Closing the Achievement Gap in Disadvantaged Communities: Lessons from Successful Schools

Abstract

The fact that all children must attend school has characterised South Africa over the past two decades. While many schools are struggling to address this challenge, others have made strides and progress in closing the gap between groups. This article recounts how these secondary schools have been able to narrow the achievement gap and sustain their success over time. The three schools described here are all large public schools that serve disadvantaged communities in Mpumalanga, South Africa. Data was collected during meetings with the three schools which consisted of two rounds of focus group and one whole group session. These meetings helped the researcher to gather important information about each school’s characteristics, school change process, school climate, role of the curriculum and instructional practices in promoting learner achievement. While each of the participating schools has unique characteristics, a set of important common practices emerged.     

Pathways to literacy: a study of invented spelling and its role in learning to read

This intervention study tested whether invented spelling plays a causal role in learning to read. Three groups of kindergarten children (mean age = 5 years 7 months) participated in a 4-week intervention. Children in the invented-spelling group spelled words as best they could and received developmentally appropriate feedback. Children in the 2 comparison groups were trained in phonological awareness or drew pictures. Invented-spelling training benefited phonological and orthographic awareness and reading of words used in the intervention. Importantly, the invented-spelling group learned to read more words in a learn-to-read task than the other groups. The finding are in accord with the view that invented spelling coupled with feedback encourages an analytical approach and facilitates the integration of phonological and orthographic knowledge, hence facilitating the acquisition of reading.     

Computers in schools

He has been responsible for OECD publications in this area and has written many articles in this and other educational fields.     

An Epistemological Approach to French Syllabi on Human Origins during the 19th and 20th Centuries

This study focuses on how human origins were taught in the French Natural Sciences syllabuses of the 19th and 20th centuries. We evaluate the interval between the publication of scientific concepts and their emergence in syllabuses, i.e., didactic transposition delay (DTD), to determine how long it took for scientific findings pertaining to our topic to be introduced in teaching. Conceptions were categorised into four successive periods, each of which lasted approximately half a century. We showed that the DTD on human origins was influenced in each period by the conceptions of the curriculum developers, by the educational system and, more generally, by the socio-political context.     

The relationship between the school as a learning organisation and staff outcomes: A case study of Wales

Does the school as a learning organisation affect staff outcomes? This article examines the relationship between the school as a learning organisation and staff job satisfaction and the school's responsiveness to staff needs using a purposefully designed “Schools as Learning Organisations Survey” completed as part of an OECD study in Wales. A positive and significant relationship is found between the school as a learning organisation and both job satisfaction of staff—that is school leaders, teachers and teaching support staff—and the school's responsiveness to staff needs. The article proposes ways of realising these outcomes and identifies areas for further research. Policy makers, school staff and other stakeholders in education and other public sectors internationally can use these findings as supporting evidence in recommending people to develop their organisations into learning organisations, given the potential benefits for employees and the organisation at large.