Over the past 3 decades, a substantial body of scholarship has examined the effects of school leadership on student learning. Most of this research has framed leadership as an independent variable, or driver for change, in relation to school effectiveness and school improvement. Yet, scholars have observed that leadership is also influenced by…

The relationship between perceived teacher collective efficacy and student problem behaviour was examined in a two-wave study. Participants were 1,100 teachers in 48 Norwegian elementary schools. Questionnaires were completed with approximately 6 months lag. A variance component model suggested a strong intraclass correlation (ICC2) for collective…

This study aimed to identify the classroom and school characteristics that are associated with student achievement in mathematics and Serbian language in primary schools in Serbia. The study sample consisted of 119 public primary schools, 253 classrooms, and 4,857 third-grade students. Variables from 3 past research paradigms--input-output,…

This article presents a theoretical argument for assuming that schools have an orientation to learning that influences both whether teachers learn and also whether they change professionally as a result of the learning. This school-level orientation to learning is hypothesized to consist of beliefs and practices about learning. Results from a…

In the past 3 decades, the concept of professional community has gained considerable momentum in the theoretical and empirical studies in this field. At the same time, the concept has faced conceptual and methodological difficulties in that as yet no universal definition has been formulated and that its operationalization differs in the various…

This study analyses the educational progress of an entire national cohort of over 530,000 pupils in England between age 7 in 2000 and age 11 in 2004. The results show that Black Caribbean boys not entitled to free school meals, and particularly the more able pupils, made significantly less progress than their White British peers. There is no…

This paper investigates whether inferences about school performance based on longitudinal models are consistent when different assessments and metrics are used as the basis for analysis. Using norm-referenced (NRT) and standards-based (SBT) assessment results from panel data of a large heterogeneous school district, we examine inferences based on…

Using survey responses from a national sample of US teachers, this paper provides insight into 2 questions: (1) Do 3 specific attributes of leadership behavior--the sharing of leadership with teachers, the development of trust relationships among professionals, and the provision of support for instructional improvement--affect teachers' work with…

The purpose of this paper is to identify school effects on student performance for tertiary entrance in Australia, taking into account student-level predictors using longitudinal data from the 2003 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study. It finds that aspects of schooling, such as positive attitudes to school and disciplinary…

In many countries, teaching assistants are working in schools in increasing numbers. While they formerly supported teachers by completing low-level administrative tasks, they are increasingly playing a pedagogical role and working directly with pupils, particularly those with special educational needs. However, little is known about the quality of…

This paper investigates the extent to which changes in the effectiveness status of schools can be related to changes in the functioning of school factors included in the dynamic model of educational effectiveness. The methods of a follow-up study were identical to those of a study conducted 4 years ago in order to test the validity of the dynamic…

This study proposes and tests a multilevel structural model of school context, composition, and school leadership on school instructional practices and outcomes in elementary schools in a western state in the United States. We focus on direct and indirect relationships implied in our proposed model using an "added year of schooling" in reading and…

This paper discusses the challenge of making large-scale improvements in literacy in schools across an entire education system. Despite growing interest and rhetoric, there are very few examples of sustained, large-scale change efforts around school-age literacy. The paper reviews 2 instances of such efforts, in England and Ontario. After…

Student perceptions of teacher and classmate support have been identified as a powerful protective factor for a range of children's outcomes. Evidence suggests that students perceive less support as they advance to higher grades, a factor that may be linked to declines in school attendance. This study utilized a sample of 2,616 students enrolled…

This study reports a meta-analysis on the effects of ethnic minority share in school on achievement test scores. Best evidence from the studies that have appeared thus far on this topic shows that these compositional effects appear small in general, but may be larger when the ethnic minority group is African Americans in the USA than when the…