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Journal of Educational Administration and History

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The state of the field of educational administration

Tanya Fitzgerald a;Helen M. Gunter b
a
School of Education, University of Manchester, UK b School of Education, Unitec Institute of
Technology, Auckland, New Zealand

To cite this Article Fitzgerald, Tanya andGunter, Helen M.(2008) 'The state of the field of educational administration',
Journal of Educational Administration and History, 40: 2, 81 — 83
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/00220620802210830
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00220620802210830

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 Journal of Educational Administration and History
Vol. 40, No. 2, August 2008, 81–83

EDITORIAL
The state of the field of educational administration

As we noted in the editorial in Volume 40, Number 1, the Journal of Educational Adminis-
Journal
10.1080/00220620802210830
CJEH_A_321250.sgm
0022-0620
Taylor
2008
20Editorial
40
tfitzgerald@unitec.ac.nz
TanyaFitzgerald
00000August
and
&ofFrancis
Educational
(print)/1478-7431
Francis
2008 Administration
(online) and History

tration and History (JEAH) is in its 40th year. This is therefore an opportunity to reflect not
only on the journal and its contribution to the field, but the state of the field itself. We are
inviting readers and authors to reflect on the theoretical and methodological development of
the field. The first issue of this year was devoted to highlighting the nature of the field and
how JEAH, as a journal, has contributed to the knowledge base.
In this collection of papers, attention is focused on the identification and critique of key
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concepts and issues that include headteacher’s critique of and resistance to policy, the inter-
sectionality of gender, leadership and ethnicity, ongoing issues in teacher performance
management, the orthodoxies of school effectiveness research, a critical analysis of texts
related to the field, and the modernisation agenda. This edition concludes with an analysis
of the preceding papers and their contribution to debates in and the development of the field
of educational administration.
The focus that we have elected, ‘The state of the field of educational administration’, is
not accidental. The genesis of this collection of papers began with a conversation amongst
a group of scholars that critical debates should continue to surface in journals such as JEAH.
Essentially we were troubled that the term ‘critical’ was, at times, juxtaposed with the term
‘oppositional’ and this was not our collective reading of what being critical, engaging in
critical dialogue and what our contribution to critical scholarship entailed. We saw an inter-
connection between critical reading, critical writing and critical thinking that contributed to
current debates and scholarship in the field. By inference, this does not involve a rehearsal
of debates but the adoption of a stance that surfaced critical questions concerning the nature
and shape of knowledge, how this knowledge was being produced and by whom and the
underpinning construction of this knowledge for the field. What remains problematic is that
knowledge production is frequently linked with the agenda of the State as we have
commented on previously.1 As we highlighted in the editorial that appeared in the first
edition of Journal of Educational Administration and History in 2008,2 it is essential that
critical debates concerning knowledge production continue to occur and that the insistent
presence of a neo-liberal reform agenda continues to be critically evaluated, not the least
because of its impact on the field and field development.
In order to publicly debate these agendas and surface our disquiet concerning the state
of the field, this group of scholars collectively engaged in a connected symposium at the
September 2007 British Educational Leadership Management and Administration
(BELMAS) conference in Reading. The underpinning concern of the architects of this
1
See here H.M. Gunter and T. Fitzgerald, ‘Educational Administration and History: Debating the
Agenda’, Journal of Educational Administration and History 40 (2008): 5–20; H.M. Gunter and
T. Fitzgerald, ‘The Future of Leadership Research?’, School Leadership & Management 28 (2008):
263–280.
2
Gunter and Fitzgerald, ‘Educational Administration and History’.

ISSN 0022-0620 print/ISSN 1478-7431 online

© 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/00220620802210830
http://www.informaworld.com
 82 Editorial

symposium was that the field of educational administration appeared to be at a point of theo-
retical disconnection and, accordingly, we shaped our presentations around our concerns.
Each of the papers traversed some of the current debates and highlighted the extent to which
knowledge production remains connected with a neo-liberal State. In order to draw together
the theoretical and methodological threads of these papers, Peter Gronn acted as discussant
and reflected on the extent to which the papers highlighted and extended the issues.
Based on feedback and discussions at BELAMS as well as comments from referees,
these papers have been revised. The editorial and concluding paper from Peter Gronn can
be read as the ‘Introduction’ and ‘Conclusion’ to this collection of papers and pinpoint the
issues that remain critically present.

Documenting debates
As we have indicated, this edition highlights a number of contemporary policy and scholar-
ship issues that underpin the field of educational administration. In setting forth the agenda
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for the journal in Volume 20, Number 1, we did indicate that our challenge as editors was
to ensure that a plurality of voices was encouraged and that wider debate about purposes
and practices in the field was imperative. The authors featured in this edition have not only
responded to this challenge but have offered their own nuanced understandings of these
contemporary issues. What is refreshing, we believe, is that the authors have not simply
rehearsed debates but offered their own critical stance that challenges the field itself. How
can the field be renewed and re-invigorated with robust debate?
The first contribution by Pat Thomson interrogates the extent to which headteachers deal
with escalating policy demands and considers how their agency fosters a level of resistance.
In a direct theoretical and empirical challenge to the field, the author challenges headteachers
(as professionals) and academics (as scholars) to consider how collective action might ‘speak
back’ to policy regimes that are deeply inequitable. Importantly, Thomson raises questions
concerning headteachers’ voices and the potential for their critical and collective voice to
take up multiple subject positions and re-frame the research agenda. Importantly, there is a
call from the author for the field to consider ways in which headteachers and headteacher
associations might contribute to knowledge production in the field that can offer a rich
perspective.
In similar ways, Jane Wilkinson, in the second paper, extends the call for multiple voices
and highlights the diversity of possibilities for the field if it is ‘opened-up’ to the inclusion
of critical, Black, feminist and Indigenous perspectives. Notably, Wilkinson takes seriously
recent calls for research and theorising to include in more explicit ways notions of diversity
and leadership in ways that are conceptually rich, socially just, educationally transforma-
tive, as well as providing critically reflexive possibilities. As part of her own reflexive turn,
the author examines the interplay of her own biography and scholarship in the field and
proposes that serious questions concerning power and knowledge production should be
more insistently raised. Wilkinson concludes by suggesting that active intervention is
required if genuinely productive, democratic and socially inclusive ways of leading are to
be realised and actioned.
In her analysis of teacher performance management, Tanya Fitzgerald highlights ways
in which the continuing lack of trust in teachers has underpinned the development and imple-
mentation of policy and associated practices. Performance management, as a policy solution
to the ‘problem’ of teachers, is, according to the author, predicated on the flawed assumption
that the intervention of the State and its agencies is required to ensure that teachers’ work
is aligned with organisational objectives. Accordingly, the shift in teacher accountability
 Journal of Educational Administration and History 83

from the profession to the State has, in effect, served to de-professionalise teaching and
teachers’ work.
The historical construct and emergence of school effectiveness is examined by Terry
Wrigley. Arguing that the concept of improvement is intrinsically ideological, the author
argues that the significant and explicit paradigm change that occurred in the early 1990s
resulted in a managerialist and reductionist approach to improving schools that exacerbated
poverty and inequities rather than alleviated, or mediated, its effects. One of the key features
of Wrigley’s paper is that he overviews the emergence in England of school improvement
and school effectiveness studies and therefore reminds readers of the long-term conse-
quences of these paradigms.
Richard Bates and Scott Eacott offer a challenge to those working in the field of higher
education. That is, they challenge field members to consider the texts that are in use, those
that are discarded and the extent to which these texts can be used to formulate the knowledge
that is taught, reinforced, received and, at times, regurgitated. Drawing on evidence from
the Australian context, the authors question the ‘local’, ‘global’ and ‘international’ and via
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their highly nuanced study of educational administration programmes in Australia, conclude

that there is a focus on the academic (as opposed to the technical and operational) but that
there is a steady albeit worrying decline in numbers of Australian studies and authors being
used. The authors present a challenge to field members, particularly those involved in
academic programmes in institutions of higher education. That is, how do the texts used
reflect or deflect current and contemporary debates? In what ways might the field be
complicit, intended or otherwise, in its own demise by decisions made as to which texts are
‘worthy’ and which ones are to be discarded? How might the field be ‘read’ if texts are used
as evidence of what ‘counts’?
The penultimate contribution by Helen Gunter provides a theoretical backdrop for this
issue of the journal as well as the articles that appear in this edition. The author’s examination
of modernisation and Barber’s policy implementation strategies is a refreshing account of
history-making and history-writing as a deeply complex and contested process. Arguably too,
the ‘deliverology’ and its consequences that Gunter highlights have similarly surfaced in the
work of Thomson, Fitzgerald, and Wrigley (in this issue). In her call for ongoing dialogue
about the nature of the field and what scholarship is in practice, Gunter highlights the central
concerns that led to the BELMAS seminar and this collection of papers. The passionate plea
for field members to engage in debate and dialogue and position themselves as central to
the development of the field is a challenge that requires response.
Drawing this all together, Peter Gronn has used the metaphorical ‘turn’ of Hamlet and
the state of Denmark to not only reflect and comment on the papers in this edition but also
to contribute his own critical ideas to how the field, the ‘kingdom’, has developed and the
challenges it continues to face. This is a paper that can well preface as well as summarise
the contributions and we would like to suggest can and should act as a catalyst for continu-
ing these critical debates.

Tanya Fitzgerald
School of Education, University of Manchester, UK
Helen M. Gunter
School of Education, Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand