In recent years a suite of policies and practices that are strongly influenced by efforts to make the work of educators and education providers more accountable, have had a powerful impact across the sector in settings such as Australia. In part, this goes some way to explaining why many working in the teaching profession report being dissatisfied…

The articulation of school autonomy into practice nationally, regionally and locally is highly situated in terms of what it enables or impedes with regard to the professional autonomy of principals and teachers. Principal autonomy does not necessarily mean greater teacher professional autonomy. In this paper, we draw on a three-year qualitative…

This article explores how recent curricular reform in Australia has been responsive to a culture of redress. It argues that taken together, the 2008 National Apology to the Stolen Generations and the 2010 national curriculum reform marked a turning point, whereby settler colonial injustices have since been systematically included in the…

Indigenous leaders in higher education are restive, disaffected, and dissatisfied with the slow gyrations of change. Using Interest Convergence Theory, this paper will unravel the constraints inherent in institutional reform that delimit the influence of Indigenous senior leaders in the sector. Positioned amidst the burgeoning impact of…

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…

Over the last forty years, Australasian researchers have witnessed problems and negative trends relating to academics and students from marginalised groups operating within the higher education sector. This article demonstrates that these researchers have become increasingly aware of the need for more equitable practices in higher education.…

Progress towards equitable schooling and educational outcomes in Australia has been notoriously slow, with countless reports highlighting stark inequities between rural areas and urban centres. Most reforms have been grounded in distributive notions of social justice -- addressing funding, staffing, and resourcing -- but fail to address other…

This response to the question about what we are angry about and what we dream of for young children reflects our work of over 30 years in Australasia. For Kylie in Australia and for Sonja in Aotearoa New Zealand and now also Australia. We direct the RECE common call, for an elevation of children's rights, to a voice, to a 'good' education, and to…

In this article, we argue that current assessment practices in higher education require urgent examination and should be re-imagined in culturally responsive ways to ensure fairness for all. From sociocultural and social justice perspectives, we highlight examples of cultural and linguistic bias in assessment that disadvantages many First Nations…

In Australia, pervasive deficit representations and positioning of Aboriginal peoples continue to impact on teachers' capacity to meaningfully embed Aboriginal curriculum and pedagogies into their teaching. This sits within a policy context driven by standardization, competition and market forces focused on closing the gap between Aboriginal and…

Entitlement persists on the basis of race, gender, age, sexuality, language and able-bodiedness, despite all efforts to eradicate it -- and abetted by some efforts to preserve it. Compounding this, as teachers, it is easy for us to become habituated to possessing the only knowledge of value in the room. This chapter takes place against a backdrop…

In the entrepreneurial university, epistemic governance is exerted through external pressures of market competition, funding, university rankings and research assessment and internal processes of organisational restructuring and mechanisms of corporate governance to re/produce epistemic injustices. Data from a study of three Australian…

Within the rough ground that is the field of education there is a complex web of ethical obligations: to prepare our students for their future work; to be ethical as educators in our conduct and teaching; to the ethical principles embedded in the contexts in which we work; and given the Southern context of this work, the ethical obligations we…

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…

This paper explores issues of social justice in relation to the practice of two principals from two Australian public schools. The stories of these principals are set against a policy backdrop in Australia that has seen renewed emphasis on school autonomy reform, on the one hand, and heightened external accountability and compliance, on the other.…