This book explores the social justice implications of school autonomy reform within the context of public education in Australia. It is situated within and framed by global concerns about how public schools are navigating their ‘autonomy’ within increasingly marketised education systems.
Drawing on extensive interviews with stakeholders and five in-depth case study schools, the book calls attention to the ways in which the intentions of school autonomy reform to offer schools more freedom to make their own decisions and manage their own responsibilities have become increasingly contained by the market imperatives of economic efficiency, competition and public accountability driving state and national education systems. We build on and enrich existing research in this area that highlights how market imperatives continue to exacerbate inequality within and between schools and their systems.
An essential read for researchers, policy makers, principals and teachers worldwide, the book provides insight into how education systems can better support public schools to mobilise their autonomy in socially just ways.
This book explores the social justice implications of school autonomy reform within the context of public education in Australia. An essential read for researchers and policymakers worldwide, it provides insight into how education systems can better support public schools to mobilise their autonomy in socially just ways.
Arvustused
This book provides a comprehensive and nuanced account of the realities of leading Australian schools today under autonomy reforms. The social justice lens within this book provides an important and often overlooked perspective on issues of equity affecting students, communities, and educators. This book, while focused on Australia, is an important resource for educators and researchers worldwide who are interested in global issues of school autonomy, social justice, and equity in education.
- Amanda McKay, Griffith University, Australia
1. Introduction: School autonomy reform and social justice in Australian
public education
2. School autonomy reform in Australia: a policy history
3.
School autonomy, marketisation and social justice: The plight of principals
and schools
4. Its like were in two different schools: Contrasting
stories of teacher and leader autonomy within a distributed approach to
leadership
5. Teacher professional autonomy in an atypical government school:
matters of relationality and context
6. Competition, enterprising leadership
and the effect on schools
7. Educational leadership and the contradictions of
care in performative education systems
8. Does distance trump autonomy?: A
case study of school autonomy in a mining town
9. Devolving labour relations,
work conditions and employment standards: A focus on school services staff
10. Election or selection? School autonomy reform, governance and the
politics of school councils
11. The systemic effects of school autonomy on
social justice
12. The constitution of school autonomy in Australian public
education: areas of paradox for social justice
13. Responses from across the
globe
14. Where to from here? Putting the public back into education
Amanda Keddies research examines the broad range of schooling processes and conditions that can impact on the pursuit of social justice in schools including student identities, teacher identities, pedagogy, curriculum, leadership, school structures, policy agendas and socio-political trends.
Katrina MacDonalds research is in social justice, educational leadership, and the sociology of education through a practice lens. Her research has focused on principals social justice understandings and practices, and the impact of school reform policies on just public schooling and the principal and teacher workforce.
Brad Gobby's research interests include education policy, governance and politics and their implication for schools, teachers and principals. His specific research focus is using Foucauldian and critical scholarship to investigate how policies and policy discourses transform the school education domain, including teachers and school leadership.
Jill Blackmores feminist research interests include education policy and governance; international and intercultural education; educational restructuring, leadership and organisational change; spatial redesign and innovative pedagogies; teachers and academics work, health and wellbeing all with a focus on equity.
Jane Wilkinson's research is in educational leadership for social justice, with a focus on refugee education, issues of gender and ethnicity; and theorising educational leadership as practice/praxis. She is a lead developer of the theory of practice architectures.
Scott Eacotts research is concerned with the organisation of education and advocacy for the pursuit of equitable excellence in school provision. He is widely published with research interests in educational administration. His current projects focus on housing affordability and the teacher workforce.
Richard Niesches research is in educational leadership, the principalship and social justice in education. He focuses on critical perspectives in educational leadership to examine the work of school principals in disadvantaged schools and how they can work towards achieving more socially just outcomes.
