To organise for school success
Short description
Despite the fact the schools in Sweden are governed by the same national legislation and within the same institutional frames there exist large variations between schools when it comes to student outcome.
Why is it that some schools succeed better than other schools?
What processes and interventions make certain schools display good results year after year, while other schools do not manage to break a negative result development?
About the project
The starting point for the research project is that the way in which we choose to organise local schools play en decisive role for student outcome. We use an institutional perspective on schools as organisations and investigate the formal and informal rule systems or institutions which characterise the organising of schools along three main dimensions: the organising of the management or leadership functions of the schools, of the work of the teachers and the forms of instruction.
To understand what it is that makes certain schools succeed better than others it is important to investigate schools and their work with a process oriented perspective. It is not enough to identify factors that exist on successful schools but which are missing at less successful schools. We have to follow the work of schools under a longer period of time to make visible and thus systematise the processes and central interventions and decisions which shape a positive respectively a negative development of student outcome.
The overall aim of the project is to contribute to theory development of the importance of organising for school success. More specifically we want to make visible and systematise formal and informal organisational aspects in schools which during time have displayed a positive or negative development of student outcome.
Project Participants
Maria Jarl, Senior Lecturer, University of Gothenburg
Ulf Blossing, Professor, University of Gothenburg
Klas Andersson, Senior Lecturer, University of Gothenburg