Methodological change in school effectiveness and improvement research

School Effectiveness and School Improvement have played an important part in developing and refining methods in educational research. However, we would hypothesize that this development has also led to a certain crystallization of these methods, to the extent that it is now possible to talk of a methodological orthodoxy in both effectiveness and improvement research. To test this hypothesis, we looked at articles published in 'School Effectiveness and School Improvement' between issue 1 of 2005 and issue 2 of 2010. Results show that both quantitative and qualitative studies are dominated by a limited range of data collection methods. Over 80% of qualitative studies reported on are case studies, with the remainder being other interview methods. Of quantitative studies, almost 60% are survey studies, and just under 23% use secondary data, such as international studies and national or local accountability data sets. Almost 16% of studies used quasi-experimental designs. In terms of data analysis, in quantitative studies almost 50% of papers use multilevel methods, while a further 35% use 'traditional' statistics, such as regression and parametric or non-parametric tests. In qualitative methods the vast majority of studies used some form of thematic analysis. Implications of these findings and recommendations for future research are provided