Search

The current COVID19 pandemic has forced major adjustments, often at short notice, on schools and schooling. Educators have been working in a constantly changing environment to continue to deliver for students, families and communities all the while maintaining the necessary supports for themselves and colleagues. In Australia this has led to debates concerning when and who can close schools, the authority of schools to enact context-sensitive activities, and amplified existing inequities. Informed by a larger Australian Research Council grant focused on school autonomy and social justice, we argue that the pandemic and responses to it have highlighted the idiosyncratic nature of Australian federalism, drawn greater attention to the role of school autonomy, and amplified inequities in the access to quality education irrespective of location [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the seduction of business rhetoric into the field of education, dating back to at least to Taylorism in the early 1900s, school leaders have shaped themselves as organisational managers and leaders. Terms such as 'strategic' have been introduced to add misleading rhetorical weight to activities. But what do we mean by 'strategic'? Scholarship on strategy in schools and strategic leadership by principals has tended to spike following the enactment of polices such as the Education Reform Act in the UK. This has led to a narrow perception of what it means to be strategic, and legitimised modernistic thinking entwined with Romantic ideals. In this paper, I argue the case for a new conceptualisation of strategy. Strategy as leadership puts social practice back into educational leadership. This paper was written, as is arguably the case of a special issue, to serve as the stimulus for further discussion and debate in the quest of advancing our understanding of what it means to be strategic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we demonstrate, through content analysis of university-based programmes and one management institute, the construction of 'leadership' in the particular context of Kenya. The study paid attention to how the particularities of the locale are infused with universal discourses to develop an indigenous conceptualisation of 'leadership'. In the particular context of Kenya, school leadership is similar to the universal construction of leadership - with an emphasis on instructional leadership, the management of resources and change occasioned by rapid reforms in the education sector - but there are some context-specific differences. School leadership is also about negotiating between competing cultural and political interests, especially in relation to access, equity and equality. School leaders need to manage internal conflict in the school as well as external ethnic conflict. Leadership is also about implementing government initiated reforms that called for flexibility and innovation not only in the use of scarce resources, but also in identifying less traditional sources of funding. These unique roles have implications for leadership preparation and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]