Improving Quality in Education: Dynamic Approaches to School Improvement

by Creemers; Bert P.M.

• ISBN13: 9780415548748
• ISBN10: 0415548748
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2012-01-11
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Improving Quality in Education is a major contribution to the area of school improvement, setting out a dynamic framework that will helps schools collect data, evaluate themselves, decide on priorities for improvement and develop action plans. Emphasising the setting of targets, the authors stress the fundamental importance of making schools into the best possible learning environments, giving students and teachers the means to achieve them. Their practical, flexible approach can easily fit with the individual circumstances of each school and system.Based on this approach, the book goes on to explore a number of projects that focus on important challenges schools all around the world are facing, such as preventing bullying and developing teachers. Readers, be they practitioners, school advisors, policy-makers or researchers, will see how the contents of Improving Quality in Education can be applied in a wide variety of educational settings.To conclude the authors offer practical suggestions for designing improvement strategies, providing guidelines to schools on how to self-evaluate, make decisions on priorities and design action plans, including a useful toolkit of guidelines for measuring the quality of teaching and the efficiency of school factors.Aimed at all professionals working in the area, whether academics, researchers, policy-makers, school advisors or teachers, this book will provide expert guidance not only for graduate students, university libraries and individual academics, but also school management teams, school support agencies and officials in educational policy.

Author Biography

Bert P.M. Creemers is Professor in Educational Sciences at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Leonidas Kyriakides is Assistant Professor of Educational Research and Evaluation at the University of Cyprus.

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. vii
List of tables	p. ix
List of appendices	p. xi
Preface	p. xiii
Foundations of the improvement approach	p. 1
Developments in school improvement: the value of a theory-driven approach	p. 3
Establishing links between educational-effectiveness research and school improvement: the contribution of the dynamic model	p. 19
The dynamic approach to school improvement	p. 50
Research projects on the dynamic approach to school improvement	p. 67
Establishing school self-evaluation mechanisms to improve the quality of education	p. 69
Facing and preventing bullying through improving the school learning environment	p. 87
Schools establishing school self-evaluation mechanisms for improvement purposes: case studies of two primary schools in Slovenia	p. 106
Using DASI to improve teacher effectiveness: a group randomisation study	p. 119
Development of DASI: studies on teacher effectiveness in different educational settings	p. 143
Translating the approach into action: guidelines and instruments	p. 157
Using DASI to establish mechanisms for school self-evaluation for improvement purposes	p. 159
Instruments for measuring quality of teaching and school level factors	p. 170
The design of actions and strategies for improvement, their implementation and evaluation	p. 181
Further developments of the dynamic approach to school improvement	p. 201
Reflections on the viability of the approach	p. 203
References	p. 213
Appendix to Chapter 4	p. 233
Appendix to Chapter 5	p. 235
Appendix to Chapter 6	p. 244
Appendix to Chapter 7	p. 247
Appendices to Chapter 10	p. 250
Index	p. 288
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