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Overcoming Analytical Dualism

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Beyond Leadership

Part of the book series: Educational Leadership Theory ((ELT))

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Abstract

Although I would argue that the logic of academic work—argument and refutation—is not orthodoxy in educational administration scholarship (a matter I return to in the following chapter), there is a particular by-product of this mutation of logic. With a preference for parallel monologues, educational administration research frequently reproduces analytical dualisms in its knowledge claims. Building arguments on simplistic representations of the social world, with minimal if any attention to alternatives, leads to binary thinking which does little to advance knowledge. In this chapter, I pick up on common (even if implicit) analytical dualism mobilized in educational administration research (structure/agency, universalism/particularism, and individualism/holism) and demonstrate how the key terms of the relational program (auctor, organizing activity, and spatio-temporal conditions) overcome them. Significantly, I stress that these terms overcome the dualisms rather than simply replace them with a novel vocabulary.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

    Scott Eacott

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  1. Scott Eacott
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Correspondence to Scott Eacott .

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Eacott, S. (2018). Overcoming Analytical Dualism. In: Beyond Leadership. Educational Leadership Theory. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6568-2_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6568-2_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-6567-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-6568-2

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