Introducing the researcher

I have had a long standing professional drive to better understand the relationship between learning and student voice. This relationship has progressed from seeing students as representatives, to facilitating their role as agents in school operations, and to the impact of voice in students’ learning and engagement. This commitment demands participatory forms of institutional governance rather than representative forms, and is at odds with the current neoliberal-informed political reform focus based on changes in technical practice rather than democratic principles (Dahlberg & Moss, 2004; Harvey, 2005).

Participatory institutional governance requires teacher voice. In my most recent school leadership role, it became very clear that without teacher voice, there cannot be student voice.

This roles was as principal in a very remote, disadvantaged, Category 1 school that had no cash reserves and was being tightly monitored as a ‘one year turn around’ school under neoliberal inspired policies. There was enormous pressure to bring about change and improve student outcomes using prescribed technical practices (Dahlberg & Moss, 2004) at CPAS.

“The bad news is that […] we are losing ground—the economic and education gap has been widening at least since the year 2000.” (Fullan, 2007).

This loss of ground is widely lamented, and is described in various ways in the literature; as plateauing or declining outcomes and a widening equity gap (Adams Becker, Freeman, Giesinger Hall, Cummins, & Yuhnke, 2016; OECD, 2016), as shrinking voice (Mitra & Gross, 2009, p. 525), as a loss of democratic missions in schools (Dahlberg & Moss, 2004; Diemer, Rapa, Voight, & McWhirter, 2016), and as schools providing experiences that students describe as ‘anonymous and powerless’, more focused on test scores than preparation for engaged and contributing citizenship (Feu et al., 2017).

This loss of ground has inspired me to undertake a PhD exploring the role of a leader in closing gaps, ensuring social justice ...    

What enables socially just school leadership in conservative times?