JELPP – Volume 38 (2024)
Pathways to school improvement: Discovering network patterns of school principals
Miguel M. Gonzales1, Tiber Garza2 and Elizabeth Leon-Zaragoza31University of Nevada Las Vegas, USA, 2Florida International University, USA, 3University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, USA
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to examine the network effect of school principals as it relates to school improvement. Network practices of school principals are compared to an innovative practice for improving networking practices. Through descriptive statistics and chi-square goodness of fit, we illustrate the difference between what school principals do concerning their networking practices for school improvement compared to an innovative ideal approach for using network working for school improvement. Findings indicate there is a statistically significant difference between school principals’ networking practices in comparison to ideal networking practices for school improvement. There are also differences between who school principals seek out for ideas and who they seek out for feedback concerning their school improvements. Further discussion informs how the next generation of school principals can be equipped with innovative skills for tackling 21st-century school improvement issues.
Problematising “World Class” public education policy in South Australia: Insights for education policy makers
Andrew Bills1, Nigel Howard1, Sarah Hattam21College of Education, Psychology and Social Work, Flinders University, South Australia 2University of South Australia Education Futures, South Australia
Abstract
This policy-interested South Australian public education case study problematises how the Chief Executive (CE) and members of the Education Department’s Senior Executive Group (SEG) understood system and school improvement from 2018 to 2022. We applied Carol Bacchi’s, “What’s the Problem Represented to be?”(WPR) policy analysis framework to unearth the policy assumptions underlying the Department’s overarching policy ensemble called “World Class,” initiated across South Australia’s public primary and secondary schools. WPR reveals heightened centralised technologies of command and control directed at teacher and leader work to achieve McKinsey defined World Class status by 2028.
We find school improvement policy solutions were engineered through “managerially enforced complexity reduction” techniques within the paradigm of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM). These techniques impacted policy prescriptions, performance management technologies, school improvement plans, curriculum materials for schools, and promoted NAPLAN as the ultimate measure of the good school, the good teacher, and the good principal. NAPLAN is the National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy used in Australia and takes the form of an annual standardised assessment for students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9.
Most concerningly, we find the policy logics of World Class worked to incentivise inequality across public schools through diminishing the purposes of public education and the professionalism of educators. We conclude arguing for the democratisation of existing departmental structures within iterative inquiry-based approaches to policy formation and practice to better attend to public education purposes.