Pam Sammons

• PhD
• Professor at University of Oxford

Introduction In 2016, the UK government identified the need for counselling services in schools to be evidence‐based (Department for Education, 2016). While there is more empirical evidence on counselling and improvement in mental health (Daniunaite et al., Counselling and Psychotherapy Research , 2015, 15, 251; Finning et al., European Child & Ado...

Escuelas causando preocupación en Inglaterra se identifican sistemáticamente a través de la inspección externa. Los cambios posteriores en el rendimiento de la mayoría de estas escuelas iluminan los problemas de la eficacia y el mejoramiento escolar. Durante más de diez años, la efectividad relativa de todas las escuelas en Inglaterra ha sido evalu...

Background: Socio-economic status (SES) is a powerful predictor of attainment. Research has identified multiple mechanisms that underpin the effect of SES on attainment. For example, self-regulation (processes through which individuals direct and control their attention, emotion and behaviour) has been identified as one mechanism mediating the SES...

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...

Outcomes for school students in London, especially for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, have improved dramatically over the last two decades (Baars, Shaw, Mulcahy & Menzies, 2018; Greaves, Macmillan & Sibieta,2014), giving rise to an academic debate around the factors behind these improvements, also termed the “London effect” (e.g. Baars et al...

This paper discusses the challenges facing a national evaluation of a major early years intervention programme, Sure Start Children’s Centres (SSCCs), that was rolled out across England in the first decade of the 21st century. The paper describes the rationale for the evaluation’s mixed methods research design and the ecological theoretical approac...

Marketisation has brought complex changes to the education sector that have become a concern both in the literature and among the public. However, few studies have empirically investigated how private school teachers’ professional identities might differ from those of state school teachers. This study compares how 16 teachers in two state schools a...

Marketisation has brought complex changes to the education sector that have become a concern both in the literature and among the public. However, few studies have empirically investigated how private school teachers’ professional identities might differ from those of state school teachers. This study compares how 16 teachers in two state schools a...

Given the need to develop common frameworks for conceptualizing teaching quality and common instruments for measuring it, the current paper brings together a small group of interested scholars who have used generic, content-specific, and hybrid frameworks and classroom observation instruments to reflect on how collaboration can be enhanced in resea...

This report presents the results of an EEF-funded, independent evaluation designed to investigate the extent to which, and in what ways, Research Schools (RSs) in Opportunity Areas (OAs)1 had supported schools to enact evidence-based practices in their classrooms. The evidence centred upon the lived experiences of ten OA RSs during the first three...

Empirical studies and meta-analyses conducted during the past 35 years led to the development of a number of theoretical frameworks of teacher effectiveness. In this paper, we aim to summarize the main characteristics of three dominant frameworks within the field of educational effectiveness and discuss both their conceptual differences and their s...

In a replication and extension of an earlier study, we relied on person-centered analyses to identify teacher (Level 1) and school (Level 2) profiles based on teachers' experiences of job demands (barriers to professional development, disruptive student behavior), job resources (teacher collaboration, input in decision-making), and personal resourc...

Home learning environments prior to school are well-known predictors of educational trajectories but research has neglected children aged under three. The new Toddler Home Learning Environment (THLE) scale is one response and this paper investigates its reliability and validity. The THLE is an adaptation of the Preschool HLE (PHLE) measure develope...

Outcomes for school students in London, especially for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, have improved dramatically over the last two decades (Baars, Shaw, Mulcahy & Menzies, 2018; Greaves, Macmillan & Sibieta, 2014), giving rise to an academic debate around the factors behind these improvements, also termed the “London effect” (e.g. Baars et a...

This article explores teachers’ professional identities in the context of private tutoring institutions (PTIs) in Mainland China. “Shadow educations” have become increasingly popular among parents who seek educational opportunities for their children to improve their development and life chances. However, a lack of literature on this topic indicate...

This study makes a new contribution to the study of teacher self-efficacy (TSE) by investigating the relationship between teacher-, classroom-, school-and principal characteristics jointly and three domains of TSE: student engagement, instruction and classroom management using multilevel modelling. It uses the TALIS data-set by the OECD comprising...

Going beyond previous studies, we investigated differential effects of teacher self‐efficacy (TSE) across the three basic dimensions of educational equality in student engagement, instructional strategies and classroom management in East and South‐East Asian, Anglo‐Saxon and Nordic country clusters in a cross‐cultural analysis. It was found that al...

Teacher self-efficacy has been found to be a desirable teacher trait across countries. However, there is little known about the context to which it develops with respect to classroom practices, and the different aims of national curricula and cultural norms, and the different extent to which they are prevalent in different countries. This study mak...

Mixed‐methods (MM) designs have gained increasing interest in educational research. Still, many studies collect quantitative and qualitative data but report these data separately and do not attempt to integrate them in practice. The aim of this article is to discuss the purposes and processes of integrating qualitative and quantitative data in an M...

The final chapter of this book identifies five themes that run across the previous chapters and then uses these to signpost future directions for Educational Effectiveness Research (EER) and for the continuing development of international perspectives within EER. The five themes include: 1.That reciprocal relationships exist between EER and Intern...

This chapter provides a concise narrative overview of the development of international perspectives in Educational Effectiveness Research (EER), contextualised within shifts towards globalisation in education policy including the increased prominence of international large-scale educational assessments (ILSA) in shaping international policy discour...

This edited volume explores questions about ‘what works’, how, for whom, when, and why in education, and considers how and to what extent such knowledge can be understood and extended across countries and different educational systems. The book starts by presenting an overview of the history of educational effectiveness research and offers examples...

This paper considers various approaches to classroom observation that combine generic and mathematics content-specific dimensions of instructional quality. Using results from previous research in which three research teams each analysed the same three mathematics lessons (from fourth-grade mathematics classrooms in the USA) using different framewor...

There is a rich tradition in Europe of child-centred Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) with social development as the predominant curricular goal and free play as the main pedagogical principle for development. This tradition has been challenged by recent research showing that young children benefit from more structured learning, often call...

Teachers’ healthy and effective functioning at work is impacted by the demands they face and the resources they can access. In this study, person-centered analysis was adopted to identify distinct teacher profiles of demands and resources. We investigated teachers’ experiences of two job demands (barriers to professional development and disruptive...

This paper presents a new methodological model termed Airbag Moderation: That the relationship between two variables varies as a function of a third, and that this third variable depends upon one of the others. Airbag Moderation extends and bridges a number of theories and it can be implemented using existing statistical models and software package...

Background: Home learning environments prior to school are known predictors of educational trajectories. However, existing evidence concentrates on home learning environments that are experienced by children aged 3 years and up. In response, this paper reports on the validity and reliability of the Toddler Home Learning Environment (THLE) scale. T...

Outcomes attained by disadvantaged students in London schools have improved considerably in recent decades (Greaves et al., 2014; Blanden et al., 2015). The current implementation of government-designated ‘Opportunity Areas’ represents an attempt to extend this ‘London Effect’ to other regions of England with large numbers of schools in difficult c...

The objective of this symposium is to bring together different insights into the relationship between school improvement and the use of research by teachers and headteachers in England, Austria and Italy. Recognition of the powerful role that research can play in developing and improving the quality of teaching raises questions about the ways in wh...

Preschool programs were already viewed in the 1960s as important for preventing or correcting the cognitive deficits found in disadvantaged children (Weikart, 1966 reprinted 2016). This paper explores the possible influence of group-based early childhood education and care (ECEC), offered to the general population, on the risk for special education...

Headteachers, teachers, parents, politicians and school governors have long been united in wondering how to produce effective teaching in primary schools - but they could find few reliable answers. This book changes that. Here, some of the UK's leading researchers into effective primary school provision combine qualitative and quantitative research...

This study explores how various measures of home learning environment (HLE) collected at different ages are related to each other and explores associations when the effects of significant child and family characteristics are controlled for. Different age-appropriate measures of the HLE were constructed at ages 3, 7, 11, and 14. The measures were de...

The high mathematics performance of pupils in Singapore on international assessments has prompted educational initiatives in other countries—such as the UK and the USA—to adopt Singapore-based approaches in an attempt to raise mathematics achievement. Empirical evidence to support the transferability of such approaches beyond the Singaporean contex...

We present results from a mixed-method evaluation of a mastery-oriented, Singapore-based mathematics textbook series and teaching approach in Year 1 classrooms in England (Hall, Lindorff, & Sammons, 2016), reanalysed with a focus on individual learning needs -- not a predefined focus, but one that emerged during fieldwork/analysis. The present obje...

Many policies, practices, and interventions that we put in place to promote educational equity employ the targeting of resources to certain individuals or to groups. Great stock is then placed on the results of their empirical evaluation. However, one of the common methodological tools we use in these evaluations, Moderation, is not fit for purpose...

UK Sure Start Children’s Centres (SSCCs) aim to lessen behavioural disorders yet we lack evidence concerning how this is achieved. This study evaluates one possible mechanism: improved home learning environments (HLEs). Data come from a longitudinal study of 2,568 families and children recruited at mean age 14 months from 117 SSCCs in England in 20...

This paper draws on findings from a study of ‘inspiring’ teachers in order to illustrate the way in which the chosen mixed methods design contributed to the success of the research in addressing its research aims. The study investigated the concept of ‘inspiring’ and ‘inspirational’ teaching through recruiting a purposive sample of 17 primary and s...

This article presents one substantive and illustrative school case study to explore in depth practitioners’ engagement with Pathways—an online school improvement resource provided by the Oxford University Press (OUP). Launched in 2013, the ‘four‐step system’ comprises the following phases: ‘audit’, ‘strategic planning’, ‘take action’ and ‘evaluate...

Purpose: First, to outline how our evaluation of targeting interventions is undermined by the lack of an appropriate descriptive hypothesis. Second, to describe and demonstrate how a newly developed hypothesis is appropriate for evaluating targeting interventions. Background: Interventions that target are common in educational psychology. Examples...

This article investigates, from the perspective of senior and middle leaders, how secondary principals in England lead their schools to achieve sustainable performance despite policy shifts. Empirical data were drawn from structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses of a questionnaire survey from 309 effective and improved secondary schools in Engla...

We investigated teacher effects (magnitude, predictors, and cumulativeness) on primary students’ achievement trajectories in Chile, using multilevel cross-classified (accelerated) growth models (four overlapping cohorts, spanning Grades 3 to 8; n = 19,704 students, and 851 language and 812 mathematics teachers, in 156 schools). It was found that te...

1. Nadhim Zahawi, Minister for Children and Families, in evidence to the Science and Technology Select Committee (May 1st 2018), confirmed the importance of children’s centres to the government’s early education and social mobility strategies. But we were surprised to hear him state that the number of children’s centres in disadvantaged areas had r...

1. Nadhim Zahawi, Minister for Children and Families, in evidence to the Science and Technology Select Committee (May 1st 2018), confirmed the importance of children’s centres to the government’s early education and social mobility strategies. But we were surprised to hear him state that the number of children’s centres in disadvantaged areas had r...

Background: Moderation is the hypothesis that the relationship between two concepts varies as a function of a third. Extensions of this hypothesis have been proposed that variously link Moderation to the hypothesis of Mediation. Aims: 1. To define the hypothesis of Airbag Moderation. 2. To demonstrate that this hypothesis integrates and extends se...

This study investigates school effects on primary school students’ language and mathematics achievement trajectories in Chile, a context of particular interest given its large between-school variability in educational outcomes. The sample features an accelerated longitudinal design (3 time points, 4 cohorts) together spanning Grades 3 to 8 (n = 19,...

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...

In this paper, we extend a mixed method (MM) approach to lesson observation and analysis used in previous research in England, combining multiple structured observation instruments and qualitative field notes, to provide a framework for studying three videotaped lessons from 3rd-grade US mathematics classrooms. Two structured observation schedules...

The study identified a sub-group of high attaining (bright) disadvantaged students at the end primary schooling at age 11 and followed their progress across secondary education with a particular focus on their success in advanced level (AS and A-levels) public examinations in England. Based on an sample of approximately 3000 children tracked from a...

Various theories concerning teacher effectiveness (e.g., Campbell, Kyriakides, Muijs & Robinson, 2003; Creemers & Kyriakides, 2008; Marzano, 2003) indicate that consistency and variation in teaching practices may affect individual teacher effectiveness and collective teacher effectiveness in a school, but have not received enough regard. The study...

In February 2017 Blanden, Hansen and McNally published a document that sought to investigate the effects of quality within early education and care settings in England (Quality in Early Years Settings and Children's School Achievement, CEP Discussion Paper 1468, The London School of Economics). Within this document was an argument that contradicts...

Summary report (full text of full report also available)

The role of the parent has been clearly defined in the literature as having a positive influence on children’s emotional, behavioural and educational development, more so than other factors such as maternal education, poverty, peers socio-economic status and schooling (DfES in Every child matters (Green Paper). DfES, London, 2003; Desforges and Abo...

Background: Inspire Maths is the UK edition of My Pals Are Here! first launched in January 2015 by Oxford University Press. It consists of a textbook series and pedagogical approach that emphasises the teaching of mathematics through multiple representations of mathematical concepts – specifically the use of a Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract (CPA) ap...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the concept of “inspiring teaching” based on case studies of exemplary practitioners in England to inform professional development and collaborative learning and support school improvement. Design/methodology/approach – The study adopted a mixed methods design involving multiple perspectives. D...

As authors of the research outlined in your report we were pleased by The BMJ ’s coverage of our findings on children’s centres.1 However, we also showed that the threat posed by austerity cuts was even greater in the 20% most financially disadvantaged …

Purpose: This article illustrates how successful leaders combine the too often dichotomized practices of transformational and instructional leadership in different ways across different phases of their schools’ development in order to progressively shape and “layer” the improvement culture in improving students’ outcomes. Research Methods: Empirica...

“How far does engagement with children’s centres (CCs) promote better outcomes for families, parents, and children?” Impact is explored using multilevel statistical models that predict child, parent, and family outcomes when children were age 3 years plus, controlling for effects of other influences such as background characteristics. ‘Engagement’...

Study into differences between poor, average and excellent teachers and how their teaching practices could be linked to effectiveness of schools.

Study into differences between poor, average and excellent teachers and how their teaching practices could be linked to effectiveness of schools

Research into the ‘Effective pre-school, primary and secondary education’ (EPPSE) project and A level results.

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/485346/DFE-RR495_Evaluation_of_children_s_centres_in_England__the_impact_of_children_s_centres.pdf

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/485362/DFE-RR494_Children_s_centres_changes_in_resourcing_and_characteristics.pdf

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationships between the characteristics of the home learning environment (HLE) and students’ academic attainments in secondary school in England at age 14 and 16. Design/methodology/approach – This research study uses multilevel statistical models to investigate the strength and significance...

Recent research and policy regarding the advantages of early years provision has focused largely on the enhancement and development of cognitive skills for preschoolers. This mixed method study was conducted in Children's Centres in ethnically diverse and disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Nottingham, England and was intended to support the evaluation...

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/433853/RR433A_-_Organisation_Services_and_Reach_of_Childrens_Centres_.pdf

The present study investigates teacher effects on student achievement growth in Chile, an emerging country with a socially stratified and segregated schooling system and an unregulated and diverse teacher labour force. The shape and predictors of primary students’ achievement trajectories in language (Spanish) and mathematics are examined and the...

This paper presents a review of the family services that were offered by a sample of 121 English Sure Start Children’s Centres in 2011 and 2012. Children’s Centres are community based facilities that aim to improve outcomes for at-risk families and children through the delivery of a range of services largely aimed at families with young children. S...

Many examples of educational research, including international comparative studies have clearly documented that children’s attainments and educational careers are linked to their origins (ethnic and cultural) and the socioeconomic situation of their families. However, the extent of the equity gap for specific student groups varies between countries...

This paper examines the benefits of Pre-school centre experience in disadvantaged children’s school readiness, educational achievements and social adjustment. In this article, we describe findings from a large-scale longitudinal study in England that provides evidence on the contribution of home, pre-school and primary school to children’s developm...

This paper outlines a theoretical framework which offers an explanation of the complexity of how teachers define their effectiveness in relation to their classroom practice. The research from which this framework emerged was a two-year, mixed method study of 81 primary and secondary school teachers. The use of repertory grid interviews combined wit...

Educational and occupational aspirations have become an important reference point in policy debates about educational inequality. Low aspirations are presented as a major barrier to closing educational attainment gaps and increasing levels of social mobility. Our paper contributes to this on-going debate by presenting data on the educational aspira...

Since 1997 the Effective Pre - school, Primary and Secondary Education Project (EPPSE) has investigated academic and social - behavioural development in a national sample of approximately 3,000 children from the ages of 3+ years to age 16+. This report summarises some of the main findings about students’ views of thei r secondary schools based on a...

Since 1997 the Effective Pre - school, Primary and Secondary Education Project (EPPS E) has investigated academic and social - behavioural development in a national sample of approximately 3,000 children from the ages of 3+ years to age 16+. This report details the post 16 destinations of the EPPSE students six months after they left compuls ory ed...

This paper discusses findings from a small-scale, mixed methods study of ‘inspiring’ teaching. The study, commissioned and funded by CfBT, included case studies of a purposive sample of 17 primary and secondary teachers in England who were nominated by their head teachers as exemplary practitioners whose practice could be viewed as inspirational fo...

Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to discuss the use of mixed methods research in a major three year project and focuses on the contribution of quantitative and qualitative approaches to study school improvement. It discusses the procedures and multiple data sources used in studying improvement using the example of a recent study of the role of...

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/330276/Final_draft_-_ECCE_Strand_3_Parenting_Services_Study_Report_FINAL.pdf