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Beyond school effectiveness and school improvement: lighting the slow fuse of possibility
Author(s) -
Fielding Michael
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
the curriculum journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.843
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 1469-3704
pISSN - 0958-5176
DOI - 10.1080/09585176.1997.11070759
Subject(s) - transformative learning , democracy , fuse (electrical) , process (computing) , sociology , pedagogy , school education , mathematics education , political science , psychology , engineering , computer science , law , politics , electrical engineering , operating system
This paper argues that both school effectiveness and school improvement are importantly flawed and that we should be developing alternative approaches which connect more explicitly and more imaginatively with the dilemmas and possibilities facing education in and for democracy at the end of the twentieth century. The first half of the paper (sections 1–3) begins by expressing a number of dissatisfactions with the school effectiveness movement as a prelude to exploring the positive nature and potential of ‘mapping’ change in the school improvement process. The second half (sections 4–5) articulates a number of reservations about both school effectiveness and school improvement and begins to explore the possibility of an alternative, namely, ‘transformative education’.