School quality and the educational effectiveness knowledge base

Educational effectiveness is an important facet of educational quality. In this article educational effectiveness is used as the general term for instructional effectiveness, school level effectiveness and system effectiveness. Instructional (or teaching) effectiveness largely depends on teachers’ activities; school effectiveness depends on malleable organisational and curriculum conditions; system effectiveness largely depends on educational policies at national (or in some case subnational: e.g. in Germany) levels. Multi-level statistical analysis has contributed significantly to the development of integrated school effectiveness models. In contributions to conceptual modelling of school effectiveness, schools are depicted as a set of ‘nested layers’ (Purkey & Smith 1983), where the central assumption is that higher organisational levels facilitate effectiveness by enhancing conditions at lower levels (Scheerens & Creemers 1989). This article is based on two earlier publications by the author: Scheerens, Luyten & Van Ravens (Eds.) (2011). Perspectives on Educational Quality; Scheerens (2013). What is Effective Schooling