Schools in difficult and challenging circumstances have received increasing policy and to some extent research attention in recent years. Improving schools in these circumstances is likely to prove a difficult process. This literature review has attempted to collect research on improving schools in these areas. Themes emerging from the literature include: a focus on teaching and learning, leadership, creating an information-rich environment, creating a positive school culture, building a learning community, continuous professional development, involving parents, external support and resources. The crucial issue of sustaining improvement is also discussed.

In recent years, networking and collaboration have become increasingly popular in education. However, there is at present a lack of attention to the theoretical basis of networking, which could illuminate when and when not to network and under what conditions networks are likely to be successful. In this paper, we will attempt to sketch the theoretical background to networking drawing on work in sociology, psychology, and business studies and looking at 4 main theoretical frameworks: constructivism, social capital theory, Durkheimian network theory, and the concept of New Social Movements. We will also explore differences between networks on a number of factors such as goals, activities, density, spread, and power relations.

Teacher leadership is a concept that is gaining increasing interest from both practitioners and researchers. This article presents findings from three case studies in the UK that can be characterized as exhibiting developed, emergent and restricted teacher leadership. Differences and similarities between the schools were examined, leading us to conclude that purposive action by the head, school culture and school structures were the key distinguishing factors. Teacher leadership requires active steps to be taken to constitute leadership teams and provide teachers with leadership roles. A culture of trust and collaboration is essential, as is a shared vision of where the school needs to go, clear line management structures and strong leadership development programmes. In the developed and emergent teacher leadership schools, barriers to teacher leadership were mainly external to the school. In the school we described as exhibiting restricted teacher leadership, internal factors were also key barriers.

Teacher effectiveness is an issue that has received increased attention in recent years, as researchers have become aware of limitations in models that see the school as the key arena for improving pupil learning outcomes. This renewed interest makes it timely to look again at the methods used in teacher effectiveness research. This article presents an overview of some key issues in researching teacher effectiveness from a process-product perspective. The choice of outcome measure is a first key area. Traditionally most teacher effectiveness research has utilised externally published standardised tests. However, it will be argued that this is too limited in the light of societal demands on education. Actually measuring teacher factors is an issue the difficulty of which has often been underestimated. Classroom observation, surveys of teachers and students, and qualitative methods such as interviews have been most frequently employed. The advantages and disadvantages of each are discussed. In the final section, the main analysis methods suitable for teacher effectiveness research are outlined.