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:

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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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