Browsing by Subject "tutkimustraditio"

The aim of this master's thesis was to critically analyze the research of so called disadvantaged schools in international, mostly English and American, articles. The starting point was to investigate the concept of disadvantage and the premises in relation to educational policy practices such as accountability and how they define school success. The connection between students' background and learning outcomes has been proven in previous studies and researchers have been arguing whether schools or their context affect schools more. In this study, perspectives in disadvantaged schools research were analyzed with two questions: 1. What are schools' possibilities to overcome the restrictions created by structures and contexts? 2. What is the most important task of schools and what part do learning outcomes play in defining that? The premise for this study was that these two relate to the concept of middle class norm, which relates to representations of good and bad schools. The main research question was: How is the middle class norm constructed in disadvantaged schools research? The data consisted of 73 articles in English in seven educational journals that are considered as prestige. The chosen articles related to disadvantaged schools research, had primary or lower secondary school in their focus, were peer reviewed and published in 1995–2015. The data was analyzed with content analysis. Analysis focused on the research settings and discussions. As a result four perspectives were analyzed: school effectiveness, school improvement, sociological and recognition perspectives. The school effectiveness research is connected with national neoliberal educational policy practices, which defines what kind of research is being conducted and what defines school success. "Education faith" and academic results were crucial in other perspectives as well, only in a few critical papers and in recognition perspective the main purpose and substance of schools was drawn from a different imagination. The results are significant for international discussions about disadvantaged schools research, and in order to understand the representations of good and bad schools. This study might also benefit research groups with different perspectives and in the critical evaluation of future research.