Katrina MacDonald – författare

This book explores the social justice implications of school autonomy reform within the context of public education in Australia. It is situated within and framed by global concerns about how public schools are navigating their ‘autonomy’ within increasingly marketised education systems.

Drawing on extensive interviews with stakeholders and five in-depth case study schools, the book calls attention to the ways in which the intentions of school autonomy reform to offer schools more freedom to make their own decisions and manage their own responsibilities have become increasingly contained by the market imperatives of economic efficiency, competition and public accountability driving state and national education systems. We build on and enrich existing research in this area that highlights how market imperatives continue to exacerbate inequality within and between schools and their systems.

An essential read for researchers, policy makers, principals and teachers worldwide, the book provides insight into how education systems can better support public schools to mobilise their autonomy in socially just ways.

This book offers a richly observed study of three principals working in some of the most disadvantaged primary schools in Victoria, Australia. It explores their social justice understandings and practices in working to improve the educational outcomes for children in their schools, through autobiography, biographical interviews, in-depth interviews and observations. The work looks into their life histories, the formation of their primary and secondary habitus, and uncovers and examines their encounters with the public education field. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice and his ‘thinking tools’, the book investigates how the principals’ understandings of social justice are shaped by the intersection of their life and work histories.

This book is of interest to educational leadership scholars interested in the application of critical theory to studies of leadership. The book provides an exemplar for the application of Bourdieu’s theory of practice, and it makes a strong contribution to Bourdieusian scholarship, social justice scholarship and educational leadership scholarship.