Bert Creemers is currently Director of the University Centre for Learning and Teaching at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He is Honorary Professor in GION, the Institute for Educational Research based in the Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences and Collaborative Professor at the University of Cyprus.

He is a member of several national and international scientific organizations and founding and corresponding editor of School Effectiveness and School Improvement, and of Educational Research and Evaluation. Bert has written numerous articles and books on research and evaluation in teaching, curriculums (school to work plans) and text books, educational effectiveness and improvement, and processes and policies at the different levels of the educational system.

I started my academic career in 1974 as a researcher on teacher behaviour in initial reading. My intention was to show that the differences in behaviour of teachers who used the same textbook resulted in different student outcomes, taking into consideration the initial differences between students. The results confirmed my ideas, indicating that it was important to continue research on teaching and the results of instructional behaviour on learning and the learning outcomes of students. However, maybe due to the fact that the funding of educational research was based on the needs of educational policy in the Netherlands for research evidence and to a lesser extent, educational practice, I moved from research on teaching to research on curriculum development and the implementation of curricula. It was expected, in theory, policy and practice that schools and teachers which were involved in the development of their curriculum and textbook would be more likely to use the curriculum and textbook strictly. However the evaluation of the strategy for school based curriculum development provided further confirmation about the crucial role of the quality of teaching. The quality of teaching was more important than the common curriculum/ textbook. In the Netherlands in the seventies, like in almost all countries, there were major projects to change educational policy and practice. At that time I was Director of the Institute for Educational Research at the University of Groningen which carried out many evaluation studies into the effects of these improvements on the quality of education and especially on the effects on student outcome measures. In my publications I was sometimes very critical about these efforts at improvement since these projects did not result in excellence in outcomes nor in equity, reducing the gap between student’s outcomes.

In the eighties I made several attempts to bring together research findings in an overarching model, the different variables such as teacher behaviour, curriculum, school organization and improvement, each of which was researched separately. I did not succeed but the different findings brought a new focus in educational effectiveness theory and research. What started as a little group of researchers who tried to prove that schools and teachers matter, gradually developed into a large community of academics interested in theory and research, and policy-makers and practitioners interested in changing and improving education at different levels: the learning level, the school and the system.

The criteria for educational effectiveness are continuously debated and criticized. Educational Effectiveness Research (EER) mostly uses outcomes of schooling such as mathematics, reading and language. This is however a restricted set of intended outcomes in the cognitive domain. There are other important school subjects such as science and biology, and subjects like art and physics that help make up a balanced education. The measurement of achievement outcomes should not be restricted to the basic knowledge and skills, but cover also higher academic outcomes like application, reasoning, evaluation and meta-cognition, and skills such as problem solving and knowing how to organise your own learning. Except for cognitive academic outcomes, one can question the role of education in schools and classrooms in e.g. the socio-affective and physical domains. In my opinion, expressed in several publications (1996-2007), formal education in school should be directed primarily towards cognitive academic outcomes. Generally speaking, this domain is not covered by other social institutions in a structured and focused way. And above this, education in schools is good in this area, or at least it should be. This is for the benefit of the less advantaged, particularly those students at risk, but also for society in general.

Since 1990 I have gradually written more for an international audience about issues in educational effectiveness such as the importance of criteria for effectiveness in terms of student‘s outcomes, factors related to student outcomes and the way to do the research on these relationships. I did so in the journal, School Effectiveness and School Improvement which I founded with David Reynolds. We both served for many years as editors of the journal and the journal defined the field of research and improvement for many years. In theory and research emphasis is given to the multi-level nature of educational effectiveness meaning that different factors operating at different levels of the system, such as students, teachers, school and the system level, have an impact on student’s achievement outcomes. The level of the classroom where learning and teaching is takes place is for educational quality of utmost importance. In my book The Effective Classroom (Cassell 1994) I brought together the research on the classroom level and developed a comprehensive framework for educational effectiveness where the different levels were connected through their contribution to the quality of teaching in relation to student outcomes. This was also explored in Advances in School Effectiveness Research and Practice (Pergamon Press 1994).

The contribution to educational practice was explored and explained in the book Making Good Schools. (Routledge 1996). This publication was an attempt to connect research and improvement in a productive way by arguing that research can provide the evidence for the content of improvement and more specifically the strategies used. In my contributions to the journal School Effectiveness and School Improvement and in the journal which I founded in the same period, Educational Research and Evaluation I concentrated on research issues. However, in a number of contributions to books I expanded and explained the comprehensive framework for the other levels in education. This work can be found in Organizational Effectiveness and Improvement in Education (Open University Press 1997), Development Planning and School Improvement for Middle Managers (Kogan Page 1997) and in School Climate: Measuring, Improving and Sustaining Healthy Learning Environments (Falmer 1999).

A major problem in the testing of theories about educational effectiveness is the system level. To test ideas about the factors operating at that level more countries have to be included where a representative of schools and classrooms within schools can be drawn. And such a study on the effect of system level factors on schools and classrooms and ultimately on student outcomes needs a longitudinal design. Nevertheless this type of research is needed to explain in more detail the results of the Educational Olympics published by the TIMS and PISA studies. A first attempt to test the importance of the system level was the International School Effectiveness Research Project which published its results in 2002 in the book, World Class Schools (Routledge 2002). A major finding of this study is the importance of the quality of teaching. What works for student‘s learning and outcomes of learning is more or less the same in all countries. How the quality of teaching is established is different and some countries are more successful than others in achieving that quality. However borrowing effective factors from one country to another is not so easy because their effect depends on the wider educational environment such as the importance of education in the society and the achievement press for students and parents which is related to this. I contributed to two major synthesizing publications about the developments in the field of educational effectiveness and improvement namely:The International Handbook of School Effectiveness Research (Falmer) and International Handbook of School Effectiveness and Improvement, (Springer)

After 10 years of research on the comprehensive model of educational effectiveness it was time to include the findings in a new theoretical framework that also was able to address some of the weaknesses of the “old” framework such as the lack of attention for new ways of teaching and learning, the possibility of non linear relations between the effectiveness factors and the grouping of factors. Together with Leonidas Kyriakides, I developed the dynamic model of educational effectiveness in The Dynamics of Educational Effectiveness (Routledge 2007). The dynamic model explicitly claims to make a contribution to educational improvement. Currently Leonidas and I are involved in efforts to improve teacher professional development, school self evaluation and bullying. A book on the contribution of the dynamic model to improvement, edited with Leonidas Kyriakides will be published by Routledge in the future and intends to have an impact on research and improvement. But before this book there will be another one especially for the research area on the methodological advances in educational effectiveness research also forthcoming from Routledge. This book will be edited with Pam Sammons and Leonidas Kyriakides and will include chapters on specific methodological and statistical approaches written together with Bob Slavin, Jan Eric Gustafson, Norman Verhelst, George Marcoloudis, Charles Teddlie and Hans Luijten.

What will be the future? I expect that we might increase the explained variance at the student level by a more detailed investigation of the relation between external mechanisms in the educational system and student’s motivation and interest. Furthermore, I expect that in international comparative research we might discover that the system (the educational system and the wider educational environment) has a more substantial effect on student’s learning and learning outcomes than we thought before. Maybe that will decrease the explained variance at the school level even further than already happened by introducing the classroom level in the analysis. Finally, I hope that by increasing the empirical evidence for the model we can bridge the gap between EER and policy and practice. When a knowledge base pertaining to educational effectiveness is elaborated, backed by a theory which not only provides insights in what works but also explains why, more concrete suggestions and advice for practice and policy can be given. Finally, a theory driven evidence based approach to improvement can guide and finally evaluate and provide the evidence for educational improvement (and theory, again!).