‘School effectiveness’: the problem of reductionism

Abstract

School Effectiveness (SE), as a research paradigm and, more widely, as a set of political practices in school management and development, is examined in terms of the concept of 'reductionism'. The article serves to systematise an ongoing critique of Effectiveness by Ball, Morley, Fielding, Slee, etc. Building upon studies by the biologist Steven Rose and colleagues of reductionism from psychology to biology, the reductionism of the Effectiveness discourse is analysed in its methodological, contextual, historical and moral aspects. Finally, the article explores the impact of SE upon the dominant model of School Improvement in England in particular, and the need for transformation within that paradigm.

Lessons from abroad: whatever happened to pedagogy?

“…The highest performing countries for numeracy were Netherlands, Finland and Japan, and for literacy, Finland, Japan and South Korea. Despite frequent criticisms of the methods and procedures employed in large-scale assessments of this kind (Goldstein, 2004;Prais, 2003Prais, , 2007Roth et al, 2006;Gaber et al, 2012), and the problems of reducing complex datasets to simplistic aggregated rankings (Wrigley, 2004) the OECD findings confirmed the long-standing superiority of Finland and South East Asian countries across multiple international comparative studies of literacy and numeracy.…”

What works where? The relationship between instructional variables and schools' mean scores in mathematics and science in low-, medium-, and high-achieving countries

“…As this study follows the tradition of instructional effectiveness studies and uses advanced statistical procedures employed in the area, it cannot escape the significant criticism raised against this line of research (Caro & Sandoval-Hernandez, 2012a;Sandoval-Hernandez, 2008;Wrigley, 2004). The most common critique points to the lack of theory behind school effectiveness studies.…”

Educational Equity in Poor Urban Contexts – Exploring Issues of Place/Space and Young People's Identity and Agency

“…Developing an understanding of the impact of these wider inequalities has been a stuttering and yet recurring research focus for the sociology of education over a number of decades (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977;Bowles and Gintis, 1976;Jencks, 1972;Lauder et al, 2009;Young, 1971). More recent articulations of this type of work (for example Anyon, 1997;Lipman, 2004) have suggested a renewed interest in the importance of the structural, particularly given the theoretical and practical failures of managerialist approaches to school reform associated with aspects of the school effectiveness and improvement movement (Slee, 1998;Thrupp, 2001;Wrigley, 2004). This article builds on these ideas and in particular reviews the growing evidence for how spatial processes in England that reflect the intermingling of poverty and social, cultural and geographic factors are implicated in poor educational attainments.…”