Search

This paper reports on the findings from a multi-site case study conducted in Australia, Finland and Jamaica which explored the conditions that enabled and constrained the autonomy of school principals. Systematic data collection was carried out in the form of interviews of school principals and the data was analysed using a qualitative approach. The analysis indicates that: (1) school principals' practices are prefigured by the peculiarities of historical trajectories and ideological traditions enmeshed in schooling sites; (2) these prefiguring arrangements in turn influence varying realisations of autonomous decision making practices across national sites; and (3) even in the expression of high/low levels of autonomy, there are contradictory and contested practices. Through the analysis, three different orientations to autonomy were found: a neoliberal market orientation, a professional practice orientation and an educational praxis orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including New York State education policy constructs the role of the school principal; implementation of gifted programmes in the U.S. and 1988 Education Reform Act.

An editorial is presented on complex challenges facing education systems across the world. Topics include contributing to cross-cultural discourse and fertilisation around the importance of leadership during times of crisis; and school principals in a region enduring much turbulence and conflict and comparing them to international practices.

An introduction is presented in which editors discusses various articles within the issue on topics including implementation of universal financial aid policies for higher education students; school principals and their conflicts in Chile and significant rise of private actors in education.