Abstract
This chapter examines the changing relationship between national policy and educational leadership in Australian schools. It examines the fluid and contested policy environment that continues to shape school leadership with its increasingly insistent demands for higher levels of quality and accountability. The chapter analyses the discourses on quality that have underpinned the Australian policy field during the last decade and examines how these discourses informed struggles over the control of an emerging national framework of professional standards for school leaders. The analysis illustrates how complex, multiple and sometimes contradictory discourses have shaped and constrained the professional practices of school leaders. It suggests that policies for quality and accountability create tensions between leading for quality and accountability and leading for learning. The chapter concludes with a call for school leaders to become more literate about the policy process in order to negotiate these tensions and thus provide a bridge between leadership for quality and accountability and leadership for learning.
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Thomas, S., Watson, L. (2011). Quality and Accountability: Policy Tensions for Australian School Leaders. In: Townsend, T., MacBeath, J. (eds) International Handbook of Leadership for Learning. Springer International Handbooks of Education, vol 25. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1350-5_13
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