Session Information
32 SES 11, Understanding School Improvement From Different Perspectives - Reconstructive Qualitative Methods
Symposium
Contribution
Understanding school improvement as a highly complex process is common ground for the presentations in this symposium. The origin of this complexity can be explained by several factors: the longitudinal, indirect and reciprocal nature, the differential development of subsystems and nonlinearity of process, the variety of meaningful factors, and the fact that school improvement is a multi-level phenomenon (Feldhoff, Radisch, & Bischof, 2016).
There is a long research tradition of studying the question: what works in schools? These mainly quantitative studies offered important answers mainly connected to impact on student learning. Shared commitment and collaborative activity, knowledge and skills of teachers, leadership and management, feedback and accountability, exchange with the school environment, and teacher empowerment (Feldhoff, et al., 2016) are factors which influence student outcomes. Not questioning the meaning of that empirical evidence, there are some shortcomings in this research tradition. Those findings are not yet integrated into a comprehensive theory and there is still little empirical evidence from quantitative studies about how these factors influence each other or how to improve those factors to support student learning. Scheerens (2015) explains the possible insufficiency of the rational paradigm in quantitative research, characterized by causal interactions and linear processes, which seemingly does not work for school improvement.
There is growing interest to answer the “how does it work?” question driving researchers to take methodological challenges and use complex, mixed methods design and qualitative methods. Examples of such research are presented in this symposium.
School improvement process can be understood within a learning paradigm (Coburn, 2016) based on social constructivism. This is a common approach in school improvement research using different terms for the process of knowledge building such as: co-construction, sense-making or interpretation. Sense-making is a basis for collective and constructive processes creating new social practices within school. It is a collective, socially and interactively constructed, dynamic learning process in a complex system (Bormann, 2011; Endres & Weibler, 2017; Spillane, Reiser, & Reimer, 2002; Weick, 1995).
All three presentations are based on the assumption that social reality is produced by collective actors (Bohnsack, 2010) and that reality is embedded in social practice. The first two presentations take the perspective of the meso level (school) and focus on sense-making process (Spillane, et al., 2002) allowing for a school-specific interpretation of two concepts: heterogeneity and students’ participation. The third presentation takes a macro perspective and studies how the concepts of heterogeneity and decision-making structures are addressed from the side of educational policy and how it is presented in different journals dealing with school improvement.
References
Bohnsack, R. (2010). Documentary Method and Group Discussions. In R. Bohnsack, N. Pfaff, & W. Weller (Eds.), Qualitative Analysis and Documentary Method In International Educational Research (pp. 99–125). Opladen/Farmington Hills, MI: Barbara Budrich. Bormann, I. (2011). Zwischenräume der Veränderungen. Innovationen und ihr Transfer im Feld von Bildung und Erziehung. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag. Coburn, C. E. (2016). What’s policy got to do with it? How the structure-agency debate can illuminate policy implementation. American Journal of Education, 122(3), 465–475. https://doi.org/10.1086/685847 Endres, S., & Weibler, J. (2017). Towards a three-component model of relational social constructionist leadership: A systematic review and critical interpretive synthesis. International Journal of Management Reviews, 19(2), 214–236. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijmr.12095 Feldhoff, T., Radisch, F., & Bischof, L. M. (2016). Designs and methods in school improvement research: A systematic review. Journal of Educational Administration, 54, 209–240. https://doi.org/10.1108/jea-07-2014-0083 Scheerens, J. (2015). Theories on educational effectiveness and ineffectiveness. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 26, 10–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2013.858754 Spillane, J. P., Reiser, B. J., & Reimer, T. (2002). Policy Implementation and Cognition: Reframing and Refocusing Implementation Research. Review of Educational Research, 72, 387–431. Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
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