The Evidence-Based School Continuous Improvement

As school plays the most important role in the modern education，the improvement ofschool has became a crucial subject in educational development. As a technical term,“SchoolImprovement”appeared in the late1970’s. After experiencing the first period of schooleffectiveness research, the second period with school effectiveness and school improvementcombined, in the late1990’s, school improvement research has come into the third stage ofdevelopment: continuous improvement period. The school improvement research in China wasmade only in recent years. And the school improvement practice is especially lack of continuity,integrity and scientific methodology. On the basis of previous studies and practice, thisdissertation tries to propose a theory about evidence-based school continuous improvement andto prove the applicability of the theory with first-hand data.School continuous improvement is a cyclic self-renewal process conducted systematically,with the main goal to continuously improve the quality of education. Evidence-based practice isa new paradigm that makes social intervention more effective by inspiring people’s serious,rigorous and wise use of the available scientific evidence during professional decision making.The term “evidence-based” can mean an idea, and it can also refer to a method of experiencereview. It provides a scientific methodology to evidence-based school continuous improvement.The dissertation is divided into eight parts: introduction, literature review of evidence-basedschool continuous improvement, the meaning of evidence-based school continuous improvement,the mission and goals of evidence-based school continuous improvement, the process ofevidence-based school continuous improvement, the organizational system of evidence-basedschool continuous improvement, the self-evaluation of school continuous improvement and acase study of evidence-based school continuous improvement. In this dissertation, thefollowing issues are mainly discussed:First, the goals and process of evidence-based school continuous improvement aredescribed. The goals of continuous improvement are to build a high-performance school and todevelop continuous improvement strength. Logically, the school continuous improvement beginswith the development of school strategic planning, which is an overall planning and design of theschool. It’s different from the general development planning, because it reflects the interactiveprocess between evidence-based planning and implementation. It can be adjusted accordingly tothe change of the real situation. The continuous improvement of the different schools may havedifferent process, but they all follow the same basic process model—Shewhart Cycle. This cycleshows that the basic process of the continuous improvement always experiences four steps that is“Plan-Do-Check-Act”.Second, the organizational system of evidence-based school continuous improvement isdiscussed. School continuous improvement is an overall improvement in schools. It willinevitably bring basic changes in school system. Therefore, school principals, teachers willpromote the evidence-based continuous improvement in schools by promoting their professionaland cultural leadership. It is necessary to build the evidence-based continuous improvement culture in school. In order to enhance the ability of continuous improvement, some reforms inschool organization are maded by taking the form of flattening organization structure,restructuring organization or constructing non-administrative organizations.Third, the framework of school self-assessment and evidence of continuous improvementare discussed. School continuous improvement assessment is a formative, self-assessmentproposed with the development of continuous improvement. The study shows that schools needto gather seven aspects of improvement evidence: shared mission and goals, rigorous contentstandards for all students, curricular and instructional coherence and alignment, coherent andconsistent support for teachers’ professional development, professional community of teachers,partnership with parents, families and the community, culture and climate for student learning.R school case study in the dissertation is conducted to verify the possibility and feasibilityof evidence-based school continuous improvement in China’s educational practice. This caseshows that as an idea,“evidence–based” is easily accepted; the evidence-based approach can beapplied to Chinese schools to improve professional practice; and this method is able to guide theschool into the track of continuous improvement. This case study also reveals that it’s a long wayto establish evidence-based mechanism and improve the teachers’ ability of evidence collectionand analysis.