Search

An introduction is presented in which editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including experiences of Israeli high school principals in a time of national curriculum reform; Irish education policy and data and experiences relating to school choice.

An introduction is presented in which editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including preparing students for precarity; exploration of the labour conditions and professionals working in further education in England.

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 introduction is presented in which editor discusses various articles with the issue on topics including public servants steering education bureaucracies; research on schooling during the Covid-19 pandemic and principals leading Irish language immersion education in secondary schools.

This paper presents an account of a cross-sectorial study investigating whether shared understandings of practices might enhance continuity during transitions to school. Applying an ontological lens to cross-sectorial leading practices, the paper sheds light on the contextualised realities of transitions to school as a site specific lived experience. The paper begins with an overview of the ways transitions to school practices are understood, including emerging perspectives of transitions as continuity practices. Then, cross-sectorial concepts of leadership and leading are presented to highlight fundamental differences in the ways these practices are enacted across the sectors. The paper presents empirical evidence of the ways leading practices can work to establish shared understandings of transitions to school practices and policies. Given ‘little research has been done on the direct effects of leadership on transitions’ (OECD. [2017]. Starting Strong V: Transitions from Early Childhood Education and Care to Primary School. Paris: OECD Publications, 95) the paper contributes to emerging discourses that construct transitions to school as continuities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

The article presents the discussion on school leadership and the Covid 19 pandemic including the impacts on policy and practice in the field of educational leadership, management, and administration.

An editorial is presented on educators and education researchers. Topics include reflecting themes of leader autonomy, accountability, and leaders' experiences in a range of diverse cultural, historical, and economic contexts; exploring the impact of privatisation and commercialisation in education; and encouraging different ways of thinking about ongoing complexities of education and leadership.

Pedagogical leadership is increasingly emphasised in education policies and leadership standards. Yet conceptualisations of pedagogy and pedagogical leadership vary from a focus on compliance that operationalises the role of formal school leaders, through to notions of pedagogical leadership as a praxis-oriented practice. This paper focuses on pedagogical leading practices in school settings in Sweden and Australia. Utilising the theory of practice architectures, it explores how historical notions of pedagogical leadership have changed over time in the two countries. Findings show that there are different depths of pedagogical understanding and differences between understandings of individual and collective pedagogy in policy, school leadership and practice. Both cases raise questions about the state of educational leadership and pedagogical leadership globally and the decentring of pedagogy from students, the ultimate purpose of pedagogical practice. Properly understanding pedagogy is one way of decentring the popular role title 'pedagogical leader'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

An emergent strand within mainstream educational leadership scholarship is an engagement with notions of diversity. This is part of a belated recognition that in an increasingly globalising world the largely masculinist, white norms from which most accounts of leadership derive, lack sufficient explanatory power for educational systems. Utilising critical, black and Indigenous feminist work on the recognition of difference, as well as recent feminist scholarship deconstructing diversity discourses in educational leadership, this article outlines the origins of the key diversity discourses from which the educational leadership field draws. It then analyses recent articles on diversity and educational administration, noting how the various diversity discourses have been taken up and the subsequent implications for educational leadership theorising and practices. It concludes by arguing that critical feminist research about the politics of difference, amongst others, provides an important body of scholarship from which to develop self-reflexive and nuanced engagements with notions of diversity and leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which discusses several articles in the issue on topics including the effects of COVID-19 in education; how education reforms manifest in a particular context; and teacher training colleges in Israel.

An introduction is presented in which editor discusses various articles within the issue on topics including genealogical analysis of the evolution of teachers' identities, paradigms in school improvement and reforms in education.

This paper analyses the composition, distribution, and history of school funding in Australia through a spatial lens (Soja 2010). We explore multi-scalar school funding policy through three layers of economic maldistribution. We sketch the funding disparities between the three school sectors (public, Catholic, and independent) exposing a spatial injustice in policies of school choice; the spatial and economic maldistribution between state jurisdictions; and the economic maldistribution within state public systems, including the ability of their school communities to contribute funds. Spatial injustice is uncovered in economic maldistribution within and across these policy layers, adding nuance to existing school funding debates. The Australian case is relevant to international explorations of school funding as an example of 'unjust practice' in the hierarchies between schools across sectors, between jurisdictions, and within systems of public [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented on topics including educational productivity; educational leadership; and promoting thriving school systems.

An introduction to the journal is presented on topics including rise of elementary education at the periphery of Europe; gendered nature of occupational outcomes amongst history graduates in Canada; and creation of educational leadership.

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses articles in the issue on topics including the campaign and subsequent election of Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States.

As sites of human social activity, schools must engage in challenging conversations between staff, students and their communities about social disharmonies. This paper presents interview data from a case study of Eucalyptus High School (not its real name), a large multicultural school located in a middle-class area in suburban Victoria (Australia). The paper examines the school's engagement in 'challenging conversations' about socially and politically volatile issues as part of a holistic approach to building school culture, highlighting certain limitations in this approach. An 'ecologies of practice' model is used to critically explore these, which could be used to support schools to adopt a broad and critical examination of the possibilities and limits of their cultivation of inclusive and nurturing environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There remains strong political support for school autonomy reform within Australian public education despite evidence linking this reform to exacerbating school and systemic inequities. This paper presents interview data from key education stakeholders gathered from a broader study that is investigating the social justice implications of school autonomy reform across three Australian states. We focus on the concerns these stakeholders raise about the plight of principals and particular schools when policies of school autonomy converge with market imperatives of economic efficiency, competition and public accountability. Such concerns reflect the significance of education systems providing greater and more nuanced support for principals and schools to manage the extra responsibilities of greater school autonomy and accountability. While these aspects of support are central, we argue that systemic reform that is driven by educative, rather than market, imperatives is necessary for creating a context where school autonomy can be mobilised for social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]