Philosophy of Educational Administration: An Intellectual History

• In Event: 58.083 - Roundtable Session 26
  In Roundtable Session: 58.083-4 - Reconstructing Educational Practices and Institutions

Abstract

While the scholarly field of educational administration is heterogeneous and contested, its dominant scholarly branch continues to be grounded in the language of scientism and big theory. This study draws from John Dewey’s and George Herbert’s pragmatism and from Helen Gunter theorizing of intellectual history to culturally and philosophically ground the dominant scholarly branch of educational administration by systematically and comprehensively analyzing its philosophical claims and the corresponding philosophical debate in the wider field. Findings from this study confirm the dominant field’s structural, teleological, anti-democratic, anti-normative, non-experimental, non-reconstructive, and ideological tendencies. This study also shows that the philosophy of the dominant field could time and again be linked to conservative cultural tendencies, and especially in times of cultural unrest.

Author

• Ali H. Hachem, Stephen F. Austin State University