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OECD

This report seeks to answer the following questions:

  • Are there some school factors that are more closely associated with higher performance than others?
  • What effect do the policies and structure of education systems have on educational outcomes?

Among the school factors that are easily amenable to policy makers, such as management strategies, which seem to produce the best performance outcomes? There is a rich body of research in educational effectiveness that has highlighted factors at different levels of the education system that appear to be more closely associated with higher performance. To help build an evidence base, this report maps the data from PISA 2000 to those aspects of school context, school inputs and school processes that have received empirical support in different strands of educational effectiveness research.

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FILED UNDER: PDF, Reports, OECD, OECD
Peter Dougill
March 7, 2011

Evidence gathered from the range of sources consulted during the course of this project can be summarised as follows.

In outstanding schools, leadership is inspirational in providing clear vision and direction. Leaders who take a school from good to outstanding focus on: raising attainment and accelerating progress; improving the quality of teaching and learning; improving the conditions for learning; and developing the school as a professional learning community.

Outstanding schools place high expectations on all their students. They have a broad range of curricula to engage and support students, personalised to accommodate individual aptitudes and needs. Outstanding schools insist on excellence in the quality of classroom teaching, and have systems in place which mean that leaders know the strengths and weaknesses of all the teaching staff.

They operate an evidence-based approach to what is happening in classrooms. If staff teach less than very well, arrangements are in place to offer support. At the same time, outstanding schools have a relaxed collegiate culture in which teaching and classroom management ideas are shared unselfishly and problems acknowledged without fear of blame.

One of the key indicators of school effectiveness, firmly in place in outstanding schools, is the setting of challenging targets and the good use of arrangements for assessing and tracking pupils’ progress. These arrangements are supported by sophisticated information technology to which all relevant staff have access.

Outstanding schools are highly inclusive, having regard for the educational progress, personal development and well-being of every student. They prove that socio-economic disadvantage need not be a barrier to achievement. Speaking English as an additional language can support academic success. Senior leaders make sure that the professional development of all staff, teaching and non-teaching, is relevant, continuous and of high quality. Most of this professional development takes place in school.

Building and retaining links with parents and local communities is integral to raising aspirations and ambitions for children in outstanding schools. They are also broad in their outlook, for example by having links with schools in other countries. Outstanding schools may well take on a responsibility to support other schools which need to improve.

A key difference between being a good school and being an outstanding school involves going beyond tight quality controls towards the quality assurance of a self-confident, self-critical community in which learning is interactive and permanent.

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Mairette T. Newman
April 1, 2004

Guided by the symbolic interaction premise that meaning is found in the interaction of individuals within the world, this study set out to describe and analyse how selected high school principals in Jamaica understand and practise school leadership by exploring how they view their circumstances, and how their feelings of leadership are modified by the context of their work.

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UNESCO

This is a Jamaica Country report concerning inclusive education in Jamaica, which was presented at the Caribbean Symposium on Inclusive Education in 2007. The Jamaican perspective on inclusive education, curriculum considerations in the inclusive education environment, teacher preparation, initiatives and achievements are highlighted.

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FILED UNDER: PDF, Reports, UNESCO, UNESCO
Jamaica Association for the Deaf

Jamaica Association compiled 15 principles for reading to deaf children, which may be useful to parents.

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Christopher Dunbar
October 1, 2004

This document discusses classroom management practices. Specifically, classroom arrangement strategies, the psychology of problem behaviour, teacher management styles and ways to support and encourage student success despite the odds are explored.

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Regina M. Oliver
June 1, 2011

Disruptive behavior in schools has been a source of concern for school systems for several years. Indeed, the single most common request for assistance from teachers is related to behavior and classroom management (Rose & Gallup, 2005). Classrooms with frequent disruptive behaviors have less academic engaged time, and the students in disruptive classrooms tend to have lower grades and do poorer on standardized tests (Shinn, Ramsey, Walker, Stieber, & O‟Neill, 1987). Furthermore, attempts to control disruptive behaviors cost considerable teacher time at the expense of academic instruction.

Effective classroom management focuses on preventive rather than reactive procedures and establishes a positive classroom environment in which the teacher focuses on students who behave appropriately (Lewis & Sugai, 1999). Rules and routines are powerful preventative components to classroom organization and management plans because they establish the behavioral context of the classroom by specifying what is expected, what will be reinforced, and what will be retaught if inappropriate behavior occurs (Colvin, Kame‟enui, & Sugai, 1993). This prevents problem behavior by giving students specific, appropriate behaviors to engage in. Monitoring student behavior allows the teacher to acknowledge students who are engaging in appropriate behavior and prevent misbehavior from escalating (Colvin et al., 1993).

Research on classroom management has typically focused on the identification of individual practices that have some level of evidence to support their adoption within classrooms. These practices are then combined under the assumption that, if individual practices are effective, combining these practices into a package will be equally, if not more, effective. Textbooks are written and policies and guidelines are disseminated to school personnel based on these assumptions. Without research that examines classroom management as an efficient package of effective practices, a significant gap in our current knowledge base still exists. Understanding the components that make up the most effective and efficient classroom management system as well as identifying the effects teachers and administrators can expect from implementing effective classroom management strategies represent some of these gaps. A meta-analysis of classroom management which identifies more and less effective approaches to universal, whole-class, classroom management as a set of practices is needed to provide the field with clear research-based standards.

This review examines the effects of teachers‟ universal classroom management practices in reducing disruptive, aggressive, and inappropriate behaviors. The specific research questions addressed are: Do teacher‟s universal classroom management practices reduce problem behavior in classrooms with students in kindergarten through 12th grade? What components make up the most effective and efficient classroom management programs? Do differences in effectiveness exist between grade levels? Do differences in classroom management components exist between grade levels? Does treatment fidelity affect the outcomes observed? These questions were addressed through a systematic review of the classroom management literature and a meta-analysis of the effects of classroom management on disruptive or aggressive student behavior.

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John E. Mayer

As revealed by its title, this booklet shows how schools can be made safe and welcoming places for children. Such schools are likely to foster children’s learning and their motivation to continue learning throughout their lives.

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U.S. Department of Education

The foundation of any discussion about the use of restraint and seclusion is that every effort should be made to structure environments and provide supportsso that restraint and seclusion are unnecessary. As many reports have documented, the use of restraint and seclusion can, in some cases, have very serious consequences, including, most tragically, death. There is no evidence that using restraint or seclusionis effective in reducing the occurrence of the problem behaviors that frequently precipitate the use of such techniques.

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Maurice J. Elias

This booklet is about the social-emotional skills students need for success in school and in life. In any classroom in the world, from the simplest, with no walls, to the most elaborate, teachers must get along with students and students must get along with one another if learning is to take place. Social-emotional skills, or ‘emotional intelligence’, is the name given to the set of abilities that allows students to work with others, learn effectively, and serve essential roles in their families, communities and places of work.


Research shows that social-emotional skills can be taught to students and that their presence in classrooms and schools improves academic learning. When academic and social-emotional learning both become a part of schooling, students are more likely to remember and use what they are taught. They also incorporate into their education a sense of responsibility, caring, and concern for the well being of others, as well as themselves. Learning thus can be said to touch both the ‘head’ and the ‘heart’ and the result is classrooms that are run better and students who are more inspired. Academic and social-emotional learning are therefore connected
in every school, worldwide.


Much also has been learned about how to enhance academic and social-emotional learning in ways that are more likely to work well. This booklet gives the principles that have been shown to lead to success. It contains important guidelines for building academic and social-emotional skills, and sections in each chapter on practical
applications that can be brought into classrooms and schools without difficulty. In addition, there is an extensive section on resources, including international resources that are accessible via the Internet.


This booklet has been prepared for inclusion in the Educational Practices Series developed by the International Academy of Education and distributed by the International Bureau of Education and the Academy. As part of its mission, the Academy provides timely syntheses of research on educational topics of international importance. This booklet is the eleventh in the series on educational practices that generally improve learning.

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