Education law, schools, and school principals: findings from a mixed methods study of the impact of law on Tasmanian school principals

This article reports on recent research conducted in Tasmania, Australia, which investigated the impact of legal issues on school principals across the Government, Catholic, and Independent school sectors. The study focused on the areas of principals’ legal literacy, including the legal areas they deal with, the accuracy of their legal knowledge, their confidence in their own understanding of the law, and their sources of legal support; the legal context they face; negative impacts of their legal dealings, as well as principals’ views on how their legal supports might be improved. Whilst some findings of the study accorded with previous Australian research, others presented new perspectives on school principals’ dealings with legal issues.