Many comparative education researchers have tackled the question of how we could understand the relationship between social and cultural contexts and education. Based on the criticisms of School Effectiveness research that prospered during the 1980s, researchers started to pay closer attention to the embeddedness of education in the broader…

Systems thinking (ST) is a holistic leadership approach that puts the study of wholes before that of parts. It focuses attention on how organization members act together in networks of interactions. This is done by researching organization members' mental models, which are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even mental pictures or…

School Improvement Grants (SIGs) exemplify a capacity-building investment to spur sustainable changes in America's persistently lowest-performing schools and stimulate the economy. This study examines both short- and longer-term effects of the first two cohorts of SIG schools from four locations across the country. Dynamic…

In order to better understand the potential influence of high school students' grades on how they rate their teachers and schools, we explored the relationship between student grade point average and student ratings of teacher and school effectiveness in 370 classes taught by 230 instructors with over 6,000 students in grades 9-12 in an…

The global diffusion of outcome-based accountability in education is contested, with accounts of universal convergence being challenged by perspectives emphasising heterogeneity across different national or local contexts. This study uses data from PISA to explore, firstly, the spatial and temporal diffusion of accountability across OECD…

The call for a more collective approach to school leadership motivated the present study. The proposed model examined the mediating role of school management team (SMT) effectiveness in the relationship of SMT characteristics of goal interdependence (the extent to which a shared goal requiring cooperation is present) and functional heterogeneity…

This study emphasizes the importance of teachers' understanding and implementation of professional learning (PL). PL requires teachers to continuously learn in order to increase their professional capacity, and such capacity improvement has been correlated with pupils' enhanced learning quality. The present study explores the preservice teachers'…

Parents often select schools by relying on subjective assessments of quality made by other parents, which are increasingly becoming available through written reviews on school ratings websites. To identify relationships between review content and school quality, we apply recent advances in natural language processing to nearly half a million…

Preliminary investigations reveal that some academic staff find it difficult to adapt use of e-learning facilities for delivery academic duties which could lead to job ineffectiveness. The study, investigated the extent to which e-learning facilities availability, usability and adaptability predict job effectiveness among academic staff of…

Because of the many special characteristics of charter schools, policy makers who aim to promote a system of charters schools that ensures fair access to, and fair treatment of, disadvantaged students will need a public accountability system oriented, at least in part, to equity concerns. Massachusetts, with its single statewide authorizer, as…

To support school improvement, understanding the mechanisms that enhance teachers' engagement in professional learning activities within schools over time is paramount. The purpose of this three-wave longitudinal study is to examine the role of workplace conditions (school leaders' vision building and teams' shared goals), in supporting teachers'…

The purpose of this article is to provide Catholic educators, administrators, families, and broader parish communities an understanding of critical elements required to effectively include all students, particularly those with disabilities, in Catholic schools. With an understanding that Catholic schools enroll and will continue to add not only…

Schools must cooperate with parents to be effective. "Families are critical to children's educational success" as Sheldon (2018, vii), declared. The history of cooperation with parents is quite old. One effective way of cooperating with parents is home visits. The impacts of home visits on school-parent cooperation and student outcomes…

Each year, ACT releases data on the most recent class of high school graduates. In addition to providing an objective and standardized measurement of readiness used in college admissions decisions, the data provided by the ACT® test can be used to inform states, districts, schools, teachers, parents, and students themselves about students'…

The "IDRA Newsletter" serves as a vehicle for communication with educators, school board members, decision-makers, parents, and the general public concerning the educational needs of all children across the United States. The focus of this issue is "Teaching Quality." Contents include: (1) State Policy Recommendations for…