Education leadership and management of knowing: The aesthetics of coherentism

This paper examines the coherentist project for educational administration of professors Colin Evers and Gabriele Lakomski from a critical and pragmatic perspective. It is argued that Evers and Lakomski really have three projects going: the first project seeks to ground coherence as a solution to th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of educational administration 2001-01, Vol.39 (6), p.573
Main Author: Maxcy, Spencer J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aesthetics
Consortia
Core curriculum
Councils
Data collection
Education
Educational administration
Educational leadership
Educational Testing
Empiricism
Ethics
Grounded theory
Instructional Leadership
Leadership
Management theory
Philosophy of science
Positivism
Pragmatism
School administration
Social research
State Schools
Teaching
Theory
Values
World War II
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Summary:This paper examines the coherentist project for educational administration of professors Colin Evers and Gabriele Lakomski from a critical and pragmatic perspective. It is argued that Evers and Lakomski really have three projects going: the first project seeks to ground coherence as a solution to the problems of educational administration research upon the history of educational administration inquiry philosophies since the Second World War. The second project attempts to justify the worth of coherency as a research philosophy upon purely logical grounds. A third, and most recent, (practical) project draws upon evidence from leadership practice to prove coherentism's usefulness for school administration. The paper concludes that, rather than supporting their post-positivist philosophic underpinnings, Evers and Lakomski's third project finds them moving toward a raw pragmatism. It also concludes that coherentism is best redescribed from a pragmatic aesthetic perspective, a point of view that provides a potentially more meaningful way of understanding the relationship of coherentist theorizing and leadership action in contemporary schooling.
ISSN:0957-8234
1758-7395