7 - The Integration of Classroom and School Process Data in School Effectiveness Research

Abstract

This chapter discusses the advances in research strategy with material on the integration of school and classroom effects. Schools that are unusually effective are presumably characterized by classroom practices that are also unusually effective, yet the neglect of teachers' classroom actions and behavior has been notable. The chapter also discusses the historic separation of teacher and school effects studies that has been partially responsible for this state of affairs and the studies that show the promise of an approach that has nested classrooms interacting with schools and identifies the research needs on teacher selection studies, teacher support mechanisms, and research into the management of the instructional level by the school level that would deliver the importance of this newly emerging field. The commonality for the investigations is their study of teacher effects data within the context of school effectiveness research studies. All of these studies revealed consistent mean and standard deviation differences among schools classified as effective or ineffective.