Conceptual review and meta-analysis of school effectiveness


Reviews of school effectiveness research in developing countries


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Reviews of school effectiveness research in developing countries


The most recent review of school effectiveness studies in developing countries is the one by Fuller and Clarke (1994), see table 10.


Table 10: School input and process variables that showed significant positive associations with achievement in at least 50% of the studies in developing countries, analyzed by Fuller and Clarke, 1994*)








Number of significant effects divided by the number of analyses

School/teacher factor

Primary Schools

Secondary Schools

School spending
Expenditure per pupil
Total school expenditure

3/6
2/5



3/5
-



Specific school inputs
Average class size
School size
Availability of textbooks
Supplementary readers
Exercise books
Teaching guides
Desks
Instructional media
Quality of facilities
School library
Science laboratories
Child nutrition and feeding

9/26
7/8


19/26
1/1
3/3
0/1
4/7
3/3
6/8
16/18
5/12
7/8

2/22
1/5


7/13
2/2
-
-
0/1
-
1/1
3/4
1/1
1/1

Teacher attributes
Total years of schooling
Earlier measured achievement
Tertiary or teacher college
In-service teacher training
Teacher subject knowledge
Teacher gender (female)
Teacher experience
Teacher salary level
Teacher social class

9/18
1/1


21/37
8/13
4/4
1/2
13/23
4/11
7/10

5/8
1/1


8/14
3/4
-
2/4
1/12
2/11
-

Classroom pedagogy and organization
Instructional time
Frequent monitoring of pupil performance
Class preparation time
Frequency homework
Teacher efficacy
Cooperative learning task student

15/17
3/4


5/8
9/11
1/1
-

12/16
0/1


½
2/2
0/1
3/3

School Management
School cluster membership
Principal’s staff assessment
Principal’s training level
School inspection visits
Tracking or pupil segregation

2/2
3/4


3/4
2/3
1/1

-
0/1


1/2
0/1
-

*) Source: Fuller & Clarke, 1994.
The review considered about 100 studies and drew upon earlier reviews by Fuller (1987), Lockheed & Hanushek, 1988, Lockheed & Verspoor and an analysis of 43 studies in the period 1988-1992 conducted by the authors themselves.
Only studies that controlled achievement for students’ family background were included; and only significant associations at the 5% level were reported.
What table 10 indicates is, first of all, that there were more studies about primary schools than about secondary schools. Also, financial, material and human resource input variables were investigated more frequently than school and classroom process variables, with the exception of instructional time.
This predominance of relatively easily assessable input characteristics is also evident from table 11 where the number of times a particular variable was included in a total of 43 studies is indicated.

Table 11: The number of times out of a total of 43 studies conducted between 1988 and 1992 (primary and secondary schools taken together) a particular type of school input or process variable was investigated. Source: Fuller & Clarke, 1994





Enrolments/staff
School size
Class size

6
25



Teacher variables
Teacher training
Teacher salaries
Teacher experience
Teacher preparation
Teacher efficacy
Teacher gender
Inservice training

24
3


9
1
1
5
7

Instruction
Instructional time
Homework
Specific pedagogy
Testing of pupils

13
3


12
5

School organization
Public/Private

Tracking
Headmaster supervision

4
1
3



Equipment and facilities
Library facilities
General facilities and equipment

3
15



On the basis of their review of significant positive effects Fuller and Clarke (ibid) conclude that rather consistent school effects can be found in three major areas: availability of textbooks and supplementary reading material, teacher qualities (e.g. teachers’ own knowledge of the subject and their verbal proficiencies) and instructional time and work demands placed on students.


Policy relevant factors that showed inconsistent or lack of effects appeared to be class size and teacher salaries.

The findings summarized in tables 10 and 11 once more underline the predominance of production function type of effectiveness studies in developing countries. Riddell (1997), in a more methodologically oriented review, observes that a “third wave” of school effectiveness research in developing countries is “in danger of being lost without ever having been explored”. By this third wave she refers to, what I have described as “integrated school effectiveness studies”, comprising resource inputs, organizational factors and instructional characteristics, in which multi-level modeling is a vital methodological requirement.


An innovative set of suggestions that Fuller & Clarke develop in their interpretation of the research evidence, is to pay more attention to cultural contingencies when studying school effectiveness in developing countries. Such contingencies might help in explaining why school and classroom level variables “work” in one country but not in the next. They distinguish four broad categories of cultural conditions:



  1. the local level of family demand for schooling;

  2. the school organization’s capacity to respond to family demand “while offering forms of knowledge that are foreign to the community’s indigenous knowledge” (Fuller & Clarke, 1994, p. 136);

  3. the teacher’s capacity and preference for mobilizing instructional tools;

  4. the degree of consonance between the teacher’s pedagogical behavior and local norms regarding adult authority, didactic instruction and social participation within the school (ibid, p. 136).

These ideas, as well as the appeal to overcome other weaknesses of school effectiveness studies (lack of cost benefit analyses, shortage of longitudinally designed studies) have demanding implications for the design of studies. According to Riddell (1997) Fuller and Clarke fail to present clear research alternatives.

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