Session Information
26 SES 04 A, International Perspectives on the Improvement of Schools Facing Challenging Circumstances
Symposium
Contribution
Cuban (1993) likened educational change to a seascape whereby stormy winds create massive waves on the surface, some turbulence below the surface while on the seabed all remains calm and the work carries on as before. In this sense, reform efforts that seek to prompt change towards improving education quality and equity have relied heavily on prescriptive and one-size-fits-all approaches based on evidence from high-performing countries and schools; in contrast, the educational improvement literature has advocated to move from decontextualized top-down approaches that cause big waves but make little difference. This is particularly important in the case of schools facing challenging circumstances, where social, educational and political contextual factors matter.
Schools facing challenging circumstances are generally located in socially disadvantaged contexts, characterised by poverty, unemployment, physical and mental health problems, and poor access to social services (Muijs et al. 2004). Moreover, there is evidence that these schools face internal issues that are multidimensional and intertwined, including ineffective leadership, poor quality teaching, lack of resources, and high teacher turnover (Meyers and Murphy 2007). Although it is challenging to initiate sustained change processes in this type of schools, which require drastic transformations in schools’ organisation, professional capital and management, there is evidence that they can increase their performance by building internal capacity for improvement (Leithwood, Harris, and Strauss 2010). Given the challenging conditions of the context in which these schools are situated, and the internal difficulties they face to build capacity for improvement, the evidence suggests there are several factors that can contribute to building such capacity.
Regarding factors internal to these schools, research indicates that principals are key to generating improvement and leading turnaround processes. School leaders with high capacity, flexibility and adaptation are required, willing to mediate multiple external demands and internal needs of the educational community, to sustain the processes of change and improvement based on flexible and systematic planning and implementation (Meyers and Hitt, 2017). Similarly, leadership practices that make a difference for the improvement of schools in challenging circumstances focus on learning, promoting conditions to set and achieve ambitious goals of learning and teaching, based on shared leadership and accountability (Townsend, 2019). Conversely, regarding external factors, the development of initiatives that create networks involving research practice partnerships (RPPs) has been shown to be an important mechanism for moving beyond more traditional approaches to improvement, underpinned by authentic collaboration focused on addressing issues with classroom practice or learner experiences and outcomes (Madrid Miranda and Chapman, 2021). Similarly, evidence also has shown how quality assurance and accountability policies can foster the improvement of schools facing challenging circumstances by providing school leaders and teachers with useful performance feedback that allow them to make sense of accountability demands and identify issues under their control to seek solutions that help them turn their schools around (Camphuijsen, 2021).
In this symposium, we bring together different perspectives from Europe and Latin America to critically discuss how schools facing challenging circumstances address educational change and improvement, in diverse social, educational and policy contexts.
References
References (up to 200 words) Camphuijsen, Marjolein K. 2021. "Coping with performance expectations: towards a deeper understanding of variation in school principals’ responses to accountability demands." Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability 33 (3): 427-453. Cuban, L. (1993) How Teachers Taught: Constancy and change in American classrooms 1890-1990, New York: College Teachers Press Leithwood, Kenneth, Alma Harris, and Tiiu Strauss. 2010. Leading School Turnaround. How Successful Leaders Transform Low-Performing School. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Madrid Miranda, R. and Chapman, C. (2021) Towards a network learning system: reflections on a university initial teacher education and school-based collaborative initiative in Chile. Professional Development in Education Meyers, Coby V., and Joseph Murphy. 2007. “Turning around Failing Schools: An Analysis.” Journal of School Leadership 17 (5): 631–659. Meyers, Coby V., and Dallas H. Hitt. 2017. “Planning for school turnaround in the United States: An analysis of the quality of principal-developed quick wins.” School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 29 (3): 362–382 Muijs, Daniel, Alma Harris, Christopher Chapman, Louise Stoll, and Jennifer Russ. 2004. “Improving Schools in Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Areas -A Review of Research Evidence.” School Effectiveness and School Improvement 15 (2): 149–175. Townsend, Tony. 2019. “Changing Understandings of School Leadership”. In T. Townsend (Ed.), Instructional Leadership and Leadership for Learning in Schools. Understanding Theories of Leading (p. 1-12). Palgrave Macmillan.
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