and other societies, dating from the field's origins in the 1970s. Issues include its history, methodological and theoretical advances, scientific properties of school effects, processes at school and classroom level behind these effects, the somewhat limited translation of findings into policy and practice across the world, and future directions for research and practice in EER and for all of the discipline more generally. Future research needs are argued to be a further concentration upon teaching/teachers, more longitudinal studies, more work on possible context specificity, exploration of the cross-level transactions between schools and their teachers/classrooms, the adoption of "efficiency" as well as "effectiveness" as outcome measures, and a renewed focus upon the education of the disadvantaged, the original focus of our discipline when it began.

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This study provides further support for the affect-competence separation. Theoretical issues regarding adequate conceptualization and practical consequences for practitioners are discussed.

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This study explores the relationship between school composition and characteristics of school process and investigates their effect on mathematics achievement in Belgian (Flemish) secondary education by means of multilevel analysis. Attention is paid to the differential effectiveness of both types of school characteristics. The study confirms that there are important relationships between school composition and school process variables in secondary education. The analyses of the effect of both variables on achievement revealed that these variables have important net and joint effects on achievement independent of initial ability. We found that the addition of school composition variables to models with school process variables caused a decline in the effect of important school process variables. This outcome has important consequences for school effectiveness research, school improvement and teacher training.