Inclusive School Leadership Strategies in Disadvantaged Schools Based on Student and Community Voice: Implications for Australian Educational Policy

There is a fundamental and possibly irreconcilable disjuncture or disconnect in Australia between the political or policy level approach to the linkage between education and poverty, and the context of enactment or lived experience at the level of disadvantaged schools and their communities (see for example: Smyth, 2005; 2006; Smyth & McInerney, 2007a; 2007b). This is a disconnect that does not sit easily with the historical egalitarian philosophical underpinnings of what it means to be an Australian (as developed in the next section).