Exploring the journey of school improvement: classifying and analyzing patterns of change in school improvement processes and learning outcomes

Abstract

Based upon case study research, Jackson (2000) earlier proposed that school improvement could be conceptualized as a journey, and that the improvement challenges which schools face are determined, in part, by their location in that journey. This study sought to build upon these propositions by determining if it was indeed possible to classify schools according to different patterns of academic growth during their “school improvement journeys”. Then the research examined whether these patterns of school improvement could be linked to contextual conditions of the schools and changes in specific alterable school-level variables. The study found that schools could be successfully classified according to several predominant patterns of school improvement and that these patterns of growth in learning could be linked to features of the school context as well as to changes in collaborative, learning-directed leadership and school academic capacity.

Keywords:

• leadership
• collaborative leadership
• school improvement
• leadership for learning
• longitudinal research

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the funding support of the Research Grant Council (RGC) of Hong Kong for its support through the General Research Fund (GRF 840509) to development of the methodologies used for longitudinal modeling in this study.

Notes

1. Our initial examination of the measurement model used to define the latent improvement capacity and leadership factors at three points in time suggested that school improvement capacity and leadership displayed measurement invariance over time (defined as invariant factor structure, item loadings, and item intercepts). We then provided evidence that teachers' perceptions about schools' underlying capacity and collaborative leadership changed over time (as summarized in Table 1).

2. One possible reason for the lack of association between school context and teacher mobility is that mobility is driven primarily by retirement patterns and the union contract specifying transfer and hiring procedures (based on seniority) rather than by principal discretion in hiring teachers.

3. We found only low-socioeconomic status (SES) and math scores were significantly related to student likelihood to change schools or enter the cohort late. In each case, the identified relationships were in a different direction for each dichotomous outcome. At the school level, there was no consistent predictor identified across both dichotomous outcomes (i.e., staff stability was negatively related to student likelihood to change schools; school composition (percentages of low-SES, English language learner [ELL], and special education [SPED] students) was positively related to students' likelihood to enter the study late).