ABSTRACT
For much of the history of SER, the varied contexts within which schooling occurs have been ignored. In fact, the lack of studies concerning the context of school effects was an area that Good and Brophy listed as a major limitation of extant SER in the mid-1980s (Good and Brophy, 1986). This limitation has been addressed to a significant degree over the past decade, with the publication of a number of both research and theoretical articles on context issues within SER. (Table 5.1 shows some of the significant studies in this area, together with details on their methodology and analytic procedures.)
The study of context in SER has had a profound impact on many areas within the field: • Contextually sensitive studies have yielded differential results depending on the
‘levels’ of the context variable that is being studied (e.g. elementary versus secondary phases of schooling; rural versus suburban versus urban community types; primarily low SES versus primarily middle SES student bodies).
