ABSTRACT
Educational reform has seen the rapid rise of two strategies to create higher standards in our schools: autonomy and transparency. This chapter sets out misuses and abuses of autonomy and transparency and proposes a more ethical and effective alternative: collective autonomy. Two of these have become especially prevalent in recent years: school autonomy and professional transparency. Data-driven transparency is being used as a bureaucratic tool to watch over the professional practice of teachers and to have teachers constantly watching over each other. Transparency builds on pre-existing relationships of high trust and leadership stability. When upward and downward transparency is in balance, they have what calls reciprocal accountability. Collective autonomy is about constant communication and circulation of ideas in a coherent system where there is collective responsibility to achieve a common vision of student learning, development and success. Effective professional autonomy in today's schools is not individual, but collective.
