General description

Within the field of educational effectiveness research (EER) this paper intends to contribute to the theorising on what makes schools effective and how to improve schools, thus linking results from school effectiveness research (SER) and school improvement research (SIR). The aim is to produce an outline of a theoretical framework for analysing and understanding school success versus failure in a forthcoming empirical study with the title “Organizing School Success”.

Both SER and SIR have contributed to the EER field, however within different research traditions. Teddlie and Sammons (2010) have noted that while much SER research have used large scale quantitative methods to identify and measure differences in school effectiveness, SIR have been focusing on generating “thick” descriptions of schools using case study approaches. While SER promotes a positivistic strand where studied school interventions as well as conditions for improvements are operationalized as factors correlated to student outcome, SIR interprets categories out of thick descriptions. These categories tend to end up as factors as well, although not generalizable but rather contextual situated.

However, in both SER and SIR research there is a lack of theoretical underpinnings. Following Hargreaves (2001), we argue that a school effective model must be based on more than a set of factors correlated to student outcome. As for the SIR perspective, we argue that there must be more than list of categories accompanied by lengthy descriptions of the life in a specific school indicating the successfulness. Therefore, we stress that SER and SIR need to be linked to sociological and organisational theories making the principles of social life among teachers and principals in school logical and explicable. Expressed differently, the connection or consistency between casually determined factors (SER) and interpreted and situated categories (SIR) must be made clear.

Although theoretical frameworks occasionally have been proposed, they often lack clarity in referring to sociological theories of human agency within an organisational and institutional frame. Bennett and Harris e.g. (1999) suggest that the analyses of power could provide a conceptual and theoretical frame to bring together the two fields. However, they do not provide a conceptual framework that make the bases of social life in schools clear from a power perspective. Hargreaves (2001) propose a “capital theory of school effectiveness and improvement” based on four concepts: outcomes, leverage, social capital and intellectual capital. Hargreaves´ argument results in a model for school change and innovation. However, the model does not outline the basic mechanisms for change or how these mechanisms refer to organizational and institutional frames within schools. Making the logic of improvement processes more evident and possible to grasp, we argue that EER must be linked to sociological and organizational theories. We outline a theoretical framework concerning the principles of social life among teachers and principals. The proposed framework is a fruitful contribution to the understanding of the chain of mechanisms that create school success and failure.

Bennett, N., & Harris, A. (1999). Hearing Truth from Power? Organisation Theory, School Effectiveness and School Improvement. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 10(4), 533-550. doi: 10.1076/sesi.10.4.533.3492 Hargreaves, D. H. (2001). A Capital Theory of School Effectiveness and Improvement. British Educational Research Journal, 27(4), 487-503. doi: 10.1080/01411920124392 Poole, M. S., & Van de Ven, A. H. (2004). Theories of Organizational Change and Innovation Processes. In M. S. Poole & A. H. Van de Ven (Eds.), Handbook of Organizational Change and Innovation. New York: Oxford University Press. Teddlie, C., & Sammons, P. (2010). Applications of mixed methods to the field of educational effectiveness research. In B. P. M. Creemers, L. Kyriakides, & P. Sammons (Eds.) Methodological advances in educational effectiveness research. London: RoutledgeTaylor & Francis.