Multiplicity of school functions in the new century: The shift of paradigm in school effectiveness research

How to enhance school effectiveness is one of the major concerns in current education reforms in both local and international contexts. Even though the volume of literature on school effectiveness research is rapidly increasing in the past decade, most of the findings suffer from the ignorance of the multiplicity of school functions and cannot provide comprehensive and powerful implications for policy making and school improvement. This paper suggests that there are multiple school functions including technical/economic function, human/social, political, cultural, and educational functions at the individual, institutions, community, society, and international levels in the new century. Therefore the research paradigm should be shifted from the traditional simplistic conception of school effectiveness with focus only on technical and social functions at the individual or institutional levels to a multi-level and multi-categorical conception of school effectiveness.