School Effectiveness Research and the Development of Process Indicators of School Functioning

Abstract

Educational systems can quite easily be described in terms of a context‐input‐process‐output model. Likewise systems of educational indicators ‐‐ i.e. statistics on key aspects of educational systems that are of evaluative relevance ‐ can be categorized as context, input, process and output‐indicators. Process‐indicators are the subject of this paper. The rationale for selecting the process‐indicators chosen here was to look for those school‐ and teaching characteristics that are positively associated with educational achievement. The research literature on school and teaching effectiveness is the most relevant for this. An attempt has been made to formulate a comprehensive model of school and teaching effectiveness and to use this as the basis for a list of the most promising process‐indicators. Some of the key process‐variables that are proposed include stimulating environmental factors, achievement oriented policies, educational leadership, amount of instruction, learning opportunities, structured teaching, collaborative planning and evaluative potential of schools. The problems of constructing and using process‐indicators based on these variables are discussed from the perspectives of macro‐, meso‐ and micro‐level applications of educational indicator systems.     

国外学校效能评价指标研究的新进展

国外学校效能评价指标研究可以从经济学视角指标因素研究、组织管理学指标因素研究、社会学意义指标研究及人类学视角指标因素研究解读,研究特点可以用层次性、多样性、动态性、实证性、矛盾性来概括。学校效能评价研究面临评价指标过于繁杂、学生水平效能研究关注较少、评价学校效能的标准缺乏全面性等挑战,因此,未来学校效能评价研究将关注更精确学校效能评价指标体系、学生效能、更为广泛与全面的学生指标研究。     

School Effectiveness and School Attendance

ABSTRACT

Given that the British Government is proposing to require all schools to provide the Secretary of State with details of, amongst other things, their respective truancy rates, this article sets out to demonstrate that attendance figures, as well as examination results, should be modified before publication. It reports on a study involving 5,429 pupils in their final year of primary education attending 138 junior/primary schools in a single authority in Wales and utilises child, home and school data.     

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.     

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.     

Redefining School Effectiveness

This article examines some of the effects of the focus of school effectiveness research on the single variable of examination success. It considers the English political context within which the use of this indicator has developed and argues that such a focus has caused considerable harm. Finally, it emphasises the need for researchers to develop and use a greater variety of measures of school effectiveness.     

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.     

New Directions for School Effectiveness Research: Towards School Effectiveness Without Schools

School effectiveness research has made a number of valuable contributions to educational research over the past three decades. However, its validity is threatened by a number of evolutions that question the continuing centrality of its basic research object, the public school. Moves towards more flexible school organization such as networks of schools, a broader role for schools reconceptualized as community centers, the emergence of new providers outwith the public sector, the increasingly internationalised nature of research and moves towards greater use of distance learning and home schooling all mean that this focus may rapidly become outdated, potentially making school effectiveness research irrelevant.In this paper we will discuss the consequences of these evolutions for school effectiveness research and argue that, rather than lessening the need for effectiveness research, they increase the imperative for this type of research, as long as it is broadened to educational effectiveness in its broadest sense whether it takes place in the traditional public school or not, and is conducted in an empirical and open-minded way.     

School Effectiveness Research and Educational Policy

This paper discusses a series of recent critiques of school effectiveness (SE) research from within the academic community and the responses to them by SE researchers. It uses these as a basis to explore the nature of current SE research and its relationship with government policy. It is argued that much SE research has been too closely concerned with specific government policies as well as having weak theoretical and empirical support. The general response of the SE community to these criticisms is judged to be inadequate and recommendations for future directions are made.     

School Effectiveness and Value Added Measures

The theory that schools can promote the progress of pupils so as to overcome the influence of family, community and individual attributes, underpins British studies of school effectiveness. Measures of value added have been developed as sophisticated ways of analysing potential school effects. Desmond Nuttall played a key role in adapting the statistical technique of multilevel modelling to the issue of value added. In this paper we provide a general introduction to three topics and describe three, as yet, unresolved issues: whether value added results are stable over time; whether schools have differential results for different pupil groups; and whether the contextual features of a school exert a powerful influence on its performance.     

美国教师评价和学校效能研究

文章从历史角度阐述了美国教师评价研究和学校效能研究所关注的问题.所引用的相关文献说明了美国学校效能研究的四个阶段,在学校环境变量中,特别是教师有效性对学校的发展和成功产生的重要影响.此外,学校效能研究结果与教师评价中的教师有效性和教师的可持续发展有关.     

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.

     

美国高等院校有效性评估管窥

美国高等院校有效性评估是在人们对高等教育一般评估的效果产生质疑的时候兴起的,其发展历程分为美国高等院校有效性阶段和有效性评价阶段。其内涵是检测大学完成使命的情况。其评估指标包括学生的顶点经验、卓越的教师和有效的行政管理等。评估程序为:目标陈述,有效性标准的制定,绩效评估,审查评估结果,质量提升。     

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     

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.