Primary school principals and the purposes of education in Australia. Results of a national survey
| Published date | 06 July 2010 |
| Date | 06 July 2010 |
| Pages | 517-539 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09578231011054743 |
| Author | Neil Cranston,Bill Mulford,Jack Keating,Alan Reid |
| Subject Matter | Education |
Primary school principals
and the purposes of
education in Australia
Results of a national survey
Neil Cranston and Bill Mulford
Faculty of Education, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia
Jack Keating
University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, and
Alan Reid
University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, Australia
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report the results of a national survey of government
primary school principals in Australia, investigating the purposes of education, in terms of the
importance and level of enactment of those purposes in schools.
Design/methodology/approach – In 2009, an electronic survey was distributed to government
primary school principals in Australia seeking their views on the purposes of education. The survey
comprised 71 items of a closed format and three items of an open-ended format. Respondents rated first
the importance they ascribed to particular purposes of education, then second the degree to which they
believed these purposes were actually enacted in their particular school. Factor analyses were conducted
on the item responses. Differences between importance and enactment of purposes are discussed
together with reasons for these differences.
Findings – The findings overwhelmingly point to tensions between what they, the principals, believe
ought to be the purposes of education and what the strategies to achieve those purposes might be, and
the realities of what is actually happening. It could be argued that the results indicate a major shift away
from public purposes of education to those more aligned with private purposes. Many of the barriers to
achieving a greater focus in schools on public purposes are seen to be related to external (to the school)
issues, such as government policy decisions, differential funding and resourcing across school sectors
and emerging community and societal factors.
Research limitations/implications – This research complements other aspects of this project into
the purposes of education in Australia. There are some limitations to the reported findings in so far as
only government principals participated in the survey. Non-government school principals were invited
but declined to participate.
Originality/value – This is the only piece of research of its kind in Australia and provides unique
insights – those of principals – into what schools are focusing on and what the leaders think they ought
to be focusing on. There are clearly policy and practice implications of the research.
Keywords Australia, Primaryeducation, Principals, Educational policy
Paper type Research paper
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
The survey reported on this paper was part of a three-year Australian Research Council-Linkage
project conducted with partners, the AGPPA and the Education Foundation.
Purposes
of education
in Australia
517
Received December 2009
Revised February 2010
Accepted March 2010
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 48 No. 4, 2010
pp. 517-539
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/09578231011054743
Introduction and background
Historically, Australian schools have been seen as central to nation building. That is, as
well as enhancing the life chances of individuals, schooling has had a number of public
purposes that advance the interests of the society as a whole. However, in response to a
variety of national and international forces (Mulford et al., n.d.) in the early part of the
twenty-first century, understanding around what is meant by public purposes has
become less clear. Indeed, while there continues to be considerable investment of public
funds in Australian schools, there are questions as to whether and how schools today are
serving public purposes. This paper reports on the results of a national survey of a
project funded under the Australian Research Council Linkage scheme looking into such
questions[1].
The focus of this paper is on the first wave of results from a national survey of
primary school principals in Australia[2]. The paper will provide a discussion of
some of the key findings from the survey and raise some implications and possible
recommendations flowing from these.
Why an interest in the purposes of education?
A fundamental assumption underpinning this research is that because there is a
considerable investment of public funds in schools in Australia, then it is to be expected
that these institutions should be serving a number public purposes. Key questio ns that
arise from this assumption, then are: how are these public purposes defined and
understood, and how are they enacted in schools? The answers to such questions are not
all that straightforward, because as we have pointed out earlier:
[...] (w)hilst it might seem obvious that schools should serve public purposes, such purposes
are usually assumed rather than clearly articulated, and they seldom receive research
attention or form the focus of public debate (Reid et al., 2007b, p. 25).
Barber (2004) among others saw education as being inherently a public institution
because of both its historical foundation and long-standing focus on citizenship,
democracy and community building. Importantly, however, in the latter part of the
twentieth century, under a range of political, social and technological influences, these
purposes became disrupted and blurred. Indeed, Goodlad (1997) saw some of thes e
influences as a raising tension between the notion that the public and democratic
purposes of education are grounded in a positive agenda, while some current fear-based
agendas contend that education is in crisis with solutions lying in responses such as
high-stake testing.
Not long ago, Power (2005, p. 5) noted that education was “the engine for
development” going on to explain that the focus of education as he saw it reflected the
four pillars earlier identified by the Delors Report (UNESCO, 1996) as being about
learning to know, learning to do, learning to live together and learning to be. At about the
same time, an Australian report (Department of Education, Science and Training
Curriculum Corporation, 2003) argued that “(e)ducation is as much about building
character as it is about equipping students with specific skills” (p. 12). These
articulations gives scope to a much wider notion of the purposes and direction of
education than has been the case in recent years, where schooling has been equate d to
national economic prosperity and national curriculum and testing agendas seem to be
concerned almost exclusively with what might be termed “the basics”.
JEA
48,4
518
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