Townsend Book Volume-I (1)

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Section 1

A REVIEW OF THE PROGRESS

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Introduction

In January 2007, in Slovenia, the International Congress for School Effectiveness andImprovement (ICSEI) celebrates its twentieth year of bringing people together. Confe-rences have been held in many parts of the world and each year, key educationalresearchers, practitioners and policy makers have been brought together to consider waysof making school effective for all students who enter them.

Murphy argued (1991, pp. 166168) that there are four factors which can be con-sidered as the legacy of school effectiveness. He suggests the most fundamental of thefour is that given appropriate conditions, all children can learn. The second productof the school effectiveness research stems from a rejection of the historical perspectivethat good schools and bad schools could be identified by the socio-economic status ofthe 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 theschool, rather than the outside-of-school factors. He further argued that school effec-tiveness researchers were the first to reject the philosophy that poor academicperformance and deviant behaviour have been defined as problems of individual childrenor their families (Cuban, 1989; Murphy, 1991). School effectiveness helped to eliminatethe practice of blaming the victim for the shortcomings of the school. Finally, theresearch 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 organisationwithin 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 canbe identified. As Smink pointed out:

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20 YEARS OF ICSEI: THE IMPACT OF SCHOOLEFFECTIVENESS AND SCHOOL IMPROVEMENTON SCHOOL REFORM

Tony Townsend

T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 326. 2007 Springer.


School effectiveness is concerned with results. Researchers try to describe certainvariables 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 thevariables that play a role in a school improvement project. Both approaches need theother to successfully modernize the system. (Smink, 1991, p. 3)

Substantial progress has been made from the early 1980s, when the five factor modelof 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 effec-tiveness of any school must be considered within the context in which that school oper-ates rather than simply on the various ingredients that help to make up the schoolsoperations.

A number of studies at that time suggested that the level of effectiveness of schoolsvaried on the basis of the social environment of the schools locality (Hallinger &Murphy, 1986), with the outcomes being measured (Mortimore et al., 1988), the stageof development the school has reached (Stringfield & Teddlie, 1991), the social classmix of the students (Blakey & Heath, 1992) or even the country in which the researchwas conducted (Scheerens & Creemers, 1989; Wildy & Dimmock, 1992). It had alsobeen shown that total school performance, in terms of its effectiveness, can vary overtime (Nuttall, 1992); that schools that are effective are not necessarily effective in allthings; some might be effective academically, but not in terms of social outcomes, orvice-versa (Mortimore et al., 1988); nor are they necessarily effective for all students,since different school effects can occur for children from different groups within thesame school (Nuttall, 1989).

Now school effectiveness and school improvement, in both research and practice,are so mainstream that the almost no longer need any explanation.

An International Perspective

Country reports have always been part of the development of ICSEI. At the firstCongress of 1988 they formed a major part of the offerings. As Creemers and Osinga(1995, p. 1) indicate: The major studies (Brookover et al., 1979; Rutter et al., 1979;Mortimore et al., 1988) were well known but almost nobody had a full picture of thestudies and the improvement projects going on in the field in all the countries partici-pating in this first meeting. A selection of the reports from this first meeting waspublished in Creemers et al. (1989).

The second meeting in Rotterdam in 1989 continued the tradition of having countryreports and the publication by Creemers et al. (1989) clearly demonstrated that the searchfor 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 meantthat it was not necessary to have country reports at ICSEI in every subsequent year. As itwas, there was much new research and activity to report on in all parts of the world thatneeded to take precedence in the formative years of ICSEI.

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Consequently, the next major attempt to collate a series of country reports was madefor the Leeuwarden conference in 1995 where nine countries from Europe, NorthAmerica, Asia, the Middle East and the Pacific region joined to become part of theICSEI reporting network. The major theme of this conference was to try and establishthe links between school effectiveness and school improvement. David Reynolds, JaapScheerens and Sam Stringfield were invited to comment on some of the developmentsthat 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 countryreports 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 ofReaching out to all learners ICSEI country reports were reactivated, but with thespecial brief of trying to increase both the number and the diversity of the countriesthat provided a report. With the specific intent of trying to encourage educators insome new countries to consider development that might fall within the purview ofschool effectiveness and improvement, whilst maintaining contact with countries thathad previously reported. The result was Third Millennium Schools: A World of Differ-ence in School Effectiveness and Improvement (Townsend et al., 1999) which con-tained a total of 20 country reports, with from countries not previously represented.New countries from Scandanavia, from the Pacific, from Asia, Africa and from SouthAmerica 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 wellimplemented, but we were able to chart the progress of countries where the use of theschool effectiveness research was comparatively new, countries that had to deal withissues such as making judgements about what effectiveness means when not everychild attends school and countries that were struggling to come to grips with theaftermath 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 schoolimprovement, a tradition that the current volume continues.

However, the school effectiveness research has not been universally accepted byeducational 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 InternationalCongress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) was invited by theAmerican Education Research Association to present a symposium on internationaldevelopments in school effectiveness and improvement research, which brought theproponents of school effectiveness research face to face with the critics.

On Wednesday April 26, 2000, the session entitled School effectiveness comes ofage: 21 years after Edmonds and Rutter, has school effectiveness had a positive or

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negative effect on school reform? was offered to participants at the New OrleansAERA conference. Four papers were offered and a lively debate ensued. The fourpapers made a very neat package.

Two of the papers, Education reform and reconstruction as a challenge to researchgenres: 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 newresearch agenda Thrupp (2001) and Countering the critics: Responses to recent criti-cisms of school effectiveness research (Teddlie & Reynolds, 2000) made a much morespecific analysis of the issues. It is almost as if with the first set of papers we see thewhole forest and with the second set, we see the individual trees. Having both provideda perspective not often available to researchers. So popular was the session and so wellreceived were the papers, that it was decided to publish them in the Journal of SchoolEffectiveness and School Improvement (Vol. 12, No. 1, March 2001) as a means ofexpanding the debate.

The Current Volume

The above serves as a backdrop to the current handbook, which merges the traditionsthat have developed with the organization itself. First it looks at the development of thelinked 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 opportunityfor the inclusion of country and regional reports as a mechanism to better understandwhat is happening in various parts of the world. Seven regions of the world areincluded; North America and Latin America, Europe, Asia, Australasia, Africa and theMiddle East. Never before has such a comprehensive collection of papers from variousregions of the world been collected together. Third, it provides a link between schooleffectiveness and improvement and some of the other global issues for education in themodern world; the issues of resourcing, accountability and policy development andworking with diverse populations. Fourth, it looks at the people issues, with both afocus on leadership and teacher development. Finally, it provides some specific casestudies where school improvement practices using school effectiveness theories havebeen 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 ofthe progress in School Effectiveness and School Improvement (SESI) research, since itwas first mentioned in the 1970s. To do this we have provided an overview of the factorsthat have affected SESI research and responses to those factors, a chapter that considersthe connectedness between school effectiveness and teacher effectiveness research, achapter that provides an example of the types of research that uses the principles andtheories of school effectiveness and improvement study and two chapters that seek to

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identify the limitations of SESI research and provide some possible ways forward thatmight encourage the authors of those chapters to accept school effectiveness research inthe future.

In Chapter 2, Hedley Beare, whose thoughts and practice have been so influential oneducation in Australia and indeed have helped to shape ICSEI itself, provides amasterful review of where ICSEI and school education finds itself today. He providesan overview of the conditions after the World War II and subsequently that have createdthe pathway upon which ICSEI has found itself and documents the beginnings andprogress of ICSEI through this turbulent period of human history. He weaves togetherthe issues that are facing the world at large and the implications that these bring forthose in education and he leaves us with the critical challenge that all educators mustface. If the world (and education) changes as much in the next 20 years as it has in thepast 20 years, what must we do today that will put us at the forefront of these changesin 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 ignoreand hopefully, some ways to move forward will become apparent in the rest of chaptersin this handbook.

In Chapter 3, Leonidas Kyriakides investigates the differentiated nature of bothschool effectiveness and teacher effectiveness. He discusses the issues surrounding theassumptions that an effective school is effective all the time and for all the students anddemonstrates that the analysis much be much more fine-grained than this. He arguesthat is it primarily the teachers adaptive behavior that enables students with differentneeds to be accommodated that leads to effective classrooms and eventually effectiveschools, but because of this the unit of investigation may need to shift from the schoolto the department or even the classroom. He also argues that schools are much moreimportant to students that are disadvantaged than to those that are not, which suggeststhat a differentiated approach needs to be adopted to really understand how effectiveteachers might be for different groups of students. He also argues for more longitudi-nal studies as means of overcoming some of the current methodological problemsassociated with the case study approach.

In Chapter 4, John MacBeath provides us with an overview of a single study theImproving School Effectiveness Project (ISEP) project in Scotland. This chapter is animportant contribution because it not only provides the reader with an overview of howa school effectiveness project might be developed, managed and evaluated, but it isalso important because of some of the findings of the project itself and the reflectionsof the author. The chapter clearly shows how nothing in schools can be taken forgranted. What works in one place (e.g., the critical friend) fails to work somewhereelse. 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 haschanged 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 beingmeasured, with more and more surveillance, in the ways they have always beenmeasured. It clearly shows that the disconnect between schools and the rest of theworld cannot continue if success in life is the goal.

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In Chapter 5, Javier Murillo provides us with an overview of the Latin Americanresearch, which paralleled that of the research in other parts of the world, but is largelyunknown because of it mostly being written in Spanish. He also argues however, thatpart of the reason the Latin American research is largely unknown comes from theassumption 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 theresearch that has been conducted in the past (largely production function based,because of the various countries concerns about results) and that which is currentlybeing conducted, he provides us with an argument why we need to learn more aboutresearch from various country contexts if we are to develop a truly global approach toeffectiveness.

Chapter 6 sees our first attempt to provide the critics of the SESI research with anopportunity to review the field, express their concerns and to identify possible waysforward. Ira Bogotch, Luis Mirn, and Gert Biesta welcome the progress that ICSEIhas made over the past thirsty years but remain concerned on three major fronts. Thefirst they characterize as effective for what? where they argue that the inputs andoutputs model used by many school effectiveness researchers does not consider thecritical nature of what happens between inputs and outputs, what has come to beknown 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 thesame as what should be measured and suggest that SESI research should also considerthe question of the purpose of education as well as simply the technological consider-ation brought about by the progress from input to output. Their second major criticismis identified as effective for whom? which suggests that SESI researchers havebecome researchers in-demand and in doing so have ignored an opportunity to beresearch activists, where research is a means to changing what is rather than simplylooking at what is.

In Chapter 7, Martin Thrupp, Ruth Lupton and Ceri Brown, argue that, although theSESI research has made more concessions related to school and student context, theunderlying desire for generalizabilty of findings leads to a superficiality that overlookswhat some schools, and people in them, are facing. They propose a contexualizationagenda as a possible future development for SESI research and provide an overview ofa study underway in Hampshire, England, as a means for demonstrating the typesof 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 uswith an overview of the research and practice of school effectiveness and schoolimprovement in five regions spanning the world; the Americas, Europe, Asia andthe Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. It is appropriate to start this tour in theUnited States as much of the work involved in the school effectiveness and schoolimprovement areas emerged from studies that occurred in the United States in the60s and 70s.

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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 schooleffectiveness research, which focuses on educational processes (e.g., Brookover et al.,1979; Edmonds, 1979; Weber, 1971) and the first of the group, and school effectsresearch, which focuses on educational products (e.g., Coleman et al., 1966; Jenckset al., 1972). They also provide us with an analysis of the overlapping efforts of schooleffectiveness researchers who peaked in terms of output and interest between the 1980sand the mid 1990s and the school improvement researchers which started in the early1990s and continue to work through what has now become known as ComprehensiveSchool Reform. The authors outline some of the key areas where the field is stilluntouched, or at least underresearched, and identify a number of possible future areas ofstudy that suggest that there is still much work to be done. They end with a plea that weuse strong research to guide our improvement efforts, something that seems not to behappening as much as it should at the moment.

In Chapter 9, Larry Sackney explains the difference between the American and theCanadian history of school effectiveness and improvement, with the major differencebeing that school education is the responsibility of the provinces (as in the USA) butwith no federal system of education there is no national government that intervenes inwhat might happen locally. This has enabled provincial governments to adopt theirown version of restructuring without something like No Child Left Behind directingthe traffic. As it runs out most provinces have adopted a similar strategy and series ofprograms 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 strategiesfocus on what happens in classrooms (which is where learning happens), then littleimprovement will occur.

In Chapter 10, Beatrice Avalos provides us with an opportunity to see just howdifferent are the circumstances facing less developed regions of the world, whereGross Domestic Product is just a fraction of that in the developed world and whereissues of getting every child into school in the first place, in a climate of safety andsupport, is much higher priority than the issues of measuring how well students dowhen 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 LatinAmerican 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 studentimprovement. 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 wholecommunities becomes apparent.

We then move across the Atlantic to Europe, where issues of school effectivenessand school improvement emerged almost simultaneously with those in the UnitedStates.

In Chapter 11, Louise Stoll and Pam Sammons provide an overview of the separatehistory of school effectiveness and school improvement research in the UnitedKingdom from the first studies of Reynolds (1976) and Rutter and colleagues (1979)through the formative years of Mortimore and colleagues (1988) and the impact of the

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conservative governments of Thatcher and Major to a time where the quantitative andmeasurement based approaches associated with effectiveness met and embraced thequalitative and process based approaches of improvement. They provide us with anoverview of the key studies and an insight into the need for policy-makers, researchersand practitioners to work together if real change is to be achieved. They identify someof the challenges and critiques faced by researchers in the field but are confidentthat the processes and structures developed during this era will continue to guideeducational research into the next significant era of change and development.

In Chapter 12, Bert Creemers outlines the development in the rest of Europe, whereschool effectiveness research started a little later than in the United Sates and theUnited Kingdom but has been at the forefront of much research focused on developingtheoretical models for guiding effectiveness studies. He identifies the continuingtension between school effectiveness and school improvement in Europe where neitheris 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 effectivenessand improvement that the next major developments may occur.

The Asian-Pacific region contains some of the oldest societies known to man, butresearch in school effectiveness and improvement is largely unknown by the rest ofthe world. The work of those systems that are well known (such as Australia, HongKong and Singapore) reflects only a small part of the research that has emergedwithin the last decade. This new understanding of what has been happening in otherparts 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 thedevelopments occurring in Asia over the past decade and a half. They identify whatthey call three waves of development, starting with the search for effective schools inthe early 1990s followed by a search for school quality over the past few years, with thecurrently breaking wave of searching for what will make schools effective in thisrapidly changing, increasingly diverse and technologically oriented world in the future.They identify nine trends for educators to consider and frame these within four levelsof interest, the macro level, which considers national issues, the meso level, wheresystem issues are discussed, the site level where individual schools need to addressissues and the operational level where the actual processes of teaching and learningoccur. Their analysis of the trends identifies a series of questions and issues thatdecision-makers at all levels will need to address if we are successful in our search forthe effective school of the future.

In Chapter 14, Wendy Hui-Ling Pan argues that many of the change processes atwork in western societies simply do not fit into the Asian culture and that some ofthem, such as school self-management are much harder to implement becauseof the cultural context that exists. The current international concerns of globaliza-tion and localization are issues currently being considered in Taiwan. She outlinesthe reform movement accepted by the Taiwan government over the past 20 yearsand highlights the role of school based curriculum development, where 20% of thecurriculum is determined locally. She identifies some of the issues and problemsassociated with having local empowerment of teachers and communities and

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highlights some possible strategies that might be used to improve the effectivenessof schools within this context.

In Chapter 15, Daming Feng looks at the recent history of educational change inmainland China and in doing so further highlights the differences between a westernapproach and that employed by those with different cultural roots, and the difficultiesimplicit in just assuming a western approach can be implemented universally. Heidentifies the governments move over the past decade from prioritizing key schools tothe detriment of ordinary and disadvantaged schools to one where the disadvantagedschools are receiving the attention they deserve. However, his comment that a schoolleaders priority, according to the Confucian perspective of leadership, is not supervi-sion but tapping the natural moral source from his or her subordinates and bringingevery positive factor into being which is based on the base value of man as beingessentially good (as opposed to the Christian concept of original sin) leads to a con-flict of leadership when self-management, teacher involvement and empowerment areseen as the way forward. He identifies a series of things to consider if we are to addresschange in disadvantaged schools, but recognizes the inherent difficulties in trying todo this on a huge scale.

In Chapter 16, Brian Caldwell outlines the history of the development of schooleffectiveness 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 2established Reputation through the identification of good practice based on the earlyresearch; Stage 3 considered Modeling which refined practice using better data andanalyses; Stage 4 developed Dependability where clarity and confidence of what canand should be done at the school level were developed; and Stage 5, which has not yetbeen fully realized is Alignment: where education authorities can move from whatworks in individual schools to whole system effectiveness. He argues for a new enter-prise logic of schools that go deeper than structure and function and identifies sixcharacteristics of what should be considered if this is to be instigated. He furtherargues that alignment both between policies and practices within school systems andof resources, which now need to include intellectual capital, social capital as well asfinancial capital should be directed at securing high levels of achievement by allstudents in all settings.

In Chapter 17, Howard Fancy provides an overview of the radical changes that theNew Zealand implemented in the late 1980s and early 1990s where all the administra-tive layers of education that had previously existed were removed and individualschools negotiated directly with government over education provision and accounta-bility. He discusses the changes in governance and curriculum that were designed tokeep New Zealand at the forefront of educational achievement internationally andwere also tailored to ensure that the degree of variance in the performance of studentsfrom different classes of society was minimized. This development is significant inthat the government has used evidence based research and development and that theycame to the viewpoint that if changes was to occur, it would happen through strength-ening the ability and attitudes of teachers at the classroom level and the interaction ofhome and school at the local level. This is different to many other countries where the

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focus has been on the restructuring of schools, districts or instead have put a focus onschool leaders as the locus of change.

In Chapter 18, Brahm Fleisch introduces us to issues in Africa where there has beenlittle history of school effectiveness and improvement research. He argues that there arethree main reasons for this. First, there are few researchers at the university level with aninterest and a background in this area, and it has been university researchers that haveprovided the impetus in other parts of the world. Second, in a continent where issues ofaccess and equity have taken priority after long histories of neglect in these areas, thenissues of effectiveness of provision takes a back seat to just getting people into school inthe first place. As Mingat points out in a later chapter, countries with limited resourcesneed to determine if they are to focus on access for large numbers of the population, orimproving the quality for those advantaged few that have traditionally had access. To tryand do both at once is a very difficult task. Finally, he argues that there has been someresistance to the narrowness of the school effectiveness research. He suggests forsome 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 andimprovement as many projects are driven by academics from countries supporting edu-cation development. The current state of the school effectiveness research is thus at avery early stage of development and there still needs to be identified an independentunderstanding of African work in the field.

In Chapter 19, Ami Volansky outlines the progress and regress of school reform inIsrael, from early efforts of school autonomy in the 1970s and 1980s, through aschool based management model in the 1990s to the current period where the impactof government concerns about raising achievement quickly has left many schoolsin an educational limbo, where the requirements of new task forces are not beingimplemented and the progress of the years under school based management has beenstalled because of a lack of political support. This chapter clearly demonstratesthat substantial and rapid changes in policy and the reform agenda may lead to nomovement at all.

In Chapter 20, Ismail Guven provides us with another look at a country that hasstruggled to bring about universal education to its whole population. He identifies someof 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 tryingto bring about local reform with a centralized system. He identifies a number ofprograms that the government has implemented, mostly with educational loans byinternational agencies, to increase enrolments, to change curriculum to address therapidly changing economic environment, to improve the system of educational provi-sion and to increase the education and effectiveness of teachers. What we see is thedifficulty of trying to do all of this at once in a short period of time and what we alsostart to understand is the necessary role and obligation of countries that are more welloff to be involved in this development.

In Chapter 21, Azam Azimi provides an overview of the education system in theIslamic 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

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is redefining itself in terms of ensuring that all students are able to attend school, andwhat that means when you have substantial variations in the level of financial supportable to be provided by government and parents. Here we see goals and a strong linkedcurriculum being identified at the national level and the establishment of studentorganizations as a mechanism for maintaining focus on the learning and valuesystems that the country requires. We also see the influence of Islam as a mechanismfor guiding the social and value aspects of education at a national and local level. Theauthor of this chapter identifies that issues of school effectiveness are not as high onthe national agenda as they are in some other countries, but leaves us with thequestion 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 schoolsystems, with perhaps the most important of these being the issue of the connection offunding to achievement, the connection of inputs to outputs. There has been muchdebate 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 nofurther developments without additional resourcing, but there has been a generalresponse by governments around the world that there is no evidence to suggest thatadditional funding will make any difference.

In Chapter 22, Rosalind Levacic provides the reader with a comprehensive overviewof the way in which economists make sense of the education production functionwhere the level of outputs are assessed based on the level of inputs at the school andsystem level. She identifies that for economists, the process part of the equation, thespecifics of what actually happens on a day to day basis in schools, remains a blackbox for the most part. She provides an overview of studies in the UK, Europe and theOECD countries that focus on the issue of resources and outputs and concludes that fortargeted subjects and targeted groups, additional resources can make a difference, butoverall, the differences are small. Whether the additional funds required to make theseimprovements 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 ofthe changing nature of funding and policy making in Canada, where the early fundingmodel of a substantial local contribution to education funding was replaced by most ofthe 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 pointwhere controlling budget became more important to government than raising quality,although both were expected simultaneously. They identify the impact of choice andstructural change on Canadian school communities, but also express hope that sincethe last few years have seen more of a focus on improvement strategies and teacherdevelopment, that there will be a continuation of Canadas position near the top of theinternational league tables when it comes to student achievement.

In Chapter 24, Alain Mingat provides an excellent coverage of the complexities andconcerns related to education funding in developing regions. Three sources of funding


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are identified, government, private and donor, but the disbursement of this funding ismore complex than one might first consider and the chapter outlines how muchdisparity there is between countries in sub-Saharan Africa, in just this first piece of thepuzzle. Decisions about coverage (how many people will be served), equity, where thefunding will be spent and quality, or how much money and how it is spent are all linkedand the issue of student outcomes and raising the capacity of the people in the countryis also linked to how funding is utilized in ways that will support learning. None ofthese 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 bemore interested in quick fixes and immediate funds, some of the decisions madeare not leading to medium or longer term solutions. Mingat identifies an importantrole for funding agencies in ensuring that funds are targeted in ways that will make adifference.

In Chapter 25, Jim Spinks outlines an argument and a model for funding that shouldbe 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 toboth excellence and equity in achievement, where the vast majority of students whoenter the system emerge with substantial value added to their learning. He identifiesa series of principles that need to be considered in the development of such a fundingmodel and provides a specific example of how this might work in practice. The sum ofall individual student funding needs becomes the funding required by the school andhe argues for research to look at how schools that are successful at adding value totheir students utilize their funds as a means for developing a system wide process forthe 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 theschool 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 manymodels of accountability and many ways of collecting, analyzing and reporting data onstudent achievement, but one thing is for sure, the accountability focus is somethingthat is international and something that will not go away in the future. However, theaccountability issue has also raised issues of diversity, with many arguments related tolinking accountability to diversity in a way that creates a fair and equitable method ofmeasuring 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 problemof under-performance.

In Chapter 26, David Reynolds, who has now entered his fourth decade of researchinto issues of school effectiveness, provides us with an analysis of the strength andweaknesses associated with school effectiveness research. He argues that as a compar-atively new discipline, the early research, with comparatively unsophisticated goals andoutcomes was seized upon by politicians and education systems that, in turn, deve-loped relatively unsophisticated policy responses to the issues facing them. He further

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argues that the more recent work where school effectiveness and school improvementresearch 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 negativeresponse to what the politicians did last time. He responds to the concerns of many ofthe critics of school effectiveness by outlining an approach that takes into account thecontextual differences of schools, departments and classrooms and provides anoverview of some policies and processes that, if implemented, might make a differenceat these levels.

In Chapter 27, Susan Kochan provides an historical and philosophical considerationof accountability in the United States. She discusses how the impact of the ColemanReport in 1996 led to two different but linked research activities, one being the schooleffectiveness research, where mixed methods approaches helped to identify not onlyoutcomes but some of the factors that led to those outcomes, and the school indicatorresearch, where large scale quantitative approaches provided an overview of wholeschools or whole systems, but lacked the more fine grained analysis that would enablea better understanding of the data collected. Kochan provides us with an understand-ing of how the school effectiveness research became less popular, perhaps because ithad achieved what it set out to do, and this allowed the school indicator research to leadto the school accountability movement characterized by such terms as No Child LeftBehind and Adequate yearly Progress. She suggests that while only the large scale datacollection exists then we may make judgments about individual schools that arenot supportive of student learning. She suggests that a return to mixed methods appro-aches of the school effectiveness studies may provide as with a better understanding ofthe processes within the school that might make a difference to all students in thelonger term.

In Chapter 28, Emanuela di Gropello provides an analysis of the various models ofdecentralization that have occurred in Latin American Countries as a means forincreasing performance and accountability. She identifies a series of relationships thatare established in various ways which creates three basic models of change. The firstrelationship is called the compact which can be defined as the relationship connect-ing policymakers (governments) to organizational providers (systems); the second iscalled voice which connects citizens and politicians; the third is client powerconnecting clients to the frontline service providers (schools), and the fourth ismanagement which connects organizational providers and frontline professionals(principals, teachers). Using her analysis di Gropello identifies series of lessons forthose seeking to decentralize education systems in ways that are both effective andefficient and a series of challenges for those who are trying to do so at various levelsof the education enterprise. She identifies the importance of giving genuine voice andpower to local communities but with continued emphases on the other relationships ifpositive change is to occur.

In Chapter 29, Nick Taylor provides an overview of the strategies used by the SouthAfrican government since Aparthied to try and overcome the lack of skills and highlevels of social inequity in the country. He reports on a series of projects that firstfocused 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.


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He identifies a major reason for there only being moderate improvements as being theinability of the middle level management, such as provinces and districts to performthe necessary pressure and support mechanisms required for large scale improvement.He concludes that sooner, rather than later, the majority of schools, in the poorestperforming category, will need to be once again targeted if the country is to make itsnext 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 alllevels. He argues for a systems theory approach where all levels of the organizationare involved in learning, in leadership and in professional conversations as a meansfor focus everyones attention on students and their achievement. He provides anoverview of the principles for change utilized as a basis for improvement, strategiesthat can be used at different levels of the system and mechanisms for measuring notonly student achievement, but organizational health. This chapter is be a must readfor any leader that heads an organization that focuses on whole system change andimprovement.

In Chapter 31, Sue Lasky, Amanda Datnow, Sam Stringfield and Kirsten Sundellconsider some of the structural and relationship issues that affect education reform,especially in diverse communities. They argue that educational reform involves formalstructures, such as district offices, state policies, but also involves formal and informallinkages 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 foreach of Structural linkages (linkages from state and federal policy domains that affecteducation), 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), Ideologicallinkages (conceptual bridges that make it possible to change an individuals attitude)and Temporal linkages (continuity over time). They argue there is a complexity broughtabout by these linkages that demand additional research in these areas if school reformin 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 impactof the school leader (or school leaders) on the level of effectiveness and improvement ishigh 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 waysof 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 andimprovement 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 modelsof leadership, transactional, transformational, integral, instructional and distributed,but argue that the pressures of globalization and the expectations of systems have

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indicated the need for a much more comprehensive leadership approach, where themanagement and people development components of leadership combine throughhigh levels of communication to create communities of learners, held together byshared identity and commonly held goals and values. In this way the current deficitapproach which seems to pervade many education systems can be replaced by anapproach that allows democratic principles to be upheld and used.

In Chapter 33, Robert Marzano outlines a blueprint for school leaders to use to bringabout increased levels of student achievement. The principal, who, to Marzano is themost 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 ourconsideration. The second component of the process is to manage the change andMarzano identifies both first- and second-order change as issues to be considered.First-order change, which may be considered straight forward and following alreadyidentified 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 anddifficult to manage. He argues that perhaps much of the reason why many of theeducational reforms that provided much promise to improving student achievementhave not worked, is that the second-order changes required to embed these reforms inpractice 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 seriesof emotions at play within schools, including teachers individual and collectiveefficacy, their job satisfaction, organizational commitment, morale and engagement aswell 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 broadersociety, that impact on the emotions of teachers at any given time and he categorizes aseries of principal practices that influence teacher emotions. These are aimed at direc-tion-setting, developing people, redesigning the organization, and managing theinstructional program and contain a series of sub-categories that can identify specificprincipal practices that support the development of positive teacher emotions. He alsoreports on two leadership traits that cant be characterized, that of being friendly on theone hand and acting as a buffer between the impacts occurring outside of the schooland the teachers on the other. He argues that unless we consider the emotionalconcerns 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 Leadershipfor Organizational Learning and Student Outcomes where they researched three aspectsof high school functioning in the context of school reform: leadership, the school resultsof Organizational Learning, and student outcomes. They argue that leadership charac-teristics of a school are important factors in promoting systems and structures thatenable the school to operate as a learning organization. They argue Learning is trans-formational in nature and can be defined by six dimensions: Vision and Goals;Culture; Structure; Intellectual Stimulation; Individual Support; and PerformanceExpectations. They identify and consider four dimensions that characterise high


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schools as learning organizations: Trusting and Collaborative Climate; Taking Initia-tives and Risks; Shared and Monitored Mission; and, Professional Development andargue 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 inturn influence retention and academic achievement. In this way both distributedleadership and organizational leadership impacts specifically on student learningoutcomes.

In Chapter 36, Allan Walker, Philip Hallinger and Haiyan Qian provide an overviewof leadership development in East Asia, with a particular focus on Singapore, MainlandChina and Hong Kong. They discuss the importance, context and progress of leadershipdevelopment in the region and argue that leaders make a difference in terms of bothschool effectiveness and school improvement, but that their influence is often playedout through indirect effects. They argue that leadership is socially constructed withinthe particular context in which they work, including education reforms which impactthe 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 anddevelopment across the region to ensure that leadership development structures notonly account for the knowledge required for leading school improvement, but also howit 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 impactof teachers on student learning is critical and thus any attempt to improve studentlearning must focus attention on what happens in the classroom. It has been arguedthat classroom management, the curriculum and studentteacher relations are the threemost critical aspects of variation in student performance, outside of family and socialbackground, so if we are to change what happens to students, it will ultimately bethrough what teachers do in their classrooms. We now turn to the issues of improvingteachers and classrooms as the mechanism for improving student outcomes.

In Chapter 37, Joseph Murphy considers the impact and constraints associated withteacher leadership, where new accountability requirements has led to the need for amore distributed model of leadership. He suggests that two key domains, organiza-tional structure and organizational and professional culture, hinder the inculcation ofteacher leadership. These factors lead to the acceptance of a series of understandingsabout how the school should operate and these are described as a series of norms, on theone hand about teaching and learning, which include legitimacy, separation of teachingand administration, and managerial prerogative which can associated with teachersbeing followers, not leaders, and as such should be compliant to the wishes of the schoolleader. A second set of norms relate to the the nature of work of teaching, and includeautonomy, 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

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nor administrators really want to have teachers as leaders and even where they do, thesupport structures and incentives are not sufficient to enable this to occur withoutextra 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 andexpectations for the activity, providing support structures, training, and resources,(most importantly, time) as well as offering incentives and recognition, and ensuringrole clarity.

In Chapter 38, Chris Day and Ruth Leitch discuss the role and importance ofContinuous Professional Development (CPD) in strategies designed to improve schooleffectiveness. They argue that there are competing discourses of professionalismwhich lead to different understandings of the purposes and practices of CPD in termsof whether teachers are autonomous professionals or agents of some systemic change.In this sense who defines effectiveness dictates not only the kinds of CPD developedbut also which kinds of CPD will be resourced and assessed. They argue that thereare different interpretations of effectiveness because CPD serves three interrelatedpurposes; the development of the system, the development of the individual and,ultimately, it is hoped, the student, and so assessing the impact of CPD is not always asimple matter, and this might support why there is little research done in this area.They describe Guskeys (2000) five level model, which considers the differences inimpact of CPD from measuring participant response (at the lowest level) through tostudent outcomes (at the highest level). They indicate that across Europe, whilst thereis agreement on the need to improve the quality of education, there exists a wide rangeof diverse and sometimes contradictory agendas running, with regard to the purposesand requirements of CPD, leading to an absence of national or trans-national strategieswith common purposes, processes or standards.

In Chapter 39, Eugene Schaffer, Roberta Devlin-Scherer and Sam Stringfieldprovide an examination of teacher effects within schools in the USA. They start withthe major focus of recent reform, namely, the increasing demands for measurableeffects in student achievement then look at the school effects research focusing onthose that consider teacher behavior within school effects research. A number ofschool change projects that focus on teaching and teacher involvement in schoolimprovement and some general trends in teacher effects/development are discussed,and they give consideration to the types of training that might occur at the preservicelevel and the effective induction of new teachers into the profession, followed by ongo-ing professional development. They conclude that teacher involvement is essential tosuccessful reform efforts, and that support of teacher development is the pathwayto achieving desired changes and provide a series of practical suggestions for teacherinvolvement in school improvement and some indications of future possible researchin 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 experiencedrapid economic growth and occasional instability in the last 20 years when they wereenticed to compete in the world market Given this, large-scale reforms to both theeducation system and teacher education followed. Mainland China, Hong Kong,Japan, Korea, Malaysia, and India provide case studies of the efforts to transform the


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education system quickly, in order to prepare the country to compete in the globalknowledge economy as well as the need to utilize education as a means of solvingsocial issues, such as equality, cultural identity, and the impact of globalization. Twotrends are outlined, decentralizing decision-making power to schools and the shiftfrom a bureaucratic to a market-driven accountability system. They identify a series ofdirections for reform in the Asia-Pacific region, related to questions of standards andcompetence in teaching and learning, issues of accountability, and cost-effectiveness,how to promote long-term development and sustainability of the teacher educationsystem, including attracting, developing and retaining competent teachers, and how toimprove school effectiveness. They report on two broad strategies, the consolidation ofteacher education and the consolidation of knowledge and competence within thesystem, designed to upgrade teacher qualifications, provide an incentive structure toattract teachers, and the development of the teacher as a reflective practitioner throughbuilding a professional learning community.

In Chapter 41, Ken Rowe provides a strong argument that much of the previousresearch into school effectiveness has been looking for change in the wrong place. Hesuggests 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 ofcomplex 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 achievementswith little attention being paid to other valued outcomes of schooling. He argues thatmore recent research, focused on quality teaching indicates the proportion of variationin students achievement progress due to differences in background is considerablyless important than that associated with class/teacher membership and that it is not somuch 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 forlearning rather than at influencing teaching and learning behaviors and that there is afuture need for a reframing of the school effectiveness research agenda to one thatfocuses on quality teaching and learning if we are to improved student outcomes.

In Chapter 42, Janet Chrispeels and Carrie Andrews with Margarita Gonzalez arguethat teachers work with their assigned students, but are isolated from one another andhave limited opportunities for learning with and from colleagues. They discuss howthe use of grade level teams of teachers might improve student achievement. Theyconsider data collected from a case study in California and identify the major issuesthat 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 aclear agenda as necessary conditions for team learning. They found that when teamswere discussing student work, creating objects, or observing each other teach, theprinciples of high-quality professional development were being enacted and teacherlearning was taking place. Key issues were the opportunity to reflect on their practiceand 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 intomeaningful work by grade, department, or interdisciplinary teams as well as by

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individual teachers and the need for both the district and the school principal to findthe time required for team discussion (including providing substitutes to enable thiswhere necessary), training for teacher leaders, and communicating its instructionalgoals to enable teachers to work effectively as grade level or department teams.

In Chapter 43, Kerry Kennedy argues that Asia is characterized more by diversitythan uniformity, in political structures, culturally, economically and with differentstages of development. A common feature of all these countries is recent education andcurriculum reform, which is shaped by both economic and social agendas. Highdevelopment 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 valuescontexts. 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 providingother 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 theliberalization of curriculum. The state has co-opted progressivist principles to sup-port an economic instrumentalism as the basis of the school curriculum, wherecurriculum and instructional reform is driven by an economic need to provide workersfor the new economy. He argues that even in the well developed countries policies fora liberalized curriculum are easier to devise to put into practice. When there are manyreforms occurring at the same time, implementation faces significant hurdles. He sug-gests that policy makers need to think carefully about the sequencing and pacing ofcurriculum and instructional reform and consider their relationship with otherreforms, community values and community needs to be involved in the activity ofchange, 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 someattention 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 weconsider some examples of school change that have used the principles of schooleffectiveness as a means of improving the lives of students. First we consider themacro-level with cross-country studies, from Europe, from Asia and from LatinAmerica, 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 somespecific examples where these changes have made a difference.

In Chapter 44, Bert Creemers, Louise Stoll, Gerry Reezigt and the ESI team reporton the Effective Schools Improvement project where they develop a comprehensiveframework 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 foreffective school improvement or as a ready-made toolbox for the implementation ofimprovement in schools. The framework was developed by investigating investigate


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the relationship between effectiveness and improvement in eight European countrieswith strongly varying educational histories and policies. The purpose was to bringtogether ideas from different theories, build on findings from school improvementstudies and integrate them in a coherent way. The research identified three factorsrelating to context pressure to improve, resources and alignment of the educationalgoals with those set by the authority involved. It also established that there needed tobe active intervention at the school level, as individual teacher initiatives were notenough if there was to be a sustained and lasting impact on the school as an organiza-tion. To do this, schools needed for foster an improvement culture, consider the fivestages of the improvement processes as a part of everyday life and focus on improve-ment outcomes, either stated in terms of student outcomes (the effectiveness criteria)or change outcomes which ultimately influence student outcomes (the improvementcriteria). They argue that while effective improvement requires school level processes,the framework does not dictate what those processes might be for any individualschool and while the importance of teachers is acknowledged, individual teachers arenot 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-OnLeung, Peter Wen-jing Shan, Phillip Moore, and Kerry Kennedy report on a study thatseeks to investigate the nature of self-directed learning in secondary students in HongKong, 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 amodel with three components, the prior cognitive, motivational, and volitional condi-tions of the learner, the learning actions; and the outcomes of the learning and fourlinking processes, planning, monitoring, and feedback leading to first- and second-order learning. They found that on average, secondary students were motivated, hadadaptive attributions for their academic outcomes, were able to set learning goals, andself-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 theopportunity for educators to consider how to establish the conditions that will lead toself-directed learning in their students.

In Chapter 46, Claudia Jacinto and Ada Freytes illustrate and discuss how policies onstudent retention and learning outcomes in Argentina, Uruguay and Chile are shaped byhow schools re-create or redefine the external proposals as the participants (schoolauthorities, administrators, supervisors, parents and students) re-creating the policythrough their beliefs, values and strategies. They discuss three possible strategies usedby schools: appropriation, when proposals are adapted to the schools culture and cir-cumstances and are connected to other school activities; resistance, where contradic-tions between the change proposals and the ideas and behavior of the teachers andschool heads and where school actors are do not commit themselves to their imple-mentation, often incorporating the new elements into their discourse but rarely intotheir practice; and passivity, where schools receive projects uncritically, where thereappears little capacity to learn from experience, where there is lax coordinationbetween principal and teachers and where appear to depend on individual teachersinitiatives rather than on the institution as a whole. They suggest social harmony buildsagreements between the young peoples behavior and those of the school culture.

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Schools were slowly incorporating principles and practices that moved away from apunishment-based system of regulations and towards a vision of school order thatis built collectively. They argue that it is a challenge for teacher education and professional development to strengthen capabilities to promote harmonious schoolenvironments and improve learning outcomes, especially for the poor.

In Chapter 47, David Bamford provides a case study of a review process developedand modified by the Latin American Heads Conference as a means to support schoolself-evaluation and improvement. He describes the review process that occurred in theBritish Schools of Montevideo, Uruguay, together with the impact that it had on theschools and the school staff and governors and the subsequent changes to the reviewprocess brought about by the review activity. He articulates the initial reticence bysome staff and the processes of self-evaluation and data collection used prior to thevisit. 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 thendescribes some of the changes in the school that can be attributed to the review processand the developing understanding of the value of such a process expressed by teachersand administrators alike. The chapter provides encouragement of the types of contin-uous improvement models of school self-evaluation that are being adopted in manyparts of the world.

In Chapter 48, Rosa Deves and Patricia Lpez describe how the Inquiry BasedScience Education (ECBI) Program, initially co-sponsored by the Ministry ofEducation and the Fundacin Andes, a private foundation in Chile, became a model forstrengthening the bonds between policy making, teacher capacity building, schoolpractice and student outcomes. The program was piloted with around 5,000 childrenattending poor schools in Santiago and was then expanded to approximately 30,000students in partnership with Chilean universities. Children became engaged in many ofthe activities and thinking processes that scientists use to produce new knowledge andthey were able to develop the ability to monitor their own learning. Five differentcomponents 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 programs success. TheProgram also benefited from international cooperation, from people and institutionsundertaking similar projects in Latin America and other parts of the world. This helpincluded 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 otherLatin American countries.

In Chapter 49, Jenny Lewis discusses the improvement processes undertaken by aprimary school in Australia that led to it move from being a school at significant riskto a multiply award winning school. The school community built an evidence-basedenvironment that promoted sustainability through innovative and informed EvidenceBased Leadership in Action through the use of authentic evidence and by reconnectingall parts of the school so that staff could share their knowledge, perspectives andexperiences about students and programs. Strategies such as these moved the schoolsuse of evidence from a reactive to a proactive perspective. The sharing of leadership,


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focused professional development, mentoring and sharing at weekly team meetingswere viewed as important strategies to build a culture of professionalism in whichmutual trust, shared knowledge and responsibility, where all teachers were viewed asleaders and undertook leadership roles. Evidence-based improvement became a way oflife. Traditional testing was viewed as too abstracted from what was being taught inclassrooms and, with parent permission, these approaches were removed if favor ofdaily teacher judgments of evidence about student progress. The school developed anetworked-based knowledge management system that combined the relevant data intoan integrated information system and tutorials were developed to help teachersmanage information, analyze and act on data. These activities helped the school tosubstantially improve what it was doing in a way that encouraged all stakeholders to beinvolved.

In Chapter 50, Helen Paphitis documents the journey of an Australian secondaryschool, and herself as teacher, then school leader, then principal in the school, over thelast 20 years of growth and development. In the mid-1990s, the school faced negativecommunity perceptions, high welfare dependency, and low attendance, retention andachievement rates. She documents the changes including the introduction of Caregroups, less than 15 students, who remained in the same care group, with the sameteacher, for their 5 years at the school, the development of Enterprise Education and aschool aim to place every student in employment, further education or training.Sustainable whole school improvement was brought about by three factors: settingdirections, developing staff and enriching teaching and learning, and buildinginfrastructure for continuous improvement and the development and progress has beensustained by a structure that divides the work of the organization into eight manageableand clearly defined functions: Operations, Human Resources, Curriculum (Teachingand Learning), Care, Finances, Facilities, Marketing and Strategic Alliances, eachmanaged by a different school leader. This chapter provides us with an opportunityto see what can happen when commitment, focus and time are aligned to supportorganizational 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 researcharound 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 mightdefine school effectiveness, issues related to the political nature of school effective-ness, issues that focus on improving our understanding of learning and professionaldevelopment and issues that focus on furthering international understandings andcooperation. He discusses a number of future research possibilities that look at refram-ing and redefining the field of school effectiveness and improvement, includingredefining 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 ofthe activity of education, redefining the experience of students within schools,and redefining teacher education so that it matches with the other changes that are

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happening, both in education and in the wider society. He argues that these areas willhelp 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 readerto start at the beginning and progress all the way through. Perhaps the best way ofapproaching 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 whatothers 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 wishto start by looking at a country that you know nothing about, and you are sure to findat least one, to consider some of the cultural, economic, political and social conditionsthat help to shape educational experiences in those countries and then reflect on howthey 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, differentgoals and different methodologies. It is the richness of this mix that makes this bookworth reading, from cover to cover.

References

Blakey, L., & Heath, A. F. (1992). Differences between comprehensive schools: Some preliminary findings. InD. Reynolds, & P. Cuttance (Eds.), Schools effectiveness: Research, policy and pratice. London: Cassell.

Brookover, W., Beady, C., Flood, P., Schweitzer, J., & Wisenbaker, J. (1979). School social systems and stu-dent achievement: Schools can make a difference. East Lansing: Institute for Research on Teaching,Michigan State University.

Creemers, B., & Osinga, N. (1995). ICSEI country reports. Leeuwarden, the Netherlands: GCO.Creemers, B., Peters, T., & Reynolds, D. (1989). (Eds.). School effectiveness and school improvement.

Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger.Cuban, L. (1989). The at-risk label and the problem of school reform. Phi Delta Kappan, 71(8), 780801.Edmonds, R. (1979). Effective schools for the urban poor. Educational Leadership, 37(1), 1527.Hallinger, P., & Murphy, J. (1986). The social context of effective schools. American Journal of Education,

94, 328355.Harris, A., & Chrispeels, J. H. (Eds.). (2006). Improving schools and educational systems: International

perspectives. London: Routledge.Mortimore, P., Sammons, P., Stoll, L., Lewis, D., & Ecob, R. (1988). School matters. Somerset: Open Books.Murphy, J. (1991). Restructuring schools: Capturing and assessing the phenomena. New York: Teachers

College Press.Nuttall, D. (1989). How the inner London authority approaches school effectiveness. In B. Creemers, T. Peters,

& D. Reynolds (Eds.), School effectiveness and school improvement. Amsterdam: Swets & Zeitlinger.Nuttall, D. (1992). Letter to The Independent, 21 November.Reynolds, D., & Teddlie, C. (2001). Reflections on the critics, and beyond them. School Effectiveness and

School Improvement, 12, 99113.Rutter, M., Maugham, B., Mortimore, P., & Ousetn, J. (1979). Fifteen thousand hours: Secondary schools

and effects on Children. Boston: Harvard University Press.Scheerens, J., & Creemers, B. P. M. (1989). (Eds.). School effectiveness and improvement: Proceedings of

the First International Congress. Groningen: Rion.Slee, R., & Weiner, G. (2001). Education reform and reconstruction as a challenge to research genres:

Reconsidering school effectiveness research and inclusive schooling. School Effectiveness and SchoolImprovement, 12, 8398.


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tributedbooks for allthe reference

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Slee, R., & Weiner, G. with Tomlinson, S. (1998). School effectiveness for whom? London: Falmer Press.Smink, G. (1991). The Cardiff conference, ICSEI 1991. Network News International, 1(3), 26.Stringfield, S., & Teddlie, C. (1991). Schools as affectors of teacher effects. In H. Waxman, & H. Walberg

(Eds.), Effective teaching: Current research. Berkeley: McCutchan.Teddlie, C., & Reynolds, D. (Eds.). (2000). International handbook of school effectiveness research. London

& New York: Falmer Press.Teddlie, C., & Reynolds, D. (2001). Countering the critics: Responses to recent criticisms of school effec-

tiveness research. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12, 4182.Thrupp, M. (1999). Schools making a difference: Lets be realistic! School mix, school effectiveness and the

social limits of reform. Buckingham, Philadelphia: Open University Press.Thrupp, M. (2001). Sociological and political concerns about school effectiveness research: Time for a new

research agenda. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 12, 740.Townsend, T., Clarke, P., & Ainscow, M. (1999). Third millennium schools: A world of difference in effec-

tiveness and improvement. Lisse, the Netherlands: Swets & Zeitlinger.Wildy, H., & Dimmock, C. (1992). Instructional leadership in Western Australian primary and secondary

school. Nedlands: University of Western Australia.

26 Townsend

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The waves of reform, they are called. What follows are the observations of an old manof the sea, weather-beaten and bronzed, but not browned off by riding for severaldecades the dumpers, and with the same exuberance as the dolphins do. Nothing isquite 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 assiduouslystudying the tide charts and reading carefully and constantly the short and long-rangeweather 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 greatsweep of the sky and the erosions made by storms, and speculating on how thegeography 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 reconstructionafter the chaotic mess of 19391945. The end of the Second World War produced theneed for the rehabilitation, re-settlement, and employment of returning servicepersonnel, and the so-called baby boom. A decade and a half later, this nest of demandshad produced the educational upheavals of the 1970s curriculum reform, schoolreform, system reform, massive new building activity, indeed an almost total re-jiggingof educational provisions.

The second period of widespread social and economic reconstruction occurred inthe 1980s, coinciding with the terms in office of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Ministerin Great Britain and of Ronald Reagan as the President of the United States. Theirpolitical stance was similar, namely to introduce policies based on the market econ-omy, allowing the built-in incentives of competition to introduce the discipline ofgetting value for the dollar and of achieving outcomes through private enterprise.

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

Hedley Beare

Tony Townsend + 1-4020-4805-X + Proof1 + 16 February 2007

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T. Townsend (Ed.), International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, 2740. 2007 Springer.


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 theeducational upheavals of the 1970s and the 1990s, as though schools have always beenthe way they are now. It is prudent to consider just how far and how quickly theeducation enterprise has come, and for educators to be given some praise for themiracles they have achieved.

The First Major Reform Period

There are few people around now who remember what schooling was like prior to thepost-war period of upheaval. Schooling then was staid, stereotyped, almost one-track inits orientation. Of the secondary school cohort which began at around Year Seven, onlyabout 5%, or 1 in 20, survived to Year Twelve. It was a process designed to producedrop-outs, and where one dropped off the conveyor belt determined the employmentoptions a

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