Epistemology and Educational Administration

Synonyms

Theory of knowledge and educational administration

Introduction

This entry explores in detail the ways in which epistemology shapes both the structure and the content of some of the major theories of educational administration. It does this by examining the epistemological assumptions that lie behind the kind of methodologies required to justify such theories or those epistemologies that query, on epistemological grounds, the relevance of a justificationist framework. Theories to be examined include traditional science approaches that assumed logical empiricism, traditional critical theory approaches that adopted transcendental forms of justification, humanistic approaches that saw values as central, perspectival Kuhnian approaches that advocated subjectivism, postmodern views based on a challenge to the notion of justification, and those that saw coherence as a model of justification. There are many more possible examples, but these well-known theories provide useful...