Responses to positive and negative feedback on organizational aspects of school quality: teachers’ and leaders’ views on a Swiss traffic light approach to school inspection

ABSTRACT

In social contexts, feedback by observers, participants, or recipients provides information on performance and products, thereby creating an opportunity to learn and improve. In education governance, many countries rely on school inspection by professional observers to convey feedback on organizational and pedagogical processes and outcomes. This article examines the reactions of teachers and leaders to a Swiss inspection approach that uses a traffic light system to evaluate process features of school quality. Using SPSS and Mplus, the multilevel analysis distinguishes between individual and collective effects. On the individual level, school leaders respond to the traffic light inspections in general slightly more positively than teachers. On the collective level, feedback that flags organizational disturbances or failures of local schools does not evoke a sweeping rejection. Overall, the results indicate a rather high acceptance of the traffic light approach.

KEYWORDS:

• School inspection
• external evaluation
• feedback
• school quality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Founded in 1992 as the Office for Standards in Education, later Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills.

2 Reports in local newspapers often misread the green icon as per se signifying outstanding quality. To the best of our knowledge, school boards or principals have never protested against this misunderstanding.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Carsten Quesel

Carsten Quesel is professor of sociology of education at the School of Education of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland. His research focuses on project-based learning, education governance, school evaluation, and school improvement.

Kirsten Schweinberger

Kirsten Schweinberger is a senior researcher at the School of Education at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland. Her central topics are professional development, evaluation, and research methodology.

Guido Möser

Guido Möser is founder of masem research and university lecturer for advanced statistics. Together with Carsten Quesel he has published on school and teaching climate and on entrepreneurship education.