Explains how outdoor learning opens new possibilities for expanding educational opportunities. Explores various lifelong skills that can be learned from outdoor environments, and presents ways to expand classrooms beyond the school building. (GR)

International comparisons of school effectiveness and outcomes have been used to suggest that British schools are underperforming and British students are underachieving, a view that permeated official publications in the 1990s. A review of some international studies and the difficulties of making international comparisons reveals no evidence of…

This article describes the process of theoretical reflection that preceded the development and empirical verification of a model of "effective school improvement". The focus is on basic mechanisms that could be seen as underlying "getting things in motion" and change in education systems. Four mechanisms are distinguished:…

Barton argues that the school accountability system now operating itself has some accountability problems. He discusses three key flaws: (1) The system ignores the fact that--because many states have not yet aligned their standards, curriculum, and test--many assessments being used don't meet basic criteria for test validity; (2) The present…

In England, the government has encouraged state secondary schools to be more diverse by becoming specialist. This paper reports estimates of the relative effectiveness of specialist schools for pupils' attainment in General Certificate of Secondary School examinations in 2001 compared to nonspecialist comprehensive schools, controlling for pupils'…

There are approximately 8,600 schools in the US that had failed to make their minimal requirement of "adequate yearly progress" and were labeled under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy criteria, as "low-performing." Some of these schools were in fact doing great but had only failed in meeting the requirement of having 95% of its students take the…

Improvement in the quality, efficiency, and equity of education, to a considerable extent, depends on the nexus of teaching and learning, which is in turn influenced by the quality of teachers. The teacher has been identified as the single most important factor influencing the quality of education by the Indian Education Commission and the…

This study investigated how graduates of an urban alternative school understood, interpreted, and compared their experiences in previous schools that they considered ineffective with their experiences at an effective alternative school. This study found that students find those schools effective that create or allow spaces where they can be…

This article summarizes and reflects on the findings related to pedagogy of two closely associated Department for Education and Skills (DfES) funded research projects: the "Effective Provision of Pre-school Education" (EPPE) and the "Researching Effective Pedagogy in the Early Years" (REPEY) projects. The EPPE research project was a five-year…

When the Association for Science Education published "I've done this before" in 1994, the ASE working party focused on continuity and progression. Now, nearly 10 years later, how far have schools progressed in their understanding and practice of transition? In this article, the author takes a look at the state of transition in primary science…

This paper discusses performance evaluation and the introduction of incentives into education in Latin America from an analytical and methodological perspective. The aim is to describe ongoing strategies and learn from practical experiences in this field. The cases analyzed reveal that school-level evaluations and collective incentives adapt…

This report is about a study of high leadership capacity schools and those in the process of becoming such a school. Schools were selected for participation in the study based on the leadership capacity characteristics they possessed and evidence of improved and sustained student performance, professional cultures, and shared leadership dynamics.…

Purpose: The educational literature reflects the widely shared belief that participative leadership has an overwhelming advantage over the contrasting style of directive leadership in organizational and team effectiveness. The purpose of this study was to examine the relative effect of a directive leadership approach as compared with a…

Strategic planning in school management now encapsulates a range of activities that are now required of staff in schools and, through school improvement planning, has come to be the only legitimate approach for schools in preparing for their future. Head teachers are central to this process. Consequently, they are now responsible for leading and…

In this article, the author continues to develop the perspective of the improved school finance, an effort to move beyond the conventional framing of funding and resource issues, presented in the article by Grubb, Huerta, and Goe in this issue. Here, the author presents the results of use of the National Educational Longitudinal Survey of the…