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In this article, the authors explore common and emerging conceptions of what consti-tutes knowledge in educational administration, how knowledge relates to practice, and how individuals in universities and schools can engage in a particular kind of knowledge work—research. The authors suggest that a fully articulated perspective on research in educational administration might characterize research as occupying a multidimen-sional space delineated along three dimensions: why the research is done, who conducts the research, and how the research is done. Productive, interesting, and generative research can be situated anywhere on these dimensions, and five principles can be used to guide various forms of research. The implication is that although currently the field of educational administration encompasses two communities of practice, we should strive toward becoming one community of scholars. The authors discuss how doctoral pro -grams might develop students for this community of scholars and provide a case example from one university.

Purpose: This article examines the history of three management concepts that originated in the business sector and progressed to the K-12 education sector. Framework: We propose a new conceptual model intended to help illuminate how ideas and strategies originally created for business leadership gain influence in the realm of K-12 school leadership. We build upon existing research into the history of educational reform and relevant studies of organizational management fads and fashions. Methods: We focused on three business management concepts that emerged in the past four decades as school leadership fashions: Management by Objectives, Total Quality Management, and Turnaround. We analyzed relevant data by mapping lines of business management influence on school leadership, tabulating fashion-related document appearances in the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) database, and charting the appearance of business-inspired fashions in consecutive editions of prominent educational leadership textbooks. Findings: An existing business management concept, after a time lag, crosses borders from business to education. Various stakeholders serve as fashion setters who help the incipient innovation become an influential, attention-grabbing school management fashion that receives broad but fleeting attention in K-12 education before fading away as a discarded reform. Over the last four decades, this cyclical process has served as an accumulating fashion trend in which existing (and possibly outdated) business management techniques are routinely positioned as promising, innovative K-12 educational solutions. Implications: We conclude by offering thoughts on implications and suggestions for future study, including asking whether “locally sourced” management innovation can and should exist in K-12 school leadership.

Influential texts have long identified principals as being essential to school success. Accordingly, high expectations and pressures have attended the principalship and affected the professionals who occupy it. This exploration asked three interrelated questions: What pressures have urban school principals typically faced, in the past and today? What new pressures have emerged? What effects have these pressures had on principals and the prospect for lasting urban school improvement? To answer these questions, historical and contemporary artifacts were analyzed, as well as data from interviews with 17 principals from one large urban district. Findings indicate that today, even more so than in the past, the urban principalship is characterized by extensive responsibilities and limited control, nested in a context of relentless accountability.