Public Purposes of Education

The public purposes of education across the Western world are based on common ideologies of social justice, liberty and equity (Wiseman, 2010). However, certain purposes gain dominance because of the political processes that reflect the climate of that time in history (Gunzenhauser, 2003; Reid, Cranston, Keating, & Mulford, 2011). There is evidence to support the failure of certain accountability arrangements, such as high-stakes testing in certain jurisdictions, when accounting for learning (Siegel, 2004). In Australia, the lack of alignment between the purposes of education and the federal and state arrangements of educational accountability has an effect on the way some educational leaders perceive their responsibilities of leadership notably their accountability of learning (Cranston, Reid, Mulford, & Keating, 2011). Pertinent to this blog is the educational leader’s ideologies about the purposes of education and the way these could have an effect on their interpretations of leading learning.