Daniel Muijs

Ofsted

School effectiveness research has been subject to various criticisms over the years. While some of these have been justified, others have conflated the ‘science’ with the use to which it is put by policy makers, or have made unjustified methodological claims against the field. The latest is Stephen Gorard’s BERJ paper ‘Serious doubts about school e...

El objetivo de este artículo es conocer cómo opera una red de escuelas orientada a la mejora del proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje en la ciudad de Southampton (al sur de Inglaterra). Con esta finalidad, se presenta un estudio de caso que incluye la realización de entrevistas al personal directivo y docente de las cinco escuelas participantes, y la r...

Teacher effectiveness, which impacts student attainment even when controlling for student characteristics, is of key importance as a factor in educational effectiveness and improvement. Improving the quality of teaching is thus the primary means by which we can enhance student learning outcomes. Thus there has long been great interest in the develo...

Background Networks play an important role in today’s societies. As a consequence, changes are apparent in the political, economic, cultural, educational and social agendas. Purpose The main goal of this article is to map the situation of school networks in Spain. The research questions are focused on what forms collaboration and networking take i...

The principle of schools collaborating to improve is one that has seen growing interest in recent years, and there is emerging evidence that in particular collaboration between high and lower performing schools can be an effective school improvement method. However, this evidence relates primarily to secondary schools, and little research has been...

School-to-school collaboration as a school improvement method has grown in importance in England in recent years, and there is some evidence that such collaboration can have a positive impact on both capacity to change and student attainment. Most previous work in the area has focused on the urban context, however, despite the fact that increasing...

This article performs exploratory research using a mixed-methods approach (structural equation modelling and a thematic analysis of interview data) to analyse the ways in which socioeconomic disparities in voting patterns are reproduced through inequalities in education in different national contexts, and the role of self-efficacy in this process....

This study adopted a quantitative methodology involving a matched sample of federated and non-federated schools and utilising multilevel modelling techniques to explore the impact of federations on student outcomes. The sample involves a total of 50 school districts and 264 schools. These are grouped into 122 federations; 264 comparator schools wer...

This article deconstructs the language of the 2010 UK Coalition Government's White Paper, The Importance of Teaching. It uses analytical frameworks related to rhetoric established by Aristotle and Cicero. It explores the mechanisms of language using both critical discourse analysis and content analysis, offering quantitative data on the content of...

One of the key findings from decades of educational effectiveness research is the importance of the classroom level as a predictor of pupil outcomes. In this review, we therefore look at synthesising our best evidence from research on effective teaching, and its corollary, teacher development. In the 1st section, we will look at key findings from 3...

While educational theory has often seen collaboration and competition as incompatible, there is increasing evidence that collaboration persists in educational markets characterized by competition. In this paper, we use the theoretical lens of ‘coopetition’, a relationship between organizations involving competition in some segments and cooperation...

What do teachers learn ‘on the job’? And how, if at all, do they learn from ‘experience’? Leading researchers from the UK, Europe, the USA and Canada offer international, research-based perspectives on a central problem in policy-making and professional practice – the role that experience plays in learning to teach in schools. Experience is often w...

The most recent decade has seen a major growth in interest in teacher leadership, but there is limited research on the extent to which early career teachers can take on teacher leadership roles. In this article we explore this question by looking at teachers prepared through the alternative certification programme Teach First (TF), which aims to ha...

School federations are groups of two or more schools operating under a single governance structure. The study reported in this article compared federations designed to raise performance in low-attaining schools against a matched sample of their non-federated counterparts. The findings are based on quantitative analysis of data collected in 2009–201...

Educational effectiveness research (EER) has accumulated much knowledge in the areas of school effectiveness research (SER), teacher effectiveness research (TER) and school/system improvement research (SSIR). Yet many schools and educational systems are not making enough use of the material and their insights. The article reviews evidence of practi...

School federations are groups of two or more schools operating under a single governance structure. The study reported in this article compared federations designed to raise performance in low-attaining schools against a matched sample of their non-federated counterparts. The findings are based on quantitative analysis of data collected in 2009–201...

Educational effectiveness research (EER) has accumulated much knowledge in the areas of school effectiveness research (SER), teacher effectiveness research (TER) and school/system improvement research (SSIR). Yet many schools and educational systems are not making enough use of the material and their insights. The article reviews evidence of practi...

This project investigates the impact of the dynamic approach to school improvement (DASI) aiming to help schools face and reduce bullying through integrating research on bullying with educational effectiveness research (EER). A network of approximately 15 schools in each participating country (i.e., Belgium, Cyprus, England, Greece, and The Netherl...

This paper reports on a theory-based evaluation of the Teach First programme, an alternative certification programme based on Teach for America. A mixed methods approach was employed within the theoretical framework of the Dynamic Model of Educational Effectiveness. Findings from classroom observations, interviews and surveys suggest that Teach Fir...

How can we really evaluate teacher effectiveness?

Educational effectiveness research (EER) has made a significant contribution to our understanding of the characteristics and processes associated with more and less effective schools in a diverse range of contexts. However, this remains a contested field of inquiry and has been subjected to significant critique. This paper examines the origins and...

The English school system is characterized by high levels of school autonomy coupled with high levels of accountability and a great frequency of change following policies instigated in the late-1980s but strengthened over time. School leaders play a very strong role in their schools and are therefore subject to significant pressures. This is leadin...

This book provides a contemporary overview of school effectiveness and improvement. It charts the development theory and research in this area and looks at the contribution made to policy and practice. It also challenges some assumptions that have become ingrained into the theoretical and methodological traditions of the field. By challenging these...

Shortcomings of educational quality in rural schools remain a key focus in the literature related to developing countries. This paper studies whether rural primary schools in Malaysia, an upper middle-income developing country, are still experiencing lower levels of educational resources, school climate, school leadership, and parental involvement...

This study explored the ways in which schools addressed the needs of pupils in low‐attainment class groups, or sets, in the context of multiple and contrary government policy directives and inconclusive research findings about setting. In this article we have focused on school and classroom practices as well as the organisational processes through...

The population in Cyprus, a recent European Union member, has become much more heterogeneous during the past decade. Here, we examine the attainment patterns of minority and native students enrolled in six secondary schools from different cities in Cyprus, and identify factors responsible for these patterns. The combination of examined factors has...

Traditionally, a network has been defined as a set of actors (individuals or organisations such as schools) connected by a set of ties, which can be of a more or less formal nature (Borgatti & Foster, 2003). The principle of networking and collaboration has become more prevalent and more widely studied in organisations both in the private and publi...

As well as research in psychology, another discipline that has seen a longstanding interest in collaboration and networks is sociology. Key sociological theories of networking and collaboration, including Durkheimian network theory, the theory of new social movements and neo-functionalist theories of networking will be discussed in this chapter. Th...

As we mentioned in Chapter 1, networking and collaboration have become increasingly popular mechanisms for the delivery of public policy over the past two decades. In this chapter we will explore some of the backgrounds to this evolution.

As well as internal conditions, it is important that the right external conditions exist for networks of schools to be successful. Our research has identified a number of such conditions.

The launch of the federations policy in England signalled a new phase of policy development in the move towards encouraging collaboration (see Chapter 1). While federal structures do exist in other countries, including the Netherlands, for the first time in England collaboration between schools had the potential to be more than individuals and team...

Despite the growth of networks and collaboration both in education and in the public sector more generally, most of what we know about management derives from studies of single organisations. This is clearly problematic in the light of observed differences in the nature of networks. Leading networks requires an additional skills set, focussed on or...

Educational reform tends to operate in cycles, whereby reforms are abandoned and replaced, in many cases to be revisited and revised at a later date, as prior reforms come to be seen as not fully having addressed the key educational issues they set out to remedy (Ravitch, 2000). In particular, the issue of social disadvantage and its relationship t...

As Hopkins and Reynolds (2001) have stated, school improvement as a field has gone through four main phases. The first phase is described as being characterised by unsystematic attempts at improvement and an emphasis on organisational change and school self-evaluation. Fragmented and weak implementation and a lack of connection to student outcomes...

Based on both theory and research, we will present a typology of educational networks differentiating them by factors such as network density, goals and purposes, and longevity. The typology is based on theoretical considerations and prior research, and will, along with the theories discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 provide a framework for discussing t...

As education systems in many countries respond to demands for higher standards, they face the challenge of how to achieve equity. Put simply, how can systems continue to raise overall levels of achievement whilst reducing the gap between higher- and lower-performing groups of learners?

In this and the next chapter we will explore the theoretical basis for networking in education. To do this, we will draw primarily on theories developed outside of an educational context, but will discuss the educational applications of the theoretical frameworks mentioned. In this chapter we will look at more localised theories, in the following c...

Most research on networking and collaboration to date has focussed on schools serving disadvantaged urban communities that may face severe pressure from accountability systems demanding improved performance, but little attention has so far been paid to collaboration between schools in rural areas, not least due to views of a ‘rural idyll’ where str...

In order for networks to be successful, a number of internal conditions need to be present. In this chapter we will discuss some of these key factors, and how they can be achieved.

Yes, it is official.We now have an address we can call our own, with our new offices in Endsleigh Gardens, London and two new members of staff: Farzana Rahman and Mark Donoghue. In the next several months members will find their inquiries being redirected from KSAM's Lynne Fletcher and Emma Pettigrew in Macclesfield to Farzana and Mark in London. A...

Purpose – This paper is intended to give an overview of research on the impact of leadership on student outcomes, the main leadership activities related to these outcomes, and strengths and weaknesses in the research base. Design/methodology/approach – This paper is a literature review of key papers addressing the relationship between leadership a...

This study aims to explore the impact of Teach First on student achievement. Teach First is an alternative certification program in England based on Teach for America. A quasi-experimental design where each Teach First school was matched to a school as similar as possible on key characteristics for three years prior to taking part in the program wa...

This study aims to explore the pedagogy of Teach First teachers in schools during their second year, in terms of both impact in the classroom and teaching methods. Teach First is an alternative certification program in England based on Teach for America. A mixed methods approach, employing surveys of participants and headteachers, case studies of 1...

Collaboration and networking have recently come to the fore as major school improvement strategies in a number of countries. A variety of initiatives, from government and other agencies, have encouraged collaboration and led to a lot of practical activity in this area. However, at present there are no texts in education that explore collaboration a...

The UK government, along with other Western governments, has argued that the raising of standards must also promote equity: that the emphasis on raising attainment must not simply benefit children who are already performing at a high level.

In the previous chapter we introduced the concept of a federation, a formal collaborative arrangement between schools that statutorily exists in the English system. In that, and previous, chapters, we have also touched quite a number of times on the perceived advantages of networks and collaboratives in education. However, the bottom line for any e...

This article provides background and rationale for the International System for Teacher Observation and Feedback (ISTOF) project. After describing the process used to develop ISTOF, the outcomes of the project are presented: the conceptual framework, the components of effective teaching, the indicators for each component, and the rating scale for c...

Background: Grouping students into classes by ability on a subject-by-subject basis, also known as setting, is a common practice in many educational systems. An important issue is therefore the way in which setting decisions are made. While educators and policy-makers favouring setting claim that ability or achievement is the sole criterion used, c...

This accessible and authoritative introduction is essential for education students and researchers needing to use quantitative methods for the first time. Using datasets from real-life educational research and avoiding the use of mathematical formulae, the author guides students through the essential techniques that they will need to know, explain...

This is the first study in Cyprus aiming to gain insight into the factors responsible for the low attainment of ethnic minority students observed in earlier studies. Teachers from different schools and cities on the island participated in a focus group discussion. Identified factors related to the child, parents, home environment, teachers, school,...