Many of our schools are good schools - if this were 1965. Processes and structures designed for a time that has passed are no longer appropriate in a rapidly changing society. Throughout the world a great deal of effort and money has been expended in the name of educational change. Much of it has been misdirected and some of it wasteful. This book assists people inside and outside schools to bring about positive change by helping them to define the purposes behind change, the processes needed to achieve change and the results which they should expect. By linking the why, what and how of change, the authors provide both a theoretical critique and practical advice to assist all those committed to changing and improving schools.

Changing Our Schools

Education & Teaching

Stoll, Louise

Fink, Dean

Schools & Teaching

Open University Press

“All who are interested and concerned about educational reform and the improvement of schools will find this book a must read. It stimulates, it challenges, and it informs, such that the reader is most surely enriched by its plenitude.” Dr Shirley Hord, Scholar Emerita “At last we have a book of international cases to add to the literature on networks! Policymakers and practitioners alike will find the reasons why networks are fast becoming the reform organizations of choice. The book elevates network understanding to a new level.” Ann Lieberman, Senior Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
<ul>
<li> What is a professional learning community? </li>
<li> What are the key challenges facing these communities and how might they be resolved? </li>
<li> Is it time to extend our thinking about professional learning communities?</li>
</ul> There is great interest internationally in the potential of professional learning communities for enhancing educational reform efforts and sustaining improvement. This international collection expands perceptions and understanding of professional learning communities, as well as highlighting frequently neglected complexities and challenges. Drawing on research, each chapter offers a deeper understanding of topics such as distributed leadership, dialogue, organisational memory, trust, self-assessment and inquiry, and purpose linked to learning. The last section of the book focuses upon three of the most challenging dilemmas that face developing professional learning communities - developing professional learning communities in secondary school, building social capital, and sustaining professional learning communities. The authors provide pointers on why these challenges exist, offering rays of hope for ways forward.
 Professional Learning Communities is key international reading for education professionals, school practitioners, policymakers, academics and research students. It is a must-read for anyone interested in building capacity for sustainable learning and the ability to harness your community as a resource for change.

Professional Learning Communities: Divergence, Depth And Dilemmas: Divergence, Depth and Dilemmas

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Mental Health

What is a professional learning community? What are the key challenges facing these communities and how might they be resolved? Is it time to extend our thinking about professional learning communities? There is great interest internationally in the potential of professional learning communities for enhancing educational reform efforts and sustaining improvement. This international collection expands perceptions and understanding of professional learning communities, as well as highlighting frequently neglected complexities and challenges. Drawing on research, each chapter offers a deeper understanding of topics such as distributed leadership, dialogue, organisational memory, trust, self-assessment and inquiry, and purpose linked to learning. The last section of the book focuses upon three of the most challenging dilemmas that face developing professional learning communities - developing professional learning communities in secondary school, building social capital, and sustaining professional learning communities. The authors provide pointers on why these challenges exist, offering rays of hope for ways forward.Professional Learning Communities is key international reading for education professionals, school practitioners, policymakers, academics and research students. It is a must-read for anyone interested in building capacity for sustainable learning and the ability to harness your community as a resource for change.

Professional Learning Communities

Seashore-Louis, Karen

The disciplines of school effectiveness research and school improvement practice and research have been apart for too long. This book is the first major attempt, by leading writers and practitioners in these fields, to bring the areas together in a coherent way. Existing knowledge about the characteristics of `good' schools is outlined, together with the knowledge base about how to `make schools good schools'. The book also makes an entirely original contribution to re-thinking practice in school improvement that can revolutionise our thinking in the late 1990s, and which can be of use to academics, to policymakers and to the practitioners which much existing work has neglected.

Making Good Schools: Linking School Effectiveness and Improvement (Politics of Language)

REYNOLDS, David

Creemers, Bert P.M.

Bollen, Robert

Lagerweij, Nijs

Hopkins,David

Routledge

It's About Learning (What's in it for schools?)

The purpose of this book is to re-orient the current agenda in education towards learning. The recent emphasis has been on achieving standards through managing schools, teachers and the teaching process. But the real purpose of schools was, is, and always will be about learning. In an increasingly complex, diverse and unpredictable world, it is necessary for schools and those working with them to refocus on learning at all levels - pupils, teachers, leaders, the organisation as a whole and all of the school's partners. It's About Learning is a clear and well written discussion woven with practical examples and strategies. It also includes an annotated bibliography suggesting useful follow-up reading, and the issues are posed as questions for reflection and discussion.

It's About Learning (and It's About Time): What's in it for Schools?

Politics & Social Sciences

Earl, Lorna

Sociology

School Matters

Few issues of national importance have received as much attention in recent years as education. Yet, for all the concern and rhetoric about the declining quality of our schools in a competitive world, there are surprisingly few hard facts about what makes good schools work and how to improve bad ones. The University of California Press is therefore pleased to announce the publication of the first significant research on the effect of primary schools in decades. Based on one of the largest surveys of primary school effectiveness ever undertaken—the researchers monitored the progress of nearly 2000 students in 50 British inner-city primary schools for four years—School Matters not only shows exactly what goes on in primary schools—it shows how they vary in their success and explains why. Among the many important and hopeful results: Schooling IS more important for pupils' progress than background. High expectations DO have an effect on pupil achievement. Schools CAN change. The report identifies 12 key factors—all within the control of the school—that lead to effective education. Effective schools increase the progress of ALL pupils. School Matters, the most important survey of what makes schools work since Rutter's Fifteen Thousand Hours, will be of immense interest not only to education specialists, but to policy-makers and the concerned public.

Mortimore, Peter

Sammons, Pamela

Ecob, Russell

LEWIS, David

University of California Press

Few issues of national importance have received as much attention in recent years as education. Yet, for all the concern and rhetoric about the declining quality of our schools in a competitive world, there are surprisingly few hard facts about what makes good schools work and how to improve bad ones. The University of California Press is therefore pleased to announce the publication of the first significant research on the effect of primary schools in decades. Based on one of the largest surveys of primary school effectiveness ever undertaken—the researchers monitored the progress of nearly 2000 students in 50 British inner-city primary schools for four years—School Matters not only shows exactly what goes on in primary schools—it shows how they vary in their success and explains why.Among the many important and hopeful results: Schooling IS more important for pupils' progress than background. High expectations DO have an effect on pupil achievement. Schools CAN change. The report identifies 12 key factors—all within the control of the school—that lead to effective education. Effective schools increase the progress of ALL pupils.School Matters, the most important survey of what makes schools work since Rutter's Fifteen Thousand Hours, will be of immense interest not only to education specialists, but to policy-makers and the concerned public.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1988.

Social Sciences

This is a comparative study of approaches to the challenge of improving achievement, which focuses on two pairs of schools, in London and Singapore. They were chosen because they seemed to be achieving 'against the odds', with pupils who were relatively disadvantaged in their society. It is the schools' successes and achievements in the face of adversity, the strategies that enabled them to improve, and the continuing challenges that they face that are described in this book by a research team comprising educational researchers, business people and other professionals. The book first explores the context of schooling in Singapore and London, showing the differences and similarities between the two education systems. The research is presented as a series of case studies in the book's central chapters, and it concludes with a discussion of the improvement strategies adopted by the schools in relation to their different cultural contexts. The team found that many similar strategies were adopted by the principals of the four schools, but the different contexts in which they were operating meant that similar actions did not always lead to similar results. They conclude that there is no single way of achieving school improvement, no simple recipe for turning round the kinds of schools exemplified in these case studies. While common factors in improvement include motivating staff, focusing on teaching and learning, enhancing the physical environment and changing the culture of the school, change cannot be imposed from outside: the will and the effort to change must come from within.

The Culture of Change: Case Studies of Improving Schools in Singapore and London (Bedford Way Papers, 10)

Myers, Kate

Mortimore, Jo

Gopinathan, Saravanan

Leo, Elizabeth

Sharpe, Leslie

UCL IOE Press

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