Teacher professional autonomy in an atypical government school: matters of relationality and context

ABSTRACT

Teacher professional autonomy is important to teachers’ work satisfaction, efficiency, well-being, and empowerment. However, it cannot simply be defined as freedom from control because it is relational and contextual. In this paper, we examine the relationality and contextual sensitivity of teacher professional autonomy at ‘Newstall’ College, a senior secondary government school in Australia. The paper draws on a larger study that examined the social justice implications of school autonomy reform in four Australian state education systems. Newstall College was one of the five case study schools included in this study. Findings generated through in-depth interviews with eighteen staff members (including teachers, professional staff, the deputy principal and the principal) are presented that examine teacher professional autonomy. Conceptualising teacher autonomy as relational and contextual, the paper provides insight into the ways in which teacher autonomy was enabled at this school.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher autonomy
• professional autonomy
• Australia
• public education

Conceptualising teacher professional autonomy

Education research consistently highlights the positive impacts of teachers’ professional autonomy on work satisfaction and commitment, efficiency and motivation, well-being and empowerment, and self-efficacy (Day & Kington, 2008; Paradis et al., 2019). It is also associated with a positive work climate and higher levels of retention (Wermke et al., 2019). Teacher professional autonomy cannot simply be defined as freedom from control because it is embedded in differing contexts, institutional and professional relations and responsibilities (Paradis et al., 2019). As Wermke and Höstfält (2014, p. 62) argue, the teaching profession:

… is marked by its dependency on or complementary relationship to an organization: the school … teachers’ work takes place mainly between their pedagogical classroom work and the expectations and constraints of local and national authorities. Consequently, teachers have to balance pedagogical practice with organizational constraints dictated by others.

One of the key constraints for teachers is how they navigate the local, national and international expectations of audit cultures. An audit culture now permeates the organisation and management of public institutions like schools. Business-derived concepts of measurement and evaluation shape the education landscape and are the parameters within which school effectiveness and quality are determined and judged. The audit culture has placed ‘constant pressure’ on school leaders and teachers to ‘perform according to imposed and often reductive standards’ (Apple, 2005, p. 14).

This pressure is evident in the ever-increasing array of targets, indicators and comparisons that now regulate teachers’ work and undermine their professionalism and autonomy (see Ball, 2003; Connell, 2009; Gewirtz, 2002; Gunter, 2011; Hextall & Mahony, 2000). Research that is critical of the audit culture in schools argues that the rise in high-stakes accountabilities has re-professionalised the work of teachers around what has come to count as success in schools which is student performance on externally imposed standardised tests (Gewirtz et al., 2009). This climate is said to produce and value entrepreneurial teacher professionals who are driven by competition and concerned with meeting targets and outputs while devaluing the intellectual criticality, creativity and autonomy of traditional professionalism (Biesta, 2017; Connell, 2013; Sachs, 2001; Smyth, 2011). Teacher professionalism in this climate has also been re-configured in relation to ever-increasing and untenable workload demands (namely associated with the accounting expectations of the audit culture). Key research conducted in Australia associates these demands with a decline in teacher motivation, poor health and wellbeing and difficulties retaining and attracting teachers to the profession (Fitzgerald et al., 2019; Heffernan et al., 2022; Riley et al., 2021).

Other research has examined the different forms of teacher professionalism that are likely to occur in devolved systems of school governance like those in England, New Zealand and Australia where professional support and responsibility for education has shifted onto schools (namely, principals) at the same time as external accountabilities (mandated by the state) have tightened. Referring to the English context, Day (2020), for example, distinguishes between ‘general professional autonomy’ (which refers to the governance systems and education reforms that shape teachers’ work), ‘collegial professional autonomy’ (which refers to the networks and collegial arrangements deployed by school leaders to influence teachers’ work including increasing autonomy in collegial form) and ‘individual professional autonomy’ (which is tied to the professional practice of the individual teacher) (see also Frostenson, 2015, p. 24). Research that explores different forms of teacher professionalism impacted by these aspects of governance at the policy, school and classroom levels highlights the ways in which contextual relations and factors shape how teachers experience professional autonomy (Keddie, 2017; Paradis et al., 2019; Salokangas & Wermke, 2016). Here teacher autonomy is understood as a multi-dimensional, layered and contextually embedded phenomenon (Frostenson, 2015; Ingersoll, 2003; Wermke & Höstfält, 2014; Wermke et al., 2019).

These understandings of teacher autonomy inform our analysis in this paper – an analysis that explores how relational and contextual factors at a senior secondary school in Australia enabled teacher professional autonomy. We examine the ‘conditions that allow genuine opportunities for [teachers] to act in a professionally autonomous manner’ (Paradis et al., 2019, p. 397). Paradis et al. (2019) explain relational autonomy as distinct from individual autonomy. Whereas individual autonomy is associated with:

… individual teachers generally seek[ing] freedom from control, relational autonomy highlights the inextricable relational nature of autonomy, which relies on the webs of social and institutional relationships and structures. (Paradis et al., 2019, p. 395)

For Paradis et al. (2019, p. 395; see also Wermke et al., 2019), this conceptualisation of autonomy is significant as it moves beyond normative understandings that focus on the ‘simple presence or absence of control’ or freedom/empowerment in teachers’ work to examining its ‘inherent relationality’ (e.g. relations between teachers, school actors and the general public) and its ‘contextual sensitivity’ (e.g. teacher autonomy can be experienced differently and mean different things depending on the school in question) (see Wermke et al., 2019). In terms of relationality and teacher professional autonomy, trust is ‘a decisive factor in whether a teacher feels autonomous or not’; as Paradis et al. (2019, p. 407) argue, ‘accounts of autonomy cannot be separated from accounts of trust’:

… trust and teacher autonomy are tightly interwoven concepts. When the status and work of teachers is respected and trusted, in other words, when school actors have confidence in the professional work of teachers, teachers should feel supported and not controlled by others … Supported to work freely, teachers who feel entrusted, arguably, should also perceive autonomy in their work. (Paradis et al., 2019, p. 399)

A focus on trust among teachers, of and by the principal, and of and by the education system, is particularly significant given the conditions of audit and performativity currently shaping teachers’ work. To be sure, for some teachers, these conditions are empowering because they have enabled a cultivation of an outstanding teacher identity that is better than the rest (see Ball, 2003; Holloway & Brass, 2018). For many teachers, however, the audit and performative culture is generally disempowering because it changes teacher practice and collegial relationships in often detrimental ways and creates a climate of mistrust that accuses or blames teachers for students’ poor academic performance (Lingard, 2011).

The processes of audit and devolution have also impacted on the trust between school leaders and teachers – government school principals are now more directly responsible and accountable to the state and the public. This shift potentially enables an increase in managerial and authoritarian leadership and potentially moves away from trust in individual teachers’ ability to make decisions about student learning, progress and attainment in their classrooms (Day, 2020). As Day (2020, p. 259) further explains:

The extent to which teachers are able to exercise individual professionalism now depends not only on the relative strength of their own knowledge, skills and moral purpose, but also on how the principal uses his/her pedagogical authority in establishing the collective values expressed in the cultures of the schools in which they work. Thus, how principals interpret and manage this authority in externally initiated neo-liberal reform contexts may now determine how their teachers experience professional autonomy.

Mutual trust between principals and teachers thus plays an important role in the extent to which teachers feel valued, supported and respected as professionals capable of doing their job. But the relationality of teacher professional autonomy including how trust is articulated differs in relation to aspects of school context (Paradis et al., 2019) – aspects such as school type, intake, school leadership, material resourcing and academic performance. Braun et al. (2011) provide a useful four-part heuristic for considering the different contextual factors that shape how schools act within the current complex policy environment (adapted below¹):

• Situated factors (such as student intake and school type);

• Professional factors (such as school leadership and teacher values);

• Material factors (such as staffing and school budget);

• External factors (such as local and national policy and systemic support, expectations and pressures).

According to Braun et al. (2011), these areas of context impact on schools’ capacities to cope amid the ever-changing and overwhelming proliferation of policies (both external and internal) that principals and teachers interact with daily – especially those associated with the performative demands of the audit culture as they are exacerbated due to increasingly competitive education markets within and between public and private education sectors (see Keddie, 2013, 2017). The particularities of school type and intake (e.g. student demographics and achievement), leadership (e.g. the levels of trust between principals and teachers) and material factors (e.g. sufficient staffing and access to resources), for example, will impact on how professionally autonomous teachers feel.

In this paper, we draw on the work of Paradis et al. (2019) and Braun et al. (2011) to examine how relationality and contextual sensitivity shaped teacher professional autonomy at ‘Newstall’ College, an upper secondary government school in Australia. The paper draws on a larger study that examined the social justice implications of school autonomy reform in four Australian state education systems.² Newstall College was one of the five case study government schools included in this study. Findings generated through in-depth interviews with eighteen staff members (including teachers, professional staff, the deputy principal and the principal) are presented that examine teacher professional autonomy. Conceptualising teacher autonomy as relational and contextual, the paper provides insight into the ways in which teacher autonomy was enabled at this school.

Research processes

As already mentioned, the research presented in this paper draws from a broader study into the social justice implications of school autonomy reform in Australia.³ This project is exploring how autonomies granted to principals in devolved public education systems enable and constrain social justice outcomes. Four team members in pairs conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 members of staff at Newstall College (which constituted 40% of the staff at the College) (Table 1). Participants (three male and 15 female) volunteered to take part in an interview after information about the study was presented to staff by a member of the research team. The gender divisions between the Leadership Team (all male) and teachers/allied staff (all female) mirror the Australian education workforce data: 61% of secondary teachers are women, but only 40% of secondary principals are women. In line with the Australian National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research 2007 (2018), informed consent was sought from participants, who could withdraw at any time. The interviews were approximately 60–90 minutes long. They were semi-structured and organised around a series of questions that sought to identify the background and role of participants in relation to the school, their thoughts about the school and its systems of management, their understandings of professional autonomy within schools for principals and teachers, their equity concerns relating to their school (especially for students) and their thoughts about the extent to which the school could mobilise autonomy to address these concerns.

Table 1. Newstall college participants.

Executive staff	Teachers	Allied staff
Sam (principal) Hayden (deputy principal) Eric (manager academic services)	Brooke (maths/dance) Jasmine (English) Kate (maths/science) Kayla (maths/science) Kim (humanities) Kristina (science) Kylie (science/maths) Nicole (humanities) Stella (accounting/finance) Violet (English/careers)	Iris (social worker) Lydia (marketing and enrolments) Maria (social worker) Rosalie (student services) Zoe (manager corporate services)

The interviews were transcribed, then organised and coded using NVivo. Coding was driven by the key concepts explored in the broader research project including ‘managerial’, ‘professional’ or ‘collective’ ‘autonomy’, ‘social justice’, and ‘equity’. In this paper, we draw on the data coded as ‘teacher professional autonomy’ as we were interested in how teacher autonomy was enabled as relational and contextual. Data included in this code overlapped with other codes (i.e. it included issues associated with, for example, managerial autonomy, social justice and equity as they related to professional autonomy). Data analysis was an iterative process drawing on the teacher autonomy literature (outlined earlier) and considering the four contextual factors outlined by Braun et al. (2011).

About the school

Newstall College is a government senior secondary school located in a regional area of Australia. It is a newly built facility that caters to about 450 students who are in the final years of their schooling (Years 11 and 12). These students are overwhelmingly from Anglo-Australian and middle-class backgrounds with 70% identifying as female. Newstall offers both vocational and university pathways, the latter referred to as ‘the ATAR [Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank] stream’ signifying the school’s priorities. At the time of the fieldwork, Newstall College had 32 full-time teaching staff and 14 non-teaching staff. Its high performance and private school atmosphere meant that it had attracted students from local private schools.

There is tension between Newstall and other schools in the community. There was very little collaboration outside of their school with other government schools. The principal argued that this lack of collaboration was because Newstall as a senior secondary had little in common with other schools in the community, including the local government schools’ network. Newstall was also viewed derisively by some of the local schools because it was seen as poaching students, especially academically able students, from the other local high schools, which Newstall needed to do because it had no feeder schools. Many of the Newstall staff did not acknowledge the impact of this structural factor and the benefits it accrued through its recruitment of students, its student cohort, and its resources (e.g. teachers did not teach all year round) on surrounding schools, especially government schools. A reductive and deficit view of other schools and their students was expressed by several interviewees, with student behaviour typically discussed in relation to how difficult behaviour was in other schools, thereby favouring Newstall who did not have the same problems. Some teaching staff commented that competition between schools was positive: ‘it drives up quality because it makes other schools try harder’, ‘[they need to] develop new strategies and programmes to attract students’, etc. (a typical discourse of many politicians). In fact, there was some anxiety or concern among Newstall school leadership about student recruitment and retention fears as surrounding schools were driven to compete with Newstall to retain their students. As Kylie (teacher) argued:

… I can understand why the other schools would be upset at us because if we take all the ‘cream of the crop’ and all they are left with is the kids that are punching each other in the heads, then that’s bad for them, too. Anyways, it’s nice, though, as a parent and as a teacher of students who have had those difficult situations and finally got to come here and experience a good education; it’s nice that it provides that as well.

Our overwhelming impression from the interviews was that staff were very happy to be working at Newstall. Some had worked at the local government high schools and found Newstall to be a better place to work. Staff spoke in highly positive ways about the leadership of the school. The principal was seen as enabling staff to be autonomous, creative and innovative. Most of the participants spoke of the high degree of teacher autonomy enabled at Newstall, as the following comments illustrate:

We have autonomy. We can do pretty much what we like (Hayden, Deputy Principal (DP))

… the capacity to just get on and do what I need to do as a teacher; so, to be present with students and to do it as unencumbered as possible; you know, without … a lot of the administrative impositions or whatever. So, we do here at Newstall, I believe, have that opportunity just to get in, teach, do our best, be creative, et cetera. (Jasmine, teacher)

The following sections provide an account of the conditions (relations and contextual factors) at Newstall that enabled high levels of teacher professional autonomy. To this end, as noted earlier, we present the data around Braun et al.’s (2011) four-fold heuristic to examine the 1) situated (e.g. student intake and school type), 2) professional (e.g. school leadership), 3) material (e.g. staffing and school budget) and 4) external (e.g. systemic support, expectations and pressures) factors that enabled teacher autonomy with a particular focus on leadership and trust (Paradis et al., 2019).

Situated factors impacting on teacher professional autonomy: student intake and school type

Newstall’s high academic performance and specialised adult learning environment attracted a particular sort of student cohort. Students at Newstall are overwhelmingly Anglo-Australian, middle-class, and predominantly female. While the school as a government school is technically not permitted to ‘select’ students (i.e. enrolment should be based on students living in geographic proximity to the school), its reputation together with an interview process involved in recruiting students based on their ‘fit’ with the school’s expectations of high academic performance and motivation to study meant it was ‘selective’ due to this process. As such, most of the students were streamed towards a university pathway.

This university pathway student cohort was described by teachers as well behaved. One teacher commented, ‘it is a nice environment even though it’s a [government] school, we tend to have very few behaviour problems here … I very much appreciate this environment; it’s very nice’ (Kristina). The manager of corporate services, Zoe, agreed, ‘they are students that have wanted to come here so they are therefore quite focused students so there’s very few behaviour issues here’, as did Hayden (DP), ‘they are here, very eager and willing to learn. So, there’s virtually no behavioural issues. We don’t have kids throwing chairs or running out of class or being dysregulated’.

The participants spoke of the freedom and autonomy offered to students at Newstall and an environment of ‘good rapport between teachers and the students’, as Kristina (teacher) explained:

We consider this a young, adult learning environment. Like, that’s what we call basically our ethos here. This is a way of being here. So, there is a lot of respect from the students and the teachers and a lot of trust between us and the students.

At Newstall, students were trusted to manage their learning and were allowed freedoms that were not typical of schools generally, as Kristina commented, ‘the expectation is that we do trust our students’. The principal Sam explained such freedoms as follows:

… we say to students: ‘There’s no bells, no signs; there’s no out-of-bounds areas here. If you want to be here at 7.30, that’s fine. If you want to stay till 5.30, that’s fine. Just get your job done. This is what your job looks like. You can come into the staff studies area. There is no door to knock on’. Students go in there all day, every day. It’s not the old, ‘No, this is the staff area only. You are not allowed in here. This is our place’.

As a senior secondary school, many of the teachers at Newstall did not teach in the final weeks of the school year because their students’ exams were scheduled in October. Several participants noted how this situation enabled teachers more time at the end of the year to reflect on their teaching and to plan for the following year. Stella (teacher) explained: ‘we work really hard [in] terms 1, 2 and 3 and term 4, our students are gone. Primarily, we can spend all of this time now thinking about next year’.

These situated factors associated with student intake and school type were seen as facilitating the professional autonomy of teachers at Newstall. While some participants were critical of the students at school as being ‘passive’ (Nicole, teacher), there was recognition that the student intake enabled teachers to focus on curriculum and pedagogy (Forsey, 2010; Parding et al., 2017); as Hayden (DP) commented: the context ‘provides … an opportunity to do amazing things because [students] will go along with it without protesting’. Hayden also noted, however, that this did not necessarily mean teachers were innovative and creative; indeed, he noted that the school ‘attract[ed] compliant staff’ who tended to push students in traditional rather than creative and innovative learning (e.g. giving them more of the same work). Regardless of whether teachers took up their autonomy in creative ways, the point here is that the situated factors at Newstall supported teacher professional autonomy. While teachers’ work reflected the pressures and intensities related to extending the learning of highly motivated and high achieving students (Parding et al., 2017), these students and their specialised learning setting meant that teachers were less subject to a policing of their practice (than may otherwise be the case in lower achieving and less advantaged schools where audit and accountability expectations can be more pronounced and where leadership may be less inclined to support teacher creativity and innovation beyond a focus on raising academic standards; see Keddie et al., 2022). They were trusted to enact their professionalism in ways of their own choosing (Braun et al., 2010; Keddie, 2013).

Professional factors impacting on teacher professional autonomy: school leadership

Most of the participants referred to the practices of the school leader, Sam, in highly positive ways as enabling teacher professional autonomy. Sam had been at the school for ten years and had been deputy head before becoming principal. He was described as ‘very accommodating’ and supportive of teachers’ ideas and needs (Brooke, teacher), ‘a leader who certainly does enable people as opposed to constrain people’ (Jasmine, teacher), as ‘allow[ing [teachers] a lot of freedom’ (Kylie, teacher), as ‘mak[ing] everyone feel included’, ‘appreciated’ (Rosalie, allied staff) and ‘valued ‘(Zoe, manager, corporate services). A few teachers mentioned visibility and approachability, for example Kim (teacher) stated, ‘the leadership, I feel, are really visible and very present and open. It is not as though you have to book appointments to speak to key people. Doors are open, you pop in’.

Many of the participants spoke of feeling like they were trusted to do their job well, as Kylie (teacher) explained:

I think the trust element is here. They trust that we are professional. When we were selected to work at the school … they picked you because they trust you; and that’s really, really apparent. Whereas in other schools I feel like they needed to micro-manage me or I didn’t feel like they trusted my judgment and my decision-making.

Violet (teacher) similarly stated, ‘we are trusted as professionals. I feel like admin listen and they will say, you are the expert … what do you think? And they will work with us to find solutions’. Kim and Kristina contrasted the freedom they felt at Newstall with their previous schools where, as Kim stated, ‘every minute [was] micro-managed’, while Kristina argued ‘everything had to be checked [and] questioned’. Stella (teacher) described Sam similarly as ‘kind of stand[ing] back’ and letting teachers ‘drive a lot of what [they] do’. A few teachers noted that they were free to make decisions and mistakes, Violet commented:

I am very very supported to make decisions and to fail as well. Like, if I make a mistake, it’s not the end of the world. I’m not going to be hauled over hot coals. It’s sort of like, ‘Okay, what did you learn? What can we do better next time? What support do you need?’, that kind of thing …

Kylie similarly noted the freedom she felt to make mistakes. She described the process of critical reflection with Sam about learning from these mistakes as ‘safe’ accountability. These reflective meetings were held with all staff that Sam (principal) described as a key part of the ‘accountability mechanisms’ he had in place where ‘feedback from students, academic progress’, professional learning and staff wellbeing were discussed. He commented:

I think there’s enough trust there, that they will tell me pretty much anything and everything now; the good, the bad and the ugly. And I think that they don’t mind that opportunity to [sit] down with me and [say], ‘Look, this is what I think’. So that is an … it is like a mutual accountability.

Hayden (DP) also referred to the trust Sam had built with staff. He spoke of accountability in terms of risk – as he explained, ‘it’s … very clear that we have said that, ”the risk is with us; it’s not with you teachers. We are going to make your life better; we are not going to make your life harder”. We are very clear, ”We are going to make mistakes; and it’s not going to be a problem for you”’.

For Sam, building trust with staff was not just about respecting their professional capacities as ‘experts’ but about ensuring that the structures and practices at Newstall were formed and adjusted in transparent and inclusive ways that were also open to critique. Many of the participants noted here the importance of the school’s ‘business plan’ guiding teacher practice. The plan is a broad document developed in collaboration with staff that spelled out the purpose and focus of the school to ‘prepare students for life’ (Sam) by offering meaningful pathways, skill development, relationship building and active learning. It was a document that, according to Kim, meant that the ‘leadership are on the same page’ as teachers in terms of the goals they are working towards and accountable to; she explained:

… the business plan is definitely connected to our accountability as practitioners … our performance management is all structured around the business plan. So you set a target of what you are working on and that’s tied into the goals. So it’s quite cleverly done. You know, they have really thought about it; and then how to generate evidence that we are implementing it and working towards it. But it doesn’t feel tokenistic; and I don’t feel cynical about it.

Kate (teacher) spoke of the plan as supporting staff to ‘collaborate more with each other and explore ideas and really hone their practice as much as they possibly can on a regular basis’. This involved small group discussions in staff meetings about ‘what we do in the classroom’ and providing ‘reflection summaries’ that are shared. She described the plan as ‘driven by staff’ and ‘infiltrated throughout everything that we do’. Sam noted the significance of tapping into the teachers’ passion about what they would ‘like to educate young people about that is not in a course’ so that skills like ‘problem-solving, teamwork, communication skills [and] creativity could be embedded in course delivery’ even within the content driven focus of the ATAR (Australian Tertiary Admission Rank) courses.

These professional factors associated with school leadership support the professional autonomy of teachers at Newstall. We can see here that trust is a decisive factor in how teachers experience autonomy (Paradis et al., 2019). In particular, it is Sam’s leadership – his respect for and trust in his teachers, his confidence about their capacities as professionals and his support for these capacities – that enables teacher autonomy (Day, 2020; Paradis et al., 2019). The comments clearly point to mutually respectful and trusting relations between leadership and teachers within a context of positive institutional relationships (Paradis et al., 2019). Sam manages his authority in ways that not only support teachers to exercise individual professionalism but, through the school’s business plan, also establish collective values and cultures expressed towards enriching the learning culture of the school (Day, 2020). This trusting environment is significant in mediating or buffering the harmful pressures (of anxiety and disempowerment) of the audit culture shaping all teachers’ work (Apple, 2005; Lingard, 2011) which will be further explored later in the paper.

Material factors impacting on teacher professional autonomy: staffing

The specific material factors impacting on teacher professional autonomy at Newstall were associated overwhelmingly with staffing. A few of the participants referred to the recruitment of staff as selecting the kind of teacher who expressed their professional autonomy in ways consistent with the school’s vision of trust and freedom for students and teachers rather than ‘teachers who have been institutionalised for a very long time … who are quite autocratic in the way that they deal with students’ (Stella, teacher). Trust and freedom were instrumental within the Newstall culture to enabling teacher autonomy through work flexibility. Eric (manager, academic services) explained that it was possible for staff to work fractional hours and days if they wanted to, as well as work additional hours to support students which led to them being able to take time off in lieu as well as work from home where practical – e.g. when they did not have ‘face-to-face’ classes (Zoe, manager corporate services).

As noted earlier, as Newstall is a senior secondary school, there was flexibility in Term 4 for teachers to reflect and plan for the following year, which was appreciated by the teaching staff. Kim (teacher) stated that there are ‘days and days to really plan good pedagogy’. Resources were devoted in this time to events like ‘whole-college development days’ (Zoe, manager, corporate services) where teachers pitched ideas for ‘professional learning workshops that they would like to run with students next year’ but were able to do much of this work off-site during school hours (Sam, principal). In relation to these workshops, teachers commented on the material resources available. Kim explained, ‘they [Sam and Hayden – principal and DP] are like, “If you need finance, we’ll work it out. If you need time, we’ll work it out. If you need a whole term of, you know, a session a week just to prepare, to deliver your five weeks, we can work that out”’. Other staff spoke about their autonomy over aspects of budget associated with their subject area (Kristina, teacher) and role (Maria and Iris, social workers). As one of the school’s social workers, Maria mentioned this autonomy in relation to the flexibility she had over her budget with her team to best support students – from being able to offer appropriate support services for students experiencing mental health issues to organising guest speakers and workshops for students and staff.

Another issue associated with staffing that seemed to support teacher professional autonomy was the flat leadership structure of the school (i.e. the school did not have a middle leadership level). While this structure meant that there was less opportunity for ‘climbing’ the promotions ‘ladder’ (Violet, teacher), it did mean ‘greater cohesion’ and collaboration amongst staff (Jasmine, teacher) across disciplines (Kate, teacher). As Kristina (teacher) noted, middle management (in the form of Head of Learning Area managers) could be controlling. Violet (teacher) added that the structure meant that she felt ‘more in control about what’s happening at work’ because, rather than going through middle management, she could ‘go straight to the principal’ with any questions or for assistance which facilitated communication and response. This was facilitated by another key material factor at Newstall: its relatively small size.

These material factors associated with staffing support the professional autonomy of teachers at Newstall. Again, trust and respect between teachers and the administration enabled this autonomy – especially in relation to the flexibility for teachers to be able to work part time and off campus and the support and resources (of time and funds) available for teachers to work in creative ways to improve their practice in collaboration with others (Paradis et al., 2019).

External factors impacting on teacher professional autonomy: systemic support, expectations and pressures

Consistent with the remarks presented earlier by Hayden (DP) about the ‘risks’ of accountability being shouldered by the administration at Newstall, rather than teachers, participants commented on the buffering role that leadership played in mediating external demands. Brooke (teacher) mentioned that while Sam (principal) ‘might have a lot of restrictions’, ‘he doesn’t let’ the teachers know. ‘He tries to make it so that we are not affected by those restrictions … [he’s] a buffer against the system. Yes. That’s what a leader should do’. Several of the teachers referred to the state curriculum as an example of this buffering. Teachers were generally hesitant to deviate from this curriculum even though it was not mandated. Hayden (DP) commented:

… we are doing a great deal of curriculum innovation at … the moment. And people are still worried about, Will [the curriculum authority] let us? Well, [they] have got nothing to do with it. Are we doing the best by our students? Are we coming up with the right pathways? Are we satisfying our local community? We are still doing all the stuff that they want us to do but … we are doing a better job…

… we have given them the permission to adjust their syllabus delivery. And it’s an understanding of trust that in no way are they going to - you know, if they are teaching Biology, they are not going to be suddenly teaching basket weaving instead … they have enormous autonomy in their classroom to choose the learning strategy, the delivery, the timing of that delivery. There is a great range of assessments that they can use; weightings that they can use; but, yes, they are monitored for some sort of quality assurance/comparability. But they can make those decisions … whether they do that or not, you have to encourage them to do it. So they have that capacity to do that; and we support them in doing it.

This buffering involved Sam and Hayden assuring teachers that they wouldn’t get ‘in trouble’ if they deviated from the curriculum (more so with general courses rather than ATAR courses where, as Sam argued, ‘there’s very little scope’ for doing things differently). On this issue Hayden (DP) stated that leadership spent ‘a lot of time trying to convince people that “There is no big, black car with the guys in the coats, coming to get us”. And people – don’t know … that the bureaucracy or the Department has been so downsized now that there’s not enough people to chase up’ (a consequence of devolution). He spoke of the illusion of a bureaucracy micro-managing everyone and how teachers and principals actually had much more autonomy than they thought they did, a comment experienced principals made in our broader study (see Keddie et al., 2022). This buffering enabled teachers’ professional autonomy; as Nicole (teacher) indicated, she felt she had been given ‘enough rope’ by the school leadership to create a programme she was really passionate about from the United Nations Association that was included as a Year 11/12 course.

For Stella (teacher) the willingness of the school’s administration to question external expectations and their encouragement of teachers to do the same was why she chose to work at Newstall, as she explained:

I think that’s why, for me, personally, I am working here; because I have people who are at that higher level, at that administrative level, questioning it as well. So we are questioning it - you are constantly questioning it as a teacher, ‘Why the hell am I doing this? Why the hell am I making my students learn this stuff … ?’ … so as a staff and as a critical thinking teacher, you have to question that stuff. ‘It’s not right; it doesn’t work’; and then if you are working in an environment that doesn’t support that or purport that, then that obviously creates a disconnect.

These external factors associated with the buffering role leadership played in mediating external accountability demands supported teacher professional autonomy. Such mediation, as these comments highlight, enabled curriculum innovation and fostered critical thinking and, consistent with the other contextual factors, was informed by a valuing and trust of teachers’ professional judgements (Paradis et al., 2019). In this section we can see the enabling effects of school leaders’ pedagogical authority to establish a culture at Newstall where external expectations (from the curriculum body in this case) are interpreted and managed in ways that foster teacher professional autonomy to benefit the students and the school community (Day, 2020).

Concluding discussion

The case study presented in this paper highlights the relationality and contextual sensitivity of teacher professional autonomy. The high levels of professional autonomy experienced by teachers at Newstall reflect an atypical story – it is a story that is inconsistent with much research in this space that highlights the negative impacts of the current regimes of audit and accountability constraining teachers’ work and undermining their professional autonomy. At Newstall, teachers did not report experiencing the pressures of meeting particular targets and outputs or untenable work demands. Rather, they reported feeling valued and trusted as professionals who are capable of doing their job well (Connell, 2013; Smyth, 2011). To refer to Day’s work (2020), the structures and practices at Newstall seem to support both an ‘individual’ and ‘collegial’ form of professional autonomy. The point of this paper has been to highlight the contextual and relational factors that enabled this autonomy. To this end, the paper examined the situated, professional, material and external factors at Newstall that mediated how teachers experienced professional autonomy.

The school’s student intake and school type were key situated factors enabling teacher autonomy. The high achieving predominantly female student cohort as well as the specialised focus on Years 11 and 12 were seen as enabling teachers to focus on curriculum and pedagogy. Being a senior high school, with an emphasis on academic outcomes, allowed the school to develop a culture of learner autonomy within a young adult environment. These factors mean that the school is attractive to a particular kind of aspirational student. Positioned so advantageously in the local education market, the principal used his agency to create a collaborative ethos in which internal professional accountability was possible because teachers felt valued. Trust and respect for teachers from the school leadership (Sam and Hayden) were key professional factors that supported teachers to exercise individual and collegial professional autonomy. Adequate resourcing and work flexibility were material factors enabling teacher professional autonomy, as was the buffering role of leadership in mediating external accountability demands for teachers.

Newstall College is a government school, but it differs from other government schools in terms of the contextual and relational factors examined in this paper. Unlike at Newstall which is a senior college, other government schools (like most secondary schools in Australia) tend to cater to a broader age range of students (Years 7 to 12) who may be less privileged and more culturally and academically diverse. Other secondary schools may not achieve the level of academic success that Newstall has and thus their principals and teachers may feel under greater pressure to improve test scores. These schools may also not enjoy the same material benefits that Newstall does in relation to teacher work flexibility and adequate resourcing to enable curriculum innovation (see Keddie et al., 2022). These factors matter in enabling and/or constraining teacher professional autonomy.

The current audit culture in education is placing enormous pressure on schools. For teachers, this culture has seen a rise in high-stakes testing and externally imposed accountabilities, which has tended to undermine their professional autonomy. While it is clear that teacher autonomy is not a straightforward or unified sensibility (Wermke & Höstfält, 2014; Wermke et al., 2019), there are clearly specific relational and contextual factors associated with supporting teacher professionalism and autonomy that are applicable for consideration in more typical schools (than the one presented in this paper). It is well recognised, for example, that teacher professional autonomy is enhanced by supportive, inclusive and mutually respectful relations between school leaders and teachers; trust and confidence in the quality of teachers’ work and in their capacities to work independently and creatively; an environment where they have opportunities to input into and shape broader school-wide planning, goals and decision-making; access to, and choice about, quality professional learning; opportunities to learn together; access to adequate material and human resources to improve pedagogy and student learning; and autonomy in relation to work arrangements and flexibility. These factors not only enhance teacher professional autonomy, they also increase feelings of greater work satisfaction, motivation and commitment, and increased wellbeing and empowerment (Day & Kington, 2008).

The analysis offered here is important in conceptualising teacher professional autonomy beyond a presence or absence of control or freedom to understanding its inherent relationality and contextual sensitivity. Understanding the power of situated, professional, material and external factors to support and undermine teacher professional autonomy is illuminating and provides important insight into how public education systems might better support the diversity of schools within their remit in ways that allow teacher professional autonomy to flourish.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP190100190.

Notes on contributors

Amanda Keddie

Amanda Keddie is a Professor of Education at Deakin University. Her research examines the processes, practices and conditions that can impact on the pursuit of social justice in education settings. Amanda’s qualitative research has been based within the Australian, English and American schooling contexts and is strongly informed by feminist and social justice theories. Her recent books are Autonomy, Accountability and Social Justice: Stories of English Schooling (2019), Researching the margins (2022) and The affective intensities of masculinity in shaping gendered experience: From little boys, big boys grow (2022).

Katrina MacDonald

Katrina MacDonald is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, Deakin University, Australia. Her research and teaching interests are in educational leadership, social justice, spatiality, and the sociology of education through a practice lens (feminist, Bourdieu, practice architectures). Katrina’s qualitative research has focused on principals’ social justice understandings and practices, and the impact of school reform policies on the provision of just public schooling.

Jill Blackmore

Jill Blackmore is Alfred Deakin Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, and former Director of the Centre for Research in Educational Futures and Innovation and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia. Her research interests include, from a feminist perspective: globalisation, education policy and governance; international and intercultural education; educational restructuring, leadership and organisational change; spatial redesign and innovative pedagogies; teachers’ and academics’ work, all with a focus on equity. Recent higher education research has focused on disengagement with and lack of diversity in leadership, international education and graduate employability. Her research has focused in particular on the re/constitution of the social relations of gender in and through education in the early 21st century.

Brad Gobby

Brad Gobby is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at Curtin University, Western Australia. He is a policy sociologist whose research examines education policies and programmes, with a focus on the areas of school autonomy in diverse contexts and governance. His recent work also investigates policy and pedagogical responses to the climate crisis. He has published widely on the topics of education policy, politics and school autonomy in international journals and edited books and is an editorial board member of the Journal of Educational Administration and History.

Notes

1. We have modified some of the factors in Braun’s et al.’s (2011) original model – e.g. we have included school type and school leadership.

2. Australian Research Council Discovery Project DP190100190.

3. This research was approved by the Deakin University Human Research Ethics Committee (HAE-19-029).