Worldwide interest in school improvement shows no signs of abating, if different countries' government policies, the amount of literature published, and attendance at the annual conference of the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement are used as indicators. In this chapter, the authors outline the components of the project. They examine issues in conducting comparative case studies before looking at some similarities and differences between countries across the improvement process on the basis of case study analysis. The authors present their eventual final framework and offer some recommendations for its use by practitioners, researchers and policy-makers. The project, Capacity for Change and Adaptation in the Case of Effective School Improvement, drew on Hopkins and colleagues' 1994 definition of improvement, defining effective school improvement as 'planned educational change that enhances student learning outcomes as well as the school's capacity for managing change'.

This article describes how the Dutch Department of Education incorporates New Public Management (NPM) principles in educational policy, and whether conflicts of interest between the Department and schools cause deviations from NPM. We reviewed policy documents and performed secondary analyses on school data. Educational policy focuses on output indicators and accountability aspects. However, when departmental interests do not align with school interests, the Department develops new policies that partly contradict NPM principles. We argue that a more consistent focus on output and well-developed school autonomy may help to enhance the quality of education

It is well-known that the quality of vocational education and training (VET) depends on how well a given programme aligns with the values and interests of its stakeholders, but it is less well-known what these values and interests are and to what extent they are shared across different groups of stakeholders. We use vignettes to quantify the values that four groups of stakeholders assign to nine attributes relating to VET quality. The four stakeholders are students, teachers, workplace training supervisors, and policymakers. The nine attributes are employers’ appreciation of students, graduation rate, obtained language skills of students, mentoring hours in workplace learning, challenge, structure, students’ appreciation of teachers, schooling hours, and attention to civic education. Five hundred thirty-one Dutch respondents were repeatedly asked to rank a set of four hypothetical programmes, each with a specific value on the nine quality indicators. Through conjoint analysis we obtain the values that the stakeholders assigned to the nine attributes when evaluating the quality of VET programmes. The values assigned to the attributes ‘a challenging curriculum’ and ‘employers’ satisfaction’ were similar across the four groups of stakeholders, yet the values assigned to the remaining attributes differed substantially across stakeholders. This illustrates the diversity in values and interests of different stakeholders, and points to a need to quantify these values, for use by both the Dutch government and VET colleges, to improve the overall quality of education and the match between vocational programmes and their stakeholders.

Educational effectiveness research is often criticised because of the absence of a theoretical background. In our study we started out from an educational effectiveness model which was developed on the basis of educational theories and empirical evidence. We have tested the main assumptions of the model by reanalysing a large-scale longitudinal dataset which contains elementary school data of subsequent student cohorts, their teachers and their schools. We found some expected positive effects on achievement of individual classroom and school factors in the effectiveness model but these were not stable across school subjects and student cohorts. When factors were grouped into clusters the findings remained essentially the same. To interpret the clusters we made use of the concept of consistency, which refers to a balance between factors which may enhance effectiveness. Some teachers and schools are more consistent than others, but this does not affect the achievement of their students. Cross-level interaction effects were not found. The instability of effects makes it hard to suggest changes in the model at this moment.

Constructivist ideas have influenced recent major innovations in Dutch secondary education and new curricula for reading and math in primary education, for example, pay much more attention to metacognition than before. In our study, we compared the growth of student metacognition in varying learning environments, direct instruction, and cognitive apprenticeship in primary school. The study also included a control group of teachers. In order to measure metacognition we developed a questionnaire, with separate parts for metacognitive skills and metacognitive knowledge. In the item selection procedure we made use of item response modeling. It was found that in the direct instruction and the cognitive apprenticeship group the pupils had higher scores on metacognitive skills and metacognitive knowledge compared to the control group pupils. No clear differences were found between direct instruction and cognitive apprenticeship. Interactions of learning environment and student intelligence were non-significant for both output measures.

School effectiveness and school improvement have different origins: School effectiveness is more directed to finding out "what works" in education and "why"; school improvement is practice and policy oriented and intended to change education in the desired direction. However, in their orientation to outcomes, input, processes, and context in education, they also have much in common. In the project Effective School Improvement (ESI), the merger of the 2 traditions has been pursued. In the theoretical part, different orientations have been analysed and combined in a model for effective school improvement. Based on this analysis, an evaluation framework was developed for the analysis of the case studies of school improvement projects in the participating countries. The theoretical model and the results of the analyses of the case studies were combined in a framework of effective school improvement.

The comprehensive framework was developed in the Effective School Improvement Project. The initial framework was based on an analysis of a range of theories and an additional analysis of case studies in the field of school improvement. A revision took place after an analytic confrontation of the initial framework with successful improvement projects. Also, country conferences for groups of researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers contributed to the revised version of the framework. The framework builds on earlier work in the field of school effectiveness and school improvement.

In this article, we describe the history, current practice and future of teacher evaluation in The Netherlands. After a short introduction describing the Dutch educational system, we present information about teacher evaluation practices performed by persons outside the school (the Inspectorate) and inside the school (the principal). We then pay attention to the progress of teacher and school effectiveness research in The Netherlands and the relatively weak links between research and evaluation practices in schools. Finally, we outline some potential future developments in the field of teacher evaluation in The Netherlands.

Applicability of research models across contexts is often viewed as desirable. This article discusses 6 issues faced by members of the Effective School Improvement (ESI) project research teams as they explored themes emerging in case studies carried out in 8 different countries, as part of a process of trying to generate a model that would be valid and applicable across contexts. After posing questions that need further resolution, the conclusion at this particular stage of the research was that caution was advisable before transferring the findings from one context to another.

This study concerns the effects of teacher training in instructional behaviour based on new insights in the field of learning and instruction. In an experiment, eight teachers were trained to apply a cognitive apprenticeship model and five teachers were trained to apply a direct instruction model in reading comprehension lessons in primary schools. The teachers in both experimental conditions received teaching guides, which were an adaptation of the curriculum for reading comprehension that they already used. The control group of seven teachers used the same curriculum, but received neither teaching guides nor training. In both experimental conditions teachers successfully changed their behaviour, but they did not succeed in implementing all characteristics of the instructional model aimed at in their training.

Educational effectiveness theory and research have developed considerably in recent years. Despite the advances, several problems remain, such as the inability of effectiveness characteristics to explain variance in student outcomes satisfactorily and consistently. In this article, we introduce the concept of vision as a potential solution for these problems. Educational effectiveness has focused heavily on behavioural factors, but the ideas behind these factors could be important as well. After discussing related concepts at the national, school and classroom levels, we introduce the concept of vision which relates ideas and behaviour more strongly than earlier concepts such as expectations and beliefs because it emphasises causal relations between educational goals and means and pays attention to the psychological, pedagogical and sociological dimensions of education. Consequences for further theory and research are discussed.

Ideally, school effectiveness research and school improvement might have a relationship with a surplus value for both. In reality, this relationship is often troublesome. Some problems can be attributed to the intrinsic differences between effectiveness and improvement, such as different missions. However, an analysis of the current situation in effectiveness and improvement shows that there are many possibilities at all stages of research studies and improvement projects for a more fruitful relationship. In this article, stronger links between effectiveness and improvement are advocated. Such links can be achieved by better-guided processes of application and reconstruction of knowledge during effectiveness research and improvement. These processes, illustrated by some successful projects which have started recently, are described under the heading of sustained interactivity.

In this article, the current status of school level factors, as they appear in research reviews and in school effectiveness models is criticised both from a theoretical and from an empirical perspective. School level factors are often related to student achievement without taking into account the classroom level, where teaching and learning primarily take place. As a theoretical alternative, an overview of school level factors that enhance the quality of instruction, time for learning and opportunity to learn at the classroom level is provided. These factors are supposed to contribute to the explanation of differences in student achievement. Some empirical support for these ideas is found in educational research studies that have made use of three-level analyses.

1 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 2 2. BACKGROUND AND OBJECT IVES OF TH E PROJECT 10 2.1 Background information for the construction of an ESI model 10 2.2 The role of models in educational science 12 2.3 General principles for the construction of an ESI model 13 3. SCIENTIFIC DESCRIPTIO N OF THE PROJECT RES ULTS AND METHODOLOGY 15 3.1 Contribution from theories to an ESI model 15 3.1.1 School improvement theories 15 3.1.2 Curriculum theories 16 3.1.3 Behavioural theories 17 3.1.4 Theories of organisation, organisational learning and the learning