Peter W. Hill

Multilevel Modelling in School Effectiveness Research

ABSTRACT Fifteen years ago, Burstein (1980) argued that the key to methodological progress in studies of classroom and school effects depended on the development of appropriate models and methods for the analysis of multilevel data. Considerable progress has been made in the intervening years such that anyone familiar with the growing school effectiveness research literature will have encountered the methodological imperative: ‘Pay attention to the multilevel organisational structure in which schooling occurs’ (i.e., students within classes within schools). Results are now available from a number of studies that have employed multilevel modelling to investigate school and teacher effectiveness. In the main, these results suggest that variation between classes is far more significant than variation between schools, although in detail the evidence often appears to be contradictory and open to a variety of interpretations. This article considers why different studies generate different findings, identifies s...

Modeling Educational Effectiveness in Classrooms: The Use of Multi-Level Structural Equations To Model Students' Progress.

Long-standing and enduring problems in quantitative studies of educational effectiveness relate to fitting models that adequately reflect the complex inter-relationships among multivariate, multilevel factors affecting students’ educational progress, particularly among those that operate within classrooms. This article illustrates one approach to solving such difficulties by combining the analytic approaches of multilevel analysis and structural equation modeling in a two-stage process. The data used are drawn from a longitudinal study of teacher and school effectiveness for three Grade-level cohorts of 4,558 students clustered within 334 class/teacher groups in 52 elementary schools. The article provides estimates of inter-relationships among achievement and social background factors including ‘critical events’ on students’ progress in mathematics, together with their affective schooling experiences and inattentive behaviors in the classroom. Findings are presented indicating the extent to which progress...

Multilevel Modeling of Educational Data With Cross-Classification and Missing Identification for Units

This paper presents a method for handling educational data in which students belong to more than one unit at a given level, but there is missing information on the identification of the units to which students belong. For example, a student might be classified as belonging sequentially to a particular combination of primary and secondary school, but for some students the identify of either the primary or the secondary school may be unknown. Similar situations arise in longitudinal studies in which students change school or class from one year to the next. The method involves setting up a cross-classified model, but replacing (0, 1) values for unit membership with weights reflecting probabilities of unit membership in cases where membership information is randomly missing. The method is illustrated with reference to longitudinal data on students’ progress in English.

Assessing, Recording and Reporting Students’ Educational Progress: the case for ‘subject profiles’

Abstract In response to persistent concerns about limitations endemic to the exclusive use of standardised tests and examinations for student assessment and standards monitoring, one approach to addressing these concerns in Victoria (Australia) since 1986 has been the development and use of ‘subject profiles’ as frameworks’ for assessing, recording and reporting students’ educational progress. Following a brief context review and account of their origins, this paper defines what is meant by subject profiles and indicates why and how they have been developed and used. In arguing the case for the use of subject profiles in both monitoring and explanatory research, attention is given to both their utility and limitations. For illustrative purposes, descriptive data are presented from recent studies involving 34 000 students in Reception to Year 11, drawn from 650 government, Catholic, independent primary and secondary schools, using the ‘reading’ strand from the Victorian English Profiles and the ‘number’ st...

Systemic, Whole-School Reform of the Middle Years of Schooling

A large scale longitudinal study into the cognitive and affective development of pupils in Australian schools between kindergarten and grade 11, shows stagnation both in math and language in the middle years of schooling. Moreover, attitudes towards schools are rapidly declining during this stage. Building on the educational effectiveness knowledge base guiding principles for a reform of the middle years are outlined, and it is advocated that a whole school design instead of an incremental approach is needed to bring about the desired changes.

Shaking the Foundations: Research Driven School Reform.

ABSTRACT This article argues that the paradigm within which educational effectiveness has been studied has reached the end of its ‘use‐by date’ and that a new paradigm is beginning to emerge that fully integrates research into educational effectiveness with ongoing processes of school improvement and reform. Examples are given of the kind of studies that have been carried out or are beginning to be undertaken using the new paradigm. Through this re‐conceptualisation of the field, it is argued that the potential exists to achieve research‐driven reforms that will shake the foundations of schooling.

Methodological Issues in Educational Performance and School Effectiveness Research: A Discussion with Worked Examples

There has been a growing awareness among educational researchers of the consequences of using data-analytic models that fail to account for the inherent clustered or hierarchical sampling structure of the data typically obtained. Such clustering poses special analytic problems related to levels of analysis, aggregation bias, heterogeneity of regression and parameter mis-estimation, with important implications for the correct interpretation of effects. This paper compares the results obtained from fitting single-level and multilevel models to two hierarchically structured data sets designed to explain variation in student achievement. Emphasis is given to the crucial importance of fitting models commensurate with the sampling structure of the data to which they are applied.

Key Features of a whole‐school, design approach to literacy teaching in schools

Over the past four years, we have been involved in two large-scale, longitudinal projects undertaken in partnership with the Department of Education and the Catholic Education Office in Victoria. The aim of both projects has been to refine, implement and evaluate a whole-school, design approach to improving early literacy outcomes. The schools we have worked with have comprised schools serving mainly students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds. In this paper, we describe the two projects, outline the main features of the approach that we have refined within the these projects and present data indicating the results achieved in the project schools.

Reforming the Assessment of Student Achievement in the Senior Secondary School

The challenge that confronts agencies responsible for assessment and reporting in the senior secondary school is to extend systematic assessment procedures to a broader range of learning outcomes than those currently assessed by public examinations, to develop methods of reporting which are more descriptive of individual achievement and which provide a better basis for describing and maintaining standards, and to provide results which are sufficiently comparable across schools to enable fair comparisons of applicants for tertiary study. Some recent developments in assessment and reporting practice are considered with a view to identifying methods and approaches capable of satisfying this diverse set of demands. An approach which is particularly appealing because of its potential to provide simultaneously more descriptive reports of student achievement and adequate levels of comparability is the use of a set of common assessment tasks attempted by all students enrolled in each Year 12 course of study.