Why Is Everything Old New Again? A Case for Methods and Structures to Mediate Between Social Science and Leadership Practice

• In Event: 46.021 - Theory, History, Debates, and Paradigm Wars: Whence the Field of Educational Administration?

Abstract

Anyone familiar with the mid-20th century theory movement within the Educational Administration field undoubtedly experienced feelings of déjà vu while reading the National Research Council (NRC) 2002 publication, Scientific Research in Education. Although the theory movement was focused narrowly on the educational administration/leadership field and the NRC’s book was about the education field in general, both embraced quantitatively validated social science theory as the solution to educational problems.
Fast forward to the 2003 AERA meeting where Grover Whitehurst, then the head of the federal government’s newly created Institute for Education Science, touted quasi-experimental research with randomized assignment to control and experimental groups as the federal government’s new educational research gold standard. Even those with only a passing knowledge of the history of educational research would have had to conclude that Whitehurst was channeling the early twentieth century experimental psychologist E. L. Thorndike (1910) who also, in essence, promised that experimental studies could tell us ”what works.” This despite the title of Whitehurst’s presentation: “New Wine in New Bottles.”
The reactions to Whitehurst’s gold standard and the NRC’s touting of quantitatively validated scientific theory were also predicable for those who understood educational history, especially the history of educational administration’s theory movement. Like paradigm wars combatants Thomas Greenfield and William Foster, combatants in the “science wars” that got played out during the first decade of the 21st century expressed grave concern about the transformation of value issues into technical questions.
Of course, in all of the examples presented here, there were differences between past and present. The similarities, however, overshadowed relatively superficial differences.
Now that we appear to be in a period of détente, a period (not unlike the era of big-tent politics (Donmoyer, 1991) that played out between the paradigm and science wars) in which those who favor, for example, randomized trials and those concerned with, say, social justice can operate within their own domains without much interference from those in other domains, it seems appropriate to ask why history keeps repeating itself within the educational research field. That question is the focus of the paper being proposed here.
The first part of the paper will tackle the question head on. The basic argument is that quantitative, qualitative and even mixed-methods social science researchers are playing a fundamentally different game than the game that educational leaders must play and, consequently, will always disagree and never be able to tell educational leaders “what works.” A variety of sources will be used in the course of making this argument including Toulmin’s (1971) distinction between academic disciplines and public policy fields.
The second part of the paper will argue that social science theory and research findings are potentially useful for educational leaders. To be useful, other methods and organizational structures that mediate between the world of the simplified ideal typical worlds of social scientists and the highly complex and messy worlds in which educational leaders must operate, The second part of the paper will detail what these methods and structures would look like.

Author

• Robert B. Donmoyer, University of San Diego