School Effectiveness and School Restructuring: Contributions to Educational Improvement 1

ABSTRACT

Over the last twenty years, school effectiveness work has dominated efforts to improve schools. Within the last five years, school restructuring has moved front and center in the school improvement literature. This paper examines these two lines of improvement efforts to ascertain the major contributions of each to schooling and education. It is argued that the effective schools movement has been influential in helping dismantle the existing foundations of schooling. In particular, it is suggested that academics and practitioners working within the effective schools framework have been influential in pushing prevailing behavioral approaches to learning off center stage. Effective schools workers have also helped re‐establish the primacy of learning and teaching in schools and helped channel improvement efforts into consistent and overlapping streams of action. It is argued that school restructuring, in turn, offers the possibility of taking us considerably further ‐ of weaving seminal contributions from effective schools into dramatically different forms of schooling. In particular, it is suggested that the school restructuring movement promises viable alternatives to behaviorally‐grounded models of learning and teaching, to hierarchical models of organizing and managing education, and to bureaucratic and professionally‐dominated models of governing schools.

     

学校效能研究与学校重建

追求学校教育质量与效能是当今世界各国基础教育改革的核心要旨.学校效能研究从揭示学校对学生的成就影响开始,其间经历有效学校运动到学校改进运动,其目的是改进学校,使学校成为有效能的学校.学校效能研究在40年的发展过程中在方法论上不断革新,试图揭示学校效能的因素,在实践层面为政府以及学校重建提供理论指引;同时学校效能研究面临着政治化、专门化和技术化问题,问题的解决有待于研究的进一步深化.     

Restructuring Teacher Education in Australia

Debate on teacher quality and quality in teaching and teacher education has been as vigorous in Australia as it has been in the UK and the USA. In Australia, however, reform in teacher education has been subsumed within a national metapolicy of corporate federalism which is an amalgam of beliefs or discourses including neo‐corporatism, economic rationalism, corporate managerialism and human capital. The paper analyses the most recent document on reform of teacher education in Australia (the Ebbeck Report) and shows how its policy formulation is influenced by the discourse of corporate federalism. It also shows how micro‐economic reform in this sector is related to reforms in other sectors of education.     

Engaging Practitioners in State School Improvement Initiatives

For most of U.S. history, local communities were the primary arbiters of school quality. Beginning in the mid-twentieth century, states began assuming more and more control over school standards and outcomes. The question we seek to answer is whether and the extent to which a particular kind of local voice—the voice of education practitioners—is represented in states' current, significant initiatives to improve low-performing schools. In the article, we focus on the role that practitioner knowledge played in the development of school improvement policies across three state education agencies. We draw on interviews, surveys, and document analyses collected for a larger exploratory study of knowledge utilization. Contrary to earlier research showing weak or uneven connections between state agencies and practitioners, we found that practitioner advice networks were generally stronger than states' research advice networks. We found ample illustration of staff using this advice to make sense of research for their own contexts, and for their own approaches to school improvement. Agencies formed ties to practitioners in districts and schools, in professional membership associations, within their own agencies, or in other agencies wrestling with similar problems. Who they turned to differed depending on earlier improvement policies and institutional histories.     

School Culture,School Effectiveness and School Improvement

The relevance of the concept of culture to school effectiveness and school improvement is explored. Two typologies are developed. The first proposes four ‘ideal type’ school cultures, based on two underlying domains; the second, a more elaborate and dynamic model, proposes two ‘ideal type’ school cultures, based on five underlying structures. Each is discussed for its heuristic, conceptual, methodological and explanatory potential in research in the fields of school effectiveness and school improvement. In distinguishing collegial cultures from collaborative styles, the article advances recent writing on collaboration. From the theory hypotheses about the relationship between school culture and school effectiveness and improvement can be derived as well as techniques to test such hypotheses.     

School Effectiveness and School Improvement: Sustaining Links

Ideally, school effectiveness research and school improvement might have a relationship with a surplus value for both. In reality, this relationship is often troublesome. Some problems can be attributed to the intrinsic differences between effectiveness and improvement, such as different missions. However, an analysis of the current situation in effectiveness and improvement shows that there are many possibilities at all stages of research studies and improvement projects for a more fruitful relationship. In this article, stronger links between effectiveness and improvement are advocated. Such links can be achieved by better‐guided processes of application and reconstruction of knowledge during effectiveness research and improvement. These processes, illustrated by some successful projects which have started recently, are described under the heading of sustained interactivity.     

School Effectiveness and School Improvement in Context: The Case of South Africa

This article explores the issue of whether lists of characteristics constituting the effective school are universally valid. It argues that the effectiveness or otherwise of schools must be understood contextually as there are significant differences between both the material and ideological contexts of schooling. The article uses the example of South Africa to demonstrate the difficulties in judging schools in one context using criteria developed in another. Three examples of schools that can be considered effective in the context of the new South Africa are described and discussed and the article concludes by arguing that education for peace and democracy is an essential feature of school effectiveness in South Africa.     

浅论学校德育工作的有效性

学校德育是一项带有明显目的性和强烈主观能动性的社会实践,是一种讲究效益的活动。但为什么我们所熟悉的、曾经是行之有效的德育方法现在不管用了呢?为什么教师的良苦用心回报甚少呢?原因虽然很多也很复杂,而最根本的则是德育的复杂性。 一、认识德育的复杂性 首先,德育与整个社会的变革与发展、与社会政治、经济、文化等各个组成因素之间有着复杂的社会     

以美育增强学校德育实效性

当前增强学校德育实效性，需要把美育融入德育。学校教育要充分利用自然美、社会美和艺术美，使学生获得思想濡染和人格塑造。美育融入德育，要使学生由“技巧人”转变为“审美人”，由“感性人”转变为“理性人”，由“庸俗人”转变为“高雅人”。     

From School Effectiveness and School Improvement to Effective School Improvement: Background,Theoretical Analysis,and Outline of the Empirical Study

School effectiveness and school improvement have different origins: school effectiveness is more directed to finding out “what works” in education and “why”; school improvement is practice and policy oriented and intended to change education in the desired direction. That means that in the orientation on the outcomes, input, processes, and context in education, school effectiveness and school improvement also have much in common. In the project Effective School Improvement (ESI), the merger of the 2 traditions has been pursued. In the theoretical part different orientations have been analysed and combined in a model for effective school improvement. Based on this analysis the framework is developed for the analysis of the case studies on school improvement projects in the participating countries.     

提高高校体育教学质量的思考

文章针对高校体育教育质量的现状,结合高校体育教学和学生实际,提出了提高高校体育教学质量的5点建议.一是提高体育教师的责任心;二是改革传统的模式教法;三是优化教学内容,改革考试制度;四是加强监督措施,转变领导观念;五是培养学生的锻炼习惯等.     

Linking School Effectiveness Knowledge and School Improvement Practice: Towards a Synergy

A survey is undertaken of the ‘paradigms’ of the academic communities of school effectiveness and school improvement researchers, practitioners and scholars. It is argued that the two ‘paradigms’ are very different, and that this has hindered the improvement of educational practice. Examples are given of programmes which are a ‘blend’ of the two different approaches, and detail is given as to how the school effectiveness and school improvement communities can meet the knowledge needs necessary for improving the quality of schooling.     

Restructuring,Teacher Engagement and School Culture: Perspectives on School Reform and the Improvement of Teacher's Work 1

ABSTRACT

Recent educational policy reports in the U.S. have called for significant changes in teachers’ work to increase their effectiveness. The paper examines the relationship between the restructuring strategies in two comprehensive high schools and teachers’ engagement, which is defined as a multi‐dimensional construct. In one school, the restructuring strategies focused on creating a supportive climate for students, and in empowering students and teachers; in the other, emphasis was on developing professional skills of the faculty and strengthening group cohesiveness. The implications of the strategies for teacher engagement are illustrated with case study data. The discussion points to several conclusions: (1) the effects of restructuring are more bounded than is often assumed; (2) a quality of work life framework drawn from the social scientific literatures is useful for analyzing the effects of reform policies on teachers’ work; (3) teachers make trade‐offs between different types of engagement in order to increase their work satisfaction; and (4) restructuring has potential for increasing teachers’ engagement in schools with mixed socio‐economic and racial populations.

     

Restructuring Higher Education. A Comparative Analysis between Australia and The Netherlands

It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful to success, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favour; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have actual experience of it. (Machiavelli)

     

Action Research and School Initiatives in Environmental Education: a response to John Elliott

This response to Elliott's contribution to the ECER symposium questions the action research methodology of the ENSI project. It is argued that there are cultural and policy limitations associated with it. In conclusion, suggestions are made about future European research in the field.