Session Information
26 SES 04 B, School Improvement and Quality Through the Lens of Educational Leadership
Paper Session
Contribution
Due to their location and the composition of the student body, schools in challenging circumstances face more difficult conditions. With a high proportion of students from non-privileged family situations (usually measured by the educational attainment and financial circumstances of the parents), these poorer socio-economic circumstances are often associated with special compensatory services provided by the school. In addition, schools in challenging circumstances have different organizational quality characteristics.
When quality characteristics differ, schools need external support. To be able to face these different problem and stress constellations of particularly stressed schools, it is therefore necessary to take a differentiated view of the stress characteristics as well as different school development and support approaches, which are based on the specific needs of the schools.
The necessary additional support from the system can take place, for example, within the framework of professionalization and advisory services.
This paper examines the quality and benefits of a support program for schools offering various interventions and their impact on school leadership, school development and school quality in schools in challenging circumstances.
It is based on data from the accompanying study of a program to support schools in challenging circumstances, which supports school leaders of schools in disadvantaged social environments in the further development of their school through interventions like coaching and school development counselling. It also records the quality and the change in the quality of school characteristics and examines the contribution of the interventions to these changes.
The paper is based on the following overarching questions:
- How is the quality of the interventions assessed by the school stakeholders who have a connection to the measures?
- What are the consequences of the interventions in terms of qualities and quality changes in the schools?
This research draws on several strands of literature. First, it builds on research on school effectiveness, which since the 1970s has focused on the impact of various school-related factors on students' academic performance. This has included increasing attention to schools with particular challenges in recent years, which includes a focus on school context in terms of low socio-economic status, high levels of migration, etc., which often occur in combination with dysfunctional features of school organization (e.g., Baumert, Stanat & Watermann, 2006). Second, the paper draws on research on school development and change with a particular focus on 'school turnaround', which can be seen as an educational policy initiative to change and improve the performance of these schools (Murphy & Meyers, 2008; Peck & Reitzug, 2014; Authors, 2012, 2019, 2020).
One of the key findings of the research is that improvement initiatives need to be differentiated and adapted to the needs and challenges of individual schools (e.g., Reynolds et al., 1996). With regard to the selection of strategies, different concerns have to be addressed, such as decisions on the number and size of prioritized areas, where to set the focus, the use of data, and assessments related to the capacity of the school to change as well as the degree of external support needed (Meyers & Smylie, 2017). Different models for “School Turnaround” have been tried out in the US and in England. While some models include radical approaches such as school closure and retention of staff, others concentrate on professional development (e.g., courses, peer-teaching, coaching) focusing on improving the quality of teaching and school management, establishing cooperation or even initiating school fusion between a “failing” school and a school characterized as “successful”, and improving the coordination between the school and the local authorities. The last type of model is more evident in the German speaking context (Author, 2018; Racherbäumer et al., 2013).
Method
This five-year longitudinal mixed methods study is based on a sample of around 150 schools in North Rhine-Westphalia. Over a period of three years, half of the schools experienced further measures to professionalize school leadership (e.g., coaching of school leaders, continuous professional development program) and support school development (additional financial resources, school development counselling). The quantitative analyses are based on a total of six surveys of staff and school leaders - three on the work situation, three on the various interventions. On the one hand, the intervention survey serves as an implementation check with the aim of verifying whether the program has been implemented effectively. At the same time, variation in intervention quality provides an opportunity to examine whether certain dimensions of intervention quality predict school quality. In addition to a descriptive evaluation of the quality assessments of staff and school leaders, autoregressive regression analyses are conducted to examine the impact of specific program components/interventions on selected school quality characteristics during the program period. These analyses were conducted at school level, as the program was implemented at school level. Due to the reduced sample size at the school level, the regression analyses were estimated in separate models for each explanatory variable. In each case, a characteristic of school quality at the third measurement point (dependent variable) was regressed while controlling for the same variable at the first measurement point (control variable t1), as well as a characteristic of outcome quality (influencing factor, effect variable) of a program component/intervention. This reveals whether the quality of outcomes is related to the characteristic of school quality after the program, independent of the initial value of the characteristic of school quality before the program. The control or dependent variables are based on the school mean scores of the staff's assessments of school quality at the first and third measurement time points, respectively. The influencing factors are based on the mean values of the assessments of the outcome qualities from the surveys of all different time points. Through a comparison group design, it is possible to compare the changes in project and comparison schools and to relate them to the program interventions. To measure the changes in the schools using questionnaire data of the survey on the work situation, the effect size Cohen's d (Cohen, 1988) was calculated, which refers to the practical relevance of the results.
Expected Outcomes
Presented are selected results on the perception of the quality and benefits of the different interventions as well as their effects on school leadership, school development and school quality. The results of the study show the very positive assessment of the quality and benefits of the program modules and their positive consequences on the quality of the organization. The results of the regression analyses provide evidence that positively perceived outcome qualities of the training program, coaching and school development counselling go hand in hand with improvements in numerous dimensions of school quality (e.g., coordination of action of school management, cooperative leadership). For example: The school members’ positive perception of the benefits (β = .26**) and reached goals (β = .28**) as well as their perception of an increase in competence development (β = .25**), behavioral (β = .27**) and organizational (β = .15*) change through the school’s work with a process consultancy for school development is associated with an improved coordination of actions of the steering group perceived by the employees. Additionally, the effect sizes show that the majority of the project schools have developed better over the course of the program, both on the basis of the assessment of the school management and the staff, than the comparison schools, some of which have even developed negatively. The overall findings show that there is evidence for the effectivity of the interventions of school development programs. Thus, the longitudinal study shows the contribution of different interventions on school leadership and school development of German schools in challenging situations. Based on the results, the interventions are discussed in relation to their effects. In this way, the conditions for successful implementation can be identified and implications for practice can be derived.
References
Authors (2012, 2018, 2019, 2020) Baumert, J., Stanat, P. & Watermann, R. (2006): Herkunftsbedingte Disparitäten im Bildungswesen. Vertiefende Analysen im Rahmen von PISA 2000. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed). L. Erlbaum Associates. Meyers, C.V. & Smylie, M.A. (2017). Five Myths of School Turnaround Policy and Practice, Leadership and Policy in Schools, 16:3, 502-523, DOI:10.1080/15700763.2016.1270333 Murphy & Meyers, (2008): Turning Around Failing Schools: Leadership Lessons From the Organizational Sciences. Thousands Oak, California: Corwin Press. Peck, C., & Reitzug, U. C. (2014). School turnaround fever: The paradoxes of a historical practice promoted as a new reform. Urban Education, 49, 8-38. doi: 10.1177/0042085912472511 Racherbäumer, K., Funke, C., Ackeren, I. van & Clausen, M. (2013): Datennutzung und Schulleitungshandeln an Schulen in weniger begünstigter Lage. Empirische Befunde zu ausgewählten Aspekten der Qualitätsentwicklung. In: Die Deutsche Schule 13, Beiheft 12, S. 226-254. Münster: Waxmann. Reynolds, D., Bollen, R., Creemers, B., Hopkins, D., Stoll, L. & Lagerwej, N. (1996): Making Good Schools: Linking School Effectiveness and Improvement. London: Routledge/Falmer.
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