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Did a set of examiner's reports written on educational theses subscribe to a common view of critical thinking? An analysis indicated that an idealized style of critical thinking was embodied in examiners' comments, one which combined the imagery of detached rationality with the imagery of imaginative insight. This functional definition, applied for the purpose of assessment, appears to represent a mixture of assumptions taken from traditional and emergent research traditions in educational administration. It is conjectured that this functional definition may represent a negotiated meaning, arrived at in the light of conflicting intellectual and cultural pressures experienced in the academic study of educational administration.

A study of the published statements of Australian school administrators revealed that two distinctive configurations of power and service relationships are projected in their publically presented images of state school administration as it relates to government and the public. A previous Traditional Centralist‐Unity configuration is now being replaced by an Emergent Devolution‐Diversity conformation. Analysis was directed to (a) understanding the significance of the two images in terms of their function as public communications, and (b) accounting for the shift in the imagery in the light of pressures for change, the way administrators are interpreting change as turbulence, and the projection of counter images incorporating critiques of government school systems. To help organise analysis, it was assumed that images of system administration have the potential to communicate: 1. information, 2. explanation, 3. judgements and value positions, 4. statements designed to advance sectional interests, and 5. themes and persuasive symbols. It was also assumed that the shift in the public images of administrators may be studied in the way their images relate to three basic sources of administrative tension: tensions which arise from problems of meaning, problems of aspiration, and problems of practice.

Those who were responsible for the establishment of the Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration (CCEA) in the early 1960s and 1970s were clearly leaders. All had vision, were entrepreneurial and tenacious, sensitive to situational and political pressures and highly ethical in their relationships with others. Yet each displayed a unique style of leader behaviour. Thus the three key elements in their behavioural setting were the traits they possessed, the sensitivity to the environment they demonstrated and the style they adopted. Ansoff has described contemporary society as being typified by paradox, ambiguity and risk. These characteristics continue to typify the business and government environments of advanced Western nations. Are the characteristics of leader behaviour demonstrated by CCEA′s founders adequate to meet the turbulence of future societal change? The answer is “yes”. When the extensive literature on leader behaviour is analysed and the politics of scholarship are taken into account, those three key elements remain. This is reflected in Zehnder′s recent address to the Australian Institute of Directors with its highlighting of leadership as a function of intuition, ethics, entrepreneurship and vision and in the recent emphasis by several writers on “transformative leadership”.

Enterprising projects require a mixture of the imaginative and rational, not the rejection of one in favour of the other. Where a clear distinction is made, the imaginative and rational may support different doctrines on how knowledge and understanding should be acquired. Where attempts are made to draw on both as analytic and creative resources, e.g. as in the qualitative treatment of new social data, researchers may have the task of developing a complementary approach to social enquiry which combines objectivity with intuition and detachment with feelings of rapport. The data obtained often require an advocacy approach to argument, one where a persuasive line of argument is designed to establish the relative strength of a case in what may well be an adversarial context of claims and counter‐claims. Where research deals with various kinds of evidence, e.g. objective and subjective, research methods must be argued as compatible with a research problem and its context, and not dictated arbitrarily by research doctrine. An example is given of what is claimed to be a rational, linear approach to developing the internal logic of a research report; the claim is discussed that rationality and imagination may be complementary in speculative research; and an advocacy approach to presenting a research case is discussed.

An adequate study of leadership behaviour must take account of leader‐member encounters in routine meetings and in the more informal and spontaneous discussions with individuals and groups. This comprehensive approach to leadership behaviour must relate the behaviour of the leader and member in interaction to the social system of the organization. The present discussion focusses on the relationship between general organizational values and normative role prescriptions on the one hand and behaviour in leader‐member encounters on the other. Particular use is made of the views of Talcott Parsons and Erring Goffman. It is concluded that the relationship between the constructs selected for discussion is subtle and difficult to test. However, there appears to be merit in the detailed study of the more informal leader‐member encounters which occur in the daily life of the organization.

The maintenance of a distinction between management and leadership behaviours at the conceptual and/or practical level negates the search for a “practical theory” of leadership. If management is viewed as an art, management and leadership behaviours are inextricably intertwined in an organisational setting. Both activities are part of the cultural action of an organisation.

Graduate students of the University of New England (U.N.E.) during the period 1970–1984 wrote one hundred dissertations on morale in a wide variety of educational institutions. The Staff Morale Questionnaire (S.M.Q.) developed and progressively refined at U.N.E. was extensively used in these and other studies in Australia. The project's greatest value lay in the way it enabled external (i.e. off‐campus) students to develop their academic critical abilities in a guided research effort, and in the ripple effect which has enabled numerous administrators in Australian schools to gain some sensitisation to and understanding of the importance of organisational morale.

Recent studies of bureaucracy and decision making in education using differing methodologies and populations are, the writer claims, pointing to generalizations which are largely supportive of each other. An important question only partly answered is whether the relationships identified as between the bureaucratic variables and situational and personal variables examined are causal. Caution should therefore be exercised in drawing implications for practice. Nevertheless, on the basis of overall consistency in the findings, the writer proposes that moves toward participative management approaches and away from rigid hierarchical organization of schools should lead to positive consequences such as improved supervisor effectiveness, greater teacher satisfaction, a decrease in student alienation, and improved student achievement.

The United Nations General Assembly has decided that 1970 be designated International Education Year, with the following main objectives: “(1) to take stock of the present situation throughout the world; (2) to focus attention on a number of major requirements for both the expansion and the improvement of education; (3) to make greater resources available to education; and (4) to strengthen international co‐operation.” It is thus appropriate that the second international intervisitation program in educational administration is scheduled to be held in Australia during the summer of 1970.

The generally held belief that the extension of participative administrative arrangements within education systems has necessarily led to democratic educational reform is critically examined. Although restructured systems may afford greater community involvement in educational governance, such involvement is generally bureaucratically mandated and occurs within a social and political context in which power relationships, including the relationship of education to other social spheres, are largely unexamined and remain unaltered. Using the case of Victoria, Australia, as an example it is demonstrated that versions of participation in education need not disturb patterns of managerial control.