Improving Schools Through School-to-School Support in Italy: Results From a Randomized Control Trial

• In Event: School Improvement Through Research Engagement in Different Contexts

Abstract

Objectives
This study engages with one of the first significant attempts to improve lower secondary schools in areas of socio-economic disadvantage in northern Italy. The ScuolInsieme project, which is the focus of this research, benefitted from large-scale financial resources (500 million euros), and was aimed at (1) enhancing head-teachers’ organisational and leadership potential while developing their professional competences; and (2) improving students’ motivation and metacognitive skills. This paper reports on the potentialities and limitations of the project, which was conducted as a randomised control trial, seeking to explore the scope it offered for stimulating improvement, and piloting possible approaches to innovation within the framework of specific institutional arrangements in Italy. The most important contextual factors and constraints shaped by these arrangements were: (1) weak leadership among head-teachers and strong teacher autonomy; (2) a limited time frame beyond teaching hours that staff could be expected to invest in professional development activities; and (3) recently initiated and not yet consolidated strategies of school self-evaluation and the elaboration of school improvement plans.

Perspectives
The research was informed by an approach to raising student achievement based on the improvement of schools’ organizational effectiveness and on school context enrichment. ScuolInsieme followed ideas trialled elsewhere, such as school-to-school support, and reinforcement of the role of school leadership. The study describes how these approaches worked in the Italian context, with an emphasis on the role of the tutors within the project (26 overall) and the results. The focus is on how the tutors worked in collaboration with the schools; on the extent to which they employed differentiated improvement strategies and on the various improvement initiatives that emerged ‘from below’.

Methods
A personalization approach to improvement as well as the idea of micro-networks for improvement informed the improvement project. The paper draws on both quantitative and qualitative data to analyse the tutors’ intervention and their effectiveness in relation to the specificities of the context of the Italian schools.

Data
Data related to the intervention, including qualitative observations as well as outcome data were collected over the course of three years –including follow-up one year after the intervention – and were subject to various forms of analysis, including counterfactual analysis. Ethical approval was secured following national guidelines.

Results
The results reveal the various ways in which schools engaged differently with the three lines of improvement, as defined by the framework of this project. They reveal the importance of various factors including: the role played by the tutors in supporting schools in difficulty: the willingness (or otherwise) of the schools to get involved; the difficulties of elaborating a local improvement project focused on learning outcomes, and the reluctance of head-teachers to assume direct responsibility for leading the project.

Significance
The study shows the potential for school improvement from below in a specific institutional context such as the Italian one. It represents one of the first and most significant attempts – in terms of the resources invested – to design and monitor a school improvement project in this country.

Authors

• Mincu Monica Elena, University of Torino

• Claudia Mandrile, Fondazione per la Scuola