Session Information
26 SES 03 A, Educational Leadership in Theory and Pratice
Paper session
Contribution
"There can be no claim to support a knowledge base for a profession without a bona fide theoretical framework to define and support the derivative professional practice" (English, 2003, p. 3). This opening statement of Fenwick W. English, in his work exploring the post-modern challenge to the theory and practice of educational administration, leads one to think about the theory and practice gap in the field of educational leadership and management. As the quality of school leadership is believed to have a significant impact on school and student outcomes, there is a growing interest in the field of educational management, administration and leadership (EMAL) from both academicians and practitioners (Bush, 2007). However, as Hoy and Miskel (1996) stated, theories used to describe organizations are not reality itself. Actual organizations are much more complex than these representations and they distort reality as a consequence. (as cited in Donmoyer, 1999, pp. 25- 40).
Van de Ven& Johnson (2006) explicate the gap between theory and practice in any field by 3 approaches and further propose a method of "engaged scholarship", a mode of inquiry that converts the information provided by both scholars and practitioners into actions that address problems of what to do in a given domain.
The gap between theory and practice in the field of educational leadership and management is also highly evident in the Turkish context, which brings forward the epistemological and practical issues related with the profession. It is always a point of debate in different contexts amongst the school practitioners as well as the scholars in the field. Not a single day passes without observing and hearing people from both groups complain about this issue, and further criticizing the opposite camp. On the other hand, a meaningful number of practitioners pay effort to pursue academic career in the field by attending post-graduate programmes. Moreover, scholars complain about the insufficient effort to construct "genuine theories" that would cure the problems of the local context. The model by Van de Ven & Johnson (2006) seems highly relevant to explain this phenomena.
Therefore, the aim of this qualitative study is to explore the reasons behind this evident gap between theory and practice in the field of educational leadership and management in Turkey as well as the suggestions for solutions from the views of the school practitioners with and without post-graduate degrees in the field in Turkey. This study serves as an inititative to build a conceptual framework for the local contextç The future steps will be to investigate the opinions of the scholars and then to gather more data with greater representative populations in Turkey. Therefore, a kind of conceptual transition to bridge the gap between theory and practice in the field of educational leadership and management could be proposed.
The main research question serving the purpose of the study is as follows:
- What are the reasons and solutions for the gap between theory and practice in the field of educational leadership and management in Turkey according to practitioners?
The study subsequently aims to address the following questions:
- How do school practitioners view the relationship between theory and practice in the field?
- What problems/issues do they encounter in this respect?
- What are the similarities and differences between the views of the practitioners with and without post-graduate degrees in the field?
- What is necessary to bridge the gap between theory and practice according to the practitioners?
- What are the expectations of the practitioners from the academia in this respect?
- To what extent are the findings in Turkish context relevant to the existing international literature?
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bush, T. (2007). Educational leadership and management: theory, policy and practice. South African Journal of Education, 27(3), 391-406. Donmoyer, R. (1999). The continuing quest for a knowledge base: 1976-1998. In J. Murphy& K.S. Louis (Eds.), Handbook of research in educational administration (pp. 25-43). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. English, F. W. (2003). The postmodern challenge to the theory and practice of educational administration. Illinois: Charles C Thomas Publisher. Van de Ven, A. H., & Johnson, P. E. 2006. Knowledge for theory and practice. Academy of Management Review, 31, 802– 821.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.