School improvement trajectories: an empirical typology

ABSTRACT

This paper is based on a multiple case study of schools which have been identified as improving their performance for about a decade. We proposed different criteria by which to characterize and study these improvement processes and, by applying them to our sample, we elaborated a typology of school improvement trajectories: we identified 4 different trajectories of school improvement. We called the first type restricted improvement because at its center is the management of processes that mainly target academic achievement tests; the second is incipient improvement, which is based on changes that restructure the school processes; the third identified trajectory are cases where school improvement is moving toward institutionalization, while the last are those cases where improvement has been already institutionalized and the schools have achieved high levels of educational effectiveness. We identified challenges that schools face at different stages of school improvement and discussed some related policy issues.

KEYWORDS:

• School effectiveness
• school improvement
• case studies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. System for the measurement of educational quality (for its Spanish acronym).

2. Additional details about the study can be found in Bellei, Valenzuela, Vanni, & Contreras (2014).

3. We included the 3,669 schools with 15 or more students in the fourth primary level to increase the validity of the measurement of academic achievement.

4. The typical structure of school leadership in Chile is based on a team composed by the principal (who is in charge of the functioning, organization, and management of the school), the pedagogical coordinator (who focuses on instructional leadership responsibilities), and the general inspector (who oversees school discipline).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the PIA-CONICYT Basal Funds for Centers of Excellence [grant number BF0003]; PIA-CONICYT ANILLO [grant number SOC-1104].

Notes on contributors

Cristián Bellei

Cristián Bellei is an associate researcher of the Center for Advanced Research in Education and assistant professor in the Sociology Department, both at the University of Chile. His main research areas are educational policy, school effectiveness, and school improvement; he has published extensively about quality and equity in Chilean education.

Xavier Vanni

Xavier Vanni is an associate researcher of the Center for Advanced Research in Education at the University of Chile. His work and research focus on educational policy, school leadership, and school improvement.

Juan P. Valenzuela

Juan Pablo Valenzuela is an associate researcher of the Center for Advanced Research in Education and associate professor in the Economics Department, both at the University of Chile. His main research areas are economics of education and social inequality.

Daniel Contreras

Daniel Contreras is the coordinator of the education area of UNICEF in Chile, and teaches at the Alberto Hurtado University. He has published about educational policy, school improvement, and the right to education.