Keys Processes and Conditions of Institutional Secondary Schools Improvement

• In Event: Why School Improvement in Secondary Education Is So Difficult? Learning About Improvement From Chilean High Schools

Abstract

In this study the focus was to identify the processes and conditions that allowed initiating and sustaining these trajectories of improvement. A sample of 12 high schools was selected from a subset of schools with sustained improvement identified in the first study to carry out in depth case studies. We attempted to create a heterogeneous sample that was representative of diverse realities at the country level, including different initial levels of educational performance. In each school, individual and group semi-structured interviews were conducted with several schools’ members; direct observation; analysis of institutional documents as well as a survey to students.

The findings were grouped into four axes: i) School organization and leadership; ii) Curriculum and pedagogical processes; iii) Coexistence and relationship with youth cultures; and iv) Relationship with the context, which are explain below briefly.

At the school organization level, there was a greater complexity of improvement processes, high schools faced two challenges: keep attractive in order to maintain enrollment and remain relevant, it means in connection with post-secondary education or employers. In the struggle to remain competitive in the school market, they have had to introduce larger, more radical institutional changes, such as transforming from a single gender schools to a mix school, merging with a primary school, or transforming from an academic to a vocational school. In almost all schools, leadership has been important as a driver of improvement, but the style and distribution of leadership is strongly mediated by the type and the size of the schools as well as the stage of school development (Day et al., 2011). Finally, the teaching work culture is characterized by an intense collaborative work, but unlike primary education this collaboration is mainly within the subject departments (Harris, 2001; Ko et al., 2014)

In the pedagogical and curriculum dimension, three trends were identified: a permanence of more traditional methods oriented to cover the national curriculum, a strong work of differentiation at both ends of performance: different forms of reinforcement for students with more difficulties, for example including classroom assistants, workshops, but also pre-colleges, academies, and some innovative pedagogical forms, especially channeled through workshops and free-choice curricular activities, many of them after school time (Mehta & Fine, 2019). Additionally, there was a strong orientation towards external test, with undesirable consequences, including curricular narrowing.

In relation to school coexistence, the tendency was to develop a close and friendly relations among students, and between them and teachers. Contrary to the typical Chilean secondary schools, in these school’s coexistence and discipline appeared as non-problematic. There were a high concern and intensive work about the subjective well-being and the life project of students (Rutledge et al, 2015). However, we found a low acceptance of youth cultures and little recognition of the student as a young person.

Finally, the sense, and also the measure of success of the secondary schools, is closely linked to what their graduated students do. Therefore, a relevant part of their efforts was oriented towards other institutions and the links with those became critical factors to achieve their "quality".

Authors

• Xavier Vanni, Universidad de Chile

• Mariana Contreras, Universidad de Chile

• Cristian Bellei, Universidad de Chile

• Juan Pablo Valenzuela, Universidad de Chile