Fostering affective attention to lead coherent school change: toward culturally responsive schools

With equity and inclusion as national education priorities in Australia, school leaders commonly articulate aspirations related to embedding intercultural understanding, indigenous ways of knowing and/or culturally responsive pedagogies school wide. But at the same time, dominant discourses related to school improvement driven by neoliberal demands emphasize narrow measures of numeracy and literacy, data‑driven instruction and adopting decontextualized ‘effective’ teaching strategies. For school leaders, navigating these deeply oppositional orientations manifests as educational incoherence that leads to divergent school priorities, affective numbness, and reduced teacher efficacy and commitment. This paper presents a case study of one South Australian high school that employed culturally responsive schooling (CRS) to co-construct with staff a renewed school strategy. Critical leadership studies and affect theory in education are used to describe how school leaders work with and against the logics of contemporary school policy. Findings are captured in two portraits that demonstrate the need for fostering affective attention that allows educators to interrogate the educational orientations at play in order to lead coherent school change.