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ABSTRACT
This paper investigates the impact of national policies for improving teaching and the school learning environment (SLE) on student achievement. In each participating country (i.e., Belgium/Flanders, Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Ireland, and Slovenia), a sample of at least 50 schools was drawn and tests in mathematics and science were administered to all Grade 4 students (N = 10,742) at the beginning and end of school year 2010–2011. National policies were measured through (a) content analysis of policy documents, (b) interviews with policymakers, and (c) head-teacher questionnaires. Multilevel analyses revealed that most aspects of national policies for teaching and SLE were associated with student achievement in each subject irrespective of the source of data used to measure them. Implications are, finally, drawn.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank all researchers coming from each country team for collecting the data in their country using the common instruments developed by the core team of this project, as well as for their overall contribution to the project.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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Notes on contributors
Leonidas Kyriakides
Leonidas Kyriakides is Professor of Educational Research and Evaluation at the Department of Education of the University of Cyprus, Cyprus. His main research interests are in the area of school effectiveness and school improvement and especially in modelling the dynamic nature of educational effectiveness and in using research to promote quality and equity in education. Leonidas acted as chair of the EARLI SIG on Educational Effectiveness and as chair of the AERA SIG on School Effectiveness and Improvement.
Maria P. Georgiou
Maria P. Georgiou is a PhD graduate of the University of Cyprus with a specialisation in Educational Effectiveness and Evaluation. Her research interests are focused on the factors contributing to the quality of education and educational effectiveness in general. More specifically, her work examines the characteristics of the effective educational systems and the factors that improve the effectiveness of the policy at the national level.
Bert P. M. Creemers
Bert (Hubertus Peter Maria) Creemers is Professor Emeritus in Educational Sciences at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. His main interest is in educational quality and equity in terms of student learning outcomes at the classroom, school, and system levels. Together with Leonidas Kyriakides, he works on the development and testing of the dynamic model on educational effectiveness and the approach based on this model for the improvement of education.
Anastasia Panayiotou
Anastasia Panayiotou is a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Education of the University of Cyprus. Her main research interests are in the area of educational effectiveness, educational assessment, and teacher professional development. She has several publications in international research journals and in national and international conference proceedings.
David Reynolds
David Reynolds is Professor of Education and Head of the newly established Department of Education at the University of Swansea. He has published extensively on educational effectiveness, school improvement, educational policy, and comparative education, and was one of the founders of ICSEI. He has also had an extensive involvement in trying to get effectiveness and improvement insights into educational policies in both England and, more recently, Wales. He has lectured/consulted/advised in over 50 countries.