National/local frameworks and related initiatives

In many countries, national frameworks/policies and related initiatives or measures have been implemented to guide, monitor, assess and control schools’ operations in key functional areas, such as staffing, budgeting, curriculum development, assessment and student policies (OECD-PISA, 2012; OECD-TALIS, 2013). Common examples of such frameworks/policies are national-curriculum frameworks, assessment frameworks, student-admission policies, quality-assurance frameworks, accountability frameworks and regulations governing funding allocation. Together, these national frameworks/policies constitute the core external structural authority responsible for determining how much and what types of school autonomy should be available at the school-site level. However, both national frameworks and their allocation of school autonomy to functional areas of schools’ operations may differ between countries.

In practice, the relationship between national frameworks and school autonomy is complicated and dynamic. Without the guidance of national frameworks, school members may lose their focus, and accountability may be reduced (Hanushek and Raymond, 2005). However, given the complexity of education work, it is impossible to enhance education quality without human input, which depends on the autonomy and ownership of school members. Therefore, a dichotomy or tension often exists between school autonomy and national frameworks. The theory of simultaneous loose-tight properties has been proposed as a means of understanding and managing this tension constructively (Peters and Waterman, 1982; Sergiovanni, 1984). Proponents of this theory argue that on the one hand, clear structural systems and ordinances should be established for school management, and the roles and responsibilities of the people concerned should be explicitly defined according to major policies and goals. On the other hand, to ensure effective management within schools, school members should be encouraged and given ample room to take the initiative to give full rein to their particular interests and skills (Cheng, 1996). Both national frameworks and school autonomy are necessary to simultaneously ensure accountability for education quality and improve school performance by enhancing human initiatives.

As observed in PISA in Focus (2011), the data gathered in the 2009 PISA indicate that when autonomy and accountability are intelligently combined, they tend to be associated with better student performance. “In countries where schools account for their results by posting achievement data publicly, schools that enjoy greater autonomy in resource allocation tend to show better student performance than those with less autonomy. In countries where there are no such accountability arrangements, schools with greater autonomy in resource allocation tend to perform worse” (p. 1). These findings provide strong evidence that the interplay between national frameworks and school autonomy contributes to student performance. In future research on autonomy, leadership and learning, the roles and influence of national frameworks should also be conceptualised.

In addition, contextual factors at both the school level (e.g. school size, funding sources, history, social and economic status and local community) and system level (e.g. economic, political, social and cultural developments) could be addressed in future research to provide more comprehensive insights into their effects on autonomy, leadership and learning.

Conclusion: a typology of research strategies

Based on the proposed framework for reconceptualising school autonomy (Figure 1), the potential new strategies for investigating school autonomy in relation to leadership and performance can be summarised as follows.

Single-component strategy

This strategy can be used to investigate a single component of the reconceptualisation framework, such as school autonomy, leadership, school performance or national framework. Possible research questions are as follows:

RQ1. What are the major characteristics of school autonomy across various functional areas, structural levels and cultural dimensions of a national-education system? How are these characteristics related?

RQ2. What are the key features of school leadership for various functional, structural and cultural initiatives, particularly in relation to internal school autonomy?

RQ3. In locally managed schools, what functional/educational conditions are required to enhance pedagogical performance and student learning? How are these conditions related?

Studies of this kind are generally descriptive, with attention to just one component of the reconceptualisation framework, and are thus unlikely to advance the understanding of the relationship between components (e.g. between autonomy and performance or autonomy and leadership).