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Intro -- Acknowledgments -- Contents -- About the Book -- 1 Focus and Design of the Review Study -- Abstract -- Study Aims and Research Questions -- Alignment Within the Context of Systemic Reform -- Accountability and Its Influence on Teaching -- Task Related Cooperation Between Teachers -- Methods -- Conceptual Analysis -- Literature Search -- Analyses of Research Literature and Available (International) Data Sets -- Exploration on How OTL and Educational Alignment Are Addressed in the Practice of Dutch Primary Education -- Structure of the Report -- References -- 2 Conceptualization -- Abstract -- Introduction -- Building Blocks for a Conceptual Framework -- OTL in the Context of Educational Effectiveness Research -- OTL in Curriculum Research -- OTL as Test Preparation -- An Overarching Model of "Didactic and Evaluative Specification of Educational Goals" -- Should Evaluative Specification Precede Didactic Specification or Vice Versa? -- Should Evaluative Specification and Didactic Specification be Carried Out in Different Organizations? -- How Feasible is Optimizing Alignment in a Leaner Organizational Structure? -- Hypothetical Solutions to the Alignment Problem in Educational Systems -- Centralism and Synoptic Planning -- Retroactive Planning, Combined with High Stakes Accountability -- Ways to Empirically Assess OTL -- Scope of the OTL Definition -- Data source -- The level of the Curricular Unit Envisaged -- Exposure or Alignment -- Conclusion -- References -- 3 Meta-Analyses and Descriptions of Illustrative Studies -- Abstract -- Introduction -- Meta-Analyses of OTL Effects -- Meta-Analysis of Test Preparation Effects -- Descriptions of Illustrative Studies -- Scope -- Instrument Development -- Research Design -- Results: Validity of the TCO Measures -- Abstract, General Description -- Conceptual Model and Measures.

Evidence based educational policy and practice means, first of all, that new programs use relevant scientific knowledge for design purposes, or for critical review of initial program ideas (ex ante evaluation). Secondly, before programs are implemented on a large scale it is considered desirable to conduct smaller scale try-out and pilots, preferably designed as randomized experiments. Third and finally, rigorous ex post or summative evaluation of the implemented program is to be conducted. In this article the first condition is further analysed. It depends on the availability of broadly confirmed relatively stable research outcomes that make sense in a theoretical and practical way. The illustration that is used in this article is the educational effectiveness knowledge base and its application for decision making on school improvement and educational reform. The state of the art on educational effectiveness research provides some guidelines for successful general reform strategies, but also underlines the limits of malleability in education, in the sense that effect sizes of even the most successful strategies tend to be small.

The core of the chapter consists of an overview of different types and approaches to school evaluation, geared to different conceptions of "quality" education. A taxonomy, in which various methods of school evaluation are related to the specific information providers and the specific audiences of each, is developed, as weIl as an overview of qualitative and quantitative methods. In a final section implementation issues and applicability in developing countries are discussed. (DIPF/Orig.).

In the initial part of the chapter a sketch of the Dutch policy context with respect to quality care and school self-evaluation in education is given. The particular context of fairly autonomous schools, some recent policy measures and the availability of a range of providers of tools and instruments have led to a broad rnixture of approaches to school self evaluation. This context the author considers as the basic "feeding ground" for the initiative to develop integrated instrumentation for school self-evaluation in primary education, the ZEBO-project. Next, the theoretical background and methodological aspects of this integrated school self-evaluation instrument have been discussed. In the final section an outline is being given of the actual uses schools can make of the envisaged integrated instrument. (DIPF/Orig./Ba.).

This article describes how Inspectorates of Education operationalize different inspection goals (control, improvement, liaison) in their inspection indicator frameworks. The paper provides an overview and examples of the indicators used across a number of countries and how these are incorporated in inspection frameworks to evaluate and assess schools with the purpose of control, improvement and liaison. We shall describe the inspection and assessment of the processes and results of schooling (which includes making expert judgements), and compare and contrast them with inspection frameworks that focus on controlling input requirements and checking compliance to legislation. We will discuss the value and adequateness of different frameworks in the light of recent school effectiveness research. The results collected suggested that teaching/instruction level conditions, such as high expectations, a challenging teaching approach, an orderly learning environment and clear and structured teaching are more important than school level conditions in improving student achievement. Most inspectorates however do not explicitly evaluate teaching or teachers on a classroom/subject or grade level, preferring instead to evaluate school level conditions and general instruction characteristics or teaching patterns such as learning time, school leadership and school climate. A final «council» to further and future developments of national school inspection frameworks is therefore the relative emphasis on school organizational as compared to teaching and learning, or didactic standards. A prudent warning could be for designers and adaptors of inspection frameworks not to lose sight of the primary process of teaching and learning.

Der Beitrag beschreibt, wie Schulinspektorate unterschiedliche Ziele (Kontrolle, Entwicklung und Verbesserung, Verbindung zwischen verschiedenen Akteuren im Schulsystem) im konzeptionellen Rahmen der Inspektionen und ihrer Indikatoren operationalisieren. Es bietet einen Überblick über die Indikatoren, die in einer Reihe von Ländern eingesetzt werden, und zeigt beispielhaft, wie sie in den konzeptionellen Rahmen von Inspektionen einfließen und die Schulen mit dem Ziel der Kontrolle, Entwicklung und Verbindung bewerten und beurteilen. Wir beschreiben die Inspektion und Bewertung der Prozesse und Ergebnisse schulischer Bildung (wozu auch gehört, Expertenmeinungen zu formulieren) und vergleichen sie mit Inspektionskonzepten, deren Hauptaugenmerk auf der Kontrolle von Input-Erfordernissen und der Einhaltung von gesetzlichen Vorschriften liegt. Außerdem erörtern wir, wie sinnvoll und angemessen unterschiedliche Konzepte im Hinblick auf aktuelle Ergebnisse der Schulwirksamkeitsforschung sind. (DIPF/Orig.)