Purpose: The authors review a volume that emerged from a 2-year participatory effort to look at new research directions in educational administration. The review is presented as a conversation between two researchers--an old-timer (Karen Seashore Louis) and a relative newcomer (Meredith Honig)--to probe for differences and convergence in…

Philip Woods and Carl Bagley's "School Choice and Competition" (Routledge 1998) evaluates the viability of allowing parents to choose the school their children attend within a decentralized, market environment. Despite methodological shortcomings, the authors argue effectively for schools' resistance to "competitive" social targeting and/or…

Cryss Brunner's edited volume is a well-organized review of gender issues in school administration. It offers clues about administrative roles and concepts integral to the field and furthers understanding of women's administrative experiences. The studies lay an excellent foundation for further empirical investigations into causes of women's…

Both the 1988 and 1999 editions of "Handbook of Research on Educational Administration" suggest that continuing dialogue about educational administration scholarship is warranted as conditions in schooling and society change. Handbook and "EAQ" editors asked several expert researchers to write articles about one or more chapters. (MLH)

Explains fundamental shifts dominating education's transition at technical, managerial, and institutional levels. Since the first edition of the "Handbook of Research on Educational Administration," school administration has been reconfigured and recultured. Social justice, democratic community, and school improvement comprise major integrative…

Critiquing "The Handbook of Research on Educational Administration (1999), a researcher and four graduate students respond individually to chapters on scholarship, knowledge-base development, and school-leadership history. Comments on the field's "big tent politics," communities of scholars, equity and racial issues, relevance, and values…

In this "Handbook" chapter on internationalization of educational administration, authors inappropriately equate international exchanges, pluralism in theory and research, and global patterns of educational activity with internationalization. Authors neglect intercultural thinking, overlook the rich research literature, inadequately discuss…

Critiquing two "Handbook" chapters on gender and race, this article observes that equity concerns have given way to concerns with quality and excellence. Both chapters explore reasons behind lack of equity (for poor students of color and women in school administration) and criticize "liberal" solutions to social problems. (Contains 55 references.)…

Responding to the "Handbook" chapter on educational leadership programs, this article underscores several topics noted by Professor Martha McCarthy that need attention. These include open-admissions policies; faculty dynamics (understaffed programs, changing demographics, and the graying professorate); and universities' persistent reluctance to…

Three "Handbook" chapters on school leadership responsibilities conclude that educational administration is a field where people can make a difference. Research provides firm indications of what administrators should or should not do. Constructivist teaching, teacher development, and school improvement are part of the larger challenge of…

The "Handbook" chapter on teaching describes market-oriented and constructivist reforms that are contradictory. The former constructs work as scripts for production; the latter constructs work as scaffolds for expression. Teaching must resist external scripting and assume responsibility for its own agency. Teachers' allegiance is to voters, not…

Four contiguous chapters in the new "Handbook of Research on Educational Administration" examine evolving views of school organizations. Schools are conceived as facing certain enduring dilemmas or viewed as cultures, polities, or communities. Authors describe rumblings (debates, rhetoric, and prescriptions) in the cracks of conventional schooling…

The new "Handbook" assumes that society is changing rapidly and educational administration must change with it. This article critiques chapters on four concepts: ideology, the new consumerism, social capital, and the new institutionalism. Consumerism is pure 19th-century liberalism/individualism; social capital theory and institutionalism stress…

Focuses on the paradigm talk on display in two "Handbook" chapters on next-generation methods for studying educational administration and new research paradigms for improving schooling. Discusses how talk about paradigms shapes our thinking and affects what we say about research methods on one hand and substantive issues on the other. (Contains 59…

Critiques "Handbook" chapters on achieving educational accountability and managing resources for school improvement. Accountability and finance research have shifted focus from resource allocation to organizational results. Principal-agent, expectancy, and risk theories provide lenses for viewing accountability. Research on how these elements…