Looking at School Improvement from a Contextual Perspective

Abstract

Research on effective schooling in secondary schools has identified generic characteristics and processes associated with effective schooling and school improvement but has stopped short of articulating and explaining sub processes of institutional improvement. This paper discusses the impact of school context on effective schooling. It is argued that generic school improvement characteristics and processes take on different meanings in practice, and these meanings are shaped by a school's response to the particular circumstances and challenges of its environment. In turn, this response has implications for the way school improvement programmes are developed and for the role and contribution of teachers. In focusing on meaning through context, the paper highlights the idiosyncratic and reflexive nature of effective schooling and school improvement, and in view of this, advocates a grounded or inductive theory of school improvement to guide practice. Such a theory assumes a capacity on the part of teachers for critical analysis and reflexive action, and is premised on the belief that institutional development and teachers’ professional development are interdependent.