ABSTRACT

So far in this handbook we have outlined in considerable detail the literature on school effectiveness from across the world, and attempted to relate that literature to various themes or topics within the field. It would be logical to expect a close relationship between this research base in school effectiveness and the programmes of school improvement and school development that are now in existence in virtually every industrialized country across the world, for a number of reasons: 1 The ‘founding fathers’ of effective schools research in the United States, Edmonds

(1979a, 1979b) and Brookover et al. (1979b), had an explicit commitment to the work being utilized to improve schools. The United States has shown, then, a considerable volume of ‘school effectiveness’ projects where the research knowledge is explicitly used to improve practice. The Rutter et al. (1979) study in the United Kingdom has also been utilized to provide findings for the improvement of schools, although the eventual results were somewhat disappointing. (Ouston et al., 1991; Maughan et al., 1990.)

2 There are clear interests involved in maximizing the relationships between effectiveness and improvement, since effectiveness research can provide the knowledge base concerning what to do, and the improvement community the vehicle within which the knowledge base sits.