This study provides preliminary evidence from an Italian in-service training program addressed to lower secondary school teachers which supports school improvement plans (SIPs). It aims at exploring the association between characteristics/contents of SIPs and student improvement in math achievement. Pre-post standardized tests and text analysis of…

Recent research has produced evidence to suggest a strong reciprocal link between school context-specific language constructions that reflect a school's vision and schoolwide pedagogy, and the way that meaning making occurs, and a school's culture is characterized. This research was conducted within three diverse settings: one school in…

This article presents a case study of a primary school that engaged with the Innovative Designs for Enhancing Achievement in Schools (IDEAS) Project, and moved to the sustaining phase over a period of three years. It reports how the students, who were 98 percent English as a second language, improved their reading and numeracy during this time and…

Much has been written about what constitutes effective literacy teaching and learning, the power of effective "teacher talk" and the impact on student learning outcomes. There is a growing body of research into pedagogical change to improve literacy outcomes and the implementation of schoolwide approaches to teaching and learning,…

The term "schoolwide pedagogy" was once rarely heard and yet has now become a part of most discussions around school improvement. But what does it really mean and why is the presence of a schoolwide pedagogical framework important? Some would say that in their school the adoption of an authoritative approach such as Habits of Mind,…

Government schools in Abu Dhabi, as part of wide-scale educational reforms undertaken in the whole of the United Arab Emirates, have undergone massive school improvement developments over the past seven years. Over the course of these years, the reality of student life for those in government schools has been widely altered. This research explores…

This article applies theoretical understandings of power relations within student voice work to two empirical examples of school-based student voice projects. The article builds on and refines theoretical understandings of power and participation developed in previous articles written by the authors. The first article argued that at the heart of…

For many years, England has been the epitome of high-stakes accountability, often playing leapfrog with the USA. It represents an extreme of centralized surveillance, with schools organized as a quasi-market and supervised through a punitive combination of external inspection, the use of test data to name and shame schools, and ultimately closure…

This article is an account of a project in Laos which aimed to support schools in evaluating and developing responsiveness to diversity in student populations. Teachers, students and members of the community were involved in review, evaluation and leadership of change to improve learning and participation for all school-aged members of the…

In this article, we outline the necessary action steps for schools to improve the achievement of bilingual students. We review, summarize, and utilize the pertinent scholarly literature to make suggestions for school-wide, collaborative efforts to support the achievement of bilingual learners through linguistically responsive pedagogy and…

This is the first in a series of articles which will examine the results of a qualitative, longitudinal study of school improvement initiatives from the perspective of school stakeholders. The article captures the responses of students from a low socio-economic status school in NSW, Australia to a school initiative that restructured the learning…

Building on a decade of a school-university partnership we report on a current project that is examining the development of a learning policy within Kingswood High School. We focus specifically on the development of a learning culture, and we examine how parents and children are working productively within the official policy. Using empirical data…

The arrival over the last 15 years of a substantial number of pupils of immigrant origin has presented Catalan schools with significant challenges. The schools in Vic (70 km north of Barcelona) have been at the forefront of attempts to adjust to this new multicultural reality. This article describes the results of three studies carried out by the…

In exchange for the autonomy they have been granted, schools are required to evaluate the quality of the education they provide. Self-evaluation initiatives are a frequently chosen method. The present article reveals the underlying processes which have an impact on the results of such self-evaluations. It is based on research which demonstrates…

This article is based on a case study of one English secondary school in the three years following its release from Special Measures. Having followed the school's successful improvement (in inspection terms) while under Special Measures, I was interested to know if the school would be able to sustain its improvement once the inspectors had…