Beyond school effectiveness and school improvement: lighting the slow fuse of possibility

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that both school effectiveness and school improvement are importantly flawed and that we should be developing alternative approaches which connect more explicitly and more imaginatively with the dilemmas and possibilities facing education in and for democracy at the end of the twentieth century. The first half of the paper (sections 1–3) begins by expressing a number of dissatisfactions with the school effectiveness movement as a prelude to exploring the positive nature and potential of ‘mapping’ change in the school improvement process. The second half (sections 4–5) articulates a number of reservations about both school effectiveness and school improvement and begins to explore the possibility of an alternative, namely, ‘transformative education’.

KEYWORDS:

• effectiveness
• improvement
• mapping change
• transformative education
• school