This report presents the initial findings from an ARC Linkage Grant, titled ‘Punish them or engage them? Identifying and addressing productive and unproductive student behaviours in South Australian schools’ (LP110100317), more commonly referred to as the Behaviour at School Study (BaSS). This phase of the study was conducted in 2011. We used the Behaviour at...

Bruce Johnson outlines the 'micropolitical strategies' of school leadership teams dealing with local school reform. The strategies challenge many of the orthodoxies of educational managerialism, as the schools used the 'positive politics' of negotiation, collaboration and conflict resolution to address issues of local concern, rather than the 'controlling politics' of new managerialism.