- Title
- Engaging the education sector: A policy orientation to stop damaging our schools
- Creator
- Smyth, John
- Date
- 2003
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/34461
- Identifier
- vital:5923
- Identifier
- ISSN:1329-1440
- Abstract
- In this paper the author makes a passionate 'plea for discontent', arguing that there is something fundamentally wrong with the overall direction of education policy as it is being applied to schools, and that new ways of re-engaging with it must be found. The author commences by arguing for a proposition, presenting some evidence from some research, and using that as a basis for suggesting a fundamental re-think in the way educational policy operates in relation to schools. In doing this, he underscores the centrality and significance of social capital as the basis for this re-engagement. The underlying question concerns how educational policy making is to be engaged so that it is central to institutional building. With the threat of losing schools as social institutions under the current regime of educational policy, the author argues that new ways of re-engaging educational policy beyond parallel discourses are needed. The underlying proposition is that schools that succeed are ones that have trusting relationships between school systems, teachers, parents and students. Trust between those making educational policy and schools, produces better outcomes for all, and trust is given expression through meaningful partnerships, authentic accountability, and distributed (or enabling) leadership. Social capital is central to any educational policy re-engagement with schools. The underlying argument of this paper is that schools have a social responsibility as places that 'manufacture hope' often in situations of increasing 'despair' and adversity.
- Relation
- Learning Communities Vol. , no. 1 (2003), p. 22-40
- Rights
- Unknown copyright
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- 1301 Education Systems; 1303 Specialist Studies In Education; 1399 Other Education
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