What Do Educational Administrators Really Know?

What do school administrators need to know to do their jobs well? What is taught in university-based administrator training programs? What do practicing administrators actually know? How much similarity is there between what administrators are taught, what they know, and what they need to know?

These questions have important implications for educational administration both as a field of practice and as an academic discipline.

Along with others involved in the training and licensing of school administrators, I have spent a great deal of time exploring these issues during the past several years. I have conducted individual and group interviews with practicing administrators and trainees, edited a collection of papers concerned with the actual and ideal knowledge base for educational administration, and participated in extensive conversations with university colleagues that resulted in major revisions of the administrator training programs at the University of Kansas.

Based on these investigations, I concluded that significant disparities exist between what is taught in most university-based administrator preparation programs and the job-related knowledge that school administrators actually possess. In some cases, the disparities are so large that the two bodies of knowledge hardly intersect.

Even more worrisome, equally large disparities exist between what is taught to administrators, what is known by administrators, and the most important body of knowledge in educational administration: the knowledge that a person needs to do a good job administering a school.

Overlapping Knowledge

The knowledge base of educational administration (or of any applied field) can be divided into three somewhat overlapping categories: theoretical knowledge, technical knowledge, and career knowledge.

Theoretical knowledge consists of generalizations on the basis of which administrators may develop programs designed to increase student learning or otherwise promote the goals of schooling. The generalizations may be systems of discipline-based "-isms" such as behaviorism or structuralism or more directly applicable principles, such as that increased time on task leads to increased learning.

Much of what is taught in administrator training programs is theoretical knowledge. Yet few administrators mention theories or even practical generalizations as the basis of their practice, and literature contains surprisingly few credible claims of theory being applied to improve schools.

Technical knowledge consists of factual information that relates to the performance of the various specific tasks involved in running a school or school system, such as the creation of schedules, the minimization of litigation risks, and the supervision of teachers. Much technical knowledge is taught in administrator training programs, and many administrators claim to possess technical knowledge.

Undoubtedly, many facts hold great potential value in carrying out the various facets of a school administrator's job. However, as surveys of practicing administrators and my own inquiries have shown, it is difficult to list many specific facts about running a school that most administrators know but most other people do not.

Unlike theoretical and technical knowledge, career knowledge has little to do with the successful performance of the tasks of school administration or the realization of the goals of education. Rather, career knowledge is knowledge that enhances the quality of an administrator's work life. Career knowledge includes knowing how to prepare a resume, how to perform at an interview (including perhaps appearing to have theoretical and factual knowledge whether one does or not), how to fit into a bureaucracy, to dress, to make small talk, and generally to relate to parents, bosses, school boards, students, and the various other constituencies that can affect an administrator's career.

Career knowledge is rarely a main focus of training programs, but all practicing administrators have some career knowledge or they would not have been hired or retained their jobs.

Career Survival

This analysis is not mean as an indictment of professors or of practitioners of school administration, although both groups need to rethink what they know and what they do. Any profession's incumbents act to promote their own well-being. Therefore, no profession can hope to maximize the effectiveness of its employees in promoting its goals unless the same behaviors promote both the goals of the organization and the well-being of the employees themselves.

But to survive and prosper in their environment, most professors of educational administration must emphasize theory, whether or not theoretical knowledge is what school administrators need most.

For their part, school administrators often find themselves in situations where their job survival and success depend on career knowledge, but their personal well-being rarely depends on possession of theoretical or technical knowledge. If educational administration is to develop a unified, effective knowledge base, success of professors and practitioners must depend on the possession of exactly the same knowledge that will promote the goals of schooling.

Michael Imber is co-author of a new book, The Knowledge Base of Educational Administration, to be published this spring by SUNY Press.