The Importance of Context in School Improvement

The call to improve the quality of education in the United States has been resounding for many years. Educators, researchers, policymakers, parents, community members and students have heard this call and responded in various ways. However, much remains to be done. The outcomes of schooling need to be improved, especially for at-risk students.

According to Goldenberg & Gallimore (1991), a serious question which must now be faced is how to institute lasting change in the school.

Despite considerable growth in knowledge about factors related to student achievement and the notable successes of numerous effective programs, very little is known about how scientific research actually finds its way into schools and classrooms, particularly those in which the contexts are substantially different from the contexts of the original research, for example Euro- American compared with language-minority populations. The "effective" schools literature, as influential as it has been, is of little help. There is typically no documentation of how a school got to be "effective," that is, how it instituted changes or used research findings in ways that ultimately affected children's learning (p. 3).

Louis and Miles (1990) cite the issue of leading and managing the process of change as a missing piece in school improvement, other than the exhortation to the principal to exercise "instructional leadership," in their study of urban high school change. The reader is referred to Hord (1992) for an examination of the literature regarding strategies for leading change.

Regardless of the new program or changes a school wishes to initiate, those leading school improvement efforts need an understanding of the complex nature of the school prior to and during the change effort in order to sustain implementation. In order to understand the impact of contextual factors on change, it is necessary to examine the circumstances of schooling and the meaning given to these by those in the school as well as those in the outside environment, parents and community members. The context in which those seeking to improve schools find themselves creates a set of conditions that may present bridges or barriers to change. By encouraging the development of those factors that facilitate change or nurturing them if they already exist, leaders increase the opportunity for change to become a permanent part of the school environment. Those factors that present barriers to change, if unrecognized, will thwart the efforts of the leaders of school improvement. By encouraging the development of those factors that facilitate change or nurturing them if they already exist, leaders increase the opportunity for change to become a permanent part of the school environment.

The extent to which classroom changes are implemented and how long the changes last are "acutely susceptible" to the influence of contextual conditions in the school, according to a study conducted by Corbett, Dawson, and Firestone (1984). "The basic argument is that existing school contextual conditions inevitably mingle with the change process to yield substantially different results from school to school" (p. xiii). In this paper, the context of schools will be viewed as a dynamic interplay of the ecology or inorganic elements of the school and the culture, which is composed of the attitudes and beliefs of persons both inside and outside the school, the cultural norms of the school, and relationships between individuals and groups of persons. Specific elements of these dimensions that may act as facilitators or impediments to change will be examined.