The further education (FE) sector in England has experienced two decades of marketisation. This article takes as its focus the first five years of incorporation (1993-1998) for one case study college in a city ("Coppleton") in the West Midlands of England, five years that were dominated by a contract dispute. Data from interviews with…

This article explores the connections between official contemporary identity formation and colonial pasts. Using the case studies of India and Ireland the article explores how different traditions of theorisation are powerful in these formations. India and Ireland were two colonial domains that had many linkages outside the ambit of the British.…

Faiths have long used education as a means to preserve and transmit cultural values from one generation to the next. However, they have also employed education to unite people of different cultures and proselytise others to their worldview. Over the last two centuries, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Latter-day Saint, LDS, or…

Market principles now dominate the education and social policies of many Anglophone countries, including Australia, but articulate differentially within specific contexts. Existing historical legacies, local economic and social conditions, and geographical settings interact with federal and state funding and transport policies to shape the nature…

Managers and personnel within tertiary institutions colonised by neo-liberal ministrations and buffeted by the winds of a "change culture" formed within the philosophical shifts of the last century can be considered in terms of "immigrants" or "refugees" within this new territory. The case story of this article is set in a college of education…

This article aims to present some tensions embedded in the Italian educational reform, arising both from the enactment of neo-liberal policies and the possibilities of democratic development opened up by the introduction of schools' site-based management and decentralisation. The article uses discourses as heuristic devices and presents two case…

This case study examines why public-sector reform in education often fails to deliver expected performance gains. Longitudinal evidence from a secondary comprehensive located in a former coalfield is used to identify constraints that frustrate government policies. Although the head and senior staff at Norcross School adopted transformational,…

Maori women teachers in nineteenth-century New Zealand have been little acknowledged in educational histories, and indeed, in some instances their contributions have been explicitly nullified. Those who have taken leadership roles have been no more visible. This article examines the silencing and exclusion from educational history of a young Maori…

In reviewing research from three successive research studies in one school district in Ontario, Canada, I trace the influence of leadership on the building of capacity in schools and the district. In so doing, it has become clear that the style of leadership has shifted to a more distributed approach, in which more teachers are becoming engaged in…

Despite the powers that parents are endowed with regarding governance of schools in South Africa, they are not yet given sufficient room and space to deliberate on issues of school governance; instead they are still excluded by some teaching staff who deny them (explicitly or implicitly) from taking part in crucial decisions affecting education of…

My doctoral study focused on students' perceptions of educational change in a number of secondary schools in Australia. The research was birthed when I, as a teacher at a school undergoing substantial change, started to listen to students' comments and discovered in them a remarkable similarity to what we as teachers were saying. Yet, students are…

This article explores the contrasting career routes and experiences of women leaders from differing socio-historical-political backgrounds in China, especially those in the city of Shanghai. In doing so, it seeks to examine why particular career patterns and routes to positions of leadership have emerged and how the women themselves understand and…

This article considers the usefulness of current models of leadership in change situations for an analysis of a historical case study of educational leadership. It uses the life of Sir George White (1842-1912) and his leadership in the field of education in Norwich and at the national level in the UK to examine the nature of effective leadership…

This paper highlights the intersections of history, gender and educational administration through a case study of an influential woman educator, Anne Whitelaw. It draws upon manuscripts, school archives, school histories, official files and periodicals from "both sides" of the world. Although known in New Zealand as the first Headmistress of…

This paper reports the findings of a case study aimed at investigating the forces influencing curriculum policy in one Catholic school in Western Australia (WA). The student-outcomes' focused Curriculum Framework was released in 1998 and is mandated to be implemented in all WA schools by 2004. This has made non-government schools answerable to the…