eprintid: 10204867
rev_number: 7
eprint_status: archive
userid: 699
dir: disk0/10/20/48/67
datestamp: 2025-03-14 17:46:20
lastmod: 2025-03-14 17:46:20
status_changed: 2025-03-14 17:46:20
type: book_section
metadata_visibility: show
sword_depositor: 699
creators_name: Gu, Q
creators_name: Colman, A
title: Accountability, autonomy and organisational practice: How principals of successful schools enact education policy for improvement
ispublished: pub
divisions: UCL
divisions: B16
divisions: B14
divisions: J82
keywords: Successful school leadership; Leadership accountability; Leadership autonomy; Policy enactment; School improvement; Education reform
note: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
abstract: This chapter considers the ways in which recent English education policy has positioned autonomy as a concomitant of accountability. Following a critical examination of the conceptual relations between accountability, autonomy and leadership, the chapter investigates, from the perspective of senior and middle leaders, how secondary principals lead their schools to achieve sustainable performance despite policy shifts. Drawing upon longitudinal interview data from case study schools in England, the chapter discusses how successful secondary schools—in different socioeconomic contexts and led by principals with similar, strongly held moral purposes and principles of social justice, but with different histories and values—incorporate and use externally generated policies to support their own educational agendas, as they assert their right to apply their own educational values in practice for the improvement of teaching and learning and pupil progress and outcomes. The research suggests that what the principals were perceived to be doing successfully was to use policies as opportunities—purposefully, progressively, and strategically—to regenerate coherent cultures and conditions which support the staff to learn to renew their practice. Key in this regard is how principals broaden and deepen their organisational, social, and intellectual capacities for the improvement of quality and standards in teaching and learning, despite rather than because of externally generated reforms.
date: 2023-11-17
date_type: published
publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
official_url: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800880429.00015
oa_status: green
full_text_type: other
language: eng
primo: open
primo_central: open_green
verified: verified_manual
elements_id: 2113513
doi: 10.4337/9781800880429.00015
isbn_13: 9781800880412
lyricists_name: Gu, Qing
lyricists_name: Colman, Alyson
lyricists_id: QGUXX04
lyricists_id: ACOLM45
actors_name: Gu, Qing
actors_id: QGUXX04
actors_role: owner
full_text_status: public
pagerange: 115-128
book_title: Handbook on Leadership in Education
editors_name: Woods, Philip A
editors_name: Roberts, Amanda
editors_name: Tian, Meng
editors_name: Youngs, Howard
citation:        Gu, Q;    Colman, A;      (2023)    Accountability, autonomy and organisational practice: How principals of successful schools enact education policy for improvement.                    In: Woods, Philip A and Roberts, Amanda and Tian, Meng and Youngs, Howard, (eds.) Handbook on Leadership in Education. (pp. 115-128).   Edward Elgar Publishing       Green open access   
 
document_url: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10204867/1/Chap%2011%20text%20with%20reviewer%20two%20comments_Revised_PW-MT_QG_Clean.pdf