Moving into dangerous territory? Educational leadership in a devolving education system

Abstract

Not surprisingly, many studies affirm the pivotal role of school leaders in shaping the culture of schools and the quality of teaching and learning that occurs in classrooms (Barth 1990, Fullan 1992, Grace 1995a, Sergiovanni 1998). But over the past decade the work of principals in the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand has undergone a major transformation in the wake of the restructuring of public education, a central element of which has involved a shift towards more devolved education systems. How is the work of principals being conceived today? What are the dilemmas and challenges confronting educational leadership in these new sets of arrangements? Drawing on recent empirical research from Australia, this article documents the impact of school-based management on educational leadership. It locates the emergence of new models of leadership within a corporate managerialist philosophy of a neo-liberal state that devalues the pedagogical attributes of school leadership and reinforces a growing divide between teachers and administrators. This analysis involves an overview of recent policy shifts between schools and the education centre and incorporates data from semistructured interviews with public school principals in Australian schools. After highlighting the tensions between the centre and schools in the exercise of educational leadership, the paper explores the possibilities of nurturing more distributive and educative forms of leadership in the current political climate.