Abstract
School improvement has become a common policy option to reform education. This chapter provides an overview of school improvement research, its history and particularly how it has travelled from a variety of national locations. This chapter theorises how global policy responses, such as school improvement are realised in local contexts, in this instance a network of schools in the Australian state of Victoria. The chapter troubles current understandings of education reform, particularly those based on a narrow conception of student attainment. These too often locate the problem of school improvement directly on the quality of teachers with the individual school as the unit of analysis. Rather, this analysis points to connections between schools and the learning that takes place in networks of schools in providing leadership to direct change in individual schools. Ultimately, this chapter questions what is valued and valuable in school improvement, providing the context and theoretical positions supporting the analysis pursued in subsequent chapters.
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Rawolle, S., Wells, M., Paatsch, L., Tytler, R., Campbell, C. (2016). School Improvement as a Global Movement. In: Improving Schools. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-931-8_1
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