No abstract

Dr Trevor Maddock works at the Department of Education at the University of Adelaide. In this paper he considers the debate between the critical theorists as represented by Richard Bates and materialist pragmatists as presented by Gabriele Lakomski as a contemporary manifestation of one dimension of the ongoing dispute over the appropriate depiction of the character of administration in education. In this context, the discussion focuses in particular upon the merits of some of the central ideas of Habermasian critical theory as potential linchpins for an understanding of the study and practice of educational administration.

The Problem of AdministrationThe predominant contemporary conception of an administrator is of someone who gives directions. Administration, on this view, is to do with control, whether it is of people, of events, or of objects, even when this control is conceived of as rational control. With few exceptions, it is this view of administration that predominates in contemporary educational thought, and the current concern with educational administration as a science is hardly meaningful without it. It is the objectivity of science that is important if rational control is to be established, but this objectivity presents a problem, casting doubt on the notion that educational administration can be adequately conceived of as a disinterested, objective and rule-governed activity.Current attempts to present the general activities of administrators of education as scientific have been conditioned historically by the apparent failure of traditional empiricist philosophy to provide justification for particular actions and, so, for the scientific management of administrative direction. Because administration is a kind of practice or action, a theory of administrative direction must allow administrators to determine the facts of the matter while remaining objective, but the traditional empiricist view of science has difficulty in providing such a conception. For the advocates of scientific administration, the problem is to find a way of justifying their view in light of recent criticisms of traditional empiricism.This article deals with materialist pragmatism, an influential recent attempt to resolve this problem. Numerous publications by its advocates, Evers, Lakomski and Walker, have appeared in the educational administration literature for well over a decade. Some representative examples are[1-8] and well-known figures in the field have recommended them. For example, Willower has described works by Lakomski and by Evers as "gems". In a recent bookreview, he wrote that two papers by Evers and Lakomski "alone make this booklet a worthwhile acquisition" and he suggested that these writings are "a welcome addition to the effort to furnish a non-positivist, non-subjectivist, and non-Marxist alternative in educational administration" [9]. There is further

This article responds to a recent article by Burbules (1989) in which he argued that the relevance of philosophy is subjectively determinable by educational practitioners. The purpose of this article is to identify crucial inadequacies in Burbules's account and to sketch an alternative view of the relevance of philosophy which goes some way to overcoming these difficulties. It argues that the role of philosophy lies in its contribution to the professional development of administrators and briefly sketches some specific details of the contribution of philosophy to professional development in educational administration.

No abstract