A social justice challenge for school leadership in Australia

School leadership in many countries is affected by multiple challenges. Some are specific to the local community, some emerge from the education system, and some come from government policies. While most reforms center on better educational results for all students, whichever their specific area of focus, some reforms by their very nature, even if inadvertently, disrupt understandings of social justice. When educational reforms influence teachers’ professional and personal lives, as well as those of students, the scale of impact magnifies. School leaders’ decisions play an integral role in ameliorating that impact, not simply in implementing reform. A theoretical framework based on democratic theory is adapted and applied to high-stakes testing, school autonomy, performance pay, and commercialization and marketization to consider their impact on social justice.

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