History and the Study of Administration and Leadership in Education

It is the underlying thesis of this Special Issue that the possibilities of history have been seriously and damagingly undervalued in the study of educational administration and leadership. This introduction explains why this matters and outlines a framework within which the papers of the contributors might be set. It then examines the concepts of educational administration and leadership and considers them as fields of practice. In the context of an exploration of how knowledge is produced, it discusses history as a form (or province) of knowledge and considers the contribution it can make to the study of educational leadership and administration. This is followed by a brief review of what was asked of each of the contributors and the paper concludes with some ideas for future work. Notes 1. Dr Ho Ming Ng of the University of Hong Kong brought this quotation to my attention. See Tang Dynasty - Emperor Taizong of the Tang (599-649) [cited 30 November 2005]. Available from http://www.muztagh.com/china-history/tang/emperor_taizong.htm; INTERNET. 2. I will use the term 'educational administration' to cover generically a raft of associated concepts such as leadership, management, policy-making and change in education. 3. Following Paul Hirst ("Liberal Education and the Nature of Knowledge." In Philosophical Analysis and Education, edited by R. Archambault. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965), I distinguish between 'forms' and 'fields' of knowledge'. The former are a limited set of logically discrete ways by which the mind understands the world and are characterised by concepts linked in logical networks of relationship with distinct tests of truth. In a later paper, taking history as a case, he argues as a form of knowledge it has a logical grammar governing its meaningful use. To set this aside is to cease to be engaged in history ("The Logical and Psychological Aspects of Teaching a Subject." In The Concept of Education, edited by R. Peters. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967: 44-61). Fields of knowledge are quite different and will be numerous. They are to be distinguished by their subject matter rather than by a logically distinct form of expression. They are either theoretical (like geography) or practical (like engineering). Most of those working within this canon regard educational administration as a practical field of study. 4. The recent resurrection, after a two-year gap, of this fine journal under the editorship of Bob McMillan and Janice Wallace is surely a cause for celebration. 5. I and my contributors are grateful to those who have acted as helpful reviewers - Tony Bush, Marianne Coleman, Tanya Fitzgerald, Gerald Grace, Peter Gronn, Marlene Morrison, Homing Ng, Petros Pashiardis, Duncan Waite, Ruth Watts, Dick Weindling and Junhua Zhang. 6. All but Ruth Watts are from the field of educational administration, and even Ruth, who is primarily a historian of education, has published in educational administration journals. 7. Baron, George. "Research in Educational Administration in Britain." Educational Administration, 8, no. 1 (1979): 11. 8. Ibid, 2. 9. Glatter, Ron. Management Development for the Education Profession. London: Harrap, 1972, 5. 10. Hodgkinson, Christopher. Educational Leadership. New York: SUNY, 1991, 63. 11. Glatter, Management Development, 5. 12. Hodgkinson, Educational Leadership, 63. 13. Ibid., 51. 14. Ibid., 50. 15. Burns, James. Leadership. New York: Harper and Row, 1978. 16. Hodgkinson, Educational Leadership, 49. 17. Ibid. 18. Hodgkinson, Christopher. Administrative Philosophy. Oxford: Pergamon, 1996, 30. 19. Ribbins, P., and H. Gunter. "Mapping Leadership Studies in Education." Educational Management and Administration 30, no. 4 (2002): 359-87. 20. Greenfield, T., and P. Ribbins. Greenfield on Educational Administration. London: Routledge, 1993, 259. 21. Erickson, Donald. "Foreword." Review of Educational Research, 37, no. 4 (1967). 22. I use 'administration' here because this was what the field was commonly known as in the 1960s. It was not until the 1980s that 'leadership' became dominant. 23. Debates on the nature of 'educational administration' have tended to focus on the relevance of such concepts as 'subject', 'discipline', 'field of knowledge' and 'form of knowledge'. Most contributors opt for the notion of 'field'. However, as Tony Bush has pointed out, whilst some, such as Ray Bolam, believe 'it is a field of study "which draws upon several forms of knowledge and a range of disciplines"', others, including Bush himself, argue that 'educational management is an applied discipline, drawing on longer established disciplines but with its own body of knowledge' ("Introduction: Setting the Scene." In Educational Management: Refining Theory, Policy and Practice, edited by T. Bush, L. Bell, R. Bolam, R. Glatter and P. Ribbins. London: Paul Chapman, 1999: 1-13). On this, although I share with Bush the idea that educational administration is an applied discipline (Ribbins, Peter. "Seven Precepts for Research in Leadership in Education." Management in Education 19, no. 5 (2005: 19-22). I believe, with Bolam, it borrows its key concepts, ways of working, tests of truth, etc. from disciplines that can best be described as forms of knowledge (Gunter, H. and P. Ribbins. "Leadership Studies in Education: Towards a Map of the Field." Educational Management and Administration 30, no. 4 (2002): 387-416). 24. In mitigation, there were at the time some persuasive texts advocating the merits of this connection, notably Baron, G. and W. Taylor, eds. Educational Administration and the Social Sciences. London: Athlone, 1969. Baron did accept that other disciplines might have a contribution to make to the development of the field (Baron, "Research in Educational Administration in Britain," 2). 25. A number of fine histories of the field exist, for example by Meredydd Hughes ("Theory and Practice in Educational Management." In Managing Education: The System and the Institution, edited by M. Hughes, P. Ribbins and H. Thomas. London: Holt, 1985: 3-43) and more recently by Thomas Glass (History of Educational Administration as Seen Through its Textbooks. New York: Barnes and Noble, 2004). 26. This is reported in Best, R., P. Ribbins, and C. Jarvis, with D. Oddy. Education and Care. London: Heinemann, 1983. 27. Ribbins, P. "Context and praxis in the study of school leadership." In The Values of Educational Administration, edited by P. Begley and P. London: Falmer, 1999. 28. For an account and justification of this approach, see Ribbins, Peter. "Biography and the Study of School Leader Careers: Towards a Humanistic Approach." In Leadership in Education, edited by M. Brundrett, N. Burton and R. Smith. London: Paul Chapman, 2003: 55-74. 29. His paper on "Theory about Organisation: A New Perspective and its Implications for Schools" In Administering Education: International Challenge, edited by M. Hughes London: Athlone 1975, is probably the most often quoted in the whole canon. I worked with him on Greenfield, T., and P. Ribbins, Greenfield on Educational Administration: Towards a Humane Science. London: Routledge, 1993. 30. See Ribbins, Peter. "Subject Heads in Secondary Schools." In Staff Development in the Secondary School, edited by C. Day and R. Moore. London: Croom Helm, 1986: 102-31. 31. Ribbins, Peter. "Reproducing the Subject-based Secondary School." In Delivering the National Curriculum, edited by P. Ribbins. London: Longman, 1992: 1-21. 32. Ibid. 33. Barnes, Douglas. Practical Curriculum Study, London: Routledge, 1982, 102. 34. See Goodson, Ivor., ed. Social Histories of the Secondary Curriculum: Subjects for Study. Lewes: Falmer, 1985; Goodson, I., and S. Ball, S. eds. Defining the Curriculum: Histories and Ethnographies of School Subjects. Lewes: Falmer, 1984. 35. Goodson, Social Histories of the Secondary Curriculum, 347. 36. Young, Michael., ed. Knowledge and Control. London: Macmillan, 1971. 37. Bernstein, Basil. "On the Classification and Framing of Educational Knowledge". In Young, Knowledge and Control, 47. 38. Goodson, Ivor. "Subjects for Study." In Goodson, Social Histories of the Secondary Curriculum, 344. Goodson would not apply this criticism to all work within the socio-theoretic tradition. There are, for example, policy sociologists, even socio-constructivists, in the field of educational leadership, who try to take history seriously. Gerald Grace is a case in point (School Leadership: Beyond Education Management - An Essay in Policy Scholarship. London: Falmer, 1995). 39. Several are noted in Helen Gunter's paper. 40. How, and why, we came to be engaged in this is described in Ribbins and Gunter, "Mapping Leadership Studies in Education." 41. Ibid. 42. Gunter, H., and P. Ribbins. "Challenging Orthodoxy in School Leadership Studies." School Leadership and Management 23, no. 2 (2003): 129-149. 43. Ribbins, Peter. "Aesthetics and Art and Their Place in the Theory and Practice of Leadership in Education." In Aesthetic Dimensions of Educational Administration and Leadership, edited by E. Samier and R. Bates. London: Routledge, in press

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