School, teaching, and system effectiveness: some comments on three state-of-the-art reviews

In this commentary, the 3 review papers by Reynolds et al. (this issue), Muijs et al. (this issue), and Hopkins, Stringfield, Harris, Stoll, and Mackay (this issue) on “educational effectiveness”, “teaching effectiveness”, and “school and system improvement” are discussed. In the text, the 3 papers are occasionally indicated by the acronyms EER, TE, and SSI. Topics that are dealt with are the organization of the field and the dimensions on which...