L'administration de l'éducation: Une perspective historique

Summary: Educational Administration: A Historical Perspective

SUMMARY EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE To improve the teaching and practice of educational administration, it is our view that a knowledge base is required. For this reason, we start by explaining how this field of study differs from other existing disciplines and how the existence of this knowledge base might be asserted or denied. After reviewing the literature and research projects carried out over the years, we have found sufficient knowledge specific to the administration of education to confirm that this field of study does indeed have a knowledge base, even if it is rather diversified . This is the ground covered in the first chapter. The second chapter presents key moments in the evolution and development of educational administration in the United States, Canada and Quebec. This field of study, which was initially rather philosophical at its inception at the beginning of the century, was later influenced by ideas of 396 L’administration de l’éducation scientific management that were current at the time in industry. The discipline evolved thanks to professional organisations, the financial efforts of the Kellogg Foundation and publications that have often served as reference points for the profession. In English Canada, development of educational administration began in the 1950s in Alberta, again thanks to the Kellogg Foundation. In Quebec, by contrast, the timid beginnings of the implementation of this field of study did not appear until the 1960s in two French-speaking universities (Université Laval and Université de Montréal), with McGill University following a few years later. The third chapter reviews the various ways in which educational administration has been understood throughout its evolution. Scientific business management favoured an approach based on efficiency. This was gradually replaced by a human relations approach, which in turn gave way to other approaches such as bureaucracy, a competence -based approach, a systems approach and decision-making. Attempts to define the concepts underlying the field of educational administration have been more frequent in Quebec than elsewhere in Canada. The purpose of the fourth chapter is to review both the various approaches to training in educational administration as they have been taught in the United States and Canada, and models for development of school managers. Early approaches with their emphasis on efficiency were followed by more theoretical conceptions influenced by the social sciences. Since the 1980s, discussions have focused on an approach to manager training that would provide connections between theory and practice. In English Canada, the approach to school manager training has been confined to reproducing the approach prevailing in the United States. The fifth chapter deals with the practical translation of theoretical conceptions of training in educational administration. It focuses on the contents of courses and study programmes that have existed at various times in educational administration and on current offerings . Change has clearly been infrequent over the years, and the content of American, Canadian and Quebec programmes has generally, with few exceptions, been similar in the various universities offering a study programme in this area. In Quebec, fairly significant changes have occurred over the past few years as the Quebec Ministry of Education, since 2000, has made management training a requirement for new school principals. Summary 397 The sixth chapter addresses the historical evolution of practices in teaching educational administration. The contribution of professors to the teaching of this discipline is emphasised. The certification of American managers is explained, and processes for recruiting and selecting students in educational administration are described. This is followed by a description of the situation experienced by American professors of educational administration and a discussion of their pedagogical methods. The same topics are covered in English Canada and Quebec. Certification of school managers varies greatly from one state or province to another. Recruitment and selection of students have been rather weak in both countries and pedagogical methods have been criticised for being inappropriate and lacking in realism. The seventh chapter presents the historical evolution of research in educational administration. In the United States as in Canada, research has generally been carried out by professors and Ph.D. students who applied a rationalist and positivist approach, based on structuro-functionalist studies, until the advent of the phenomenological approach in the 1980s. Throughout its evolution, research in educational administration has been the object of sometimes virulent criticism focusing on its statistical naiveté and on the lack of theories supporting the issues under study. The next chapter deals with the strengths and...