Abstract
School Effectiveness and School Improvement have achieved a hegemonic position as
paradigms of educational evaluation and development, both as research paradigms and as
discursive practices shaping policy and practice. This is true internationally but with
particular strength in the governance of English schools, thus the texts which constitute this
doctoral submission - namely a book and several journal articles, and an extended
commentary upon them - are grounded specifically in that context. The concept of paradigm
is deployed in order to question systematically their (often tacit) methodological and political
assumptions and to establish some foundations and justification for alternative models of
school quality and educational change. A particular emphasis is placed upon the neglect,
within these dominant paradigms, of educational and social aims, curriculum and pedagogy,
and their inadequate framing of the relationship between schools and social context. These
texts also focus strongly upon the situation of schools serving inner city and other highpoverty neighbourhoods, as a kind of border situation which exposes the limitations of these
paradigms.
