1 A Modest but Meaningful Contribution of Educational Effectiveness and Improvement

Educational effectiveness research (EER) can be seen as a conglomerate of research in different areas: research on teacher behaviour, curriculum, grouping procedures, school organisation, and educational policy. The main research question of EER is which factors in teaching, curriculum, learning environment et cetera, in education at different levels, such as the classroom, the school and the above school levels, can directly or indirectly explain the differences in outcomes of students, taking into account background characteristics such as ability, SES, and prior attainment. EER does not attempt to invent new ideas or programmes but to concentrate on understanding the lessons to be drawn from existing practices. In this way, EER attempts to establish and test theories which explain why and how some schools and teachers are more effective than others. This research question has been pursued for many years, sometimes with an optimistic view about the contribution of education to student outcomes and sometimes with a common feeling that education cannot contribute much to student outcomes, at least when adequate control for student background characteristics like ability, motivation and social-cultural background is applied