%0 Journal Article
%A Scott, Eacott
%A Colin, Evers
%A Australian Catholic University,
%A The University of New South Wales,
%F iab_repo:1116
%T New Frontiers in Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Theory
%U http://eprints.iab.edu.my/v2/1116/
%X Educational leadership, management and administration as a field of study has a rich history of epistemological debate. From the work of Andrew Halpin and Daniel Griffiths in the 1950s and1960s in what is known as the Theory Movement, through to Thomas Barr Greenfield’s critique of logical empiricism in the 1970s, the emergence of Richard Bates’ and William Fosters’ Critical Theory of educational administration in the 1980s and Colin Evers and Gabriele Lakomski’s naturalistic coherentism from1990 to the present time, debates about ways of knowing, doing and being in the social world have been central to advancing scholarship. However, in the most recent decade, at least since the publication of Evers and Lakomski’s work, and despite the emergence of a more sociologically informed stream of scholarship (Gunter, 2010), questions of the epistemological and ontological preliminaries of research have become somewhat marginalised. This is not to suggest that such discussions are not taking place, but rather that they have been sporadic and piecemeal. This is further embodied in the context of the various traditions of educational administration (e.g. scientific, instrumental, humanistic, critical) rarely, if ever, engaging with one another.    In this Special Issue we provide an elaborated, and coherent, discussion from these fragmented discourses to deliver an innovative and provocative dialogue with contributions from both established and emerging voices in the field. Our coherence comes not from the adoption of a single theoretical lens but rather in our engagement with epistemology, ontology and methodology. It is in the diversity of approaches taken by our contributors that as a group we make a contribution to contemporary thought and analysis in educational leadership, management and administration theory. Importantly, this is not a critique of the field – something that is already frequent enough. Rather, our attention is devoted to sketching possible alternatives for advancing scholarship. The choice of the plural ‘alternatives’ is deliberate, and its use is to evoke the message that there is more than one way to advance knowledge. That being said, the approaches adopted across this collection we believe offer fruitful directions for the field and hopefully will stimulate substantive dialogue, and debate, in the interest of advancing knowledge.