Effective Schools research has focused thinking on effective learning as one of the major outcomes of schooling. Unfortunately, however, research findings on effective learning are limited because mental activity is covert and learning can only be inferred from subsequent responses. Integrating such concepts as ability, motivation, self‐efficacy and perseverance has also proved difficult. Even though teaching is an overt activity, the models that have been constructed fail to do justice to the complexity of its components. The respective roles of modelling, expectations, instruction and feedback, for instance, are not well understood. The School Effectiveness research, however, has identified a number of factors which operate at both the classroom and the whole‐school level and which provide guidance for practitioners on how effective learning may be promoted. This paper reviews these areas of research.

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School Effectiveness and the Management of Effective Learning and Teaching

Schooling has direct effects on children's educational achievement, their acquisition of literacy, numeracy and scientific knowledge. These basic skills provide the foundation for later "subjects" such as geography, physics and foreign languages. Formal educational qualifications are the key to a child's entry into higher education or training and also employment. The learning of specific knowledge and skills is a direct effect of classroom teaching (Good & Brophy, 1986b). However, social cognitions and feelings are also influenced by school and these may be just as powerful in predicting later outcome as intelligence or school curriculum. Such indirect effects of school are more elusive because they are mediated by children's motivation to learn or avoid learning, their conception of themselves as pupils, and the attributions they create for explaining success and failure. Cognitive and motivational mediators of indirect effects continue to exert influence on individual development outside and beyond school. This selective review considers the evidence concerning direct and indirect effects of school on children's development. Section 1 examines the evidence on the effect of pre-school education on children's academic attainment, social behaviour and cognitions. There are several well designed experimental studies of the impact of preschool education which have included follow-up through young adulthood. These landmark studies employed randomised designs which contrasted the development of children who had and had not experienced pre-school education, thus allowing causal models to be devised which suggest lasting benefits of pre-school education, especially for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Section 2 outlines a few of the major studies on the effect of primary schooling. Research on the effects of primary and secondary education does not withhold education from children, thereby necessitating either natural experiments or correlational designs employing sophisticated statistical techniques, over time, to

School Influences on Children's Development

Research and debate on class size differences has focused on relations with achievement, and there is little relevant research on what mediating classroom processes might be involved. In this article we investigate connections between class size and teaching interactions. We adopt a multimethod approach, integrating qualitative information from teachers’ end-of-year accounts and data from case studies with quantitative information from time-allocation estimates and systematic observations. Our data come from a longitudinal study of two cohorts of more than 10,000 children altogether for 3 years after enrollment in English infant schools (aged 4 –7 years). Our results show, overall, that in smaller classes there is more individualized teacher support for learning. We interpret the results in the context of teacher time allocation, research on effective teaching, and post-Vygotskian approaches to teaching. It is suggested that direct models of teacher influences on pupils need to be adapted to allow for cla...

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Relationships Between Class Size and Teaching: A Multimethod Analysis of English Infant Schools

Relationships between class size and teaching : a mutimethod analysis of Englishinfant schools

Background: Despite a long-running debate over the effects of class size differences on educational performance there is little evidence on the classroom processes that might be involved.

Aims: The effects of class size differences are examined in relation to social and behavioural adjustment to school, in terms of two dimensions: attentiveness and peer relations. It was predicted that as class size increased there would be more inattentiveness in class and more signs of social difficulties between children in the form of more rejection, asocial, anxious and aggressive behaviour, and less prosocial behaviour.

Samples: Data came from a large-scale longitudinal study of children over KS1 (4-7 years). The observation study was based on a subsample of 235 children in 21 small (average 19 children) and 18 large (average 33 children) reception classes (aged 5 years). The PBR sample involved over 5,000.

Methods: There were two complementary methods of data collection: first, a systematic observation study of pre-selected target children in terms of three ‘social modes’ — when with their teachers, other children and when not interacting — and in terms of work, procedural, social and off-task activities; and, second, a teacher administered Pupil Behaviour Rating (PBR) scale comprising over 50 items rated on a 3-point scale grouped into six ‘factors’: hyperactive/distractible, aggressive, anxious/fearful, prosocial, asocial, and excluded.

Results: Observations showed that children in large classes were more likely to show off-task behaviour of all kinds, and more likely to interact with their peers in terms of off-task behaviour, social, and also on-task behaviours. Connections between class size and PBR factors were not strong. There was no support for the view that peer relations are better in smaller classes; indeed, there was a slight tendency for worse peer relations, in terms of aggression, asocial and excluded, in the smallest classes.

Conclusions: There was confirmation that children in large classes are more distracted from work and more often off task. The unexpected result, based on teacher ratings, that small classes may lead to less social and more aggressive relations between children is discussed, along with implications for teachers of a tendency for more peer-related contacts in large classes.

Lawrence McCluskey

Papers

The Issue of Class Size.