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School autonomy policies have circulated through various modes of educational governance internationally, endorsing the view that more autonomy will improve schools and their systems. When subject to the discourses and practices of marketization, however, school 'autonomy' has been mobilized in ways that generate injustice. These injustices are the focus of this paper. We draw on preliminary findings from a three-year study that is exploring the social justice implications of school autonomy reform across four Australian states. Drawing on interviews with 42 stakeholders, the paper identifies four key areas of paradox for social justice currently confronting public schools and school systems. The language of paradox is drawn on to narrate the oppositional politics between the discourses and practices constituting school autonomy and the pursuit of social justice. Such narration raises important questions for Australian public education. It highlights how these discourses are changing what is meant by the public in public education. Engaging with the language of paradox in thinking about school autonomy reform, we argue, is important given the broader landscape where public schooling is being reconstituted and where traditional links to social justice and the common good are under threat.

This paper presents a case for the importance of an application of Jean-Francois Lyotard's ideas to the analysis of educational leadership. Through exploring Lyotard's concepts of "language games", the "differend" and "performativity", this paper argues that the approach taken through the development of leadership standards cannot capture the messy, complex and contradictory phenomenon of leadership, and in fact, works against alternative understandings and approaches. An example of a leadership capabilities framework is used to illustrate the incommensurability of language games at work in these approaches. The paper then considers other ways of undertaking research in educational leadership to provoke further study in the "field". (Contains 4 notes.)

The aim of this paper is to illustrate how principal subjectivities are constructed by particular normalizing processes that occur through the disciplinary power of grants and submission writing. An increasing part of the principal's job, under moves towards self-governing schools, is a reliance of grants and submissions in order to obtain funding. This paper uses case studies of two school principals who are concerned about the increasing time and energy spent on these funding applications. Foucault's notions of governmentality and disciplinary power are used to theorize the constitution of these principals as subjects through the mechanisms of grants and submissions. This paper therefore contributes to much needed theory building around principals' work under school-based management. (Contains 1 note.)

Reforming schools is a challenging aspect of contemporary education. The role of leadership within reform agendas is critical. This article presents a case study of one school that has been highly successful in the implementation of this reform. The processes employed by the school at various levels demonstrate the ways in which effective leadership enabled successful reform to be embraced by the school teams. In this school a model of devolved leadership enabled the reform to be successful at multiple levels of school implementation. This successful model has implications for school reform and funding models. (Contains 3 tables and 3 notes.)

School autonomy policies have circulated through various modes of educational governance internationally, endorsing the view that more autonomy will improve schools and their systems. When subject to the discourses and practices of marketization, however, school 'autonomy' has been mobilized in ways that generate injustice. These injustices are the focus of this paper. We draw on preliminary findings from a three-year study that is exploring the social justice implications of school autonomy reform across four Australian states. Drawing on interviews with 42 stakeholders, the paper identifies four key areas of paradox for social justice currently confronting public schools and school systems. The language of paradox is drawn on to narrate the oppositional politics between the discourses and practices constituting school autonomy and the pursuit of social justice. Such narration raises important questions for Australian public education. It highlights how these discourses are changing what is meant by the public in public education. Engaging with the language of paradox in thinking about school autonomy reform, we argue, is important given the broader landscape where public schooling is being reconstituted and where traditional links to social justice and the common good are under threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]