The impact of educational and organisational variables on the INVALSI School Effect: findings from Puglia

The attempt to standardize the factors underlying effective teaching is central to teaching research in recent decades. In particular, the pedagogical debate highlighted the impact of the teaching quality on the outcomes of students. We describe the partial results of the work carried out by the research group of the Bari unit in the national research project “Formative educational evaluation for school improvement”, in collaboration with INVALSI, are described. The project aimed to investigate, through a multifactorial approach, differences between institutions with School- Effect (elaborated by Invalsi starting from the students' results) positive and negative. In terms of teaching practices – the specific object of focus of the following contribution – the analysis was oriented by the desire to understand the explicit and implicit variables of micro-context (related to the three constructs of design, teaching and evaluation) at the basis of the teaching quality. Through a questionnaire were explored beliefs, attitudes towards teaching and declarations of practices implemented by teachers. 443 Apulian teachers working in 18 secondary schools took part in the study. The results showed some differences between teachers belonging to schools with positive versus negative levels of school effect. Schools with high ES show to be more “selective” than schools with low ES; in schools with low ES – where there are more difficulties and heterogeneity of context – teachers feel, in addition to a greater confidence in the transformative potential of teaching, also a greater need for inclusive practices. The results – useful for identifying actions for school improvement – are discussed using an interdisciplinary approach