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This paper provides an overview of the policies of school autonomy in Australian public education from the Karmel report in 1973 to the present day. The key focus is on the social justice implications of this reform. It tracks the tensions between policy moves to both grant schools greater autonomy and rein in this autonomy with the increasing instatement of external forms of regulation. Utilising Nancy Fraser's concepts of dis-embedding and re-embedding markets, we track key policy moments in three Australian states (Victoria, Western Australia and New South Wales) along with federal interventions. We draw attention to the redistributive and representative justice implications arising from these policy moments as occurring within a consistent trajectory towards a market agenda and argue that future policy needs to consider the effect of past policy.

This paper examines principals' perceptions of school autonomy and leadership as part of a 3-year research project looking at the implications of school autonomy on social justice across four states of Australia (Victoria, New South Wales, Western Australia and Queensland). Drawing on interviews with principals and representatives from principal stakeholder organisations in these four state jurisdictions, the paper identifies a number of key issues for school principals and the implications for understandings and practices of educational leadership. These include varied understandings of autonomy, practices of leadership and implications for health, workload and well-being. The paper argues that while principals have mixed perceptions of school autonomy policies, there has been a narrowing of leadership experiences by principals in the form of managerialism and compliance. Furthermore, principals continue to experience high levels of workload, and some principals, depending on career stage and experience level, feel better able to work within and sometimes against these policies in their schools and communities. These practices are sometimes felt to be despite the system and not due to school autonomy policies themselves. The implication of these findings is that principals are inequitably able to respond to and implement school autonomy policies, an issue often glossed over in educational leadership research.

A persuasive solution for governments and systemic authorities seeking to improve the quality and equity of outcomes for students has been the localized management of schools. Believed to provide opportunities for context-sensitive decision-making, what remains unclear is how does shifting increasing management to the school-level generate the type of leadership necessary to improve outcomes? Drawing from a subset from an Australian study of school autonomy, we argue that reforms simply cannot improve outcomes as they generate work that takes leaders and educators away from teaching and learning activities and sustain if not advance enduring inequities in the system.

Neoliberal policies promoting school autonomy reform in Australia and internationally have, over three decades, appropriated earlier social democratic discourses of parental participation and partnership in school governance. Recent school autonomy reforms have repositioned school council/boards within a narrow frame of accountability and management operating in marketized systems of education. This paper considers the perceptions of 12 stakeholders in public education across four Australian states of how the latest school autonomy reform policies, including Independent Public Schools, supports corporatized and seemingly depoliticised repositioning of school councils. This data indicates there is a shift from elected parental representation to principal selection of 'skill-based' community members, with the greatest implications for those schools in disadvantaged communities experiencing difficulties gaining voluntary parental participation. We offer new theoretical insights into the links between school autonomy, governance, the role and composition of school boards and social justice informed by Nancy Fraser's theorising of social justice. We identify an emerging tension between first, parent movements as counter publics claiming participatory parity in decision-making in school councils; and secondly, principal selection of self-interested and politically influential actors onto school councils, potentially politicising school councils.

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.

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.

The public education systems of many countries have undergone governance reforms involving administrative decentralisation, corporatisation and community 'empowerment'. In this paper, we examine the significance of local participation and partnerships in the context of public school autonomy and their corporatisation. Focusing specifically on the use of school boards in the Independent Public Schools (IPS) initiative in Western Australia, we analyse the interview responses of five IPS principals using Foucauldian notions of governmentality, governance and community. The analysis shows that school boards are conceptualised and mobilised through the narrow technical-rationalist discourses of governance associated with corporatised school autonomy. School boards function as a new form of governmentality that constrains recruitment and participation in school decision-making in ways that depoliticise education. In response to the rise of school autonomy and corporatisation in Australia and elsewhere, we argue for wider local participation on school boards and local engagement with, rather than eschewal of, the politics surrounding education and the public good.

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]

The introduction of new accountabilities and techniques of government for the purposes of educational reform have created new complexities and tensions for school leadership. Policies such as the publishing of league tables in the UK, high stakes testing in the US and the introduction of the "My School" website in Australia are particularly significant for school principals. In this article I appeal to the work of Foucault and Deleuze to provide an alternate approach to understanding how principals are constituted as subjects through a range of practices and discourses associated with the introduction of the "My School" website. I specifically draw upon Foucault's notion of governmentality and Deleuze's notion of societies of control to provoke new lines of thought into these government practices. I argue that it is through the performative in the education system that school principals are becoming perpetually assessable subjects.

A persuasive solution for governments and systemic authorities seeking to improve the quality and equity of outcomes for students has been the localized management of schools. Believed to provide opportunities for context-sensitive decision-making, what remains unclear is how does shifting increasing management to the school-level generate the type of leadership necessary to improve outcomes? Drawing from a subset from an Australian study of school autonomy, we argue that reforms simply cannot improve outcomes as they generate work that takes leaders and educators away from teaching and learning activities and sustain if not advance enduring inequities in the system.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the tensions and complexities for two principals as they work towards equity and improved social and educational outcomes for their Indigenous students. Drawing on Foucault's fourfold ethical frame and poststructuralist notions of the subject, this paper presents the different ways the white female principals of Indigenous schools are formed as subjects. We illustrate how the multiplicities of their subject formation are influenced by the historicity and contextual factors of the schools and communities. These factors play a significant part in how these principals work as advocates and differently experience and negotiate the tensions around representation of and for Indigenous schools and communities. In realising equity goals for Indigenous students, the paper draws on Foucault's work to illustrate the imperative of school leaders' cognisance of, and capacity to work with, these factors.

The issue of emotions in school leadership is one that has received increasing attention in recent years. In this paper we present a case study of the emotional demands upon one principal as she undertakes a programme of school reform. This case study works against the common discourse of "emotional maturity" inherent in an individual that is prevalent in leadership standards and literatures and shows how this principal's emotional work is constructed within the political frameworks of schools. This principal was both normalised into traditional ways of being a school principal and also sought to resist such normalisations. This paper provides an important contribution to understanding the ways that women leaders are negotiating the emotional terrain of enacting change and reform in their schools.

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.)

Globally, a range of new schooling accountabilities have created a complex and often contradictory context in which school leaders work. For principals of low socio-economic status (SES) and disadvantaged schools, they must balance the accountability, performance and reporting requirements against the other needs of their communities. These tensions require new ways of rethinking leadership in the current educational context. This article draws on the work of Foucault, particularly the notions of power and counter-conduct, to examine the case study of one principal in a very low SES school as she negotiates her way through these new schooling accountabilities. This case study illuminates the importance of leadership as a form of counter-conduct through the constitution of the principal as a political subject or form of advocacy leadership. (Contains 3 notes.)

In this paper, the focus is on how a group of Australian educators support student equity through cultural recognition. Young's theorising of justice is drawn on to illuminate the problematic impacts arising from the group's efforts to value students' cultural difference associated, for example, with quantifying justice along distributive lines and with essentialising student difference as negation and lack within a frame of cultural imperialism. These theoretical tools draw attention to, and support a critical examination of, the social rules and relations within the school that create barriers to equity. Towards reconciling discrepancies relating to how student difference might best be supported, the paper endorses the prevailing imperative of centring students' perspectives and experiences. Such centring remains crucial to educators recognising the partiality and interest within their attempts to "help" marginalised students and disrupting the relations of teacher privilege and authority that reinscribe domination, control and exclusion.

This article documents the leadership practices within one secondary school in Queensland, Australia that uses equity as a central philosophy. Drawing on specific elements of productive leadership as defined by Hayes et al., the article draws attention to how the school's common equity agenda, its supportive social relations, and its dispersed leadership practices mobilise a transformative discourse of equity. Through these lenses, the article provides important insights for educational leadership amid renewed policy emphasis on the equity responsibilities of schools.

The poor performance of Australian Indigenous students in mathematics is a complex and enduring issue that needs a range of strategies to enable success in schooling for these students. Importantly, large numbers of teachers in remote Indigenous contexts are new graduates who, although full of enthusiasm, lack experience. Similarly, many of them are unfamiliar with the demands and nuances of teaching in remote and/or Indigenous contexts. This paper explores the nexus between the beliefs and practices of teachers working in a remote, Indigenous region of Australia. In particular, it proposes that the discrepancy between beliefs and practices found in the reconnaissance phase of a design study is due to the teachers realising that they need to implement changed practices to enable students to learn but having little knowledge of what such practices may look like. This finding has implications for pre-service and in-service teacher education. (Contains 1 table.)

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on research into the challenges for leadership in implementation of a new curriculum in a remote region of Queensland, Australia. Design/methodology/approach: Data for the research were gathered through an online survey and semi-structured interviews with teachers and principals involved in the reforms. Findings: Results show that there were substantial differences in the views of teachers and principals in their perceptions of the implementation process. The vast differences in the implementation strategies and leadership approaches between the schools suggested that the effect of the reform on leadership practices was more positive in schools in which elements of productive leadership were present. Originality/value: This research highlights the importance of leadership throughout reform processes, particularly in terms of the different experiences and perceptions teachers and principals have during the policy implementation process. As a result, this paper offers an important perspective on the complex dynamics of leadership processes and how curriculum reform is enacted at the local level. (Contains 2 figures.)

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.)

This paper explores the tensions and complexities for two principals as they work towards equity and improved social and educational outcomes for their Indigenous students. Drawing on Foucault’s fourfold ethical frame and poststructuralist notions of the subject, this paper presents the different ways the white female principals of Indigenous schools are formed as subjects. We illustrate how the multiplicities of their subject formation are influenced by the historicity and contextual factors of the schools and communities. These factors play a significant part in how these principals work as advocates and differently experience and negotiate the tensions around representation of and for Indigenous schools and communities. In realising equity goals for Indigenous students, the paper draws on Foucault’s work to illustrate the imperative of school leaders’ cognisance of, and capacity to work with, these factors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Globally, a range of new schooling accountabilities have created a complex and often contradictory context in which school leaders work. For principals of low socio-economic status (SES) and disadvantaged schools, they must balance the accountability, performance and reporting requirements against the other needs of their communities. These tensions require new ways of rethinking leadership in the current educational context. This article draws on the work of Foucault, particularly the notions of power and counter-conduct, to examine the case study of one principal in a very low SES school as she negotiates her way through these new schooling accountabilities. This case study illuminates the importance of leadership as a form of counter-conduct through the constitution of the principal as a political subject or form of advocacy leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on a broader study that focused on examining principal leadership for equity and diversity, this paper presents the leadership experiences of ‘Jane’, a White, middle-class principal of a rural Indigenous school. The paper highlights how Jane's leadership is inextricably shaped by her assumptions about race and the political dynamics and historical specificities of her school community. A central focus is on Jane's tendency to deploy culturally reductionist understandings of Indigeneity that position it as incompatible or incommensurable with White culture/western schooling. The paper argues the central imperative of a leadership that rejects these understandings and engages in a critical situational analysis of Indigenous politics, relations and experience. Such an analysis is presented as imperative to supporting representative justice in that it moves beyond merely according a voice to Indigenous people to a focus on better understanding, problematising and remedying the racial relations that contribute to Indigenous oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, the focus is on how a group of Australian educators support student equity through cultural recognition. Young’s theorising of justice is drawn on to illuminate the problematic impacts arising from the group’s efforts to value students’ cultural difference associated, for example, with quantifying justice along distributive lines and with essentialising student difference as negation and lack within a frame of cultural imperialism. These theoretical tools draw attention to, and support a critical examination of, the social rules and relations within the school that create barriers to equity. Towards reconciling discrepancies relating to how student difference might best be supported, the paper endorses the prevailing imperative of centring students’ perspectives and experiences. Such centring remains crucial to educators recognising the partiality and interest within their attempts to ‘help’ marginalised students and disrupting the relations of teacher privilege and authority that reinscribe domination, control and exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article documents the leadership practices within one secondary school in Queensland, Australia that uses equity as a central philosophy. Drawing on specific elements of productive leadership as defined by Hayes et al., the article draws attention to how the school's common equity agenda, its supportive social relations, and its dispersed leadership practices mobilise a transformative discourse of equity. Through these lenses, the article provides important insights for educational leadership amid renewed policy emphasis on the equity responsibilities of schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors describe some teaching approaches for school mathematics that contribute to enhanced learning outcomes for disadvantaged students in Australia. They discuss two key factors that shape the learning environments for learning mathematics. First, the expectations teachers have of learners of mathematics significantly shape the experiences that will be provided for learners. Second, is the discourse of ability that permeates mathematics more than any other curriculum area.

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]