EDUCATIONAL REFORM AND THE POLITICS OF CHANGE

McGill Journal of Education, Fall 2003 by Jordan, Steven, Jackson, Nancy

EDUCATIONAL REFORM AND THE POLITICS OF CHANGE BOOKS REVIEWED D. REYNOLDS, B. CREEMERS, S. STRINCFIELD, C. TEDDLIE, & G. SCHAFFER. World Class Schools: International perspectives on school effectiveness. London: Routledge Palmer (2002). 310 pp. C$71.95. (ISBN 0-415-25348-9).

M. WALLACE & K. POCKLiNGTON. Managing Complex Educational Change: Large-scale reorganisation of schools. London: Routledge Palmer (2002). 245 pp. C$53.95. (ISBN 0-415-20097-0).

A. DATNOW, L. HUBBARD, & H. MEHAN. Extending Educational Reform: From one school to many. London: Routledge Farmer (2002). 179 pp. C$34.95. (ISBN 0-415-24070-0).

Introduction

The last quarter of the twentieth century will almost certainly be looked back on by historians of education as an era of hyper-reform. Beginning with the school effectiveness movement of the early 1970s, the drive to reform educational systems found expression in an array of policies and initiatives - vouchers, charter schools, educational restructuring, school improvement, school choice and diversity, the new vocationalism etc., - aimed primarily, though not exclusively, at public schools over this period. Though the reform movement first emerged in the advanced capitalist countries of the West, with globalisation it has now spread to eastern Europe and the less developed countries of the South, as indicated by the World Bank's 'Global Educational Reform' website (World Bank 2003). Educational reform, it might be said, has literally gone global as we enter the 21st century.

From their different perspectives, the three books reviewed in this essay can be seen as carrying over the debate on educational reform into the new millenium. In World Class Schools, Reynolds and his colleagues examine the impact of school effectiveness approaches across nine countries. The authors' focus is clearly demarcated by themes and issues that have defined school effectiveness research for almost thirty years. Based on research conducted in England over the 1990s, Wallace and Pocklington's Managing Complex Educational Change explores the implications of large-scale educational reorganisation for school principals and local government officials. While it takes up some of the issues addressed by Reynolds et al, its focus is on what can be called the 'meso' (or mid-range) conditions of managing change across schools within school boards. Last, Extending Educational Reform, by Datnow, Hubbard and Mehan, offers a radically different approach to conceptualising educational reform than that advanced by the other two books. Focused on recent attempts to 'scale up' educational reform in the US, the authors develop an analysis of school reform initiatives generated from within a critical sociology of education.

In what follows we review how each book conceptualizes educational reform. We do this by critically exploring the major themes and issues with which they engage. The last section of the paper takes up some of these themes and issues in a discussion of educational reform, aiming to suggest new avenues for future research.

World Class Schools (Reynolds et al)

Reynolds et al begin their edited collection of essays with a dedication 'To the children of the world - may they get the educational science that they need.' In many ways this dedication captures the essence of World Class Schools which, as its subtitle suggests, is anchored in research on school effectiveness. From its inception in the early 1970s, school effectiveness research emerged as a reaction to sociological investigations which suggested that forces external to the school had a determining impact on the educational outcomes of students. While these studies initially focused on family background as either promoting or hindering students' educational achievement, later work conducted within the new sociology of education was to reveal how schools actually reproduced class, gender and race relations that directly contributed to educational inequality (Young 1971).

Alternately, school effectiveness research has consistently attempted to show that the quality of schooling (the school effect) a pupil receives during compulsory education is central in determining her educational outcomes. Thus the dedication to "educational science" in Reynolds et al. For the authors of this volume the key to understanding educational success/failure is whether or not students have access to schools with the kind of educational science that defines an effective school. Using data collected under the auspices of the International School Effectiveness Research Project (ISERP), the book presents a multi-year, comparative study of schools using primarily quantitative measures to determine their level of success in impiemeriting such an educational science. In this respect World Class Schools claims to be 'intellectually and practically' at the 'cutting edge' of school effectiveness research in the contemporary period with its comparative/ global reach.

The book is organized into three sections. Part one is composed of three chapters: the first explores the intellectual and policy context of the school effectiveness movement; the second marks out the methodological approach of ISERP; and the third presents an analysis of the quantitative data from the study. Part two constitutes the core of the book with its nine chapters on case studies of 'more effective and less effective schools' in nine countries taken from North America (Canada and the United States), Asia (Hong Kong and Taiwan), Australia and Europe (Netherlands, Norway, Irish Republic, and United Kingdom). Part three concludes with two chapters that, respectively, are concerned with a comparative analysis of data generated from the nine case studies and a review of ISERPs major findings. With the contributions of the five editors, the book has brought together work conducted by 31 school effectiveness researchers in nine countries across five continents. In its organization and scope, therefore, the book presents an impressive and comprehensive overview of scholarly debate, methodological trajectories, and policy implications and trends that define school effectiveness research in the contemporary period. In this respect World Class Schools makes a significant addition to the literature on school effectiveness.