Toward an Improved Understanding of the Organizational Nature of Schools

Abstract

An accurate conceptualization of the nature of schools is a necessary condition for developing useful knowledge in the field of educational administration. The present approach to seeking knowledge about schools, however, places an uncritical reliance on images and models of formal organizations that deflects attention away from the direct study of schools as discrete social phenomena. To counter this, the development of independent models of schools is argued for. This argument builds on an approach to knowledge originally presented by Kenneth Boulding that defines valuable middle ground between the polarized positions advocated in the recent epistemological debate in educational administration.