Advances in School Effectiveness Research and Practice PDF
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Titles of Related Interest ANDERSON & BURNS Research in Classrooms: The Study of Teachers, Teaching, and Instruction ANDERSON et al. The DEA Classroom Environment Study BURSTEIN The IEA Study of Mathematics III: Student Growth and Classroom Processes ELLEY The IEA Study of Reading Literacy: Achievement and Instruction in Thirty-Two School Systems GORMAN et al. The IEA Study of Written Composition I: The International Writing Tasks and Scoring Scales KEEVES The IEA Study of Science III: Changes in Science Education and Achievement: 1970 to 1984 PELGRUM & PLOMP The IEA Study of Computers in Education: Implementation of an Innovation in 21 Education Systems PHILLIPS The Social Scientist's Bestiary: A Guide to Fabled Threats to, and Defences of, Naturalistic Social Science PHILLIPS Philosophy, Science and Social Inquiry: Contemporary Methodological Controversies in Social Science and Related Fields of Research PURVES The IEA Study of Written Composition II: Education and Performance in Fourteen Countries ROBINSON Problem-Based Methodology: Research for the Improvement of Practice TRAVERS & WESTBURY The IEA Study of Mathematics I: Analysis of Mathematics Curricula Journals of Related Interest Teaching and Teacher Education International Journal of Educational Research ADVANCES IN SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS RESEARCH AND PRACTICE David Reynolds Bert P. M. Creemers Pamela S. Nesselrodt Eugene C. Schaffer Sam Stringfield and Charles Teddlie PERGAMON U.K. Elsevier Science Ltd, The Boulevard, Langford Lane, Kidlington, Oxford 0X5 1GB, England U.S.A. Elsevier Science Inc., 660 White Plains Road, Tarrytown, New York 10591-5153, U.S.A. JAPAN Elsevier Science Japan, Tsunashima Building Annex, 3-20-12 Yushima, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113, Japan Copyright © 1994 Elsevier Science Ltd All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publishers. First edition 1994 Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Advances in school effectiveness research and practice / edited by David Reynolds ... [et al.]. - 1st ed. p. cm. 1. Education-Research-Methodology. 2. Schools-Evaluation- Research-Cross-cultural studies. I. Reynolds, David, 1949- LB1028.A326 1994 370'.78-dc20 94-15705 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 08 042392 2 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Galliard Printers Ltd, Great Yarmouth The Contributors James Bird, School of Education, University of Wales Cardiff, United Kingdom Yin Cheong Cheng, Faculty of Education, Chinese University of Hong Kong Bert P. M. Creemers, GION, University of Groningen, The Netherlands Barbara Dundas, Department of Education, Queensland, Australia Juanita Ross Epp, School of Education, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Canada Shaun Farrell, School of Education, University of Wales Cardiff, United Kingdom Barry Green, Department of Education, Queensland, Australia Trond Eiliv Hauge, Center for Teacher Education and In Service Training, Oslo, Norway Pamela S. Nesselrodt, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, United States of America David Reynolds, Department of Education, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom Eugene C. Schaffer, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, United States of America Jaap Scheerens, Faculty of Education, University of Twente, The Netherlands Sam Stringfield, Center for Social Organisation of Schools, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, United States of America Frans Swint, GION, University of Groningen, The Netherlands Charles Teddlie, Department of Administrative and Foundational Services, Louisiana State University, United States of America vii 1 Preface and Introduction DAVID REYNOLDS The chapters of this book represent the efforts of a group of six people to make sense of the increasingly varied, disparate and complex bodies of knowledge which have become known collectively as school effectiveness research. In this task, we have been aided by other researchers and scholars in particular ways, as is made clear from the additional names that feature under the headings of particular chapters. The background of this attempt and this volume lies partly in the invitation originally extended to the six of us by a University in Taiwan (National Kaohsiung Normal University) to deliver a series of presentations which would give to an invited Taiwanese audience the 'state of the art' knowledge base as it existed, the advances in research practice that were moving the field forward, the new areas of interest such as theory development and the international research context that were likely to transform the face of the discipline in the future and, of course, our perceptions as to what the implications of all those factors were for a scientific community that was only just beginning the study of school effectiveness (Taiwan, as will be seen later, has a history of concern with teacher rather than with school effectiveness). The other part of the background of this volume lies in the preparatory work that the six of us had to do to begin an international school effectiveness study entitled ISERP (The International School Effectiveness Research Project). Before beginning this ambitious eight nation study of effective educational practices, we felt that we had to review and codify what had been learnt already in the field of school effectiveness, both to prevent duplication of work and also to alert us to the existence of potential 'black holes' of ignorance which needed filling. Out of the reviews which we completed of our countries' 'strengths' and 'weaknesses' in their research endeavours came some of the material in this volume. 1 2 D. Reynolds The experience of giving the seminars and of working together to review and codify the discipline's knowledge base persuaded us that the knowledge that we had gained could with profit be made more widely accessible for the benefit of existing researchers and of scholars entering the field. Accordingly, we have three aims in this book: 1. To provide a review of the history and 'state of the art' knowledge in the field, particularly attempting to look outside the research base of the Anglo-Saxon countries of the United States and the United Kingdom (Section One). 2. To provide a review of those research practices in terms of design, data collection and data analysis that shows the utility of these strategies for advancing effectiveness knowledge (Section Two). 3. To outline some creative new directions in which the field should prof- itably move if it is to fulfil its promise, such as appreciation of the impor- tance of cross cultural variation and of the importance of the development of theoretical models (Section Three). The detailed chapters of the book take things forward as follows. In Chapter Two, Bert Creemers outlines the historical origins of what is commonly referred to as the school effectiveness 'movement', arising as it did out of dissatisfaction with the 'schools make no difference' thesis of Coleman, Jencks and many others. The 'five factor' theory that originated in the earliest American research of course came under severe criticism, and out of these criticisms has come an appreciation of a more complex theory that incorporates multiple levels (classroom, school, nation), that is sensitive to the effects of different social and cultural contexts, which recognises the need to link levels together conceptually and empirically, and which centres on the ways in which the instruction of students, and their learning, are affected by these multiple influences. In Chapter Three, a group of authors from a wide range of countries attempts to make sense of the worldwide literature on school effectiveness. The countries include virtually all of those which have ever seen school effectiveness research within their boundaries, as follows: • Canada, where school improvement initiatives have run considerably ahead of school effectiveness research, but where useful work has been conducted on school effectiveness variables such as school climate, prin- cipal leadership and on those educational factors outside the internal fea- tures of the school which may affect effectiveness (like District organi- zation, for instance). Preface and Introduction 3 • Norway, where organizationally based studies into system effects, learn- ing environment, school culture and classroom influences are being built upon by active participation in the Third International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS). • Hong Kong, where new policies for school improvement have shifted the focus from input interventions to the improvement of management processes and to associated work on school effectiveness that is notable for its multiple outcomes and for its multilevel approach to understanding schooling. • The United States, where early and rudimentary studies associated with the five factor model have been replaced by more sophisticated studies which consider issues such as contextual variation, the interaction of teacher and school effects, the generation of theory and the consistency and stability of school effects. • Taiwan, where there has been a past focus upon teacher effectiveness but where recent studies show a broadening of interest to include more school level variables and an interest in societal factors also. • The Netherlands, where there is a quantitative research tradition that is particularly strong at the level of the measurement of teaching, classroom and instructional factors. • The United Kingdom, where a strong research base has been built that is concerned with the size of school effects, differential school effectiveness and the consistency of school effects over time, and where there is a con- siderable volume of work at the level of the school. • Australia/New Zealand, where a developing research base shows links between the school effectiveness research base and the educational administration tradition, and where recent pioneering work has been done into the varied perceptions of effectiveness within different societal and educational groupings. In Section Two, Chapter Four by Sam Stringfield explores the multiple problems involved in the study of school effectiveness. After noting the problems which have held the field back, the chapter outlines the issues which large scale data collection efforts must address, involving the development of instrumentation, the use of achievement data and the use of various forms of hierarchical linear methods of analysis. The chapter concludes with an outline of three major school effectiveness studies to illustrate how some past researchers have handled the issues and problems noted earlier, and concludes with an outline 4 D. Reynolds of the ongoing 'Prospects' study in the United States which evidences some further novel approaches in the areas of sample selection, conceptualization and measurement strategies. Chapter Five, also by Sam Stringfield, deals with outlier strategies of research design within school effectiveness research, a study design which facilitates research by maximizing the contrasts between schools through generating samples of positive, negative and 'typical' schools. The chapter outlines the findings of a number of outlier studies and concludes with a description of an outlier study in progress, namely, the International School Effectiveness Research Project (ISERP) which the six authors of this book are currently engaged upon. The other three chapters of Section Two continue the focus upon elaborating what is 'cutting edge' research strategy in the field. Charles Teddlie in Chapter Six outlines the importance of the 'context' variable, the study of which can generate much more sophisticated explanations for the processes responsible for school effectiveness and ineffectiveness, generated from a study of the interaction of school with context. Contextual variation is explained as covering the socio-economic status of catchment areas, the grade level of the school and urban/rural features. In Chapter Seven, Charles Teddlie continues to outline advances in research strategy with material on the integration of school and classroom effects. Schools which are unusually effective are presumably characterized by classroom practices which are also unusually effective, yet the neglect of teachers' classroom actions and behavior has been notable. Teddlie outlines the historic separation of 'teacher' and 'school' effects studies which has been partially responsible for this state of affairs, and goes on both to outline studies which show the promise of an approach which has 'nested' classrooms interacting with schools and to identify the research needs on teacher selection studies, teacher support mechanisms and research into the management of the instructional level by the school level that would deliver the importance of this newly emerging field. The final chapter of Section Two by Eugene C. Schaf fer, Pamela S. Nesselrodt and Sam Stringfield focuses again on the measurement of the classroom level. The authors outline the ongoing debates as to the appropriate forms of measurement of classrooms and argue for the utility of a blend of high inference and low inference observation systems. They continue by outlining the problems that are involved in developing observational instruments appropriate for internationally comparative studies, where there are very large variations by context in the meaning attributable to behaviour and in the simple practical problems of translating and back translating items. Drawing upon work undertaken for ISERP, the authors then outline an instrument for readers to use and develop as appropriate, since its utility for picking up 'between culture' variation is likely to make it also suitable for the exploration of 'between school within culture' variation. Section Three aims to focus upon three 'cutting edge' areas of the discipline where advances in research conceptualization is likely to advance our knowledge considerably. The first of these areas is theory generation, important in the field to relate together apparently disparate sets of research findings and important also to Preface and Introduction 5 focus our attention on those sets of factors that are determinate of other factors within causal chains. Three chapters correspondingly outline three very different attempts at theory generation. Stringfield outlines a model of elementary school effects that integrates existing findings upon classroom and school effects, with (QAIT) Quality, Appropriateness, Incentives and Time (at classroom level) related to the school level variables of (MACRO) Meaningful universally understood goals, Attention to daily academic functioning in all classes, Co-ordination of curriculum and instruction across classes and grades, Recruitment and development of staff, and the Organization of school functioning to achieve the daily activities and overall goals of the school. Creemers' model, like that of Stringfield, focuses upon student learning and achievement gain as its base, with this seen as potentiated by classroom factors such as use of certain curriculum materials, grouping procedures, and certain kinds of teacher behaviour, with consistency in the use of these various components argued to be important in generating positive educational outcomes. Scheerens' model building is of a different kind, in which he takes existing models of 'effectiveness enhancing conditions' and searches for varieties of 'meta theories' that may explain the patterning and the relationships between the variables. Using theories concerning 'choice' and 'rational control' for this purpose Scheerens argues that the two theories are in turn relatable to contingency theory as an all-encompassing theory in which effectiveness processes and factors at school or classroom level are seen as contingent upon the situation, opportunity and wider environment that surrounds the school. The final chapter of Section Three attempts to outline further 'cutting edge' directions for the effectiveness enterprise to profitably move in. In Chapter Twelve, David Reynolds, Bert Creemers and colleagues argue for the benefits of an enhanced internationalization of the field of school effectiveness, particularly involving an appreciation of the contribution of studies done in developing societies, which show the importance of variables such as resource levels and teacher quality (rather than teaching quality) in an interesting fashion. Reynolds also argues that cross national studies, like the International School Effectiveness Research Project which is described in outline, can provide valuable new variables for the nationally based studies, such as Opportunity to learn', and can also provide the contextual variation which forces researchers to develop more sensitive explanations of which school and classroom factors potentiate learning in which cultural situations. Most of our conclusions concerning the directions in which we feel school effectiveness research could usefully move, and the issues which we feel school effectiveness research could usefully address, will have become obvious to readers during the various chapters, so we do not draw any separate set of conclusions at the end of this volume. We can only note that the very complexity of the research enterprise that is now needed to move the discipline forward makes it more and more unlikely that individual scholars, rather than research teams, will be able to advance our knowledge. The future for research and development probably lies very much in collaborative enquiry, in which individuals synergistically relate in 6 D. Reynolds intellectual endeavours with others with whom they share similarities and differences, generating a final product which is more than the sum of the ideas of the individuals that have contributed. This also happens to be the way that we have produced this book. We hope that the volume stimulates others to begin, or to continue, the search for the characteristics of effective schools world-wide.
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