School Autonomy Reform and Social Justice in Australian Public Education

Amanda Keddie’s research examines the broad range of schooling processes and conditions that can impact on the pursuit of social justice in schools including student identities, teacher identities, pedagogy, curriculum, leadership, school structures, policy agendas and socio-political trends.Katrina MacDonald’s research is in social justice, educational leadership and the sociology of education through a practice lens. Her research has focused on principals’ social justice understandings and practices, and the impact of school reform policies on just public schooling and the principal and teacher workforce.Brad Gobby's research interests include education policy, governance and politics and their implication for schools, teachers and principals. His specific research focus is using Foucauldian and critical scholarship to investigate how policies and policy discourses transform the school education domain, including teachers and school leadership.Jill Blackmore’s feminist research interests include education policy and governance; international and intercultural education; educational restructuring, leadership and organisational change; spatial redesign and innovative pedagogies; teachers’ and academics’ work, health and wellbeing all with a focus on equity.Jane Wilkinson's research is in educational leadership for social justice, with a focus on refugee education, issues of gender and ethnicity; and theorising educational leadership as practice/praxis. She is a lead developer of the theory of practice architectures.Scott Eacott’s research is concerned with the organisation of education and advocacy for the pursuit of equitable excellence in school provision. He is widely published with research interests in educational administration. His current projects focus on housing affordability and the teacher workforce.Richard Niesche’s research is in educational leadership, the principalship and social justice in education. He focuses on critical perspectives in educational leadership to examine the work of school principals in disadvantaged schools and how they can work towards achieving more socially just outcomes.

• 1. Introduction: School autonomy reform and social justice in Australian public education 2. School autonomy reform in Australia: A policy history 3. School autonomy, marketisation and social justice: The plight of principals and schools 4. ‘It’s like we’re in two different schools’: Contrasting stories of teacher and leader autonomy within a distributed approach to leadership 5. Teacher professional autonomy in an atypical government school: Matters of relationality and context 6. Competition, enterprising leadership and the effect on schools 7. Educational leadership and the contradictions of care in performative education systems 8. ‘Does distance trump autonomy?’: A case study of school autonomy in a mining town 9. Devolving labour relations, work conditions and employment standards: A focus on school services staff 10. Election or selection? School autonomy reform, governance and the politics of school councils 11. The systemic effects of school autonomy on social justice 12. The constitution of school autonomy in Australian public education: Areas of paradox for social justice 13. Responses from across the globe 14. Where to from here? Putting the public back into education

This book provides a comprehensive and nuanced account of the realities of leading Australian schools today under autonomy reforms. The social justice lens within this book provides an important and often overlooked perspective on issues of equity affecting students, communities, and educators. This book, while focused on Australia, is an important resource for educators and researchers worldwide who are interested in global issues of school autonomy, social justice, and equity in education.- Amanda McKay, Griffith University, Australia