Comparative Educational Administration: Developing a Cross-Cultural Conceptual Framework

Abstract

Although educational administration has experienced impressive development over the past three decades, the fact that a robust comparative branch of the field has failed to emerge is equally conspicuous. This article acknowledges and highlights the need for comparative educational administration and argues that the development of conceptual frameworks is imperative in building a comparative dimension. A conceptual framework is described and justified based on a cultural and cross-cultural approach focusing on the school level as the baseline unit for analysis. Specifically, the proposed framework is architectured around the interrelationship between the core concepts of culture, organizational structures, leadership and management processes, curriculum, and teaching and learning. Finally, implicatitons of the model are discussed, including the need for the framework to be operationalized by the development of appropriate research instruments.

Bridging the research‐practice gap: barriers and facilitators to research use among school principals from England and Israel

“…Furthermore, studying and understanding phenomena in the context of foreign systems can often provide greater insights into our own ways of working (Dimmock and Walker, 1998). 'The identification of similarities and differences between systems is important in that it can help clarify problems of reform and change by generating informed cross-cultural fertilization of ideas and experiences'.…”

School principal preparation in Europe

“…Our research techniques, discussed in the article's second section, were exploratory because conceptual frameworks for cross-cultural studies in education leadership are only in their infancy (Dimmock and Walker, 1998;Richmon and Allison, 2003) and because comparative research on which we might model our…”

The principalship in developing countries: context, characteristics and reality

“…However, the structure of educational systems differs widely across countries, and education systems are structured in very different ways (Dimmock & Walker, 1998;Lassibille & Gomez, 2000). The dissimilarities stem, at least in part, from cultural, national and sociological contexts underpinning education in any nation.…”

“…The dissimilarities stem, at least in part, from cultural, national and sociological contexts underpinning education in any nation. In that sense, cultural contexts impact on principals' sets of attitudes, values and norms for behaviour which may be very different from those used by school leaders in other contexts (Heck, 1996;Dimmock & Walker, 1998).…”