ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we analyse the current (fourth) phase of EER, examine the main research questions that form the foci of educational effectiveness enquiry and analyse methodological issues that should be taken into account when designing studies, as well as in analysing quantitative and qualitative data. These issues are presented to show the contribution research methodology has made and can make to the development of EER, before further clarification of the methodologies themselves and how they can be used is presented in the second part of the book. As mentioned in the introductory chapter, the current phase of EER is concerned with promoting a better understanding of the complex and dynamic nature of educational effectiveness. Thus, this chapter is concerned with methodological issues that have important implications, especially for modelling effectiveness, and the next chapter discusses issues associated with the design of studies that search for causal relations. More specifically, causality is a general issue in EER, and almost all effectiveness studies deal in one way or another with hypothesized (or implied) cause-and-effect relations by searching for factors that explain (in a statistical sense) variation in student outcomes. Further, this is usually in terms of academic achievement tests or measures of some kind. However, EER also encounters frequent difficulties in claiming cause-and-effect relations due to the non-experimental nature of most EER designs. In the last chapter of the first part of this book we acknowledge that the emphasis given by the current phase of EER to the dynamic perspective of educational effectiveness draws attention to the importance of searching for predictors of the processes of school improvement. This implies that researchers should not restrict themselves when describing effective practices to only those features that can be observed in schools. Instead, EER should also contribute to the design of theory-driven improvement strategies and in developing measures of their impact on changes in the effectiveness of teachers and schools over time. Since this shift in the research agenda of EER raises specific methodological issues, it is discussed in more detail in Chapter 4, which is concerned with establishing links between EER and policy and practice.
