Improving Schools and Educational Systems International Perspectives

School improvement has become a dominant feature of educational reform in many countries. The pressure upon schools to improve performance has resulted in a wide-range of improvement programmes and initiatives which can provide both inspiration and advice to everyone involved in school improvement. This book draws together the most effective school improvement projects from around the world in one comprehensive text, including detailed comparative analysis of a wide variety of initiatives. Drawing on examples from the UK, the USA, Canada, South Africa and Australia this book gives both an international snapshot and a coherent synthesis of initiatives that have given achievable results.

Part 1: Setting the Context Introduction 1. A Brief History of School Improvement Research in the USA Part 2: School Improvement: Phases 2 and 3 2. Success For All 3. The High Reliability Schools Project: Some Preliminary Results and Analyses 4. sing the power of difference in school improvement projects 5.Effective School Improvement:: Similarities and Differences in Improvement in Eight European Countries Part 3: School Improvement: Phase 4 6. Changing Secondary Schools Is Hard: Lessons from 10 years of School Improvement 7. Building Instructional Quality: 'Inside-Out' and 'Outside-In' Perspectives on San Diego’s School Reform 8. Standards-Based Reform and Small Schools of Choice: How Reform Theories Converge in Three Urban Middle Schools 9. Education District Development in South Africa: A New Direction for School Improvement? 10. The Challenge of Systemic Change in Complex Educational Systems: A District Model to Scale Up Reform 11. The Creation of Knowledge Networks: Collaborative Enquiry for School and System Improvement Part 4: Towards the 5th Phase School Improvement: Future Directions for the Field Conclusion.

Alma Harris is Pro-Director (Leadership) at the Institute of Education, London and Professor of Educational Leadership at the London Centre for Leadership in Learning, Institute of Education, London. Janet Chrispeels is Director of the Centre of Educational Leadership at the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education, University of California Santa Barbara, USA.