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The past, present and future of educational administration

Article  in  Journal of Educational Administration and History · November 2017

DOI: 10.1080/00220620.2017.1401985

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Jane Wilkinson Jeffrey S. Brooks

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 Journal of Educational Administration and History

ISSN: 0022-0620 (Print) 1478-7431 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjeh20

The past, present and future of educational

administration

Jane Wilkinson & Jeffrey S. Brooks

To cite this article: Jane Wilkinson & Jeffrey S. Brooks (2018) The past, present and future of
educational administration, Journal of Educational Administration and History, 50:1, 1-2, DOI:
10.1080/00220620.2017.1401985

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00220620.2017.1401985

Published online: 10 Nov 2017.

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JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION AND HISTORY, 2018
VOL. 50, NO. 1, 1–2
https://doi.org/10.1080/00220620.2017.1401985

EDITORIAL

The past, present and future of educational administration

This issue of the Journal of Educational Administration and History marks our first as
Co-Editors. We are excited by the opportunity to serve the field in this capacity and look
forward to supporting innovative and insightful scholarship in what we view as a vibrant
and important space that has made key contributions to educational leadership research
and practice. We have seen a distinct and critical change in JEAH under the editorship of Pro-
fessors Helen Gunter and Tanya Fitzgerald. During their tenure, JEAH has shifted from a
journal where educational administration and history were reported on separately to one
that brings the two domains of practice together. The editors have broadened and redefined
educational administration as not only governance and government, but policy, leadership
and management. There is a recognition in the journal that history is a living discipline
that reports on contemporary issues – history in the making – not only on events in the past.
JEAH is rare in being one of the few educational leadership journals that has cultivated a
strong critical and social justice leadership focus as well as a focus on multidisciplinary
methods and methodologies. As such, it has become a journal in which scholars in these tra-
ditions (and still others) can publish. JEAH has built up a strong reputation for combining
scholarly excellence with this niche lens. As scholars in the critical, social justice paradigm,
who draw on a range of methodologies from anthropology, critical feminism, practice
theory, sociology and critical policy, we see our role as editors as complementing the trajectory
of the journal that Professor Helen Gunter and Professor Tanya Fitzgerald have built.
However, we also seek to extend the journal into new research areas, encourage the exploration
of under-represented geographic locations and provide a forum for cutting edge and classic
perspectives and debates that shape the past, present and future of educational administration.
As we discussed potential foci for this issue, we considered several issues that influence con-
temporary leadership discourses – among these was the campaign and subsequent election of
the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump. It occurs to us that there are two basic
perspectives to adopt in relation to the Trump Presidency. On the one hand, it is easy to make
the argument that this election is a paradigm-busting moment that forever shifts the discourse
on leadership. Gone is the social justice and care-based orientation developed over the past
several decades, and in its stead we now have a leadership built on propaganda rather than
evidence, on hatred rather than compassion, and on economic elitism rather than a distri-
bution of goods, services and opportunity. This perspective suggests that might makes right,
and that leaders are justified by their positional power and individual gravitas. They are not
to be questioned or held accountable by subordinates. The second perspective on Trump’s lea-
dership is that it is more evolution than revolution – it is the next (and perhaps obvious) step in
a long arc of social injustice, White supremacy and economic inequity in a country better
characterised as a Plutocracy than a Democracy, no matter popular rhetoric to the contrary.
Authors in this special issue seek to reconcile these two perspectives, and instead of treating
them as conclusions, they tend to use them as points of departure. In Making America’s Schools
Great Now: Reclaiming Democracy and Education Leadership Under Trump Sonya Horsford
reconsiders leadership by examining active and passive forms of resistance from contemporary
and historical perspectives. Susan Faircloth, in Leadership in the Era of the Trump Presidency:
Implications for the Education of American Indian Children and Youth, looks specifically at the

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

 2 EDITORIAL

existential and actual consequences of a leader with outright disdain for non-White Ameri-
cans. Steve Courtney wonders about what a Trump presidency augurs for the solvency and
integrity of government school systems in Privatising educational leadership through technol-
ogy in the Trumpian era. In Enacting President Trump’s Leadership Contract with Educators:
Toward a Communal Leadership Perspective Chen Schecter explores the tension between the
leader as individual and the leader as part of a collective. Eugenie Samier rounds off the issue
by considering the way that a Trump presidency frames the spirit of contemporary leadership
in Education in a Troubled Era of Disenchantment: Emergence of a New Zeitgeist.
Collectively considered, these articles represent high-quality research that seeks to make
sense of a contemporary phenomenon, and to put that phenomenon into historical perspective
as a way to make sense of future policy and practice. In many ways, they embody the diversity
of thought, method and geography that is a hallmark of the Journal of Educational Adminis-
tration and History. They help scholars, practitioners and policy-makers make sense of an
event that has punctuated the (perhaps false) equilibrium that seemed to be moving concep-
tualizations of leadership closer to a social justice orientation.

Jane Wilkinson
Monash University – Education, Melbourne Australia
jane.wilkinson@monash.edu

Jeffrey S. Brooks
Monash University, Clayton, Australia

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