ABSTRACT
School improvement research is highly prolific and diverse in its attempt to reveal the processes and factors that facilitate the enhancement of school achievements. In this chapter, we examined more than 200 academic papers published in the last five years dealing with school improvement and effective schooling. We employed a semantic network analysis to identify reoccurring themes and topics and elaborated on these topics based on an in-depth analysis of a sample of articles. Our findings show that the main narrative of improvement is a conservative one. In line with educational management studies that responsibility lies in the hands of the school principals and mainly teachers, showing some trends that characterize 21st-century schools. Yet, students, parents, and other external stakeholders are viewed as more passive in the process. The educational goals stress improvement over effectiveness. School improvement has been primarily defined and assessed based on students’ academic abilities and their outcomes or scores on tests. There is much less emphasis in recent literature on bottom-up factors such as life skills, social capital, or social and universal values.
keywords: school improvement, effective schooling, semantic network analysis, literature review
