Jane Wilkinson is Associate Professor of Educational Leadership, Monash University, Australia. She researches educational leadership as practice/praxis. Jane's new book is Educational Leadership as a Culturally-constructed Practice: New Directions and Possibilities (with Laurette Bristol, Routledge, 2018). She is lead editor (with Jeffrey S. Brooks) of the Journal of Educational Administration and History.

Richard Niesche is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. His research interests include educational leadership, social justice and poststructuralism. He is a founding co-editor of the Educational Leadership Theory book series with Springer.

Scott Eacott is a relational theorist in the School of Education, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He is widely published with research interests and contributions in three main areas: 1) a relational approach to organizational theory; 2) social epistemology; and 3) school reform.

This book explores the educational leadership, policy and social justice implications of the increasing dismantling of public education systems and the privatisation of educational provision.

List of illustrations Acknowledgements Series editors' preface 1 Challenges for public education: Perils and possibilities for educational leadership, policy and social justice (Jane Wilkinson, Scott Eacott and Richard Niesche) Part I: Theoretical possibilities 2 Re-imagining leadership as a resource of and for educational practice/praxis in neoliberal times (Jane Wilkinson) 3 School and principal autonomy: Resisting, not manufacturing, the neoliberal subject (Richard Niesche) 4 Educational leadership research and the dismantling of public education: A relational approach (Scott Eacott) Part II: Local/international cases: Competing practices of a school autonomy reform 5 Competitive entrepreneurship and community empowerment: Competing practices of a school autonomy reform (Brad Gobby) 6 Exploring a school improvement initiative: Leadership and policy enactment in Queensland's Independent Public Schools (Amanda Heffernan) 7 Depoliticisation and education policy (Helen M. Gunter) 8 Oh to be in England?: The production of an un-public state system (Pat Thomson) 9 Shifting logics: Education and privatisation the Swedish way (Nafsika Alexiadou, Lisbeth Lundahl and Linda Rönnberg) 10 To be 'in the tent' or abandon it?: A school clusters policy and the responses of New Zealand educational leaders (Martin Thrupp) 11 The rise of authoritarian neoliberalism: How neoliberalism threatens public education and democracy (David Hursh) Part III: Critical commentary: Alan Reid 12 Restoring the 'publicness' of public education (Alan Reid) Index