School Effectiveness and the Management of Effective Learning and Teaching

Abstract

Effective Schools research has focused thinking on effective learning as one of the major outcomes of schooling. Unfortunately, however, research findings on effective learning are limited because mental activity is covert and learning can only be inferred from subsequent responses. Integrating such concepts as ability, motivation, self‐efficacy and perseverance has also proved difficult. Even though teaching is an overt activity, the models that have been constructed fail to do justice to the complexity of its components. The respective roles of modelling, expectations, instruction and feedback, for instance, are not well understood. The School Effectiveness research, however, has identified a number of factors which operate at both the classroom and the whole‐school level and which provide guidance for practitioners on how effective learning may be promoted. This paper reviews these areas of research.