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Navigating the paradox of excellence and equity in school leadership

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posted on 2024-08-28, 05:03 authored by Babak DadvandBabak Dadvand
In this paper, I examine the tensions that a school principal experienced in reconciling performative priorities with equitable practices in a government secondary school in a low Socio-Economic Status suburb in Victoria, Australia. I use the notion of paradox to explore how the principal navigated contradictions and tensions. I aim to provide a more nuanced understanding of sense-making processes, agency, and capacity for action in the face of resource constraints, competing priorities and conflicting options in educational spaces. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s notions of ‘striated spaces’ and ‘lines of flight’, I discuss how the principal worked simultaneously within and against inadequate resourcing and performativity pressures to cater for the more complex needs of a group of marginalised students in his school. I highlight the tensions that arose from this work. These tensions remained mostly unresolved, setting in motion an ongoing cycle of compliance, compromise, contradictions, and contestation. The findings show the complex interactions between material realities, punitive modes of accountability, self-discipline, and subjectivity. I conclude by discussing the need for an equity-informed policy agenda driven by a positive mode of accountability to enable equitable practices in school leadership and management.

History

Publication Date

2024-09-01

Journal

Australian Educational Researcher

Volume

51

Pagination

1239 - 1253

Publisher

Springer Nature

ISSN

0311-6999

Rights Statement

© The Author(s) 2023 This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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