Autonomy and social justice in challenging times

Abstract

I am writing this editorial during the COVID-19 'lockdown', which is having a profound impact on all our personal and professional lives, across the globe. I hope that you are safe and well, and managing to stay engaged and productive, as educational leaders, students, scholars and researchers. We are all learning to operate in new ways, without the stimulus and support engendered by regular face-to-face contact. EMAL activity is continuing as normal, using our virtual platform. Submissions are at an all-time high, indicating that the EMAL family remains fully engaged in knowledge production.The first article in this issue, by Jessica Holloway and Amanda Keddie, examines the impact of school autonomy on social justice in Australia. The authors indicate that autonomous schooling attracts a great deal of political interest worldwide but add that social justice is compromised and fractured by decentralisation. They interviewed 13 principals across 3 Australian states, with a specific focus on the links between social justice and autonomy. They report that principals enact autonomy in socially just ways but note that this is more difficult for those serving economically disadvantaged contexts. They conclude that social justice requires social cohesion, adding that this 'is difficult, if not impossible, to maintain in a decentralised system'.Julia Morris and her colleagues also focus on Australia, in their study of staff culture in a secondary school. The authors define school culture to mean the collective values and beliefs of school staff. They conducted a survey of staff on organisational health, and also collected data via focus groups, in a metropolitan secondary school. The data indicated eight factors that contributed to staff morale. Four of these were given specific attention by the school leadership team: appraisal and recognition, participative decision-making, professional growth and supportive leadership. The authors conclude that there was an overall improvement in morale, linked to professional learning and a shared vision.Haim Shaked and Pascale Sarah Benoliel examine the relationship between two important themes: instructional leadership and boundary management. They contend that the existing literature on instructional leadership 'often stops at the school boundary' and focuses mainly on internal processes. They adopted purposive sampling to identify 37 participant principals in Israel. The authors argue that instructional leadership is not wholly internal, that boundary management is not solely external and that these two constructs are not mutually exclusive. They conclude that an instructional boundary manager should be a 'mediating agent', linking internal and external stakeholders.Andre du Plessis and Jan Heystek explore the extent and nature of distributed leadership in South African schools. They question whether it is possible for shared or distributed leadership to co-exist with the country's traditional bureaucratic system. The authors conducted discourse analysis of laws and policy docume...

Leadership for inclusive online learning in public primary schools during COVID-19: A multiple case study in Hong Kong

“…However, it remains unclear how school leaders sustain the learning of children from poor families when face-to-face classes are suspended ( Bates et al, 2021 ). This question is clearly related to the larger issue of developing leadership for social justice and inclusive education ( Bush, 2020 ; Vassallo, 2021 ). As a city with an advanced economy and leading digital competitiveness that is concurrently facing an ever-widening wealth gap, the case of Hong Kong is of particular relevance to an empirical investigation into the question.…”