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Most comparative education research has included investigation of dimensions of educational reform but not all research in the field has focused concertedly on reform in relation to the realities in practice. In the latter half of the 20th century comparativists underscored the need to investigate implementation issues, not just reform policies, as had often been the case in earlier comparative research, since time had shown that political processes did not always equate with educational outcomes. Reforms can be thwarted altogether, significantly modified or mediated in practice, embraced with qualification, or differentially implemented across regions or levels within a given country. Reform implementation might produce intended and unintended change (for better or for worse); or no change at all might be the outcome; or change might occur ahead of reform. Some of the most fascinating findings in comparative research are dichotomous considerations of change such as policy versus practice, ideal versus real, de facto change versus de jure change, intended and unintended outcomes of reform, grass-roots (bottom–up) versus centralized (top–down) reforms, and de facto change legitimized-after-the-fact through reform or new policy.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the key individuals, associations and significant events contributing to the establishment and first 50 years of successful publication of the Journal of Educational Administration.

This paper is historical in design. Information relevant to its 50 years of publication has been obtained from the JEA's 172 Editorials and from minutes of Editorial Advisory Board and Management Committee meetings, supplemented by personal editorial memoranda.

Recognised as one of the leading generalist international journals in its field, the Journal of Educational Administration has until recently been edited in Australia. The most eminent international scholars in the field have published in the JEA throughout its lifetime. Esteemed scholars have also occupied positions on its Editorial Board. The JEA has enjoyed close and supportive associations with several prominent professional organisations including UCEA and CCEA.

This paper does not include detailed information about the content of the almost 1,000 articles published throughout its history. This is the subject of other specific research undertakings.

The JEA was the first generalist international journal in the field of educational administration. Its first volume appeared in 1963. It has reached the age of 50 years and hence this paper's report of such may provide a basis for similar studies of other journals as they achieve significant milestones.

This chapter will examine the interplay among actors who took part in the process of consensus building towards a post-2015 education agenda via different channels of global governance, including both formal and informal channels.

Most of the forums and entities established as part of the global governance structure are composed of representatives from UN or UNESCO member states, civil society organizations (CSOs) and UN agencies. However, each of these categories has diverse constituent groups; representing these groups is not as straightforward a task as the governance structure seems to assume. Therefore, based on interviews and qualitative text analysis, this chapter will introduce major groups of actors and their major issues of concern, decision-making structure, mode of communication and relationship with other actors. Then, based on an understanding of the characteristics of the various channels and actors, it will present the structural issues that arose during the analysis of post-2015 discourse and the educational issues that emerged as the shared concerns of the ‘education community’. While most of the analysis to untangle the nature of discourse relies on qualitative analysis of texts and interviews, the end of this chapter will also demonstrate the trends of discourse in quantitative terms.

What was the post-2015 discourse for the so-called education community, which in itself has an ambiguous and virtual existence? The keywords post-2015 and post-EFA provide us with an opportunity to untangle how shared norms and codes of conduct were shaped at the global scale.

The issue of training and appointment of school administrators has consumed substantial attention from educational scholars for several decades. The literature has witnessed a growing amount of research effort in investigating and identifying the effective ways of training and appointing school principals. However, there are also political, social and cultural aspects to this endeavour, which potentially influences the practices pertaining to training and appointment of school principals. This chapter represents scholarly efforts to discuss issues on the training and appointment of school administrators in Turkey within its historical and political background. Thus, first, it focuses on the historical journey of the field of educational administration in Turkey. This journey has been categorised under three phases: The Ottoman Era, Early Years of Turkish Republic and the 1950s Onwards. Second, this chapter discusses school principalship in Turkey with a specific focus on political and legal dimensions. Finally, the chapter ends with an overall evaluation of the practices and policies pertaining to school administration curriculum in Turkey.

This chapter examines the educational barriers that homeless youth face in one large urban area. The text reviews the McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act and discusses how California has attempted to follow the federal mandates, and the implications for Los Angeles. The chapter utilizes interviews with 120 homeless youth and 45 policymakers, school counselors, and after-school program coordinators in Los Angeles to understand how youth experience the education system. The authors identify aspects of the federal mandate that impede the educational progress of homeless youth. The findings highlight that homeless youth are not a homogenous group and educational supports need to be designed recognizing the diversity of their needs. Implications for policy and program implementation are discussed as they pertain to one large city in order to generate future research that might support, contradict, or expand upon the findings.

Suggests that educators in Australia are displaying a growing interest in graduate instruction in educational administration. Examines issues that are central to making courses relevant, stimulating and appealing for educational administrators today using the review of one Master′s degree course as an illustration. Discusses the need to review courses, then considers decisions about the primary instructional focus, the educational clientele, neglected content areas, experiential components and flexible modes of attendance. Proposes teaching arrangements that add diversity and relevance to curricula, including the design of subjects in conjunction with local education authorities, lecturing by expert managers, and reliance on part‐time and visiting appointments. Presents continuing education as a further responsibility of educational administration departments. Advocates course promotion and ongoing contact with the profession and advances some strategies. Cautions, however, against innovations designed only to capture additional enrolments and funding.

This chapter aims to provide a critical analysis of special needs education within the United Kingdom today. Central to such an analysis is an understanding of the rapidly changing social and political milieu within which special needs education is embedded, including the rapidly changing demographics of schooling, and the devolution of political power into four separate but linked countries – England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Following a discussion of such wider social, political and educational issues, the authors explore the convergences and divergences in policy and practice across the four devolved administrations. The authors describe a plethora of contemporary policy developments within each of the four administrations that speak to the need for special needs education to change in response to 21st century concerns about the problems of access to, and equity in, education for all children. Despite this, the authors remain extremely circumspect about the potential of many of these developments to lead to successful inclusive practices and developments on the ground – and explain why. The analysis in the concluding section focuses on the issue of teacher education for inclusion and some very innovate UK research and development projects that have been reported to successfully engage teachers with new paradigm thinking and practice in the field of inclusive special needs education.

This paper has a twofold purpose: (1) to demonstrate, largely with historical evidence, that, contrary to what some have argued, thinking about educational research articulated at the start of the twenty-first century was not really “new wine in new bottles” but, rather, a continuation of the so-called paradigm wars about, ultimately, unresolvable methodological and epistemological issues that occurred during the twentieth century; (2) to suggest a way members of the educational administration field might transcend, or at least circumvent, time-consuming and distracting battles about unresolvable methodological and epistemological issues in the future while keeping their focus on issues of practice.

This is a quasi-historical essay that uses influential literature during the historical periods focused on as evidence to support the essay's arguments.

The paper demonstrates that twentieth century philosophical disagreements about research methods and the role that educational research can play in policy and practice decision making were not resolved but, rather, were largely reenacted during the first decade of the twenty-first century, again without a resolution. The paper proposes a way that administrators, policymakers and researchers can manage this situation and still use research to make policy and practice decisions.

The paper suggests a new role for both school administrators and policymakers to play. If administrators/policymakers play this role successfully, all types of research can inform decision making about policy and practice, and researchers can concentrate on doing their research rather than engaging in unresolvable philosophical disputes.

Although a great deal has been written about the twentieth century's theory movement and paradigm wars and the twenty-first century's so-called science wars, the link between these phenomena has not been discussed in the literature. In addition, there have been few attempts to articulate an operational strategy for managing unresolvable philosophical disputes about research methods and the role that research can play in decision making. This paper tackles both matters.

The purpose of this paper is to recover the identity of Chinese intellectual discourse, arguing for the necessity of a Chinese methodology in educational research to be constructed on the basis of the Chinese philosophical traditions and the Chinese social norms for the aim of solving Chinese educational issues within the Chinese cultural context.

The paper is a theoretical paper, arguing for the ontological, epistemological and methodological basis for a Chinese methodology in educational research.

The major ontological issue of Chinese social and educational research, also the ultimate goal of the Chinese governance, is social harmony through harmonious personal relationships. The key to social harmony has been seen in the Chinese philosophical tradition as residing in people’s personal morality and obligation, which constitutes the epistemology of Chinese research. And the golden mean of moderation by synthesizing and balancing the dualist extremes of views and actions should be adopted as the methodological paradigm to researching social and educational issues in China.

The elaboration of these three entities holds promises in the construction of the Chinese methodological system on Chinese social terms and merits.

The author has long sensed that the extensive methodological borrowing from the West by Chinese scholars in educational research might be problematic, given the vast structural differences in the two social worlds that the author and other scholars have observed. A paper in English to argue for the necessity of constructing a uniquely Chinese methodology for educational research in China is an absolute necessity.

More than five years have passed since A Nation at Risk was published in 1983 by then‐Secretary of Education Terrance Bell's National Commission on Excellence in Education. Those years have seen the publication of an enormous body of both primary material, composed of research reports, essays, and federal and state reform proposals and reports; and secondary material, composed of summaries and reviews of the original reform reports and reports about effective programs that are based on reform recommendations. This annotated bibliography seeks to identify, briefly describe, and organize in a useful manner those publications dealing with K‐12 education reform and improvement. The overall purposes of this article are to bring organization to that list, and also to trace relationships and influences from the federal initiatives to the states and professional associations, and from there to the school districts and individual schools.