Studies in School Improvement

Citation

Oplatka, I. (2010), "Studies in School Improvement", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 48 No. 4, pp. 543-546. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578231011054761

In many Western countries nowadays, school improvement has become a dominant theme in the national education discourse, at least in part, due to public concerns about poor education and low student achievements in international scales. This has led to a host of school improvement interventions and initiatives, on one hand, and to massive research on this topic in the education literature. Hoy and Dipaola's (2009) book is another contribution in this line of research. The compiled book covers an entire spectrum of issues (p. vii) “around the broad topic of school improvement, which includes studies of principal leadership, change, reform, and cultures and strategies that improve instruction,” as the editors indicate in their preface. In its eleven chapters, authors holding different theoretical views demonstrate their own interpretation of school improvement, be it handled directly or indirectly through addressing to related topics, such as leadership, or school effectiveness.

In Chapter 1, Leithwood and Sun systematically exposes the reader to unpublished research on the effects of transformational leadership upon teachers' emotions, teachers' practices, school conditions, and student achievements, all of which are aspects of school improvement interventions. Based on 54 quantitative unpublished works, the authors found consistent positive effects of transformational leadership on teachers' emotions and beliefs and, to a lesser extent, on student achievement, a major indicator of school improvement in our era of accountability.

One element underlying the model of transformational leadership, change orientation, is analyzed theoretically and empirically in the next chapter. Kearney and Smith identify three converging aspects of change that set successful reform, including teacher receptivity to change, the principal's change orientation, and receptivity of stakeholders to externally imposed alterations. The chapter literally presents the process through which the authors have developed the Faculty Orientation Scale, which represents, according to the authors (p. 36) “a valid and reliable tool that can be employed to asses teachers' perceptions of change in schools”. The reader benefits from having the opportunity to learn more about this measure in the final appendix and to examine its items, a very useful instrument for every principal wishing to know more about the culture of change in his/her school and school's environment. The practical notion related to school change underlying the second chapter continues in the subsequent one, written by Rowan and Correnti. Using data collected in 120 elementary schools, the authors concluded that the implementation strategy pursued by Comprehensive School Reform programs had large effects on implementation outcomes. For practitioners, the evidence suggests the wisdom of pursuing procedural and professional strategies for making instructional change in schools.

Very illuminating, in my view, is Chapter 4 in which Kirby and DiPaola adopt the concept of academic optimism, rarely appearing in the discourse of educational administration, to examine the structural and cultural influences on student achievement. Drawing on McGuigan and Hoy's definition of academic optimism in terms of collective efficacy, trust in students and parents, and academic press/emphasis, the authors confirmed the factor structure of academic optimism and pointed to a significant relationship between this sort of optimism and student achievement while controlling for socioeconomic status (SES). Fortunately, despite a student's SES, I learned that schools can do a lot to enhance their student achievement through intensifying the element of academic optimism in the school's climate, a corollary that needs to be further investigated in future research on this concept.

Student outcomes, both in terms of achievement and retention, are the focus of the two subsequent chapters. Jadallah and Pounder found that the overall implementation of middle school reform is significantly related to the learning environment, including academic‐ and engagement‐emphasis areas. From a different point of view, Perez and Johnson provide initial insights into a specific program for out‐of‐school youth – continuation high schools – incorporated in the Californian educational system. They found that these schools vary dramatically in mission, design, program, philosophy and challenges across the state, resulting from vague expectations, differences in district priorities, poor data collection and analysis systems. In the light of the practical ”spirit” emphasized in this compilation, practical suggestions for the establishment of similar schools in other areas are provided.

Of much relevance to the study of school improvement is the conceptual work of Firestone. In Chapter 7, Firestone develops a conceptualization of how district culture and processes influence teaching and learning. His fascinating analysis led him to conclude that (p. 197) “the most powerful culture for supporting improvement and ultimately student learning is the student‐learning culture”, embedded with the shared assumption that students can learn, and the commonly‐held belief in collaborative leadership and trust. The author, however, is fully aware of the difficulty to attain a student‐learning district culture in an era of accountability and standardizations in which, in my own view, outcomes are prioritized and hierarchical structures are favored by many policy‐makers.

Chapter 8, written by McMahon and Hoy, struck me, not because it is not well structured and robust, but because it took me unexpectedly to sociology of work, in general, and to the issue of teacher professionalism in particular without providing me with some links between school improvement and this old‐debated topic. Based on empirical data, the authors, in a highly accessible form, display four elements of professionalism – effectiveness, academic engagement, self‐regulation, and contribution to professional community coming together to form an integrated model of teacher professionalism.

As some models of school improvement attach much significance to trust among teachers and students, the next two chapters center on this cultural feature in different educational arenas. Chapter 9 elaborates on the perceived influence of teacher‐school board member trust relationships on school effectiveness, concluding that trustful relationships in the school are related to higher student achievement. Chapter 10 takes the issue of trust one step further. Adams and Forsyth aim at conceptualizing and validating a scale to measure student trust perceptions of teachers, a group of school members that has been left relatively untouched in the research on trust in schools. The measure includes items to capture several indicators within the contexts of student‐teacher interactions, such as benevolence, reliability, honesty, and competence, all of which indicators of critical importance to student achievement. The concluding chapter, written by Young and Young is of high concern for professors of educational administration, but at the same time, of very scant “visible” reference to the issue of school improvement. This study, according to the authors (p. 281) “focuses on admission decisions for a doctoral program in educational leadership and assesses if applicants varying in national origin perform differently on common academic predictors […]” admittedly an important research topic, yet its relation to the book's title is extremely vague.

Although, very sensibly, there are some parts that I found more interesting than others. Most of them represent a significant contribution to the field of school improvement and effectiveness. Written by many putative scholars in the field of educational administration in North America, this compiled book serves a valuable resource for district officials, principals, teachers, parents, and many other stakeholders whose major aim is to improve our schools. Personally, I learned much about new horizons in the research on school improvement and the adoption of new concepts in order to better understand this organizational phenomenon. I felt the book provides the reader with a varied and multi‐perspective view of this area of study. The material itself is varied. Both ends of the spectrum from the highly technical and theoretical to the very practical are well represented.

Nevertheless, there are a few things that detract from this book. First, due to a lack of introduction written by the editors, presenting the theoretical framework underlying this compiled book, the structure and order of the book is unclear, leaving the reader to judge the contribution of any chapter to the study of school improvement. Second, and arising from this point, it is not clear why, for instance, the chapter by Leithwood and Sun which usefully explores the effects of transformational leadership is placed in the first page, when the issue of leadership is only one aspect of school improvement, not necessarily the major one of them. It is similarly a little puzzling why chapters revolving around issues of dropout, professionalism, and doctoral programs have been included in this book. Some readers might have difficulty with the order of the materials and its contribution to the study of school improvement in their country. A concluding chapter could have made up for it. Despite these shortcomings, the book is certainly highly recommended for anyone who has a vested interest in school reform with a specific interest in school improvement interventions and initiatives.