ABSTRACT

There are reports about school improvement initiatives that have been successfully implemented and evaluated within relatively brief time scales. However, many initiatives do not survive over longer terms. Our purpose in this study was to identify successful strategies for achieving long-term school improvement. We interviewed 12 leaders at four educational sites. We adopted complex adaptive systems perspectives to analyse the interview transcripts, provide rich descriptions of contexts, illustrate examples of practices, and synthesise participants’ accounts to highlight key areas for attention and action. Participants described purposeful programme selection with clear goals, strategic staff leadership and continuous professional education, accountable professional networks, data sharing and feedback, time and resource management, distributed multilevel leadership, and a supportive school culture. We recommend adopting a complex adaptive systems perspective to communicate and facilitate processes of change, including planning, enacting, and evaluating school improvement as a continuous long-term process rather than as an end product of any singular initiative.

摘要

有报告称，学校改进举措已在相对较短的时间内成功实施和评估。然而，许多举措无法长期生存。我们这项研究的目的是确定实现学校长期改善的成功策略。我们采访了 4 个教育机构的 12 位领导者。我们采用复杂的自适应系统视角来分析访谈记录，提供丰富的背景描述，说明实践示例，并综合参与者的叙述以突出需要关注和采取行动的关键领域。参与者描述了具有明确目标的有目的的计划选择、战略性员工领导和持续专业教育、负责任的专业网络、数据共享和反馈、时间和资源管理、分布式多层次领导和支持性的学校文化。我们建议采用复杂的适应性系统视角来沟通和促进变革过程，包括将学校改进作为一个持续的长期过程而不是任何单一举措的最终产品来规划、制定和评估。