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Succeeding Against the Odds: Understanding resilience and exceptionalism in high-functioning township and rural primary schools in South Africa

克服困难取得成功：了解南非高效的乡镇和农村小学的韧性和例外主义

基本信息

批准号：
ES/N01023X/1
负责人：
Servaas Van Der Berg
金额：
$ 49万
依托单位：
Stellenbosch University
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2016
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2016 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FN01023X%2F1
关键词：
Succeeding Against Odds Understanding resilience

项目摘要

The aim of the present study is to understand resilience and exceptionalism in high-functioning township and rural primary schools in South Africa. Previous research has shown that a large part of the explanation behind these schools' success is the leadership and management practices of teachers and particularly principals. Despite this near universal acceptance of the pivotal role of school leadership and management (SLM) for student achievement, accurate quantitative indicators of these practices remain elusive. Put simply, we do not currently have appropriate questionnaires that can accurately capture the school leadership and management practices among schools in challenging contexts in developing countries. One of the reasons for this is that these instruments are designed primarily with a developed-country-context in mind and do not account for possibilities that are prevalent in developing countries and typical in challenging contexts. Furthermore, in large-scale quantitative research, existing measures of SLM capture effective or ineffective SLM practices in superficial and fragmented ways. When looking at existing quantitative models of educational achievement researchers regularly find that there is a large unexplained component despite controlling for school resources and various student home-background factors. This is especially the case in challenging contexts where this disconnect between resources and results seems largest. One of the tentative explanations for this lack of explanatory power is that we are not currently capturing the true leadership and management practices (or lack thereof) in these schools and that this is partly due to inappropriate and inadequate SLM instruments. This is the first motivation for the inter-disciplinary nature of the proposed study; that the disciplines of Economics and Education bring different but complementary perspectives to bear on this issue of school leadership and management. Our previous research on schools in poor contexts in South Africa showed that deeper insights were obtained by a comparison between paired sets of schools with similar demographic and locational features, one performing poorly and the other performing strongly. This matched-pair approach is discussed briefly below. The proposed inter-disciplinary matched-pair analysis is, to the best of our knowledge, the first of its kind in either developing or developed countries. The current research uses 30 matched-pairs (matching 30 exceptional schools and 30 typical schools) because this provides the stark relief needed to identify which practices are driving the difference between the high performing schools and the average/low-performing schools in rural areas and townships in South Africa. The research will involve five stages: (1) Use population-wide assessment data to identify 30 exceptional primary schools (and their 30 matched pairs) in townships and rural areas in South Africa, (2) Conduct an in-depth study of 12 of the schools (6 exceptional and 6 matched typical) (3) Using the insights gained from Stage 2 develop new, more accurate and more context-specific measures of school leadership and management and pilot these in a different set of 18 schools (9 matched-pairs); (4) After finalising the new questionnaire this will be administered to all 60 schools to capture the SLM practices and behaviours of all matched pairs. In addition the team will administer background questionnaires to staff and students and monitor the Annual National Assessments in each of the 60 schools, (5) The final stage will involve validating the SLM measures identified in Stage 2, developed in Stage 3 and captured in Stage 4. The aim here is to use rigorous quantitative analysis to determine whether or not these new measures of SLM practices and behaviours are systematically related and specifically their predictive or explanatory power.

本研究的目的是了解高功能的乡镇和农村小学在南非的弹性和例外。先前的研究表明，这些学校成功背后的很大一部分原因是教师，特别是校长的领导和管理实践。尽管学校领导和管理对学生成绩的关键作用几乎得到普遍接受，但这些做法的准确量化指标仍然难以捉摸。简而言之，我们目前没有适当的问卷，可以准确地捕捉学校的领导和管理实践中的学校在发展中国家的挑战性环境。原因之一是，这些工具的设计主要考虑到发达国家的背景，没有考虑到发展中国家普遍存在且在具有挑战性的背景下典型的可能性。此外，在大规模的定量研究中，现有的可持续土地管理措施以肤浅和零散的方式反映了有效或无效的可持续土地管理做法。当研究人员查看现有的教育成就定量模型时，他们经常发现，尽管控制了学校资源和各种学生家庭背景因素，但仍有大量无法解释的成分。在资源与成果之间的脱节似乎最为严重的挑战性环境中，情况尤其如此。对这种缺乏解释力的一个初步解释是，我们目前没有掌握这些学校真正的领导和管理做法（或缺乏这种做法），部分原因是可持续土地管理工具不适当和不充分。这是建议的研究的跨学科性质的第一个动机;经济学和教育学科带来了不同但互补的观点来承担学校领导和管理这个问题。我们之前对南非贫困地区学校的研究表明，通过对具有相似人口和地理特征的成对学校进行比较，可以获得更深入的见解，其中一所表现不佳，另一所表现出色。下面简要讨论这种配对方法。据我们所知，拟议的跨学科配对分析在发展中国家或发达国家都是第一次。目前的研究使用了30对配对（匹配30所特殊学校和30所典型学校），因为这提供了确定哪些做法正在推动南非农村地区和乡镇的高绩效学校与平均/低绩效学校之间的差异所需的明显缓解。研究将分五个阶段进行：（1）利用全民评估数据确定30所特殊小学（2）对南非城镇和农村地区的12所学校进行深入研究（6个例外和6个匹配的典型）（3）使用从第2阶段获得的见解开发新的，更准确和更具体的学校领导和管理措施，并在18所不同的学校试行这些措施（9对配对）;（4）新的调查问卷定稿后，将向所有60所学校发放，以收集所有配对学校的可持续土地管理做法和行为。此外，该小组将向教职员工和学生发放背景调查问卷，并监测60所学校的年度国家评估。（5）最后阶段将涉及验证第二阶段确定、第三阶段制定和第四阶段收集的可持续土地管理措施。这里的目的是使用严格的定量分析来确定可持续土地管理做法和行为的这些新的衡量标准是否具有系统的相关性，特别是其预测或解释能力。