This paper critically examines the use of the photostories method adapted from Photovoice in research with children, exploring its effectiveness in enabling decision-making and influencing change while addressing potential challenges. Specifically, it investigates the extent to which the photostories method enables children to make decisions and…

Principal autonomy has been identified as an important ingredient in effective and healthy schools. However, little is known about the various dimensions of the phenomenon and how it takes form in different contexts. This article presents an analytical device contributing to further understand the complex nature of principal autonomy. The device…

Selecting whose words to trust profoundly impacts children's learning behaviours. This study investigated Western and East Asian children's trust preferences for informants based on social dominance and its potential association with cultural factors. Sixty-six European American children in the United States (M = 5.44 years, SD = 0.80 years) and…

Rules and rationalities are the bases of analysis in rules determined governance model. Power as the ability to influence decision-making and the influence of power centres are not sufficiently examined in the literature on the governance of higher education. The article locates various centres of power in the functioning of universities and how…

This study employed an explanatory sequential design and mixed methods to investigate school principals' perspectives on parent-teacher associations (PTAs). The research involved a large sample of 3,606 school principals or senior managers who participated in a survey and a smaller subsample of 6 principals who engaged in a focus group interview…

On 3 May 2023, the first mass school shooting occurred in Serbia, positioning children as a particularly vulnerable group in need of further support. Subsequently, the government needed to create policies to help restore a sense of security, stability and trust in the community. The main dilemma was regarding the questions: Should we continue…

Principals are confronted with an exceptional degree of difficult decisions. One of the key challenges that school principals are facing in many parts of the world today is how to maintain a balance between professional discretion and accountability with the legislative and policy framework in which they must perform their duties. Every judgement…

This paper draws from a broader study on citizenship education in Western Uganda to explain how civic education knowledge translates into civic engagement through people's lived experiences. The paper addresses two questions, that is the contextual understandings of civic education and civic engagement by the partner NGO. Secondly, what explains…

This article aims to undertake a comparative investigation of school administration to understand further the frames of curriculum making. School administration is an under-illuminated aspect of curriculum research. The paper commences from the notion that, in mass education, a school system is operationalized by many schools, which are coupled to…

My research investigates the experiences of a range of professionals tasked with the role of enacting a policy aimed at achieving social justice. In a drive where one of the priorities was aimed at reducing exclusions from mainstream schools, some participants report feelings of being marginalised and excluded from the policy process. This paper…

Student voice in governance and decision-making has become ubiquitous in higher education, evolving from buzzword to orthodoxy. Student engagement measures have become instruments of quality control, with students expected to take an active role in shaping institutional policy and practice. In this paper, we argue that this ubiquity of demands for…

As the privatisation of the public sector has grown rapidly in Sweden in the last decade, private companies have become an imperative part of education. Private companies sell and deliver consultancy, hardware, software, services, etc. to schools and municipalities. This study examines a growing rate of activities from companies and businesses…

This article reports on a small-scale research project conducted in the summer of 2021. It explores the impact of a grass-roots Anti-Racist Community of Practice on organizational culture and how much it influenced the decision-making practices of the library's Senior Management Team. Discussed are issues of structural and institutional racism,…

Research exploring the challenges department chairs face has long suggested the role is difficult and lacks tangible reward (Buller, 2012, 2015; Gmelch et al., 2017). Yet, as higher education demographics, settings, and organizational expectations change and chairs function in more uncertain and increasingly complex institutional environments, it…

In the process of higher education choice, the prospective students compare and organise universities into a preference order, which indicates status hierarchies among institutions. In this study, the aim is to investigate how (and based on what) recent business graduates construct institutional hierarchies in the national higher education…