Marketisation and competition within public schooling systems impact the work of principals in varying ways. Previous work on the marketisation of schooling and school autonomy has drawn attention to the 'entrepreneurial principal' as an effect of marketisation. In this paper we explore principals' engagements with marketisation based on 21…

This article critically considers the promise of computer adaptive testing (CAT) and digital data to provide better and quicker data that will improve the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of schooling. In particular, it uses the case of the Australian NAPLAN test that will become an online, adaptive test from 2016. The article argues that…

This article argues that education reform agendas which use policy levers, standardised testing and new regulatory authorities to steer teachers' work at a distance are creating a new temporal politics. Evidence from interviews with teachers and principals in Australian schools suggests that these reforms are impacting on individual experiences of…

Current educational practice tends to ascribe a limiting vision of the good student as one who is well behaved, performs well in assessments and demonstrates values in keeping with dominant expectations. This paper argues that this vision of the good student is antithetical to the lived experience of students as they negotiate their positionality…