What Makes A School Effective?
Devika Nadig & Vijay Gupta
Shikshangan
School effectiveness….
• Effective school is one which enhances learning achievement
of every student
• Reasonable infrastructure, sufficient number of teachers and
learning resources are necessary but not sufficient to make a
school effective
• Factors beyond these which make a school effective has been
an area of intense research
• Here is one such proposal from Robert Marzano, and its
critique and relevance to Indian schools
A bit of background….
• Marzano’s framework is based on hundreds of researches
done by others…that is, it is a meta-research
• He categorizes the factors contributing to school effectiveness
into three:
– School level factors
– Teacher level factors
– Student level factors
School Effectiveness Factors
• School level factors
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Guaranteed and viable curriculum
Challenging goals and effective feedback
Parent and community involvement
Safe and orderly environment
Collegiality and professionalism
• Teacher level factors
– Instructional strategies
– Classroom management
– Classroom curriculum design
• Student level factors
– Home environment
– Learned intelligence & background knowledge
– Motivation
5 School Level Factors
In order of the impact they have on student
achievement:
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Guaranteed and viable curriculum
Challenging goals and effective feedback
Parent and community involvement
Safe and orderly environment
Collegiality and professionalism
Guaranteed & Viable Curriculum
• Simply, whether students had adequate time to learn what we
want them to learn
• Attempt is to minimize the gap between intended curriculum
and implemented curriculum
• Do we have adequate time for instruction? How much time is
available theoretically, and how much actually gets utilized?
(Highest estimates are around 70%)
Challenging Goals & Effective
Feedback
• Establish challenging goals for students – set high
expectations - and track the extent to which goals are being
achieved
• Give timely feedback to students - which is formative and
specific to the content being learnt
Parent & Community Involvement
• Extent to which parents and community are both supportive
of, and involved in school
• Marzano suggests three features of this involvement:
– Communication between school and parents
– Participation in day to day working of the school
– Participation in governance of the school
Safe & Orderly Environment
• Refers to school climate and disciplined environment
conducive to learning
• Establish clear school-wide rules and procedures for general
behaviour, and enforce appropriate consequences for
violations of rules and procedures
Collegiality & Professionalism
• Manner in which school staff interacts and extent to which
they approach their colleagues as professionals
• How supportive they are to one another; openly sharing their
failures and mistakes; demonstrating respect for each other;
constructively analyzing and criticizing practices and
procedures;
• Professionalism – a sense of efficacy – that they can effect
changes in their schools
• Valued and critical part of school’s policy setting
• Reasonable level of subject knowledge and pedagogical
knowledge
3 Teacher Level Factors
• Instructional strategies
• Classroom management
• Classroom curriculum design
Instructional Strategies
• More effective teachers use more effective instructional
strategies
• Marzano lists following nine strategies as being found to be
most effective:
– Identifying similarities & differences i.e. compare, classify, metaphor &
analogies
– Summarizing & note taking – verbal/written summaries, taking notes
– Reinforcing effort & providing recognition
– Homework & practice – specific feedback on homework; homework
for practicing
– Non-linguistic representation – mental images, pictures, graphic
organizer, acting out the content, physical models etc.
Instructional Strategies (contd.)
• Other effective strategies:
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Cooperative learning
Setting objectives and providing feedback
Generating and testing hypothesis
Questions, cues and advance organizers – prior to presenting new
content, getting students to recall, provide links and represent
previous knowledge
Classroom Management
In order that instruction and learning can take place:
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Establishing and enforcing rules and procedures
Carrying out disciplinary actions
Maintaining effective teacher-student relationship
Maintaining an appropriate mental set for management
Classroom Curriculum Design
Sequencing and pacing of content in the classroom – three
principles suggested by Marzano:
• Learning is enhanced when a teacher identifies specific types
of knowledge that are the focus of a unit or lesson
• Learning requires engagement in tasks that are structured or
are sufficiently similar to allow for effective transfer of
knowledge
• Learning requires multiple exposure to and complex
interaction with knowledge
3 Student Level Factors
• Home environment
• Learned intelligence & background knowledge
• Motivation
Home Environment
As per Marzano, home atmosphere comprises three
elements:
• Communication about school i.e. parent discussing with
children about school work; encouraging children regarding
school work; and providing resources to help children do their
school work
• Supervision i.e. extent of parent monitoring and controlling
child’s behaviour to optimize academic achievement
• Parental expectations and parenting style – high expectations
and high achievement are correlated; parenting style –
authoritarian, permissive & authoritative
Learned Intelligence & Background Knowledge
• Intelligence has two aspects – as knowledge (crystallized
intelligence), and as cognitive process (fluid intelligence)
• Crystallized intelligence is learned while the other is largely
innate; Fluid intelligence is instrumental in developing
crystallized intelligence
• Crystallized intelligence is same as background knowledge for
all practical purposes
• Experience-rich environment helps in enhancing background
knowledge
• Experience-rich environment has a direct correlation with
vocabulary
Motivation
• Refers to student motivation to learn the content in a given
subject
• Students are motivated when there is autonomy, mastery and
purpose
A Critique
• Marzano’s framework is silent on what is a good curriculum
(or syllabus); perhaps because there are learning standards in
place in most of the states of the US
• Framework is similar in spirit as Balance Scorecard and quality
models which attempt to discover input parameters,
controlling which will ensure quality outcomes
• Framework can possibly be enhanced by using the idea of
levels from Capability Maturity Models (CMM) used in
software business
Our experience with Indian schools…
• Factors which require major pulling up:
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Guaranteed & viable curriculum
Collegiality & professionalism
All three teacher level factors
Learned intelligence & background knowledge
• ‘The quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality
of its teachers’
Thank You