MEDD8001 Chap.4 Systematic Review and School Effectiveness
Systematic Review and School Effectiveness
An argument fifty years old, and the design built to summarise it
This chapter pairs an educational issue with a research design, which is the pattern every chapter from here on follows. The issue is whether schools make a difference and, if they do, which of their processes matter more than others.
The design is the systematic review, which exists because a question studied for half a century cannot be answered by reading a few studies and forming an impression.
Educational effectiveness research is taught as a sequence of phases, beginning as a reaction to the finding that, next to ability and social background, schools appeared to have little effect.
That origin explains why the early literature is preoccupied with demonstrating that schools matter rather than with explaining how, and later phases turn to multilevel methods, then to process models, then to engagement with school improvement scholarship and international work.
What reviews say effective schools do
A widely cited review names nine processes: leadership that is firm, involving, instrumentally oriented and watchful;
attention fixed on learning itself, meaning results and the time spent getting them; a culture carrying a shared vision, order and positive reinforcement; demanding standards held of pupils and staff alike; progress watched at school, room and individual level;
parents brought in; teaching made effective by protecting learning time, grouping deliberately, measuring against the best available and bending to what pupils need; staff development sited in the school and tied to its own plans; and pupils given a part in the business of education through duties and entitlements.
Three further processes are singled out for schools serving communities under the greatest social strain, and the existence of a separate list is itself the finding.
The conditional the chapter turns on
School processes vary with school needs, so the useful question is never which process works but which process works for a school in this position.
Four conditioning factors are named: the subject being taught, the socioeconomic profile of the students, how effective the school already is, and the trajectory it is on. Each is developed with examples that could be tested, which is what makes this a research chapter rather than a list of virtues.
Some researchers approach the issue from the other end and characterise ineffective schools, producing sharper observable markers at student, classroom and school level, and the review of effective teaching goes further still by stating expectation effects as a list of countable teacher behaviours rather than as a state of mind.
A systematic review is a design, not a longer reading list
The lecture separates the two carefully.
A literature review is part of an empirical study, normally completed before data collection, though in grounded theory the data may be gathered and worked over first, with the comparison against existing theory left until later. A review of the systematic kind stands as a design in its own right, carrying a protocol and producing findings of its own.
Seven purposes are given for a literature review, from defining the frontiers of the field to enabling you to interpret the significance of your own work, and a review that does none of them has summarised reading rather than reviewed literature.
The method, walked through a published example
The steps are: clarify the aim and specific questions;
identify relevant studies through named databases and a stated combination of search terms; extend by manual searching of core journals, referential backtracking and consultation; select against inclusion and exclusion criteria fixed in advance and applied first to abstracts and then to full texts, recording the number excluded at each pass;
code the included studies to a scheme covering identification details, study type, levels studied, research design, research method and key findings; and analyse the coded studies, in the worked example through the six-phase thematic analysis taught in the next chapter.
Every step subtracts a stated number for a stated reason, which is the property that makes a review reproducible, and four families of published difficulty close the topic, covering how a question is framed, how the procedure runs, how findings are consolidated and how they are interpreted.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Phases of educational effectiveness research, and why the early work looks the way it does
- 02
Four standing criticisms of the effectiveness literature
- 03
Nine processes of effective schools, plus three for challenged communities
- 04
Four factors that make an effectiveness finding conditional
- 05
Markers of ineffective schooling at student, classroom and school level
- 06
Expectation effects stated as countable teacher behaviours
- 07
Literature review against systematic review, and seven purposes of the first
- 08
Aim, search, manual extension, selection, coding, analysis
- 09
Framing, procedural, consolidating and interpreting challenges
Four decisions to fix before searching, two to record after
- 4Name the four decisions that must be fixed before the search runs.
- 3Name the two that may be made afterwards and must still be recorded.
- 3Say what happens to the six-week constraint in the method section.
Key terms
- Educational Effectiveness Research
- The body of work asking whether and how schools affect student outcomes, which began as a reaction to evidence that schools mattered little next to ability and social background.
- Inclusion Criteria
- The stated conditions a study must meet to enter a review, fixed before the search runs so that the resulting set is a consequence of the protocol rather than of the reviewer's preferences.
- Screening Funnel
- The record of how many studies were identified, screened, assessed and included, with the number excluded and the reason given at each stage.
- Coding Scheme
- The fixed set of fields a review records about every included study, typically identification details, study type, population level, research design, method and key findings.
- Self-fulfilling Prophecy
- The mechanism by which teacher expectations become outcomes, which the reviewed literature specifies as a list of observable behaviours rather than as an attitude.
- Trajectory
- Where a school currently sits in its own improvement path, one of the four factors that make an effectiveness finding conditional rather than general.
Systematic Review and School Effectiveness FAQ
What is the difference between a literature review and a systematic review?
A literature review is a component of an empirical study, written so the researcher understands the field and can clarify the scope of the work before collecting data. A review of the systematic kind stands as a design in its own right: it carries a protocol, a stated search, criteria fixed in advance, a coding scheme and an analysis, and its findings are about the literature rather than about a new sample.
Two groups of students need the second, those doing a review as their project and those who need a rigorous review inside a project of another kind.
Can I do a systematic review as my research project for this course?
It is one of the designs the course teaches as a project option, and the practical appeal is that it does not require access to a school or ethical clearance for human participants. The practical cost is that it is unforgiving about protocol: your criteria have to be fixed and reported, your counts have to add up, and a reader has to be able to repeat what you did.
Confirm with your specialism teacher that it fits your specialism's expectations for the assessment task before committing.
How do I avoid an effectiveness finding that is too general to be useful?
Attach the condition. The lecture is explicit that school processes vary with school needs and names four conditioning factors: subject, student socioeconomic profile, current effectiveness and improvement trajectory.
A claim that monitoring progress raises effectiveness is nearly unfalsifiable; a claim that it raises effectiveness in schools that have not yet begun improving is a claim someone could test, and it is also the version a principal could act on.
Assessment move
Find one systematic review in your own field and reconstruct its funnel on paper: identified, screened, excluded with reasons, assessed, included. Check that the numbers subtract correctly. Doing this once teaches more about the design than reading a methods chapter, and it also gives you a template whose steps you can name in your own proposal without inventing a protocol from scratch.
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