Board of Trustees

Abstract

This brief overview of my research explores the impact of one aspect of New Zealand's self-managing reforms on the changing and predicted gender profile of the principalship in primary schools. The research in progress is a national study of boards of trustees' selection practices of principals carried out in 2002. It examines how trustees interpret and act upon often contradictory and conflicting official discourses from self-managing policies and Equal Employment Opportunities (EEO) legislation, as well as populist discourses mobilised by the media. Using feminist discourse theory (Bacchi 2000) I argue that the reforms have not contributed to a significant shift in the gender diversity representation of the principalship.