 1
Distributed throughout period of change implementation 1
Nurtures in-school professional networks 1
Provides support for instruction 1
Teacher salaries 3, 4, 7
Struggle over priorities 4
Pressure for change 5
District size (smaller is better) 7
Government / policy
Pace of educational change and its management 3
Extra demands on time (e.g., implementation of new curricula) 4
Erratic, unresponsive policies creating confusion and uncertainty 7
Greater public accountability including the use of high-stakes tests 7
Broader Society
Society/community’s view of teachers and their status 3, 7
Negative images of teaching in the popular media 7
Other employment opportunities 7

Key. 1, individual teacher efficacy; 2, collective teacher efficacy; 3, job satisfaction; 4, organizational com-
mitment; 5, stress/burnout; 6, morale; 7, engagement in the school or profession (retention/turnover);
* teacher performance.
 A Leadership Perspective 623

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 perform-
ance 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 prepa-
ration and marking and seriously erodes the opportunities for providing differentiated
instruction for their students. Further, (4) excessive paperwork (e.g., filling in forms, col-
lecting 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’ per-
ceptions 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 cer-
tified 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
624 Leithwood

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 environ-
ments – influence teachers’ emotions, as do split- or multi-grade classes, especially for
elementary teachers. Inadequate levels of learning resources and inappropriate assign-
ments 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 teach-
ers’ 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 con-
flict 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 teach-
ers 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’ mis-
behavior have significant effects on teacher satisfaction, stress, absenteeism, and attri-
tion. 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
 A Leadership Perspective 625

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 poten-
tially quite malleable, however, and can easily outweigh the negative effects of larger
school sizes and urban locations. Positive contributions to teachers’ internal states (effi-
cacy, 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., Loucks-
Horsley, 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 work-
place 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
626 Leithwood

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 satisfac-
tion, 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 teach-
ers’ sense of individual and collective efficacy, as well their job satisfaction and orga-
nizational 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 improve-
ment is called for in many districts. Second, teacher salaries, typically under district con-
trol, 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, stan-
dards, 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 deter-
mined 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 dis-
trict 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
 A Leadership Perspective 627

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 environ-
ment, 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 sub-
stantial 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 chal-
lenged when externally imposed changes seem erratic or unresponsive to what teach-
ers 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 regula-
tions and practices associated with them typically erode teacher autonomy. These
policies also constrain the use of teacher expertise in many ways: For example, by pre-
scribing large numbers of very specific curriculum standards; introducing high-stakes
tests that measure a relatively narrow set of student outcomes; endorsing a small num-
ber 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 invest-
ment 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,
628 Leithwood

including developing curricula, assessing student performance, coaching and mentor-

ing 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 effi-
cacy, 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 teach-
ers 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 impor-
tant bearing on teachers’ job satisfaction and their continuing engagement in the pro-
fession. 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 teach-
ing when they comment on how little support they get from parents (Dworkin, 1997).
Alternative employment opportunities are a third wider social force affecting teach-
ers. Such opportunities significantly increase the chances of teachers leaving the pro-
fession, 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
 A Leadership Perspective 629

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 smarter-
than-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 organi-
zations do. For example, they modify organizational structures to help make col-
leagues 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 inter-
personally 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 stu-
dents 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, emo-
tional 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 evi-
dence 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, indi-
vidual 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 classi-
fied in Table 2 as developing people. Included among these practices are being collegial,
630 Leithwood

Table 2. Principal leadership practices that positively influence teachers’ emotions

Leadership practices Teacher emotions

Direction setting
Developing an inspiring and shared sense of direction 1, 4
Expressing unreasonable expectations (–) 5

Developing people
Being supportive 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Buffering teachers from disruption 1, 4
Providing teachers with discretion over classroom decisions 1, 4
Modeling appropriate values and practices 1
Rewarding teachers for good work 1, 3, 4, 6
Being considerate 4
Providing feedback on individual/group work 2, 4
Distributing leadership/involving teachers in decision making 2, 4
Listening to teachers/is open to teachers’ suggestions/collegial 2, 4
Looking out for teachers’ welfare 4

Designing the organization

Flexible enforcement of rules 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Managing the instructional program

Providing instructional guidance 2, 6
Seeking creative ways to improve instruction
Providing resources for teachers 1, 5, 6
Minimizing student disorder 1, 3, 6

Other practices
Influencing district decisions 1, 2, 4
Communicating effectively 4, 6
Acting in friendly manner 4
Inconsistent in behavior (–) 5
Failing to follow through on decisions (–) 5

Key. 1, individual teacher efficacy; 2, collective teacher efficacy; 3, job satisfaction; 4, organizational com-
mitment; 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 lead-
ership 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.
 A Leadership Perspective 631

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 infor-
mal, 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 teach-
ers’ individual and collective efficacy, organizational commitment, and stress were
reported for principals who act in a friendly manner and are able to influence the deci-
sions of district administrators to the benefit of the school. Excessive stress for teach-
ers 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 dif-
ferent countries at the present time. Although both have attracted their share of criti-
cism, 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 cate-
gories 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
632 Leithwood

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 gov-
ernments (Stringfield & Herman, 1996; Thrupp, 2000). Another major theme centres on
the respective emphasis given to “top down” or “bottom up” approaches to school effec-
tiveness and improvement (Scheerens, 1997).
The social and political decontextualisation and inequitable use of school effective-
ness 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 class-
rooms (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.
636 Silins and Mulford

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 effec-
tiveness 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 learn-
ing 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 leader-
ship 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 637

Table 1. 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.
Culture 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.
Structure 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.
Intellectual Encourages staff to reflect on what they are trying to achieve with students and
stimulation 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.
Individual support 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.
Performance Has high expectations for teachers and for students and expects staff to be
expectation effective and innovative.
For example, the principal has high expectations for us as professionals.

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 learn-
ing 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 effective-
ness); 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
638 Silins and Mulford

Table 2. The dimensions that define organisational learning in high schools

Construct Description

Trusting and Schools where collaboration is the norm and discussions amongst colleagues
collaborative climate 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.
Taking initiatives Schools where staff are empowered to make decisions and school structures
and risks 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.
Shared and monitored School staff participate in school-level policy decisions and have a shared
mission (improving sense of direction; current practices are reviewed and problems are solved by
school practices) 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.
Professional Staff are encouraged to develop professionally; other schools, external
development 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.

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 auton-
omy 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 exam-
ine 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 aca-
demic achievement. Studies of school restructuring and school effectiveness com-
monly 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.
 School Effectiveness and Improvement 639

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 con-
ducted, the development, identification and confirmation of leadership and OL con-
structs 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 chap-
ter, 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 coeffi-
cient) 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 inten-
sity 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 aggre-
gation 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 pre-
dominated 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.
 Actin2 0.94 Collab 0.91 Notab 0.55
640

Actin7 0.93 Val15 0.91 Risks 0.96 Respond 0.69

Actin12 0.93 Val19 0.94 Impr 0.95 Expart 0.74
Actin14 0.89 Prod 0.89 Goalset 0.57
Actin16 0.96 Opinion 0.76
7 Stutch 0.88
Actin17 0.93 0.60 Staff valued 0.25 9
0.28 Organisational Peers 0.71
Actin21 0.86 learning
5 11 Utility 0.83
Size97 10.00 Active
Actin22 0.89 Participation 0.24
involvement 0.35 Ident 0.90
–0.26
Silins and Mulford

0.51
Ecres 0.98 3 0.21 0.32
School size 13
Edocc 0.97 0.56 Engagement
0.24 0.27 R2 = 0.84
0.32
1 –0.33 0.90
Socioeconomic 0.24 0.17
status 0.63
12
0.26 0.29 Academic
0.29 self-concept

2 –0.39 0.32
Home 10
background 0.59 Teachers' Undmat 0.85
0.54 work 0.89
Confid
–0.25 Learn 0.82
4 0.22
Extrac 0.61 0.23 8 Grad 0.73
Leader Community Lkinstr 0.87
Discuss 0.74 focus Marks 0.76
0.32 Varact 0.86
Staids 0.80 Selfass 0.84
Help 0.74 6 Diswk 0.82
Goal 0.98 Teacher
0.49 leadership Org 0.88
Worldev 0.72 Com5 0.95
Culture 0.96
Space 0.66 Bestwk 0.72
Com8 0.95
Struc 0.95
Com18 0.95 Chall 0.80
Inst 0.95 Indtch 0.79
Com20 0.95
Inds 0.94 Tchteam 0.85
Perf 0.87 Whst 0.92

Figure 1. Model 1– Factors infuencing student engagement with school

 Opinion 0.68
Respond 0.77
Goalset 0.57
Stutch 0.81
Notab 0.40
Peers 0.71
Expart 0.79
Utility 0.75
Size9 1.00 Ident 0.85
9 5 Ratsacec 0.68
– 0.27 Participation 0.40 Rattafec 0.50
Ecres 0.98 3 7 Terwag 0.93
School size 0.32 Engagement
Edocc 0.98 0.61 Tafewag 0.94
0.80
0.55 0.35
1 9
Socioeconomic 0.41 Achievement
status R2= 0.64
0.42

0.40 0.46 8 0.45

2 Retention
Home
background –0.20

0.70 Sacerr 0.86

4 6
Teachers' 0.59
Extr 0.78 Academic Schrr2 0.77
work self-concept
Discuss 0.86
Staids 0.45
Help 0.83 Lkinstr 0.71 Undmat 0.82
Worldev 0.76 Chall 0.87 Confid 0.89
Space 0.66 Varact 0.74 Learn 0.76
Org 0.82 Grad 0.90
Diswk 0.69 Marks 0.75
School Effectiveness and Improvement

Bestwk 0.77 Selfass 0.79

641

Figure 2. Model 2 – Factors infuencing retention and student achievement

642 Silins and Mulford

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) 930.57 65.51 0.98
Education/occupation category (Edocc) 939.42 74.72 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) 3.26 0.31 0.61
Discuss schoolwork (Discuss) 3.28 0.27 0.74
Provide study aids at home (Staids) 3.81 0.30 0.80
Help with schoolwork (Help) 3.97 0.24 0.74
Conversations about world events (Worldev) 3.08 0.27 0.72
Space for study (Space) 3.62 0.26 0.66
School size [unity mode]
Size in 1997 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 3.56 0.44 0.98
Culture 3.63 0.54 0.96
Structure (Struc) 3.68 0.40 0.95
Intellectual stimulation (Inst) 3.34 0.43 0.95
Individualised support (Inds) 3.50 0.50 0.94
Performance expectations (Perf) 3.89 0.36 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) 3.64 0.58 0.94
Administrators visible (Actin7) 3.75 0.57 0.93
Administrators easily accessible (Actin12) 3.92 0.47 0.93
Administrators observe or inquire about
teaching (Actin14) 2.71 0.52 0.89
Administrators interested in students’ progress (Actin16) 3.50 0.50 0.96
Administrators work with teachers (Actin17) 3.00 0.44 0.93
Administrators review student progress (Actin21) 3.54 0.42 0.86
Administrators discuss educational issues (Actin22) 3.86 0.33 0.89
Teacher leadership [outward mode]
From individual teachers (Indtch) 2.68 0.26 0.79
From teacher teams (Tchteam) 2.57 0.28 0.85
From whole staff (Whst) 2.64 0.41 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) 3.78 0.39 0.91
Staff contributions valued (Val19) 3.23 0.46 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) 3.73 0.37 0.95
Administrators work with community reps. (Com8) 3.67 0.40 0.95
Administrators incorporate community values (Com18) 3.44 0.40 0.95
Productive working relations with community (Com20) 3.47 0.44 0.95

Organisational learning [outward mode]

Collaborative climate (Collab) 3.58 0.27 0.91
Taking initiatives and risks (Risks) 3.27 0.33 0.96
Improving school practices (Impr) 3.36 0.37 0.95
Professional development (Prod) 3.09 0.25 0.89

Teachers’ work [outward mode]

Like the way teachers teach (Lkinstr) 3.01 0.35 0.87
Variety activities in class (Varact) 3.13 0.29 0.86
Teachers discuss my work with me (Diswk) 3.18 0.30 0.82
Most classes well organized (Org) 3.36 0.29 0.88
Teachers expect me do my best work (Bestwk) 4.07 0.22 0.72
Constantly challenged in class (Chall) 3.18 0.21 0.80

Participation [outward mode]

Mean no. of days skipped/late (Notab) 2.04 0.23 0.55
Respond whenever asked during class (Respond) 4.00 0.23 0.69
Extracurricular participation (Expart) 2.08 0.36 0.74
Setting my goals (Goalset) 3.02 0.18 0.57
Enjoy giving my opinion in class (Opinion) 3.45 0.25 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) 3.77 0.23 0.85
Confidence in success (Confid) 3.75 0.24 0.89
Extent of learning (Learn) 3.65 0.26 0.82
Expectation of graduating (Grad) 4.21 0.31 0.73
Satisfaction with marks (Marks) 3.56 0.25 0.76
Self-assessment of marks at end of year (Selfass) 3.51 0.21 0.84

Engagement [outward mode]

Student teacher relationship (Stutch) 3.18 0.29 0.88
Satisfaction with peer interaction (Peer) 4.10 0.20 0.71
Usefulness of schoolwork for future life (Utility) 3.62 0.23 0.83
Identification with school (Ident) 3.02 0.33 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
644 Silins and Mulford

Table 4. Direct, total, indirect effects, and correlations of latent variables influencing student engage-
ment with school (Model 1)

Variable Direct JknStda Total Indirect Correla-

effects error effects effect tion
( p) (t) (i) (r)

Home background R 2
0.07 (d
0.96)b Q2
0.03

Socioeconomic status 0.26 0.10 0.26 – 0.26
School size R
0.32
2
(d
0.82) Q
0.29
2

Socioeconomic Status 0.56 0.07 0.56 0.56

Leader R 2
0.17 (d
0.91) Q2
11
Socioeconomic status – – 0.13 0.13 0.12
Home background 0.23 0.11 0.23 – 0.24
School size 0.33 0.08 0.33 – 0.34
Active involvement R 2
0.82 (d
0.42) Q2
0.81
Socioeconomic status – – 0.12 0.12 0.15
Home background – – 0.21 0.21 0.18
School size – – 0.30 0.30 0.36
Leader 0.90 0.02 0.90 – 0.90
Teacher leadership R 2
0.39 (d
0.78) Q2
0.34
Socioeconomic status – – 0.21 0.21 0.33
Home background – – 0.11 0.11 0.08
School size 0.25 0.09 0.42 0.16 0.42
Leader 0.49 0.09 0.49 – 0.58
Staff valued R 2
0.72 (d
0.53) Q2
0.71
Socioeconomic status – – 0.14 0.14 0.22
Home background – – 0.16 0.16 0.01
School size – – 0.33 0.33 0.36
Leader – – 0.71 0.71 0.75
Active involvement 0.60 0.06 0.60 – 0.80
Teacher leadership 0.35 0.06 0.35 – 0.70
Community focus R 2
0.71 (d
0.54) Q2
0.68
Socioeconomic status 0.22 0.06 0.12 0.10 0.10
Home background – – 0.18 0.18 0.20
School size – – 0.27 0.27 0.14
Leader 0.32 0.14 0.81 0.49 0.78
Active involvement 0.54 0.14 0.54 – 0.80
Organisational learning R 2
0.89 (d
0.33) Q2
0.88
Socioeconomic status – – 0.16 0.16 0.27
Home background – – 0.18 0.18 0.07
School size – – 0.37 0.37 0.36
Leader 0.21 0.09 0.80 0.59 0.84
Active involvement 0.28 0.09 0.43 0.15 0.86
Teacher leadership 0.32 0.06 0.41 0.09 0.78
Staff valued 0.25 0.07 0.25 – 0.86
Teachers’ work R 2
0.41 (d
0.77) Q2
0.35
Socioeconomic status 0.39 0.10 0.11 0.28 0.13
Home background 0.59 0.08 0.64 0.04 0.51
School size 0.29 0.10 0.20 0.09 0.02
Leader – – 0.19 0.19 0.27
Active involvement – – 0.10 0.10 0.24
 School Effectiveness and Improvement 645

Teacher leadership – – 0.10 0.10 0.16

Staff valued – – 0.06 0.06 0.16
Organisational learning 0.24 0.08 0.24 – 0.28
Participation R 2
0.55 (d
0.67) Q2
0.51
Socioeconomic status – – 0.04 0.04 0.11
Home background 0.51 0.07 0.68 0.17 0.65
School size 0.26 0.06 0.20 0.06 0.28
Leader – – 0.05 0.05 0.26
Active involvement – – 0.03 0.03 0.28
Teacher leadership – – 0.03 0.03 0.11
Staff valued – – 0.02 0.02 0.15
Organisational learning – – 0.07 0.07 0.24
Teachers’ work 0.27 0.08 0.27 – 0.54
Academic self-concept R 2
0.63 (d
0.61) Q2
0.60
Socioeconomic status – – 0.16 0.16 0.16
Home background 0.29 0.08 0.72 0.43 0.66
School size 0.24 0.06 0.24 – 0.13
Leader – – 0.08 0.08 0.10
Active involvement – – 0.04 0.04 0.06
Teacher leadership – – 0.04 0.04 0.03
Staff valued – – 0.03 0.03 0.02
Organisational learning – – 0.10 0.10 0.07
Teachers’ work 0.32 0.07 0.41 0.09 0.64
Participation 0.32 0.09 0.32 – 0.62
Engagement R 2
0.84 (d
0.40) Q2
0.82
Socioeconomic status – – 0.05 0.05 0.03
Home background – – 0.69 0.69 0.62
School size – – 0.12 0.12 0.01
Leader – – 0.15 0.15 0.29
Active involvement – – 0.08 0.08 0.24
Teacher leadership – – 0.08 0.08 0.09
Staff valued – – 0.05 0.05 0.18
Organisational learning – – 0.19 0.19 0.26
Teachers’ work 0.63 0.05 0.77 0.13 0.87
Participation 0.24 0.06 0.29 0.06 0.68
Academic self-concept 0.17 0.06 0.17 – 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 influ-
ences 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)
646 Silins and Mulford

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 vari-
ables 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 com-
munity 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 pre-
dictors 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 pre-
dictors 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.
 School Effectiveness and Improvement 647

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 pre-
dominated 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) 976.93 64.41 0.98
Education/occupation category (Edocc) 980.72 67.07 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) 2.93 0.32 0.78
Discuss schoolwork (Discuss) 3.24 0.33 0.86
Provide study aids at home (Staids) 4.08 0.25 0.45
Help with schoolwork (Help) 3.76 0.31 0.83
Conversations about world events (Worldev) 3.22 0.30 0.76
Space for study (Space) 3.81 0.27 0.66
School size [unity mode]
Size in 1999 (Size9) 730.62 316.30 1.00
Teachers’ Work [outward mode]
Like the way teachers teach (Lkinstr) 3.26 0.31 0.71
Constantly challenged in class (Chall) 3.28 0.28 0.87
Variety activities in class (Varact) 3.01 0.28 0.74
Most classes well organized (Org) 3.39 0.29 0.82
Teachers discuss my work with me (Diswk) 3.46 0.24 0.69
Teachers expect me do my best work (Bestwk) 4.12 0.23 0.77
Participation [outward mode]
Enjoy giving my opinion in class (Opinion) 3.62 0.21 0.68
Respond whenever asked during class (Respond) 4.08 0.23 0.77
Setting my goals (Goalset) 2.94 0.18 0.57
Mean no. of days skipped/late (Notab) 2.13 0.20 0.40
Extracurricular participation (Expart) 1.76 0.41 0.79

(Continued)
648 Silins and Mulford

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) 3.72 0.21 0.82
Confidence in success (Confid) 3.60 0.24 0.89
Extent of learning (Learn) 3.67 0.24 0.76
Expectation of graduating (Grad) 4.32 0.26 0.90
Satisfaction with marks (Marks) 3.28 0.30 0.75
Self-assessment of marks at end of year (Selfass) 3.31 0.19 0.79
Engagement [outward mode]
Student teacher relationship (Stutch) 3.44 0.22 0.81
Satisfaction with peer interaction (Peers) 4.34 0.21 0.71
Usefulness of schoolwork for future life (Utility) 3.37 0.24 0.75
Identification with school (Ident) 3.02 0.32 0.85
Retention [outward mode]
SACE retention rate (Sacerr) 0.28 0.19 0.86
School retention rate II (Schrr2) 0.54 0.25 0.77
Achievement [outward mode]
Ratio SACE completers (Ratsacec) 0.33 0.20 0.68
Ratio TAFE completers (Rattafec) 0.58 0.26 0.50
TER weighted aggregate (Terwag) 65.19 6.56 0.93
TAFE weighted aggregate (Tafewag) 41.13 2.60 0.94

*PLS Path factor loadings.

SES has the strongest total effect (t
0.56), Home Background has an indirect influ-
ence (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 influ-
ence on Academic Self-Concept (i
0.41) mainly through Teachers’ Work.
 School Effectiveness and Improvement 649

Table 6. Direct, total, indirect effects, and correlations of latent variables influencing school retention
and student achievement (Model 2)

Variable Direct JknStda Total Indirect Correla-

effects error effects effects tion
( p) (t) (i) (r)

School size R 2
0.37 (d
0.79)b Q2
0.31

Socioeconomic status 0.61 0.09 0.61 – 0.61
Teachers’ work R
0.53
2
(d
0.69) Q
0.46
2

Socioeconomic status 0.20 0.09 0.20 – 0.20

Home background 0.70 0.06 0.70 – 0.70
Participation R 2
0.75 (d
0.50) Q2
0.71
Socioeconomic status – – 0.16 0.16 0.22
Home background 0.80 0.06 0.80 – 0.82
School size 0.27 0.08 0.27 – 0.32
Academic self-concept R 2
0.41 (d
0.77) Q2
0.33
Socioeconomic status 0.40 0.10 0.28 0.12 0.28
Home background – – 0.41 0.41 0.54
Teachers’ work 0.59 0.08 0.59 – 0.51
Engagement R 2
0.78 (d
0.47) Q2
0.73
Socioeconomic status – – 0.01 0.01 0.04
Home background – – 0.71 0.71 0.66
School size 0.32 0.09 0.21 0.11 0.18
Teachers’ work 0.55 0.10 0.55 – 0.81
Participation 0.40 0.12 0.40 – 0.67
Retention R 2
0.38 (d
0.79) Q2
0.28
Socioeconomic status 0.46 0.11 0.47 0.01 0.44
Home background – – 0.30 0.30 0.23
School size – – 0.09 0.09 0.45
Teachers’ work – – 0.23 0.23 0.23
Participation – – 0.17 0.17 0.16
Engagement 0.42 0.10 0.42 – 0.40
Achievement R 2
0.64 (d
0.60) Q2
0.56
Socioeconomic status 0.41 0.41 0.56 0.15 0.53
Home background – – 0.42 0.42 0.34
School size – – 0.05 0.05 0.29
Teachers’ work – – 0.10 0.10 0.26
Participation 0.35 0.12 0.43 0.08 0.33
Engagement – – 0.19 0.19 0.42
Retention 0.45 0.11 0.45 – 0.69

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 Back-

ground is a dominant influence on Participation ( p
0.80) and School Size is nega-
tively ( p
0.27) associated with Participation indicating that Participation is greater
in the smaller schools. A smaller, significant, negative and indirect (i
0.16) influ-
ence on Participation is SES. This is associated with the smaller schools reflecting
lower SES.
650 Silins and Mulford

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 stu-
dents ( 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 out-
come 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 sta-
tus, 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 lead-
ership 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 organi-
sation 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 self-
concept and engagement with school. Leadership and OL promote students’ participa-
tion in school, student academic self-concept and engagement with school mainly
through the mediating effects of teachers’ classroom work. However, OL and the trans-
formational 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, how-
ever, 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
 School Effectiveness and Improvement 651

student engagement giving way, however, to the stronger and direct influence of teach-
ers’ work in the classroom. This model demonstrates that the influence of family edu-
cational 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 fam-
ily 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 edu-
cational 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 fac-
tor 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 self-
concept 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 stu-
dents’ participation and involvement in school activities. Schools that develop pro-
grams to encourage students to be actively participating in academic and social
activities of the school are promoting identification with school, improved student-
teacher 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 educa-
tion 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 iden-
tify 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 back-
ground or home educational environment and socio-economic status, participation and
652 Silins and Mulford

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 stu-
dents 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 collabora-
tively 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 col-
laboration with the community had no influence on OL, teachers’ work or student out-
comes. 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 dis-
tributed 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 coun-
teract 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 socio-
economic 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
 School Effectiveness and Improvement 653

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 aca-
demic achievement. There is a differential effect of size on participation in and engage-
ment 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 engage-
ment, 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 perform-
ance 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; struc-
tures 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 commu-
nity with the emphasis on whole staff and teacher teams providing significant sources
of leadership.
654 Silins and Mulford

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 chal-
lenging 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 expec-
tations 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 class-
rooms, 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 aca-
demically (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 num-
ber 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 find-
ings 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 pro-
viding 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.
 School Effectiveness and Improvement 655

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 perform-
ance 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 over-
whelmingly 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, empower-
ment 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 stu-
dent 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 influ-
ence 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
656 Silins and Mulford

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 trans-
formational and distributed leadership. In fact, an extensive review of the evidence
of leadership effects on student learning, including the LOLSO project, has con-
cluded (Leithwood & Jantzi, 2005; Leithwood, Seashore Louis, Anderson, &
Wahlstrom, 2004):
● Leadership is second only to classroom instruction among all school-related fac-
tors 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 encour-
aged. The second factor is the presence of a professional learning community. A profes-
sional 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, nur-
turing professional development program. Schools that develop systems and environ-
ments 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 devel-
opment of problem-based professional development material (Mulford, Silins, & Leithwood, 2004)
based on the quantitative and qualitative data.
 School Effectiveness and Improvement 657

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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 leader-
ship 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 differ-
ence” 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 learn-
ing. As Sackney and Walker (2006) explain: “By keeping issues of teaching and learn-
ing 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 ini-
tiating 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 ade-
quately coordinating the individual activities during the improvement processes … .
659
T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 659–678.
© 2007 Springer.
660 Walker, Hallinger, and Qian

Furthermore, it is required to create the internal conditions necessary for the continu-
ous development and increasing professionalism of the teachers. It holds responsi-
bility 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 effec-
tive and accountable” (p. 922). Hallinger (2003a) cites further research in the region con-
firming 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 lead-
ers, Leithwood and Riehl (2003) claimed that: “Leadership has significant effects on stu-
dent 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 inter-
related 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 contin-
gent 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 descrip-
tions 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
 Leadership Development 661

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 hierar-
chical compliance. We also note the discontinuity between these norms and the assump-
tions 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 com-
mon 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 privatisa-
tion of education, requirements for strategic planning, the development of new curric-
ula 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 strug-
gle 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 edu-
cation, 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 per-
formance and Hong Kong teachers are required to account in quantitative terms
(hours) for professional development undertaken. A number of regional societies,
662 Walker, Hallinger, and Qian

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 envi-

ronment 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 attrac-
tion – 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 neces-
sity 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 them-
selves 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 mul-
tifaceted 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.
 Leadership Development 663

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 partic-
ipative 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 col-
laboration 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 pro-
motes 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 facili-
tation, inquiry, conflict mediation and dialogue, and data management.”
664 Walker, Hallinger, and Qian

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 charac-
terise 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, pro-
moting 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 struc-
tured 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 mean-
ingful 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 excep-
tions, recognition of this need is a fairly recent phenomenon, and one that remains a
 Leadership Development 665

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 forth-
coming. 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 indispen-
sable, 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 decentralisa-
tion, 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 profes-
sional 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 trans-
ference. 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 knowl-
edge, skills and attitudes to become competent to lead schools into the new millen-
nium” (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 collabo-
ration 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 fur-
ther discussion about leadership development across the region. While the following
discussion of the state of leadership development in the three societies provides a
666 Walker, Hallinger, and Qian

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 pro-
gram and it was widely acknowledged as an effective vehicle for preparing school lead-
ers (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
 Leadership Development 667

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 prin-
cipals 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 con-
siderable 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 begin-
ning 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
668 Walker, Hallinger, and Qian

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: con-
text 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 technolo-
gies, 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 princi-
pals 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 experi-
ence sharing. On top of the standard program, the government acknowledges success-
ful 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 nation-
wide famous principals” and were registered for further advanced courses (Shanghai
Morning Post, 25 January 2006). Such a model illustrates the competitive and hierar-
chical 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 differ-
ent 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, newly-
appointed and serving principals were diffuse and organised on an ad hoc basis by the
Education Department (ED), different School Sponsoring Bodies, higher education
 Leadership Development 669

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 pro-
grams for education leaders pre-2000 were overwhelmingly classroom based, were
tendered out to universities, rarely involved practicing leaders in more than “legitimis-
ing 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 devel-
opment – 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 devel-
oped 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 six-
year 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 com-
menced 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 dis-
tinguishing (closely related) features may be relevant to improving leadership devel-
opment 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 pro-
vide 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
670 Walker, Hallinger, and Qian

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 prepara-
tion 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:
● 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 on-
site 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 develop-
ment, 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
 Leadership Development 671

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 socie-
tal 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 per-
sonal awareness and individual or cooperative action learning. While there is obvi-
ously an ongoing need for the meaningful infusion of theoretical frameworks and
knowledge, and inspirational motivation from “outside,” if principals do not see learn-
ing 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
672 Walker, Hallinger, and Qian

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 encom-
pass 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, coop-
erative “in the job” learning across schools or focused learning sets) which allow for
differing learning purposes and styles. The content available through different gate-
ways 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 per-
sonal 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 learn-
ing 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 stay-
ing 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 hierar-
chical 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, pro-
grams 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.
 Leadership Development 673

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 exer-
cises. 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 condi-
tions” 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 set-
tings. 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 sophisti-
cated 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 cru-
cial that leadership development structures not only account for the necessary knowl-
edge, but also how this is contested and implanted within specific leadership contexts.
674 Walker, Hallinger, and Qian

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 infrastruc-
ture of schooling, attempting to exorcise the dysfunctionalities of traditional hierar-
chical 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.
682 Murphy

and organizational and professional culture – that have been shown to hinder the incul-
cation 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 inter-
actions 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 orga-
nizational 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 lead-
ership” (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 organiza-
tional 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 dis-
courage 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
 Teacher Leadership 683

well, then at least to help meet the goal of universal access. Second, existing organiza-
tional 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 “institu-
tional 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 capac-
ity 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 con-
cepts 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 consis-
tent 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
684 Murphy

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), “unyield-
ing bureaucracies” (Suleiman & Moore, 1997, p. 3) make it “difficult for teacher lead-
ers 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 assem-
blage 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 pat-
terns 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] dis-
courage 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, hierarchi-
cal 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
 Teacher Leadership 685

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 navi-
gate 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 “organiza-
tional 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 leader-
ship” (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 struc-
tural changes” (Darling-Hammond, Bullmaster, & Cobb, 1995, p. 94), the development
of the “revolutionary organizational structures needed to promote … teacher leader-
ship” (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 devel-
opment of shared leadership in schools. At the broadest level, it is argued that “teach-
ing 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 leader-
ship” (Barth, 2001, p. 446). Too often, when opportunities for shared leadership are
686 Murphy

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 gen-
eral 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 indi-
vidual teachers’ training, years of experience, effort, personal characteristics, and abil-
ities, 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 develop-
ment … 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 pre-
vailing 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 peri-
ods of change such as those associated with work redesign. In “the absence of tradi-
tions 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 leader-
ship] fits into the existing culture” (Katzenmeyer & Moller, 2001, p. 80), it is also
 Teacher Leadership 687

important to work from the understanding that “creating an appropriate culture to sup-
port 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 curricu-
lum, 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 decision-
making, 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 culti-
vate 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 & Brownlee-
Conyers, 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 school-
wide 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 teach-
ers 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).
688 Murphy

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 administra-
tors. Given this culture, teachers are “reluctant to challenge traditional patterns of prin-
cipals’ 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 arrange-
ments, 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 compli-
ance, 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 col-
leagues 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
 Teacher Leadership 689

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) docu-
ment, 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 pri-
vacy” (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 accept-
able 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 val-
ued, 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 col-
laboration 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 tra-
ditions” (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
690 Murphy

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 respon-
sibilities … clash with old expectations for equality” (Hart, 1990, p. 517). At a mini-
mum, “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 egal-
itarian 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 respon-
sibility” (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 egali-
tarian 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 well-
founded because “attempts to assign formal leadership roles to teachers often place
 Teacher Leadership 691

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 com-
ments … 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 stan-
dards 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 reconcep-
tualization of “the context in which they work” (Moller & Katzenmeyer, 1996, p. 7).
That is, careful attention to “the organizational conditions necessary to function effec-
tively” (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, awak-
ening the understanding of teachers themselves to their leadership potential, and then
providing for the development of teacher leadership” (pp. 123–124). Factors that hin-
der development include “a lack of time, unsatisfactory relationships with teachers
and administrators, and a lack of money to get the job done” (Pellicer & Anderson,
692 Murphy

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 leader-
ship … 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, “with-
out … 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 commu-
nity over autonomy and public work over norms of privacy. Values about shared lead-
ership 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 rig-
orously 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.
 Teacher Leadership 693

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 struc-
tures circumscribe the ability of “adults to work together in a routine, centrally coordi-
nated 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 class-
room 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 lead-
ership” (Barth, 1988b, p. 133) functions. New structures, on the other hand, will be sup-
portive 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
694 Murphy

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 struc-
ture must also foster the capacity of the organization “to keep key people in those struc-
tures” (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 leader-
ship 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 impor-
tance … [of] the need for professional development to lay a foundation for teacher lead-
ership 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 pro-
fession 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).
 Teacher Leadership 695

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 lead-
ership. 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 stres-
sors, 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 lead-
ership 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 class-
room 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, partic-
ularly working with students” (p. 549);
696 Murphy

(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 lead-
ership” (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 deter-
rent 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 teach-
ers to work together (Harrison & Lembeck, 1996; Wasley, 1991), “for teacher lead-
ers 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).
 Teacher Leadership 697

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, appre-
ciation, 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 acknowledg-
ment 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 well-
respected 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 dis-
tricts “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 sup-
port the teacher leaders. Second, they honored teacher leaders’ requests for pro-
fessional development and sometimes initiated opportunities for them to attend
698 Murphy

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 nega-
tive 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 knowl-
edge and skill to develop and perform successfully in new work roles and work-
ing 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 leader-
ship 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 lead-
ers 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 lead-
ership 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
 Teacher Leadership 699

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 rela-
tionships between teacher leaders and other teachers” (Whitaker, 1997, p. 10) is never
far from the surface; neither is “the ambiguity associated with other teachers’ percep-
tions” (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 lead-
ers (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 & Brownlee-
Conyers, 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”
700 Murphy

(Pellicer & Anderson, 1995, p. 13; Yarger & Lee, 1994). Mistrust sometimes emerges
(Whitaker, 1997), confusion forms (Hart, 1994), and friendships are subject to “con-
siderable 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 lead-
ers, 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 sur-
prising 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 con-
flict, 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 excep-
tional 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 gar-
nering “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.

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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 depart-
ment 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 eval-
uate 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.
708 Day and Leitch

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 iden-
tified, 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 communi-
ties in which principals/headteachers “delegate”; “distribute” or “disperse” their lead-
ership 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) Competing discourses of professionalism: purposes and practices of CPD
(2) Meanings of effectiveness
(3) CPD and professional learning
(4) Evaluating the impact of CPD
(5) 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 chang-
ing economic, social and knowledge contexts which, over the last 20 years, have chal-
lenged 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 assess-
ment. 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
 Professional Development of Teachers 709

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 psy-
chological 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 verifi-
cation” (Power, 1997), “audit cultures” (Strathern, 2000) and “standards-based account-
ability” (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 teach-
ers 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 dis-
courses 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
710 Day and Leitch

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 rela-
tively 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 mod-
els 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 rea-
son, 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 learn-
ing communities) and which recognise the importance to effective teaching and learn-
ing 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
 Professional Development of Teachers 711

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 think-
ing, 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 pur-
poses and thinking and planning. It must also take account of the moderating influ-
ences 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 mod-
erating (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 lon-
gitudinal 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 teach-
ing 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 begin-
ning to try to draw together previously disparately researched areas of effectiveness.
However, research which focuses upon evaluations of CPD effectiveness shows
overwhelmingly that these:
● rarely focus upon longer term or indirect benefits;
● rarely differentiate between different kinds of benefits in relation to different pur-
poses;
● 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
712 Day and Leitch

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:
● 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 ped-
agogical knowledge, understanding student learning needs and planning for,
monitoring and assessing these; or evidence-based practice as a form of practi-
tioner 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 sub-
ject knowledge transfer, teaching and learning strategies, changes in the motiva-
tions, 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, sup-
portive leadership that balances collegial, collaborative work on the one hand with
individual, autonomous work on the other (Clement & Vandenberghe, 2000), includ-
ing 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) rela-
tionship between teacher learning and pupil learning and achievement.
 Professional Development of Teachers 713

Professional
Individual
Orientation of practitioner
Personal professional Organisational
development (immediate
(extended development
activity classroom
development)
knowledge)

Kinds of
professional
development

Individual as
Individual as Individual as
Underlying view Individual as member of
member of wider member
of individual person learning and
community of of school
teaching
professionals community
community

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 develop-
ment programs that ask about the “presumed links between professional learning strate-
gies 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 exam-
ined 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 stu-
dents 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.
714 Day and Leitch

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; demon-
strable 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, mid-
dle manager, principal, mentor or coach; or, for updating skills needed to con-
tinue 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 poli-
cies, 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 implementa-
tion 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 experi-
ence. Effectiveness may be interpreted as focussing upon three areas:
 Professional Development of Teachers 715

(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 sus-
taining 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’ motiva-
tions, attitudes and values, expectations, engagement with learning and knowl-
edge 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 inter-
relationship 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 Pupil

School

Figure 2. Evaluating CPD at three levels

716 Day and Leitch

Evaluating the Impact of Continuing

Professional Development2
It is clear from research that a key factor in ensuring effective CPD is matching appro-
priate professional development provision to particular professional as well as organi-
sational 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 socio-
emotional 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 organi-
sations and at particular times of national reform when different needs will predomi-
nate, and times in individual teachers’ career development when their needs must
prevail. Needs assessment at both these levels is necessary. Effectiveness of profes-
sional 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’ profes-
sional 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 sum-
marises 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 activ-
ities 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., net-
work 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, con-
tent, 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.
 Professional Development of Teachers 717

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 think-
ing 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 impres-
sionistic and highly subjective. Questions addressed at level 1 will include whether the
participants enjoyed the event, thought it was useful, addressed their needs, was well-
presented 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 pre-
pared, 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 eas-
ily 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
718 Day and Leitch

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 organ-
isational policies, organisational support for the program (especially from leadership),
organisational resources provided to the program (including, crucially, time) organisa-
tional 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 par-
ticipants 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 attain-
ment, 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 non-
cognitive 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 back-
wards, 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 sum-
matively, 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
 Professional Development of Teachers 719

levels identified by Guskey and minimise bias, data need to be collected from a vari-
ety 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, commit-
ment 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 doc-
uments, designated CPD leadership, a range of CPD opportunities, formal and infor-
mal, 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 system-
atic through state-controlled assessment and inspection systems. For example, in
England and Wales, the government’s Teacher Development Agency (TDA) funded pro-
fessional development for teachers must be evaluated for its impact on pupils in
schools. Few, however, have managed to create sufficiently sensitive models of evalua-
tion 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 cross-
European 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.
720 Day and Leitch

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 train-
ing (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 teach-
ers 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 develop-
ment 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 budg-
ets 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 prac-
tice 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 develop-
ment of new technologies or new student assessment practices (Siniscalco, 2002,
 Professional Development of Teachers 721

pp. 13–14), or opportunities to revisit and renew commitment. With regard to prob-
lems 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 clearly-
defined 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 aca-
demic standards. However, it is divided into academic and practical stages with lit-
tle 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 commit-
ment, self-efficacy, intellectual stimulus, reflexivity and renewal of purposes.
Equally, in countries where there are shifts from individual career-oriented devel-
opment 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 pro-
portion 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 standardisa-
tion and harmonisation would be feasible or even desirable (Buchberger, Campos,
Kallos, & Stephenson, 2000).
722 Day and Leitch

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 opportuni-
ties which will be relevant to purpose and teachers’ organisational, social and individ-
ual 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 teach-
ing, 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 devel-
opment 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 develop-
ment 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 stu-
dents’ 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)
 Professional Development of Teachers 723

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 com-
plexities 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 cen-
trally 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 per-
sonal 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, atti-
tudes or emotions. (van den Berg, 2002, p. 589)

A wide range of research has revealed that whether CPD takes place on- or off-site, spe-
cific 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, com-
plexities 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 profes-
sional 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 short-
term 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 signif-
icantly greater complexity to CPD and demand a more comprehensive, system-wide
724 Day and Leitch

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.

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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 teach-
ers 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 achieve-
ment, 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.
728 Schaffer, Devlin-Scherer, and Stringfield

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 experi-
ences 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 per-
forming 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, sup-
ported 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 cog-
nitive 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 logi-
cal 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 yield-
ing 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 expecta-
tions for student learning; active leadership; time on task; tracking student progress;
a safe, orderly environment; and strong home-school relationships – were translated
 The Evolving Role of Teachers 729

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 assess-
ment of teaching across many states.
In the twenty-first century, many program reforms have disappeared from the pro-
fessional scene, yet school and teacher effectiveness studies continue to provide valu-
able 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 examina-
tion 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 increas-
ing 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 exam-
ination 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 over-
haul of the current schooling processes and its supporting systems proliferated, includ-
ing 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.
730 Schaffer, Devlin-Scherer, and Stringfield

The most recent expression of this policy drive for increased educational accounta-
bility 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 account-
ability 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 school-
level 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 stud-
ies, 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 teach-
ers 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 out-
come variables; in Stage Three, issues of equity are introduced; and in Stage Four, con-
text 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
 The Evolving Role of Teachers 731

effective schools. Five of those school effectiveness processes directly involve the
work of teachers, as shown below in italics:
(1) The processes of effective leadership
(2) The processes of effective teaching
(3) Development [of] and maintaining a pervasive focus on learning
(4) Producing a positive school culture
(5) Creating high (and Appropriate) expectations for all
(6) Emphasizing student responsibilities and rights
(7) Monitoring progress at all levels
(8) Developing staff skills at the school site
(9) 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 contri-
butions 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 class-
room 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, satis-
faction 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 improve-
ment. 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 proj-
ects experimented with involving the whole school in order to impact achievement.
732 Schaffer, Devlin-Scherer, and Stringfield

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 effective-
ness, 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 implemen-
tation, and length of time have not been sufficient to tell whether such programs are
effective. The federal government is currently funding projects that employ scientifi-
cally 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 suc-
cess, 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 decision-
making and teacher development to support student learning. Exploring practice and pol-
icy issues related to the professional development of teachers, especially through school
 The Evolving Role of Teachers 733

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 devel-
opment, and concepts of social capital development within and outside of schools
as key ingredients to bringing about significant learning opportunities for com-
munities, 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 effec-
tiveness 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 devel-
opment, 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 “strength-
based” model (Chrispeels, 2004) for school improvement. These advances in under-
standing schools and teaching can inform any school effectiveness model and support
the basic elements of school effectiveness noted in the four stages of school effective-
ness described by Teddlie and Reynolds (2000). Two conclusions of these develop-
ments 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 well-
developed 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
734 Schaffer, Devlin-Scherer, and Stringfield

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 profes-
sion 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 pro-
moted 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 train-
ing 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 stu-
dents. Realizing that minority students and students in poverty often do not get the
benefit of excellent teachers, New York developed a research-based mentoring pro-
gram 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, col-
leagues, and administrators; and professional opportunities on novice teachers’ deci-
sions 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 Stan-
dards (NBPTS) was created to recognize, support, and expand teaching excellence.
 The Evolving Role of Teachers 735

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 participa-
tion in communities of learning.6 During the course of a year, candidates provide evi-
dence 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 experi-
enced 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 compar-
ing 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 classroom-
embedded 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 devel-
oped professional development programs can be useful in facilitating change at the
local level (Stringfield et al., 1997). More recent research on comprehensive school
736 Schaffer, Devlin-Scherer, and Stringfield

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 implementa-
tion (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 pro-
gram 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 adminis-
trators 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 coor-
dinated, 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 experi-
enced teachers may be paired with experienced teachers (Association of Supervision
and Curriculum Development, 2002). During a common free period or with time pro-
vided 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
 The Evolving Role of Teachers 737

decisions. Mathematics teachers have been working with researchers in Michigan, dis-
cussing 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 collec-
tion 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 sup-
port 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 sam-
ples 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 devel-
opment 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 stu-
dent 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 misunderstand-
ings 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,
738 Schaffer, Devlin-Scherer, and Stringfield

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 cen-
ters, 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 imple-
menters 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 teach-
ers 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 innova-
tions 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, video-
tapes 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 les-
sons 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
 The Evolving Role of Teachers 739

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 proj-
ects, 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 analy-
sis of student learning. It fits well in training for teachers in school effectiveness pro-
grams 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
740 Schaffer, Devlin-Scherer, and Stringfield

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 pro-
vide 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 les-
sons, (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 analy-
sis 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 proj-
ects 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 infor-
mation, 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.
 The Evolving Role of Teachers 741

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 devel-
opment 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 demonstra-
ble 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 teach-
ers who are better informed about examining student work and who will be better pre-
pared 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 develop-
ment 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 fam-
ilies). 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 sup-
ported through teachers (Datnow, Hubbard, & Mehan, 2002). Active teacher leader-
ship can expand school effectiveness potential by helping get changes embedded in
classrooms. In individual settings, teachers are implementing changes that have posi-
tive 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
742 Schaffer, Devlin-Scherer, and Stringfield

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, interdiscipli-
nary, 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 course-
work. 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 text-
books 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 hall-
marks 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 instruc-
tion focused on student outcomes, (3) consistent monitoring to ensure improvement in
 The Evolving Role of Teachers 743

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 pres-
ent. Lichtenstein (2006) noted that unless reformers consider the current responsibili-
ties 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,” “one-
school-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 coor-
dinated 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.
744 Schaffer, Devlin-Scherer, and Stringfield

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 out-
comes 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 achieve-
ment (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 capac-
ity 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.
 The Evolving Role of Teachers 745

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., stu-
dent, 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 assess-
ments 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. 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.
2. 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.
3. Although federal funding for medical research has continued to grow in the United States, federal fund-
ing for experimental and quasi-experimental studies on the scale of the original teacher effects and pro-
gram effects studies have not been funded by the US Department of Education for well over a decade.
4. 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).
5. 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.
6. These five propositions are detailed with examples at the NBPTS website, http://www.nbpts.org/about/
coreprops.cfm
7. 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 compar-
isons 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 educa-
tion is not merely a means to achieve an individual’s career development and self-
actualization but can also be a way of alleviating the negative effects of global
competition on individuals and communities, bringing about stability and the develop-
ment of the society (Cheng, 2003). Hence, governments expect their education
systems to meet social demands and help their countries to increase future competi-
tiveness. However, many are troubled with the large education budget and the ineffi-
ciency 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.

751
T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 751–766.
© 2007 Springer.
752 Tam and Cheng

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 coun-
tries 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 con-
fronted 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 expand-
ing 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 disadvan-
taged 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 achieve-
ment, something that schools find difficult to deliver. Furthermore, socio-cultural
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 “Focus on students’ learning interests and experience, include knowledge
and skills which are necessary for life long learning”
Hong Kong SAR Learning for life – learning through life 2000 To build a lifelong learning society
Learning to learn: The way forward in curriculum
development 2000 Help students to build up their capabilities to learn independently
Indonesia Competency based curriculum 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
Japan The education reform plan for the 21st century 2001 Establish an educational philosophy suitable for the new century and
improve the provision for education
Korea Adapting education to the e information age 2001 It is a reform of the educational system for the new society through ICT
Malaysia Smart school curriculum 1999 to foster the knowledge, skills, and attitudes appropriate for success in
the Information Age
Philippines Restructured basic education curriculum 2002 raising the quality of the Filipino learners and graduates and empowering
them for lifelong learning
Singapore Thinking schools, learning nation 1997 A “learning nation” envisions a national culture and social environment
that promotes lifelong learning in our people
Taiwan Moving towards a learning society and action plan
for educational reform 1998 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
Thailand National education act, 1999 1999 (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.
Sustainable School Effectiveness
753
754 Tam and Cheng

changes driven by the rapid economic growth have been breathtaking, causing many
large cities to develop numerous social problems. Urban social problems, such as juve-
nile 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 edu-
cation 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 edu-
cation 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 restructur-
ing 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 expe-
riencing a downturn in the economy. Worse than that, the territory experienced a dras-
tic 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
 Sustainable School Effectiveness 755

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 gov-
ernment 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 achieve-
ment, 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 stan-
dards, 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 encour-
age “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 envi-
ronment. The reasoning behind these slogans is that educators in Japan came to recog-
nize 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.
756 Tam and Cheng

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 confi-
dence 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 curri-
culum, 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 cur-
riculum 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 uni-
versities, 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.
 Sustainable School Effectiveness 757

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 scien-
tists, Malaysian educators conceived and developed the Smart School vision, a grand
project aimed at equipping Malaysian schools with the information technology hard-
ware 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 edu-
cation). 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
758 Tam and Cheng

the education system and economic needs of the community, oppressive school envi-
ronment, 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 edu-
cation, 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 chal-
lenges 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 ele-
mentary 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 edu-
cation 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-to-
date 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).
 Sustainable School Effectiveness 759

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 auton-
omy 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 market-
driven 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 educa-
tion 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 cre-
ated 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 intro-
duced 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 con-
sequences, due to the effect of globalization and international competition. Yet, policy-
makers 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 foun-
dation 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
760 Tam and Cheng

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 coun-
try 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 com-
petence 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 con-
cerned with the long-term development and sustainability of the teacher education sys-
tem, 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 incen-
tive structure and fine-tuning the orientation of training, shifting from a technical-
rational 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
 Sustainable School Effectiveness 761

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 social-
ized 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 uni-
versities 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 educa-
tion sector appears to be stable in many parts of the region, it tends to attract more can-
didates 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 candi-
dates. 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,
762 Tam and Cheng

Table 2. Selected indicators relating to educational provision in the Asia Pacific region

HDI rank1 Countries Combined gross Education Technology

enrolment ratio index 2 achievement
for primary, index (TAI)
secondary and value 3
tertiary (%)
2002/2003 2

High development 4
11 Japan 84 0.94 0.698
22 Hong Kong,
China (SAR) 74 0.87 0.455
25 Singapore 87 0.91 0.585
28 Korea, Rep. of 93 0.97 0.666
33 Brunei
Darussalam 74 0.86 ..
Middle development 4
61 Malaysia 71 0.83 0.396
73 Thailand 73 0.86 0.337
80 Kazakhstan 85 0.94 ..
84 Philippines 82 0.89 0.300
85 China 69 0.84 0.299
93 Sri Lanka 69 0.83 0.203
96 Maldives 75 0.90 ..
97 Turkmenistan .. 0.91 ..
108 Viet Nam 64 0.82 ..
109 Kyrgyzstan 82 0.93 ..
110 Indonesia 66 0.81 0.211
111 Uzbekistan 76 0.91 ..
114 Mongolia 74 0.90 ..
122 Tajikistan 76 0.91 ..
127 India 60 0.61 0.201
129 Myanmar 48 0.76 ..
130 Cambodia 59 0.69 ..
133 Lao People’s
Dem. Rep. 61 0.66 ..
134 Bhutan .. 0.48 ..
135 Pakistan 35 0.44 0.167
136 Nepal 61 0.53 0.081
139 Bangladesh 53 0.45 ..
1
The HDI rank is determined using HDI values to the fifth decimal point
2
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).
 Sustainable School Effectiveness 763

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 acquisi-
tion 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 inter-
act 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 attem-
pted an innovation successfully, but the experience is often confined to the boundary
of the school. Academics may possess the knowledge but have often alienated them-
selves 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 neces-
sary long-term strategy to maintain sustainable improvement within the education
community.
764 Tam and Cheng

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 monopo-
lized 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 pro-
grams. 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 short-
cycle 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 comprehen-
sive universities. Other countries in the region are also taking steps towards this direc-
tion, 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 incor-
porate 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 solv-
ing global economic and environmental problems. However, the current development
 Sustainable School Effectiveness 765

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 coun-
tries, 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 con-
solidating 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?

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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 pros-
perity. 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 out-
comes 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 meas-
ure 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.
768 Rowe

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 pri-
ority policy issue in all OECD countries where attention has focused on ways of assess-
ing 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 “sociologically-
determined” 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 vari-
ance 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 varia-
tions 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
 Research on Teaching and Teacher Quality 769

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 behav-
ior, 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 effec-
tiveness, namely:
(1) purposeful educational leadership;
(2) challenging teaching and high expectations of students’ achievements;
(3) involvement of and consistency among teachers;
(4) a positive and orderly climate; and
(5) 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)
770 Rowe

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 devel-
opment of structural equation modeling techniques that enable the simultaneous esti-
mation 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 behav-
ioral competencies. Whereas the use of scores on achievement tests for the measure-
ment 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 char-
acteristics 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 com-
petence. Such criticism has gained credence in the areas of standards monitoring
and performance assessment, where new approaches to obtaining more curriculum-
specific 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 pro-
vided 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”
 Research on Teaching and Teacher Quality 771

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 between-
class/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;
772 Rowe

● 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 teach-
ing 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 con-
tinue 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 frame-
work 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 fea-
tures: 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 trouble-
some and enduring methodological problems in educational research, namely: (1) the
problem of measuring change, and (2) the problem of analyzing multilevel data.
 Research on Teaching and Teacher Quality 773

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 sig-
nificantly 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 achieve-
ment than school variables. Also, in general, more powerful classroom level vari-
ables 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 Certifi-
cate 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” charac-
teristics), 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 17 9
Finland 45 0
France 16 6
Israel 21 8
New Zealand 42 0
Scotland 31 5
Sweden 45 0
USA 45 9

* Source: Adapted from Scheerens et al. (1989, p. 794).

774 Rowe

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)

Class/Teacher effects (%) School effects (%)

Literacy
Primary 45.4 8.6
Secondary 37.8 7.4
Numeracy
Primary 54.7 4.1
Secondary 52.7 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 Nume-
racy, 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, enjoy-
ment 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 conclu-
sion 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.
 Research on Teaching and Teacher Quality 775

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 achieve-
ment 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 reflec-
tion 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 stu-
dent outcomes as follows:

The effect of poor quality teaching on student outcomes is debilitating and cumu-
lative … . 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 out-
comes 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%
Students

Home
5–10%
Peers Schools Principal 50%
5–10%

Figure 1. Sources and average percentage estimates of explained variance in students’ achievement
outcomes
Source: adapted from Hattie, 2003.
776 Rowe

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 stu-
dents’ “abilities” (as measured by the General Achievement Test), gender and school sec-
tor (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 differ-
ent 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’ achieve-
ment 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’ propen-
sity 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 per-
formance … has the effect of absolving educators of their professional responsi-
bility 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
 Research on Teaching and Teacher Quality 777

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 “cop-
outs” 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 govern-
ment 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 teach-
ing 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 advo-
cate 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).
778 Rowe

Curiously, a major barrier to reform is a lack of understanding of issues surround-

ing 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 on-
going 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 con-
cerned 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 subse-
quent 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 case-
study-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 teach-
ers 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 regard-
ing the magnitude of their relative contributions to performance and effectiveness.
 Research on Teaching and Teacher Quality 779

Fortunately, this is changing (see Hill, 1995, 1998). The trend now is towards the devel-
opment of indicator systems that facilitate benchmarking of performance against exter-
nal 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 espe-
cially those that have begun to collect and use measures to explain variation in stu-
dents’ 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 out-
comes of schooling, and factors that affect them. Nevertheless, with increasing recog-
nition 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 initia-
tives 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 pro-
grams, 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 independ-
ent 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 uti-
lize resources at the school level, including flexibility in the use of staffing resources,
780 Rowe

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 stu-
dents 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 under-
stand 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 procliv-
ity 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 charac-
teristics” such as gender, socio-economic differences, nor school structural arrange-
ments of interest to “school effectiveness” researchers, but the “pumpkin” of quality
teaching and learning provision, supported by specified teaching standards and on-
going teacher professional development, and regardless of teacher gender (Martin &
Marsh, 2005; Rowe, 2004e). The need for a refocus of the predominant “school effec-
tiveness” 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 impor-
tance 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
 Research on Teaching and Teacher Quality 781

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 stu-
dents are the first to benefit” (Sanders & Rivers, 1996, p. 1). Furthermore, within-
school 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 strate-
gies 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 elemen-
tary grade-level teams in one school district and suggest district- and school-level sup-
ports 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.
788 Chrispeels, Andrews with González

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, subject-
matter, or grade-level meetings do not guarantee teacher learning or changes in prac-
tice. 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 impor-
tant 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 inter-
mediate 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 stu-
dents. 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.
 System Supports for Teacher Learning 789

Several important design principles guided the Effective Schools Reform Initiative:
(1) Changes would be undertaken at all levels of the system simultaneously – dis-
trict, 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 compre-
hension, writing, English language learning); (3) developing a leadership academy for
district- and school-level administrators, which met twice a month after school for pro-
fessional 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,
790 Chrispeels, Andrews with González

Miller, 2002). On walk-through visits to the schools, the Superintendent was observed
carrying the Strategies that Work text. At the leadership team professional develop-
ment 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 grade-
level 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, com-
ments 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 exhib-
ited by the others. By 2003, five of the participating schools achieved API scores equiva-
lent 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 con-
tribute 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 site-
level 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 sta-
tus quo as well as the variability among teachers’ knowledge and skills. This variabil-
ity, 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 instruc-
tional 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).
 System Supports for Teacher Learning 791

Unfortunately, teachers’ knowledge and experience is often lost, thus creating an

infrastructure where knowledge is owned by individuals and not used to promote col-
laboration that enhances teacher learning. To create an infrastructure that would lessen
isolation and build on teachers’ knowledge to generate new knowledge, regular grade-
level 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 meet-
ings 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 third-
grade team meetings held throughout the year. Pre- and post- interviews were con-
ducted 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 teach-
ers’ 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 conversa-
tion) 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.
792 Chrispeels, Andrews with González

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 knowl-
edge). 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 discus-
sions 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 pub-
lic 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 com-
ment, 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 interde-
pendent work. Table 1 summarizes the types of work that the teams engaged in over the
13 times that their meetings were observed.

KNOWLEDGE: Limited shared Shared/Generated

Independent Interdependent
Sharing Discussing Interaction around objects
One-way Bidirectional Analyzing student work
WORK: sharing of conversation Creating objects (rubric)
experiences (lessons, strategies, Observing and debriefing
and ideas and experiences) classroom observation Intellectual
Capital
REFLECTION Individual Dialectic on practice Generated Knowledge
ON PRACTICE : New understanding may Bidirectional reflection on practice Engagement in Learning
not lead to change in action leads to change in action

SOCIO- In Language In Language and Action

EMOTIONAL Words of encouragement Opening up classroom practice
SUPPORT: with no support of action to support

Figure 1. Dynamic model of types of work grade-level teams do to promote teacher learning
 System Supports for Teacher Learning 793

Table 1. Types of joint work

Meeting Date Kindergarten Third

1 12.2.04 Creation of objects Sharing of practices

Reflection on practice
2 1.6.05 Interaction around objects
Sharing of practice
3 1.20.05 Observation of classroom
practice & debrief discussion
Sharing of practice
Interaction around objects
4 2.3.05 Observation of classroom
practice
Reflection on practice
Socio-emotional support
5 2.17.05 Sharing of practice
Reflection on practice
6 3.2.05 Interaction around objects
7 3.16.05 Interaction around objects
Interaction around objects
8 3.30.05 Creation of objects
Reflection on practice
9 4.27.05 Creation of objects
Reflection on practice
10 5.25.05 Interaction around objects
Reflection on practice
11 6.22.05 Reflection on practice
Interaction around objects
12 8.25.05 No meeting
13 2.9.05 Interaction around objects
Creation of objects
Reflection on practice
Sharing of practices
Interaction around objects
Reflection on practices
Sharing/discussion of
practices
Creation of objects
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 grade-
level 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
794 Chrispeels, Andrews with González

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 com-
pared 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 effective-
ness: content knowledge (Shulman, 1987, 1996); pedagogical content knowledge; peda-
gogical 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 rever-
sals 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 offer-
ing 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 col-
leagues 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 obser-
vations 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 obser-
vation 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 bilin-
gual coach leads after school. The facilitator and one of the teachers raise the question of
Table 2. Types of work and discursive evidence of knowledge domain affected
Type of work
Analyzing and interpreting
student work using a protocol
Creating an assessment rubric
Classroom observation and
post-observation discussion
Source: Andrews, (2005, p. 74).
Knowledge domain
Content knowledge
Knowledge of students
Pedagogical content knowledge
Knowledge of students
Content knowledge
Knowledge of self
Pedagogical content knowledge
Pedagogical knowledge
Knowledge of self
Knowledge of students
Evidence
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).
[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).
System Supports for Teacher Learning
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).
795
796 Chrispeels, Andrews with González

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 class-
room and will immediately implement this new strategy in her class.
(1) Td: [Inquires into when another teacher on their team started Writer’s Workshop.]
(2) Te: She [Teacher A] started in November.
(3) Td: Did you get some training?
(4) F1: We have a writing group with [the bilingual coach]. How do you organize?
(5) Tc: That’s my question.
(6) 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.
(7) Td: Modeling is so important.
(8) Co: I am impressed how you stuck with [that] little boy …
(9) F1: I liked the process chart titled “To be a good writer.” Very nice.
(10) Te: Thank you.
(11) Ta: Specifically, I like [how the students were] sitting on their journal. I will try
that today.
(12) Td: I liked that the buddies move to face each other and give each other their atten-
tion. 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 mak-
ing 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
 System Supports for Teacher Learning 797

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 teach-
ers’ 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) stag-
ing 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) recogni-
tion 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 obsta-
cles 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.
798 Chrispeels, Andrews with González

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 experi-
ence, grade level, frequency of meetings, principal’s attendance, obstacles, processes,
strategies, conditions for team learning) and two dependent variables (teachers’ per-
ceptions 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 Impact on teaching Impact on student

learning

Effective processes Setting goals 0.458** 0.349**

Using protocols 0.330** 0.313**
Following group norms 0.399** 0.417**
Positive attitudes 0.282** 0.217*
Strategies/Approaches Developing rubrics 0.227* 0.234*
Staging/focusing on
English learners 0.134 0.200*
Conditions for team Encouragement of
learning divergent views 0.279** 0.201*
Recognition of members’ uniqueness 0.308** 0.222*
Open expression of concerns and ideas 0.334** 0.296**
Obstacles Lack of clear communication 0.330** 0.318**
Lack of focus or goals 0.500** 0.470**
Weak facilitation skills 0.342** 0.271**
Bad team relations 0.227* 0.212*

* Correlation significant at the 0.05 level.

** Correlation significant at the 0.01 level.

Table 4. Multiple regression of factors that best predict effects of grade-level meetings on teaching and
learning

Factors Unstandardized Standardized

coefficient (SE) coefficient

Impact on teaching R2
0.43

Setting goals 0.615* (0.255) 0.220
Following group norms 0.490** (0.172) 0.245
Open expression of concerns and ideas 0.424* (0.194) 0.183
Lack of focus or goals 0.625** (0.213) 0.265
Lack of clear communication 0.480* (0.221) 0.181

Impact on student learning R2
0.37

Following group norms 0.703 (0.174) 0.350
Lack of focus or goals 0.813 (0.211) 0.341
Lack of clear communication 0.591 (0.241) 0.212

* Correlation significant at the 0.05 level.

** Correlation significant at the 0.01 level.
 System Supports for Teacher Learning 799

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, lead-
ership 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 relation-
ships, 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 sanc-
tions, may be a first and preliminary step for building trust among members and sup-
porting an interdependent social network. Norms are also foundational to fostering the
conditions for team learning (e.g., encouragement of divergent views, respect for mem-
ber 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 rela-
tions, 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
800 Chrispeels, Andrews with González

school improvement process. In other words, district or school goals need to be trans-
lated 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 nat-
ural 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 mean-
ingful 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 suf-
ficient 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
 System Supports for Teacher Learning 801

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 lev-
els 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 develop-
ment 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 organ-
ization 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 con-
ferences, 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 imagi-
native 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
802 Chrispeels, Andrews with González

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, pro-
vision of books and resource materials for study, and recruiting external
experts who might work with a team to address a particular content or peda-
gogical 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 assess-
ments, 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
 System Supports for Teacher Learning 803

developed common rubric, or learned about and shared strategies for improving read-
ing 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 poten-
tially dynamic and powerful sites for professional development. This case study points
the way toward future research that is needed to explore more carefully how grade-
level 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 lead-
ers able to facilitate and guide their grade-level teams to high performance.

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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 educa-
tion 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 educa-
tion 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 dif-
fer 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.
808 Kennedy

Table 1. The scope of education reform in the Asia Pacific region, 1997–2002

Country Policy Year Emphasis

China Curriculum reform of 2001 “Focus on students’ learning interests and

basic education experience, include knowledge and skills
which are necessary for life long learning”
Hong Learning for life – 2000 To build a lifelong learning society
Kong SAR learning through life
Learning to learn: 2000 Help students to build up their capabilities to
The way forward in learn independently
curriculum
development
Indonesia Competency based 2002 To develop a process-oriented way of
Curriculum teaching multicultural attitudes and behavior
such as tolerance, mutual-respect, mutual
understanding, and recognition of religious,
ethnic, and cultural diversities and
differences
Japan The education reform 2001 Establish an educational philosophy suitable
plan for the twenty-first for the new century and improve the
century provision for education
Korea Adapting education to 2001 It is a reform of the educational system for
the e Information Age the new society through ICT
Malaysia Smart school 1999 To foster the knowledge, skills, and attitudes
curriculum appropriate for success in the Information Age
Philippines Restructured basic 2002 Raising the quality of the Filipino learners
education and graduates and empowering them for
curriculum lifelong learning
Singapore Thinking schools, 1997 A “learning nation” envisions a national
learning nation culture and social environment that
promotes lifelong learning in our people
Taiwan Moving towards a 1998 Curriculum designed for the new century:
learning society developing humanitarian attitudes,
and action plan for enhancing integration ability, cultivating
educational reform democratic literacy, fostering both
indigenous awareness and a global
perspective, and building up the capacity for
lifelong learning
Thailand National education act, 1999 1999 (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

Brunei Darussalam – with the remainder being classified as middle level development
nations2 (United Nations Development Program, 2005). Table 2 highlights that the cor-
relation 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 809

Table 2. Selected indicators relating to educational provision in the Asia Pacific region

HDI Countries combined gross Education Technology

rank1 enrolment ratio index2 achievement
for primary, index (TAI)
secondary and value3
tertiary (%)
2002/20032

High development4
11 Japan 84 0.94 0.698
22 Hong Kong, China
(SAR) 74 0.87 0.455
25 Singapore 87 0.91 0.585
28 Korea, Rep. of 93 0.97 0.666
33 Brunei 74 0.86 –
Darussalam

Middle development 4
61 Malaysia 71 0.83 0.396
73 Thailand 73 0.86 0.337
80 Kazakhstan 85 0.94 –
84 Philippines 82 0.89 0.300
85 China 69 0.84 0.299
93 Sri Lanka 69 0.83 0.203
96 Maldives 75 0.90 –
97 Turkmenistan – 0.91 –
108 Viet Nam 64 0.82 –
109 Kyrgyzstan 82 0.93 –
110 Indonesia 66 0.81 0.211
111 Uzbekistan 76 0.91 –
114 Mongolia 74 0.90 –
122 Tajikistan 76 0.91 –
127 India 60 0.61 0.201
129 Myanmar 48 0.76 –
130 Cambodia 59 0.69 –
133 Lao People’s Dem.
Rep. 61 0.66 –
134 Bhutan – 0.48 –
135 Pakistan 35 0.44 0.167
136 Nepal 61 0.53 0.081
139 Bangladesh 53 0.45 –
1
The HDI rank is determined using HDI values to the fifth decimal point.
2
The education index measures a country’s relative achievement in both adult literacy and combined pri-
mary, 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 coun-
tries in creating and diffusing technology and in building a human skills base. The index measures achieve-
ments 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).
810 Kennedy

and values, political contexts and unique development priorities. Any reference to cur-
riculum 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 educa-
tion policy that places less emphasis on the quantitative link between occupation
and formal education (to eliminate mismatches), and more attention on the struc-
ture and content of education, making it more appropriate for the economic envi-
ronment 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 produc-
tivity of Philippine labor. In turn, these could be attributed to inadequate invest-
ments 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
 Curriculum Reforms in Asia 811

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 sup-
ply 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 per-
petuate 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” influ-
encing not just personal growth and development or even just social growth and devel-
opment, 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 cater-
ing 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”
812 Kennedy

(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 acknowl-
edged, 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 acknowl-
edged in relation to education for these countries, so too have social priorities as evi-
denced 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 lit-
tle 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, conser-
vative 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
 Curriculum Reforms in Asia 813

analysed this dimension of the reform agenda, pointing out that it seeks to retain a con-
servative 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 “knowl-
edge 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 polit-
ical 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 aca-
demic approaches to schooling that characterized the Asian region towards the end of
the twentieth century. Education monitored by bureaucratic systems that rationed edu-
cation 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 coun-
tries acknowledge the importance of citizenship education as a means of developing
social cohesion, common values and political stability. There are thus twin impulses at
814 Kennedy

Key driver of curriculum and

instructional reform

Knowledge
economies
requiring
‘‘ideas’’ and
‘‘innovation’’

Schools Curriculum
need to be and
the engine instruction
rooms for need to be
innovation reformed
Different
countries
respond
according to
capacity
If medium
If high
development
development
they address
they address
mediating
reform
factors

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 polit-
ical 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, exam-
ples 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
 Curriculum Reforms in Asia 815

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 signif-
icant 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
816 Kennedy

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 learn-
ing 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 cen-
tred 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 respon-
sibilities for school based curriculum development. So that students would have an easy
pathway through the system, revisions were made relaxing admissions processes to sen-
ior 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 mate-
rials 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 “liberal-
ization” of curriculum. Such agendas seek to remove barriers whether they be subject
boundaries, teacher dominated classroom strategies or the undue influence of testing and
 Curriculum Reforms in Asia 817

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 progres-
sivisms” 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 pro-
vision 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 eco-
nomic 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 acknowledg-
ment 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 excel-
lence 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 sys-
tem 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 text-
books 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
818 Kennedy

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 pro-
vide 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 soci-
eties 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 general-
izations 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 differ-
ent 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 imple-
menting 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 examina-
tions 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 cre-
ate 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
 Curriculum Reforms in Asia 819

province of China. First, she has shown that implementation strategies are very system-
atic 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 progres-
sive teaching methods. Schools designated as “implementation” schools tend to demon-
strate 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
820 Kennedy

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 incen-
tives, 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 sys-
tems. 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 instru-
mentalism 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 provi-
sion, ensuring adequate building and providing textbooks that at least ensure a stan-
dardized 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 success-
ful 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 man-
agement. 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
 Curriculum Reforms in Asia 821

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.

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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 improve-
ment 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 ulti-
mately 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 gen-
eral. 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 improve-
ment 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.
826 Creemers, Stoll, Reezigt, and ESI Team

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 tradi-
tions/ 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 attempt-
ing 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 effec-
tive school improvement, an effectiveness criterion is needed as well as an improve-
ment 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 crite-
rion is met by the answer to the question “Does the school achieve better student out-
comes?” 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 con-
sisted of three related research tasks, namely:
 Ingredients for Success 827

(1) The analysis, evaluation and synthesis of theories that might be useful for effec-
tive school improvement.
(2) The inventory, analysis and evaluation of effective school improvement pro-
grams 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 (pre-
scriptive) 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 incorpo-
rated different points of view: (1) the integration of the school effectiveness and school
improvement traditions; (2) the search for additional insights in other theoretical tradi-
tions 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 organ-
isation (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 partici-
pating 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
828 Creemers, Stoll, Reezigt, and ESI Team

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 expectan-
cies, with the exception of market mechanisms. New factors most often referred to
 Ingredients for Success 829

Table 2. ESI factors for effective school improvement from the case studies analysis

T N F B E S P I G

Context level factors

External agents involved in improvement
programmes Yes    0   
External pressure to start improvement      
External evaluation of schools Yes     
Market mechanisms Yes  
Decentralisation of decisions (content,
teaching practice) 

School level factors

Positive attitude towards change Yes      
School culture, shared values, vision on
education, mission Yes     
School organisation that facilitates
improvement (time etc.)     
Leadership of the principal (or other staff
members) Yes    
Staff instability    
Internal evaluation (assessment of students
and teachers) Yes    
Goal setting (student outcomes and/or
intermediate goals) Yes   
Parental/community involvement in
improvement programmes 0  
Adequate planning of the improvement
process Yes  
Improvement embedded in overall school
development  
Getting ready for change/tackle visible
issues first  
Complexity/comprehensiveness of the
improvement programme  
Self-regulative improvement cycle Yes 
Student participation in improvement efforts 

Classroom/Teacher level factors

Teacher motivation and involvement/
participation in processes and decisions Yes      
Teacher collaboration (in school, across
schools) Yes    
Feedback on teacher behaviour  
Teacher training/staff development  
Implementation of essential elements of
curricula/innovations 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)
830 Creemers, Stoll, Reezigt, and ESI Team

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 evi-
dence 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 Improvment Improvement

culture processes outcomes

Resources for
improvement

Figure 1. Comprehensive framework for effective school improvement

 Ingredients for Success 831

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 con-
text (Stoll, Creemers, & Reezigt, 2006).
We concluded that the importance of the educational context appears most promi-
nently 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 impor-
tant 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 sup-
port. 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 Educational goals

for improvement

- Market mechanisms - Autonomy granted to schools - Formal educational

- External evaluation and - Financial resources and goals in terms of student
accountability favourable daily outcomes
- External agents working conditions
- Participation of society - Local support
in education/societal
changes/ educational
policies which stimulate change
832 Creemers, Stoll, Reezigt, and ESI Team

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 text-
books for school subjects.

School Factors
The central place of the school in the comprehensive framework is based on effective-
ness and improvement theories and research, which have shown that effective improve-
ment 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.
 Ingredients for Success 833

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 indi-
vidual 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 - Assessment of - Changes in the quality of the school

to improve improvement needs - Changes in the quality of the
- Autonomy used by - Diagnosis of teachers
schools improvement needs - Changes in the quality of student
- Shared vision - Phrasing of detailed outcomes (knowledge, skills,
- Willingness to become a improvement goals and attitudes)
learning organisation/ a - Planning of
reflective practitioner improvement activities
- Training and collegial - Implementation of
collaboration improvement plans
- Improvement history - Evaluation
- Ownership of - Reflection
improvement, commitment
and motivation
- Leadership
- Staff stability
- Time for improvement
834 Creemers, Stoll, Reezigt, and ESI Team

improvement. The improvement culture can be considered the foundation of all improve-
ment 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 cer-
tain 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).
 Ingredients for Success 835

(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 stu-
dents. 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 descrip-
tive, 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 individ-
ual 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 effec-
tive 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 guide-
lines 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 poli-
cies. 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 inter-
relationships 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: prac-
titioners, 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
836 Creemers, Stoll, Reezigt, and ESI Team

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 spe-
cific 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 pres-
ents 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 out-
comes). 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 imple-
mentation of improvement in schools. The framework merely clarifies which fac-
tors 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 policy-
makers how strongly schools are influenced by the context. This implies that ade-
quate 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 decision-
making.
● 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 con-
text 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.
 Ingredients for Success 837

Note
1. For a more detailed description, see Reezigt (2001).

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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 self-
learners. 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 policy-
makers 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 cul-
tivation 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 stud-
ies 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.
840 Mok, Cheng, Leung, Shan, Moore, and Kennedy

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 Asia-
Pacific region. The objectives of this study are to (1) investigate the nature of self-
directed 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 compris-
ing 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 2. Plan
Attributions Goal setting
Education aim Planning
7. Second-order learning
Change in self-knowledge
Cognition
Metacognition
6.First-order learning
Motivation
Change in learning strategy and
behavior

3. Engagement in learning
Initiation
5. Learning outcome Inquisitive mind
Information processing
Managing resources
Strategic help-seeking
4. Monitoring (Benefits, costs, behavior)
Self-monitoring Management of learning
Self-regulation Environment

Figure 1. Model of self-directed learning (Mok & Cheng, 2002)

 Self-Directed Learning 841

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 edu-
cation 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/).
842 Mok, Cheng, Leung, Shan, Moore, and Kennedy

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 impor-
tant aim of Hong Kong education is “to enable everyone to develop their full and indi-
vidual 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 flexi-
ble 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 oppor-
tunities, and to lay the foundation for lifelong learning” (Education Commission, 2000,
p. 1), there are few reform strategies targeting specifically the development of compe-
tence 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
 Self-Directed Learning 843

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 pri-
mary 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 stu-
dents. The scales include self-directed learning attitudes, learning motivation, concen-
tration, 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.
844 Mok, Cheng, Leung, Shan, Moore, and Kennedy

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 simulta-
neous 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 ques-
tionnaires were administered by teachers during their normal class time. Factor analy-
sis (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 dis-
turbing students who were in public examination years, S3 students in Taiwan, S5 stu-
dents 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 self-
directed learning of students, comprising academic self-confidence; academic motiva-
tion; failure attributions to ability, effort, and strategy; success attributions to ability,
 Self-Directed Learning 845

Table 1. Sample characteristics

Year Hong Kong Macau Taiwan All locations Total

Level Male Female Male Femle Male Female Male Female

S1 1957 1922 446 232 729 616 3132 2770 5902

S2 1976 1989 511 291 707 662 3194 2942 6136
S3 1168 1248 81 59 – – 1249 1307 2556
S4 1666 1774 394 245 805 741 2865 2760 5625
S5 – – 386 320 721 694 1107 1014 2121
S6 471 588 – – – – 471 588 1059
Total 7238 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 attribu-
tions 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 suc-
cess, 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 aca-
demically 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
Table 2. Scale definition and characteristics
Scale name Definition
Self-confidence This scale measures the students’
self-confidence on academic
matters at school.
Motivation This scale measures the intrinsic
motivation of secondary students.
Failure ability This scale measures the students’
attribution inclination to attribute their
academic failures to lack of ability.
Failure effort This scale measures the students’
attribution inclination to attribute their
academic failures to lack of effort.
Failure strategy This scale measures the students’
attribution inclination to attribute their
academic failures to poor strategy use.
Success ability This scale measures the students’
attribution inclination to attribute
their academic success
to their ability.
Success effort This scale measures the students’
attribution inclination to attribute their
academic success to their effort.
Success strategy This scale measures the students’
attribution inclination to attribute
their academic success
to their strategy use.
Education aim This scale measures the students’
inclination to perceive
education aims as learning.
846
Example item No. of items Cronbach’s alpha
I think I can handle my learning at school. 5 0.80
In order to learn more, I will not 10 0.84
be absent from school without a good reason.
If you got a very poor grade on an 4 0.74
examination, it might be because
your competence is usually low.
If you got a very poor grade on an 4 0.81
examination, it might be because
you did not try your best in your preparation.
If you got a very poor grade on an 4 0.81
examination, it might be because
you did not know how to use
effective exam strategies.
If you got a very good grade on an 4 0.81
Mok, Cheng, Leung, Shan, Moore, and Kennedy
examination, it might
be because you are always
competent in examinations.
If you got a very good grade on an 4 0.78
examination, it might
be because you studied hard
before the examination.
If you got a very good grade on an 4 0.82
examination, it might
be because you knew how to use effective
strategies to answer the questions.
I go to school for Personal fulfillment. 5 0.80
Goal setting This scale measures I use learning goals to 5 0.80
the students’ capacity guide my learning
in setting academic goals. activities.
Planning This scale measures the students’ At the beginning of each school 5 0.82
capacity in planning their academic studies. term, I set a learning plan for myself.
Academic initiation This scale measures the students’ I like taking the 5 0.77
capacity in taking academic initiative to answer
initiation. teachers’ questions.
Inquisitive mind This scale measures the students’ I am interested in 5 0.75
inclination for inquiry. learning new things.
Information processing This scale measures When I study, I always 10 0.86
the students’ capacity think of related things to help
in information processing. my understanding.
Help-seeking benefits This scale measures the students’ Seeking advice from others helps 5 0.83
perceived benefits in seeking help on me learn some problem-solving
academic matters. skills and methods.
Help-seeking This scale measures the students’ perceived Asking too many questions 5 0.86
costs costs in seeking help on academic matters. makes others think that I am stupid.
Help-seeking This scale measures In the past two 5 0.75
frequency the students’ report months, I sought
frequency in seeking advice on how to
help on academic improve my grades,
matters in the last two months. for fear of lagging behind
Learning This scale measures Before examinations, 5 0.79
Environment the students’ capacity I ask my family to be
Management in managing the quiet so as not to
learning environment. disturb my revision.
Self- This scale measures I reflect on my 10 0.85
monitoring the students’ capacity learning strategies to
in self-monitoring see if they are effective.
Self-regulation This scale measures After I get back my 5 0.77
the students’ capacity test papers, I try to
Self-Directed Learning

in self-regulation in understand the

order to do better academically. mistakes I have made.
847
 848

Table 3. Comparing self-directed learning of secondary students in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan

Scale HK MC TW F p- value of F HK-MC HK-TW MC-TW Observations from

effect effect effect Bonferroni Post-Hoc
Size size size comparisons

Self-confidence 2.38 2.36 2.31 30.7 0.000 0.01 0.05 0.02 HK
MC TW

Motivation 2.89 2.92 2.84 42.5 0.000 0.02 0.05 0.05 MC HK TW
Failure ability attribution 2.60 2.63 2.49 76.1 0.000 0.01 0.08 0.06 HK
MC TW
Failure effort attribution 2.94 2.88 3.12 184.5 0.000 0.03 0.11 0.10 TW HK MC
Failure strategy attribution 2.83 2.72 2.91 85.2 0.000 0.06 0.05 0.09 TW HK MC
Success ability attribution 2.49 2.45 2.44 11.3 0.000 0.02 0.03 0.00 HK MC
TW
Success effort attribution 3.11 3.15 3.16 19.4 0.000 0.03 0.04 0.00 TW
MC HK
Success strategy attribution 2.94 2.91 3.06 87.5 0.000 0.02 0.08 0.07 TW HK MC
Education aim 2.86 2.87 2.73 129.0 0.000 0.01 0.10 0.07 HK
MC TW
Goal setting 2.56 2.54 2.51 10.3 0.000 0.01 0.03 0.01 HK TW
Planning 2.63 2.61 2.57 19.8 0.000 0.01 0.04 0.02 HK
MC TW
Mok, Cheng, Leung, Shan, Moore, and Kennedy

Academic initiation 2.55 2.52 2.47 51.7 0.000 0.02 0.07 0.03 MC TW
Inquisitive mind 3.06 3.11 3.06 13.9 0.000 0.03 0.00 0.03 MC HK
TW
Information processing 2.75 2.76 2.79 11.21 0.000 0.01 0.02 0.02 TW HK
MC
Help-seeking benefits 2.77 2.87 2.93 179.3 0.000 0.06 0.12 0.03 MC TW HK
Help-seeking costs 2.92 3.01 3.02 77.8 0.000 0.05 0.07 0.00 TW
MC HK
Help-seeking frequency 2.06 2.05 1.94 70.3 0.000 0.01 0.08 0.05 HK
MC TW
Learning environment
management 2.41 2.45 2.42 4.4 0.013 0.02 0.01 0.01 No Difference
Self-monitoring 2.69 2.67 2.76 48.0 0.000 0.01 0.06 0.05 TW HK
MC
Self-regulation 2.85 2.90 2.84 12.9 0.000 0.03 0.01 0.03 MC HK
TW
 Self-Directed Learning 849

3.4

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2.8 MC
TW
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Figure 2. Motivation of secondary students in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan

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Figure 3. Difference between female and male (female-male) self-directed learning

between Hong Kong and Taiwan. Substantively, the differences among the three loca-
tions 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
850 Mok, Cheng, Leung, Shan, Moore, and Kennedy

Table 4. Comparing male and female secondary students on self-directed learning

Scale Male Female t ratio p-value of Abs. effect Observation

(M) (F) (MF) t size (MF)/SD

Self-confidence 2.39 2.34 7.23 0.00 0.10 M F

Motivation 2.86 2.91 9.69 0.00 0.13 F M
Failure ability attribution 2.52 2.64 14.33 0.00 0.19 F M
Failure effort attribution 2.96 2.98 2.27 0.02 0.03 No difference
Failure strategy attribution 2.76 2.91 18.50 0.00 0.25 F M
Success ability attribution 2.52 2.42 12.11 0.00 0.16 M F
Success effort attribution 3.06 3.20 18.37 0.00 0.25 F M
Success strategy attribution 2.92 3.02 11.82 0.00 0.16 F M
Education aim 2.80 2.87 10.36 0.00 0.14 F M
Goal setting 2.52 2.57 5.35 0.00 0.07 F M
Planning 2.55 2.68 16.34 0.00 0.22 F M
Academic initiation 2.54 2.52 3.63 0.00 0.05 M F
Inquisitive mind 3.06 3.07 1.95 0.05 0.03 No difference
Information processing 2.74 2.79 7.32 0.00 0.11 F M
Help-seeking benefits 2.74 2.90 21.23 0.00 0.28 F M
Help-seeking costs 2.91 3.01 12.46 0.00 0.16 F M
Help-seeking frequency 2.09 1.97 12.92 0.00 0.17 M F
Learning env management 2.34 2.49 18.58 0.00 0.25 F M
Self-monitoring 2.68 2.73 8.73 0.00 0.12 F M
Self-regulation 2.83 2.89 9.06 0.00 0.12 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 abil-
ity (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 sta-
tistically 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 meas-
ured 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 stu-
dents disagree with many of the items on this scale, reflecting the low academic self-
confidence 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 851

Table 5. Comparing secondary students in upper and lower levels on self-directed learning

Scale Lower Upper t-ratio p-value Abs. effect Observation

Forms Form (L–U) of t size
S1–S3 (L) S4–S6 (U) (L–U)/SD

Self-confidence 2.41 2.28 17.34 0.00 0.24 L U

Motivation 2.92 2.82 17.66 0.00 0.24 L U
Failure ability attribution 2.58 2.58 0.75 0.46 0.01 No difference
Failure effort attribution 2.94 3.03 10.83 0.00 0.15 U L
Failure strategy attribution 2.81 2.88 8.29 0.00 0.11 U L
Success ability attribution 2.48 2.45 3.87 0.00 0.05 L U
Success effort attribution 3.11 3.16 6.62 0.00 0.09 U L
Success strategy attribution 2.95 3.00 5.53 0.00 0.08 U L
Education aim 2.89 2.75 18.67 0.00 0.25 L U
Goal setting 2.58 2.49 10.94 0.00 0.15 L U
Planning 2.63 2.58 5.45 0.00 0.07 L U
Academic initiation 2.55 2.50 6.75 0.00 0.09 L U
Inquisitive mind 3.08 3.03 7.60 0.00 0.10 L U
Information
processing 2.75 2.77 3.04 0.00 0.03 U L
Help-seeking benefits 2.77 2.90 17.39 0.00 0.24 U L
Help-seeking costs 2.94 2.99 7.11 0.00 0.10 U L
Help-seeking frequency 2.05 2.00 5.97 0.00 0.08 L U
Learning env management 2.45 2.36 10.09 0.00 0.14 L U
Self-monitoring 2.70 2.71 1.58 0.11 0.02 No difference
Self-regulation 2.87 2.84 3.84 0.00 0.05 L U

Female – Male differences in self-directed learning

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Figure 4. Comparison of self-directed learning between students from lower (S1–S3) and Upper
(S4–S6) levels
852 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 statis-
tical artifact due to the large sample size, Taiwan students showed relatively lower self-
confidence 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 par-
ents 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
 Self-Directed Learning 853

scales reporter earlier. The differences were statistically significant but not substan-
tively 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, stu-
dents 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 indi-

viduals 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 strate-
gies, 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 con-
flicts 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 self-
directed 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
854 Mok, Cheng, Leung, Shan, Moore, and Kennedy

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 learn-
ing? 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 self-
confidence of students to take charge of their own learning? These are some of the ques-
tions 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 self-
sufficient. 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 pos-
itively 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 self-
learning 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 help-
seeking, 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 four-
point 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
 Self-Directed Learning 855

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 behav-
ioral 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 evalua-
tion 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 strate-
gies. 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 self-
regulation 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
856 Mok, Cheng, Leung, Shan, Moore, and Kennedy

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 stu-
dents 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 policy-
makers. 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 contri-
buting 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 learn-
ing discussed in the literature. Comparisons across the three geographical locations,
gender, and year levels were undertaken in search for strategies to promote self-
directed 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 adap-
tive attributions for their academic outcomes, were able to set learning goals, and self-
monitor 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 inade-
quacy 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 address-
ing through further research.
 Self-Directed Learning 857

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.

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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 evi-
dent 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 understand-
ing 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 imple-
mentation 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 pro-
grams directed towards greater inclusion within secondary schools of disadvantaged
859
T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 859–870.
© 2007 Springer.
860 Jacinto and Freytes

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 pro-
grams 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 stud-
ied. 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 “appro-
priation” 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 organ-
izing 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 estab-
lishing weekly coordination meetings between the teaching body and the administra-
tion. 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 oper-
ated. However, the reports note problems with the level of participation and teamwork,
 Latin American Case Studies 861

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, cer-
tain schools offer particular examples of “appropriation” of this policy. Some formed
working groups that undertook specific responsibilities and tasks delegated by the prin-
cipal. 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 set-
ting up what was called a “module.” These modules provide additional time for teach-
ers 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 institu-
tional 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 commit-
ments, 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 tuto-
rial 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
862 Jacinto and Freytes

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 disad-
vantaged youth, was the development of institutional networks with other schools in
order to deal cooperatively with the problems of students. The specific projects devel-
oped 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 bene-
fits, 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 subsi-
dized schooling and diminishing neighborhood populations. As the minimum number
 Latin American Case Studies 863

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 proce-
dures, in reality selection does take place. This happens for different reasons such as want-
ing 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 adminis-
tration 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 grow-
ing 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 fami-
lies 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, partic-
ularly 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 unsuccess-
fully 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
864 Jacinto and Freytes

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 multiplic-
ity 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 conti-
nuity 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; peda-

gogic (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 dif-
ferent 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 interre-
lationships. 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., reproduc-
tion 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.
 Latin American Case Studies 865

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 institu-
tional 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 dia-
logue, 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 neigh-
borhood 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
866 Jacinto and Freytes

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 chang-
ing 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 attitu-
dinal 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 environ-
ment 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” (har-
mony 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 appoint-
ment 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 relation-
ships and their problems. (Jacinto & Freytes Frey, 2004).
 Latin American Case Studies 867

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 cre-
ating 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 following-
up students with high rates of absenteeism. In some cases, these inspectors became
responsible for projects involving issues related to school climate or to specific prob-
lems such as protection and care of pregnant students and student mothers or drug pre-
vention. 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 par-
ticipation. Such is the case of regulations of the city of Buenos Aires that eliminate
reprimands and support the establishment of “consejos de convivencia” (social har-
mony 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 devel-
opment. 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 develop-
ment beyond what is on offer, manage to fill in this policy gap.
Neither initial teacher education nor continuous professional development opportu-
nities consider sufficiently the hardships encountered by teachers in the new contexts
and new youth cultures. Those schools that achieve social harmony – based on adapt-
ability 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.
868 Jacinto and Freytes

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 pro-
gram (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 per-
ceived by the schools as divorced from their reality, disconnected from teachers’ inter-
ests 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 strate-
gies 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 institu-
tional 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 chal-
lenge 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 insti-
tutional context is subject to many conditions and can never be exactly replicated, the
 Latin American Case Studies 869

systematic study of experiences such as the ones presented in this chapter could pro-
vide 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 tutori-
als 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 composi-
tion 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 exam-
ine 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 tra-
ditional 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
870 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 suc-
cessfully 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 sep-
arate 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.
872 Bamford

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 incor-
porating staff appraisal, to invite independent evaluation groups who had visited the
school previously from the UK, to join an international schools’ organisation with com-
pulsory 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 feed-
back 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 exter-
nal 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 tim-
ing 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 reduc-
ing 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 dis-
cipline 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 under-
take the Reviews the announcement to staff was met with different appreciations of
 The School Review Process 873

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 inter-
views. 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 vis-
its 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 expert-
ise 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 par-
adigms 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 mem-
bers of staff, this was a valid test of his level-headedness under fire and good prepara-
tion 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
874 Bamford

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 iden-
tify and discuss possible areas of strengths and weaknesses within their classroom
practice, their departments and other areas of concern school-wide. A certain consen-
sus began to form about the areas that would need improvement, and the more moti-
vated, 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 opera-
tion 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:

● 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 meet-
ings, 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.
● 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.
 The School Review Process 875

The Review
The Head of the Senior School reported that the Review itself:

… was conducted by an exceptional team of highly qualified professional evalu-

ators 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 peo-
ple, 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 improve-
ment. 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, profes-
sionalism 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
876 Bamford

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 profes-
sionals 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 signifi-
cant 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 pro-
gram, 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 profes-
sionals 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 note-
taking 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 recommenda-
tions 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 recom-
mendations 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 sub-
ject 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, ini-
tial 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.
 The School Review Process 877

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 restruc-
turing, 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 pro-
fessional in educational management who was able to apply a full-time effort in push-
ing 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 recommenda-
tions 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 facil-
itated the achievement of school-wide goals. The management structures in both Schools
878 Bamford

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 whole-
school 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 deci-
sions 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
 The School Review Process 879

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 whole-
school 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 diagnos-
tic tests were designed for each class to give teachers information on the students dur-
ing 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 mark-
ing 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 mark-
ing 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 decision-
making 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 reflec-
tive 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
880 Bamford

Plan in teaching and learning; it is a matter of extended professionalism and support-

ive management. The comment made by one teacher to the effect that progress fol-
lowing 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 some-
times 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 per-
spective could be used to support educational administration, which in turn would sup-
port 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 adminis-
trative 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,
 The School Review Process 881

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 recommenda-
tions 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 cre-
ativity of the staff within the School but the legitimacy and the observation of an out-
side 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 reputa-
tion 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 with-
out 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.
882 Bamford

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 develop-
ment 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 neces-
sity, for a follow-up procedure began to emerge. Significantly, it was during the applica-
tion 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 exer-
cise 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 recom-
mendations 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 fol-
low-up visit and this has been incorporated into the process as standard procedure.
 The School Review Process 883

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 stake-
holders: 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 mate-
rial for a report on the audit in which the relevant perceptions, commendations and rec-
ommendations 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 communi-
cation 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 com-
puters, 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 require-
ments 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.
884 Bamford

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 intro-
duced 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 bludg-
eoning 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, cross-
checking 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, commenda-
tions 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 rep-
resentatives, 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 self-
examination and evaluation that it entails. The report submitted to a school at the end
 The School Review Process 885

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 documenta-
tion 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 knowl-
edge. 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 scien-
tists 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 learn-
ing. 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.
888 Devés and López

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 improv-
ing 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 sys-
tem (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 prepa-
ration 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
 The ECBI Program in Chile 889

against teachers’ capacity building policies, which are more expensive and diffi-
cult 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 con-
ceived by the scientific community as a contribution to the desired renewal of the teach-
ing 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 munic-
ipalities 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 educa-
tion 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 coordi-
nated by the Ministry of Education, alongside a pre-existing initiative to improve liter-
acy 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 mate-
rials and professional development strategies that have been certified by the program
and develop a cooperative scheme that includes the schools, the districts and the sci-
entific 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
890 Devés and López

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 universi-
ties: 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 synthe-
sizing 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, pro-
posing explanations, subjecting them to test, obtaining results, analyzing the results
obtained, proposing explanations, communicating their findings to others and consid-
ering the new evidence that emerges from this interaction. This process is guided by
their own curiosity and passion to understand.
 The ECBI Program in Chile 891

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 stu-
dents 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 experi-
ences 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 con-
clusions and give opinions. I learned about volume, density, mass etc. (Grade 6
student, Cerro Navia, 2003)
892 Devés and López

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 pro-
gram, 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 experi-
mental 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 chil-
dren 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”
 The ECBI Program in Chile 893

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 scien-
tific 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 knowl-
edge. 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
894 Devés and López

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 par-
ticipating 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 chil-
dren 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 opti-
mize 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 les-
sons 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
 The ECBI Program in Chile 895

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 essen-
tial for the successful implementation of the program. These workshops have a dura-
tion 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
896 Devés and López

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; biol-
ogists, 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 model-
ing. 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 train-
ing 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 meet-
ings dealing with organizational issues, planning and evaluation as well as training for
 The ECBI Program in Chile 897

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 coun-
tries. 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 partici-
pation 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 inquiry-
based 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 devel-
opment 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 effec-
tive way to deal with this problem is to establish a science material support center
(National Sciences Resources Center, 1997).
898 Devés and López

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 par-
ticipated 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 com-
munity (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 appreci-
ate 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 question-
naires 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 initia-
tive 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
 The ECBI Program in Chile 899

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 hap-
pens within the classrooms these interactions are guided by the principle of coopera-
tion 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 hav-
ing 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 pâte) 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 proj-
ects 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 difficul-
ties. 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 pro-
gram, write more in their notebooks and have increased their vocabulary. The impor-
tance 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 presenta-
tions 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.
900 Devés and López

Among the teachers, we notice a progressive adaptation to the new methodology

and an increase in knowledge of science content and teaching methods which con-
tributes 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

● 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 per-
sonal 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 con-
sidered 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 pre-
cise 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

● Teachers have changed their views about science education and they enjoy verify-
ing 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)
 The ECBI Program in Chile 901

About the monitors

● The role of the monitors has been crucial for the good implementation of the pro-
gram, 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 prac-
tice. (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

● 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 estab-
lished with academics, scientists and professionals, and also because of the good
achievement results, the development in our students of self-esteem and self-
appreciation in the academic domain, as well as the good performance of the
teachers. (Poeta Vicente Huidobro Elementary School)

About the infrastructure and the materials

● 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 objec-
tives 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.
902 Devés and López

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 organiza-
tional 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) gov-
ernment 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 organiza-
tional 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 stu-
dent 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.
904 Lewis

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 con-
tributing 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 inclu-
sive 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 recre-
ated 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 solu-
tions 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
 Creating New Schools 905

based practices in a variety of formats that are continually being designed and devel-
oped 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 edu-
cation and business principles conducive to knowledge creation and knowledge shar-
ing (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 con-
cepts of the learning organisation, knowledge management and evidence-based lead-
ership 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 sus-
tainability 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 inno-
vations were sustainable by ensuring in turn that resources, professional support and
reflective time were adequate. The processes to develop this knowledge and the contin-
ual 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 bureau-
cratic 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 prac-
tices was required. The review conducted by the Noumea community1 gathered data
906 Lewis

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 mis-
behaviour, 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 estab-
lished with specific tasks and responsibilities. Community strategic planning confer-
ences 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 iden-
tify 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 dif-
ferent 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 impor-
tantly 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
 Creating New Schools 907

relationships and team commitment. The embracing of a community philosophy

meant that well informed knowledge-centred decisions about school change pro-
gressed 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:
● 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 under-
standable 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 profes-
sional 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 par-
ents 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 collec-
tive 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 pre-
sented 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 trav-
elling 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
908 Lewis

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 profes-
sionalism 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:
● 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. Evidence-
based 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.
 Creating New Schools 909

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:
● 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 mov-
ing 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 respon-
sibilities, 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;
910 Lewis

● moving from a model of remediation to one of prevention and continuous improve-

ment. 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 collabo-
ratively 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 artic-
ulating the outcome of a learning activity and therefore ensuring student under-
standing 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 educa-
tion 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, scruti-
nize 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
 Creating New Schools 911

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 man-
agement 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 pre-
sented 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 pro-
gram 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
912 Lewis

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 infor-
mation, 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, tutori-
als 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 innova-
tions that would add value to school and class processes. Within these weekly meet-
ings, 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
 Creating New Schools 913

organised three weeks before the end of the school year according to learning and well-
being 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 appropri-
ate 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 archi-
tecture 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 improve-
ment were consistent with a determination to create a school for the knowledge society
(Caldwell, 2004; Drucker, 1999; Hargreaves, 2003). Teachers, parents and students col-
laborated 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 organ-
ization required a dramatic shift in the organization’s pattern of decision-making and
worked consistently to reorientate the way people approached work. Noumea’s leader-
ship engaged teachers in the kind of research, investigation, experimentation and eval-
uation 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 organisa-
tional 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.”
914 Lewis

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 appro-
priate students.

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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 Ade-
laide, 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 multi-
ple 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 dis-
abled 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 pro-
gram, 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.
918 Paphitis

In the mid-1990s, the school faced a number of challenging and complex issues, includ-
ing negative community perceptions, high welfare dependency, and low attendance, reten-
tion 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 second-
ary schools in close proximity. At this time the school had no clearly understood or articu-
lated 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 com-
pleted secondary school or entered university, and data were not collected on student des-
tinations 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 envi-
ronment 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 addi-
tion, 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 chil-
dren’s reports from their care teacher four times a year. As support, training and devel-
opment 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 intro-
duced 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.
 The Case of Salisbury High School 919

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 intro-
duce 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 percep-
tions. 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 address-
ing 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 organi-
sation 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 under-
standing 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
920 Paphitis

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 stu-
dent. 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:
● 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 imple-
ment 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.
 The Case of Salisbury High School 921

My first initiative was to introduce a structure that divided the work of the organiza-
tion 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) Operations
(2) Human Resources
(3) Curriculum (Teaching and Learning)
(4) Care (Care System)
(5) Finances
(6) Facilities
(7) Marketing
(8) 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 communi-
cated 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 pro-
vided 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 sys-
tem 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 commu-
nity’s staff, students and parents. The Salisbury High School Values are Relationships,
Respect, Honesty, Success and Organisation. These values reflect our core educational
922 Paphitis

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 pur-
pose 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 offer-
ing 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 chal-
lenge of access, equity and excellence. I appointed an Assistant Principal responsible
for curriculum and professional learning who had a strong belief in equity for disad-
vantaged 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 simulta-
neously, 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 stu-
dent mattered and careful attention was paid to their individual learning styles, moti-
vations, 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
 The Case of Salisbury High School 923

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 advo-
cates for their care groups. Very often care group teachers, having built positive rela-
tionships 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 devel-
oping 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 continu-
ously 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 individ-
ually, 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 train-
ing 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 Eiste-
ddfod, 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
924 Paphitis

● using workforce reform to enhance teaching and learning and to ensure consis-
tency (e.g., employing a student employment services officer, human resources
manager, staff support)
● links to services beyond the classroom, involving the wider community and fami-
lies, 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 develop-
ment, 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 sus-
tainable, 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
 The Case of Salisbury High School 925

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 com-
petition). As our enrolments increased, we ceased the partnership, but instead looked to
developing other arrangements with training providers to deliver the increasingly pop-
ular 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 pre-
dominantly 6 years old and spread around the school in staff office areas and 5 com-
puter 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 mid-
dle wing of the school. Staff and students saved work on floppy disks and students con-
stantly 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 curricu-
lum 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
926 Paphitis

● 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 communica-
tions; 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 curricu-
lum 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 learn-
ing 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 view-
ing, 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 infor-
mation 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 facili-
ties 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 impor-
tance of school pride, identification with the school, and its reputation in the commu-
nity. Budget plans as far as possible reflect our school priorities.
 The Case of Salisbury High School 927

In addition we place a high priority on establishing and maintaining good communica-

tions 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 con-
tribute to student awards. As a school with high proportions of non-English speaking
parents and community members, we use interpreters, translators and community liai-
son officers as needed, and were recently successful in obtaining funding in collabora-
tion 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 com-
munity. 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 pur-
pose 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.”
928 Paphitis

In partnership with parents and the community, the school seeks to develop young
global citizens who have high personal integrity, are motivated, purposeful and enter-
prising, 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 (elemen-
tary) 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 stu-
dents (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 organiza-
tional energy that helps to keep the school moving and improving. This positive orien-
tation 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 inno-
vative 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.
 The Case of Salisbury High School 929

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 restora-
tive 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 reten-
tion 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 inter-
vention 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
930 Paphitis

● Literacy and Numeracy Awards

● Many individual student and staff awards for example, NiETA, SA Young Film-
makers, 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 lead-
ing 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 encour-
aged 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 commu-
nity are committed to each other and to achieve success for all. I have found that build-
ing 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 enthu-
siasm 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 deter-
mining 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, self-
management, 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 “state-
ments 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 stan-
dardized 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 sur-
vived 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.
934 Townsend

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 fur-
ther 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 actu-
ally 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 Science

Grade 4 Grade 8 Grade 4 Grade 8

1999 2003 1995 2003 1999 2003 1995 2003

Japan 567 565 581 570 553 543 554 552

Australia 495 499 509 505 521 521 514 527
USA 518 518 492 504 542 536 513 527
New Zealand 469 496 501 494 505 523 511 520
Canada 550 506 510 531 529 500 510 531
 Reframing for the Future 935

Table 2. Mean scores for reading, mathematics and science literacy for 15 year old students, Program for
International Student Assessment (PISA)

PISA

Reading Mathematics Science

2000 2003 2000 2003 2000 2003

Japan 522 522 557 534 550 548

Australia 528 525 533 524 528 525
USA 504 495 493 483 499 491
New Zealand 529 522 537 523 518 528
Canada 534 528 533 532 529 519

Table 3. Percentages of students at various levels of reading literacy, PISA 2003

Mean % below % at % at % at % at % at
level 1 level 1 level 2 level 3 level 4 level 5

Finland 543 1 5 15 32 33 15
Korea 534 1 5 17 34 31 12
Canada 528 2 7 18 31 29 13
Australia 525 4 8 18 28 27 15
Liechtenstein 525 3 8 19 30 28 13
New Zealand 522 5 10 19 26 24 16
Japan 522 7 12 21 28 23 10
Ireland 515 3 8 21 32 26 9
Sweden 514 4 9 21 30 25 11
Netherlands 513 2 9 23 31 26 9
Hong Kong 510 3 9 20 35 27 6
Belgium 507 8 10 18 26 26 13
USA 495 7 13 23 28 21 9

Table 4. Percentages of students at various levels of mathematical literacy, PISA 2003

Mean % below % at % at % at % at % at % at
level 1 level 1 level 2 level 3 level 4 level 5 level 6

Hong Kong 550 4 7 14 20 25 20 11

Finland 544 2 5 16 28 26 17 7
Korea 542 3 7 17 24 25 17 8
Netherlands 538 3 8 18 23 23 18 7
Liechtenstein 536 5 8 17 22 23 18 7
Japan 534 5 9 16 22 24 16 8
Canada 532 2 8 18 26 25 15 6
Belgium 529 7 9 16 20 21 18 9
Switzerland 527 5 10 18 24 23 14 7
Macao 527 2 9 20 27 24 14 5
Australia 524 4 10 19 24 23 14 6
USA 483 10 16 24 24 17 8 2
936 Townsend

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 var-
ious socio-economic groups, although this varied from country to country. These meas-
ures 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 chap-
ters are looked at in their entirety, there are a series of key themes that might be con-
sidered 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
● 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)
 Reframing for the Future 937

● 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., Chap-
ter 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
938 Townsend

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 accommoda-
tions 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 com-
munities, 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 enter-
tainment 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
 Reframing for the Future 939

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 personali-
zed, perhaps biased and even perhaps wrong, everyone can contribute to the creation
and transmission of knowledge and this has changed the power and information rela-
tionships 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 class-
room 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 edu-
cation, 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 improve-
ments 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 knowl-
edge about the practice, but they will also have the benefit of finding out what the pit-
falls 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 edu-
cation 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 sup-
porters 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
940 Townsend

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 cou-
ple of context issues that seem now to be used in various parts of the world to disag-
gregate 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 popu-
lation of countries that are foreign born on the one hand and the socio-economic con-
ditions 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 interna-
tional 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 success-
ful 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
Table 5. PISA 2003 scores and socio-economic conditions

Reading scores Science scores Mathematics scores Population % foreign GDP Household income
(millions)3 born4 US$3 by share

Mean % below % above Mean % below % above Mean Adjusted Adjusted Top Bottom
400 600 400 600 for GDP1 for ESCS2 10%3 10%3

Korea 525 5.8 20.7 546 9.2 28.1 542 541 549 48.8 NA 22,600 25.0 2.9
Finland 521 5.0 24.4 545 5.7 29.2 544 508 516 5.2 2.9 31,000 21.6 4.2
Canada 514 8.4 21.0 527 12.0 21.0 532 510 502 33 18.8 33,900 23.8 2.8
New Zealand 508 13.1 23.6 529 13.5 23.7 523 528 515 4.0 19.5 25,300 NA NA
Australia 506 10.8 22.6 525 11.6 23.7 524 528 509 20.2 23.6 31,600 25.4 2.0
Netherlands 503 9.9 16.3 527 11.1 24.5 538 531 531 16.5 10.6 30,300 22.9 2.5
Ireland 501 9.7 12.5 506 13.1 15.8 503 500 508 4.0 10.4 41,100 27.3 2.0
Sweden 496 11.9 18.6 507 15.6 21.4 509 487 492 9.0 11.8 29,800 20.1 3.7
Hong Kong 494 10.6 12.4 538 8.2 27.8 550 NA NA 6.9 NA 34,000 NA NA
Macao 491 8.2 5.2 529 8.5 19.9 527 NA NA 0.5 NA 22,000 NA NA
Japan 487 17.5 16.3 550 9.7 33.4 534 526 506 127.4 1.5 31,600 21.7 4.8
Denmark 479 14.7 10.1 484 22.7 10.8 514 496 501 5.4 6.2 34,800 24.0 2.0
USA 479 17.5 15.0 494 19.3 14.7 483 451 463 300 12.1 41,600 30.5 1.8
France 476 16.0 13.4 511 16.6 22.5 511 502 508 60.9 5.6 29,600 25.1 2.8
Norway 475 16.6 16.0 485 21.3 12.9 495 459 454 4.6 7.0 42,800 21.8 4.1
Germany 471 20.7 16.0 506 18.8 19.9 503 498 484 82.4 8.9 30,100 25.1 3.6
Italy 455 21.8 9.6 490 21.2 14.5 466 483 473 58.1 3.4 28,100 26.6 2.1
Russian Fed 428 31.3 3.7 494 18.6 13.5 468 NA NA 142.9 7.8 11,000 38.7 1.7
Turkey 426 33.7 5.5 434 38.6 5.7 423 487 489 70.4 NA 8,400 30.7 2.3
Thailand 396 40.4 1.3 425 37.6 2.5 417 NA NA 64.6 NA 8,600 32.4 2.8
Mexico 389 49.0 1.2 410 48.7 1.4 385 444 461 107.5 NA 10,000 35.6 1.6
Brazil 384 47.1 2.1 393 56.2 2.1 356 NA NA 188 NA 6,300 31.3 0.7
Average 477 17.3 14.1 503 17.9 17.6 500 NA NA NA NA NA NA NA
1
Reframing for the Future

Gross Domestic Product per capita in US equivalent dollars.

2
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.
941

3
Source: CIA World Factbook website (https://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/index.html).
4
Source: Global Data Center (http://migrationinformation.org/).
942 Townsend

people. It may be better to reinterpret what “high quality” means than to maintain a
system that automatically discriminates against certain groups because of characteris-
tics 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 devel-
oped 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 develop-
ment 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
 Reframing for the Future 943

Table 6. NAEP scores in reading and mathematics, 2000 to 2005

Reading Mathematics

Grade 4 Grade 8 Grade 4 Grade 8

1998 2005 1998 2005 2000 2005 2000 2005

All students 213 217 261 260 224 237 272 278
Males 210 214 253 255 225 238 273 278
Females 215 220 268 266 223 236 271 277
White 223 228 268 269 233 246 283 288
Black 192 199 242 242 203 220 243 254
Hispanic 192 201 241 245 207 225 252 261
Free/reduced lunch 195 203 245 247 208 225 253 261

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 perform-
ance. 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 distribu-
tion 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
944 Townsend

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 coun-
tries. The top income tax rate in the USA is 35%, but this only cuts in after the indi-
vidual 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 equiv-
alent 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 gradu-
ates 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,
 Reframing for the Future 945

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 implement-
ing 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 dis-
tricts 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 consid-
ered 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
946 Townsend

● School Organization
● State/District Characteristics

The following specific characteristics are listed in order of their importance to student
learning:
(1) Classroom management
(2) Metacognitive processes
(3) Cognitive processes
(4) Home environment/parental support
(5) Student/teacher social interactions
(6) Social/behavioural attributes
(7) Motivational/affective attributes
(8) Peer group
(9) Quantity of instruction
(10) School culture
(11) Classroom climate
(12) Classroom instruction
(13) Curriculum design
(14) Academic interactions
(15) Classroom assessment
(16) Community influences
(17) Psychomotor skills
(18) Teacher/administrator decision making
(19) Parent involvement policy
(20) Classroom implementation and support
(21) Student demographics
(22) Out of class time
(23) Program demographics
(24) School demographics
(25) State level policies
(26) School policies
(27) 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 indi-
vidual 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.
 Reframing for the Future 947

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 socio-
economic backgrounds. However, what is learned is the distinguishing feature of suc-
cess 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 nineteenth-
century 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
948 Townsend

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 the-
ories 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 account-
able 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 cur-
riculum 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 “textbook-
driven” 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.
 Reframing for the Future 949

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 sus-
tained 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 cur-
riculum 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 curricu-
lum 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
950 Townsend

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 west-
ern 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 the-
ory 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, technolog-
ical 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 pre-
industrial age (where education was for the few who were rich and privileged), and the
 Reframing for the Future 951

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 edu-
cation, 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:
● 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 nar-
row, 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.
952 Townsend

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 differ-
ent 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 edu-
cation, 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, espe-
cially 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 educa-
tion 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 oth-
ers 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 out-
side 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
 Reframing for the Future 953

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 them-
selves, 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 pro-
grams such as the Networked Learning Communities program (which followed Edu-
cation 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, com-
munity effectiveness cannot be determined solely by test scores or the percentage of stu-
dents 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 com-
munities 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 com-
prehensive 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 “success-
ful 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 discus-
sions to make sure that the theories being constructed and the policies and practice
being developed from them are the best they can be.
954 Townsend

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 assess-
ment 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 defini-
tion 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 cur-
riculum 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 con-
tent 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
 Reframing for the Future 955

teacher do the same thing? The underlying rationale is that to improve student achieve-
ment 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 achieve-
ment 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 edu-
cational 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 improve-
ments 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 asso-
ciated financial penalties led many school systems to spend most of their time prepar-
ing 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 admini-
stering 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 stu-
dent) 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
956 Townsend

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 lead-
ership, 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 actu-
ally 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 vari-
ous 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 mean-
ingful 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 sec-
ondary 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 lev-
els – 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 com-
munity 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
 Reframing for the Future 957

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 “disaf-
fected” 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 some-
thing 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
958 Townsend

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 appro-
priate questions that support and strengthen them, even in situations that might ini-
tially 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, some-
times 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 perform-
ing 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
 Reframing for the Future 959

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 develop-
ment 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 interest-
ing 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 intel-
ligence, (Goleman, 1995), spiritual intelligence (Zohar & Marshall, 2000) and multi-
ple 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 AC
Knowing Understanding

Facts Concepts/
processes
FT CT
Memorizing 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 some-
thing 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 fur-
ther 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 can-
not 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,
 Reframing for the Future 961

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 mas-
sive 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 access-
ing it would have profound impact on the next 100 years of development. We have rec-
ognized 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 differ-
ence. 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, eco-
nomic 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
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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.
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Gardner, H., Kornhaber, M., & Wake, W. (1996). Intelligence: Multiple perspectives. Fort Worth, TX;
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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, coun-
tries 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 coor-
dinator 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 improve-
ment, 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.
964 About the Contributors

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 profes-
sional 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 pre-
sentations 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 edu-
cation 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 inter-
national 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).
 About the Contributors 965

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 proj-
ects 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 Com-
munities: 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 cur-
rently 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 suc-
cessful 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, sys-
temic 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 mathe-
matics and science at high school level for 10 years between 1975 and 1984. He then
966 About the Contributors

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. grad-
uate 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 mem-
ber 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.
 About the Contributors 967

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 relat-
ing 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
968 About the Contributors

several articles and book chapters on district reform, leadership, English learners and
family involvement.
İsmail 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, educa-
tional 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.
 About the Contributors 969

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 sys-
tems, 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 gov-
ernment, 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 inno-
vative approach to professional learning and pedagogical reform. She is a board mem-
ber 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 respon-
sible 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 lâéconomie de
lâéducation – 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.
970 About the Contributors

Phillip Moore is Associate Vice President (Curriculum and Quality Assurance) at The
Hong Kong Institute of Education. His areas of research interest are educational psy-
chology especially text processing (with visuals), motivational and strategic aspects of
human learning, strategy training for more effective learning, and learning and instruc-
tion 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 educa-
tion 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
 About the Contributors 971

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 educa-
tion 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, cur-
riculum and instruction, and comparative education. He has supervised over 90 doc-
toral 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 consul-
tancy 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
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
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,
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

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
Index 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

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
Index 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

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
Index 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

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
Index 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

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
Index 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

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,
Index 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,

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,
Index 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,

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
Index 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,

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,
Index 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

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
Index 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

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
Index 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. B.J. Biddle, T.L. Good, and I.L. Goodson: International Handbook of Teachers and
Teaching. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-3532-5
4. A.J. Bishop, Ken Clements, Christine Keitel, Jeremy Kilpatrick, and Collette Laborde:
International Handbook of Mathematics Education. 1997 ISBN 0-7923-3533-3
5. Andy Hargreaves, Ann Leiberman, Michael Fullan, and David Hopkins: International
Handbook of Educational Change. 1998 ISBN 0-7923-3534-1
6. David Aspin, Judith Chapman, Micheal Hatton, and Yukiko Sawano: International
Handbook of Lifelong Learning. 2001 ISBN 0-7923-6815-0
7. 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
8. Kenneth Leithwood and Philip Hallinger: Second International Handbook of Educational
Leadership and Administration. 2002 ISBN 1-4020-0690-X
9. Thomas Kellaghan and D.L. Stufflebeam: International Handbook of Educational
Evaluation. 2003 ISBN 1-4020-0849-X
10. 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
11. J.P. Keeves and Ryo Watanabe: International Handbook of Educational Research in the
Asia-Pacific Region. 2003 ISBN 1-4020-1007-9
12. 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
13. N. Bascia, A. Cumming, A. Datnow, K. Leithwood, D. Livingstone: International
Handbook of Educational Policy. 2005 ISBN 1-4020-3189-0
14. J. Weiss, J. Nolan, J. Hunsinger, P. Trifonas: International Handbook of Virtual Learning
Environments. 2006 ISBN 1-4020-3802-X
15. J. Cummins, C. Davison: International Handbook of English Language Teaching. 2007
ISBN 0-387-46300-3
16. L. Bresler: International Handbook of Research in Arts Education. 2007
ISBN 978-1-4020-2998-1
17. T. Townsend: International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement. 2007
ISBN 978-1-4020-4805-0
18. J.J.F. Forest and P.G. Altbach: International Handbook of Higher Education. 2006
ISBN 978-1-4020-4011-5

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