Collegium for the Sociology of Education
The Collegium for the Sociology of Education is a forum for the scholarly discussion of social, cultural and political dimensions of education and teaching. Through presentations and working seminars, members and invited guests present and discuss their research activities, this including research related to ongoing and finished PhD projects, as well as other research of current interest, national and international. Theoretical, methodological and empirical developments related to the field of the sociology of education are also in focus.
Seminars at the Collegium for the Sociology of Education
April 10 , 2025: Dr. Katrina Macdonald
Time: 09:00–11:00
Place: Online. Link to Zoom meeting.
The challenges of school autonomy reform for equitable education systems
There is strong political consensus in Australia, England, Sweden and the United States that greater school autonomy is good for schools - that it frees up schools to respond to local concerns, to be innovative and to drive up academic standards. However, research continues to indicate that there are no definitive links between school autonomy and school improvement (as measured by student outcomes). Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that greater school autonomy within marketised education systems may undermine school improvement.
Our four-year Australian Research Council study, School Autonomy Reform and Social Justice in Australian Public Education, examined how school autonomy is understood by key education stakeholders in Australia, how it is enacted in Australian public schools, and the implications for social justice. Our conceptualisation of social justice drew on different theories but focused on issues of economic injustice (e.g., how school autonomy reform has tended to exacerbate economic inequalities between schools in low SES areas and rural/remote areas and schools in more privileged and centrally located areas in relation to their capacity to access material resources); and political injustice (e.g., how school autonomy reform is differently experienced in schools in relation to who has a voice in decision making and who is silenced).
Our study has drawn attention to the complex and varied ways in which school autonomy is understood and enacted across and within state systems and schools. In this presentation, our findings are discussed including the different ways that autonomy is viewed by different stakeholders, that school autonomy does not necessarily lead to greater teacher autonomy, how autonomy reform within a context of marketisation has placed undue pressure on school principals without the necessary system supports, and how principals experience autonomy differently depending on their experience and the context of their schools.
About Dr. Katrina Macdonald
Dr Katrina MacDonald is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, Deakin University. Her research and teaching interests are in social justice, public education, educational leadership, the teacher workforce, school reform, intersectionality, spatiality, and the sociology of education through a practice lens (feminist, Bourdieu, practice architectures). K
atrina is an assistant editor for International Journal of Leadership in Education. She is a former anthropologist, archaeologist and primary and secondary teacher in Victoria, Australia. Her recent book is: Socially Just Educational Leadership in Unjust Times: A Bourdieusian Study of Social Justice Educational Leadership Practices. For more information on Katrina’s work see deakin.edu.au.
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