Concept and Design Developments in School Improvement Research [electronic resource] : Longitudinal, Multilevel and Mixed Methods and Their Relevance for Educational Accountability / edited by Arnoud Oude Groote Beverborg, Tobias Feldhoff, Katharina Maag Merki, Falk Radisch.

Chapter 1. Introduction (Arnoud Oude Groote Beverborg, Tobias Feldhoff, Katharina Maag Merki, & Falk Radisch_ -- Chapter 2. Why must everything be so complicated? Demands and challenges on methods for analyzing school improvement processes (Tobias Feldhoff & Falk Radisch) -- Chapter 3. School Improvement Capacity - A Review and a Reconceptualisation from the Perspectives of Educational Effectiveness and Educational Policy (David Reynolds & Annemarie Neeleman) -- Chapter 4. The relationship between teacher professional community and participative decision-making in schools in 22 European countries (Catalina Lomos) -- Chapter 5. New Ways of Dealing with Lacking Measurement Invariance (Markus Sauerwein & Désirée Theis) -- Chapter 6. Taking Composition and Similarity Effects into Account: Theoretical and Methodological Suggestions for Analyses of Nested School Data in School Improvement Research (Kai Schudel & Katharina Maag Merki) -- Chapter 7. Reframing Educational Leadership Research in the 21st Century (David NG Foo Seong) -- Chapter 8. The structure of leadership language: rhetorical and linguistic methods for studying school improvement (Rebecca Lowenhaupt) -- Chapter 9. Designing and Piloting a Leadership Daily Practice Log: Using Logs to Study the Practice of Leadership (James P. Spillane & Anita Zuberi) -- Chapter 10. Learning in collaboration: Exploring processes and outcomes (Bénédicte Vanblaere & Geert Devos) -- Chapter 11. Recurrence Quantification Analysis as a methodological innovation for school improvement research (Arnoud Oude Groote Beverborg, Maarten Wijnants, Peter J.C. Sleegers, & Tobias Feldhoff) -- Chapter 12. Regulation Activities of Teachers in Secondary Schools: Development of a Theoretical Framework and Exploratory Analyses in Four Secondary Schools Based on Time Sampling Data (Katharina Maag Merki, Urs Grob, Beat Rechsteiner, Andrea Wullschleger, Nathanael Schori, & Ariane Rickenbacher) -- Chapter 13. Concept and Design Developments in School Improvement Research: General Discussion and Outlook for Further Research (Tobias Feldhoff, Katharina Maag Merki, Arnoud Oude Groote Beverborg, & Falk Radisch).

Open Access

This open access book discusses challenges in school improvement research and different methodological approaches that have the potential to foster school improvement research. Research on school improvement and accountability analysis places high demands on a study's design and method. The potential of combining the depth of case studies with the breath of quantitative measures and analyses in a mixed-methods design seems very promising. Consequently, the focus of the book lies on innovative methodological approaches. The book chapters address design, measurement, and analysis developments as well as theoretical and conceptual developments. The relevance of the research presented in the chapters for educational accountability is discussed in the book's discussion chapter. More specifically, authors present one specific innovative methodological approach and clarify that approach with a concrete example in the context of school improvement, based on empirical data when possible. In this way, this book helps researchers designing complex useful studies.