On The Epistemological Base Of Educational Administration Theories

The first question in this thesis which we point out is that the academic level of our educational administration research is much lower than the Western educational administration research, and how can we change the underdeveloped situation of Chinese educational administration sciences as soon as possible. In our opinions, the first and most important step we should take is to find the scientific epistemological base on which we can build our scientific educational administration theory, because just as the naturalistic coherentist Evers and Lakomski has proved that the structure and content of the educational administration theory is shaped by the theory of knowledge. From the first question we can reason out some other questions as following: what is the epistemological base of educational administration theories? How many kinds of educational administration theories and their epistemological bases we have now and how do these educational administration theories be shaped by their epistemological bases. In these epistemological bases, we take for which as the scientific base to build the scientific educational administration theory? And according to the general principle of this epistemology, how can we enrich and develop our educational administration theory? The analyses and solutions of these questions make up the body of the thesis, so in principle we can divide the thesis into three parts:In the first part, in order to answer the question of "what is the epistemological base of educational administration theories", we reviewed the evolvement of the theory of "knowing" and the theory of "episteme" and find out that the two theories are inseparable. So in this thesis, we propose to merge the theory of "knowing" and the theory of "episteme". In the meantime, for the justification of an educational administration theory theoretically has precedence over the construction of the educational administration theory's content, namely in the course of the building of an educational administration theory, the theory of "episteme" theoretically has precedence over the theory of "knowing", the concept of "epistemology" or "the theory of knowledge" we use in this thesis will comprise the theory of "knowing" and the theory of "episteme". Then, in the fact the epistemological base of the educational administration theory will include two parts: one is the theory about the nature, representation and justification of episteme, as the epistemological base of the educational administration theory it determines the structure, system info and representation of an educational administration theory and it justifies the theory in the same time. The other is the theory about cognition;it determines some particular ideas in an educational administration theory, such as the ideas about decision-making, organization-design, manager-training, and so on. Certainly, this kind of division is not absolute, because the theory about the nature, representation and justification ofepisteme can also have influence on some particular ideas in an educational administration theory, such as the ideas about decision-making, organization-design, manager-training;and the theory about cognition can influence the structure, system info and representation of an educational administration theory. They make of the epistemological base of educational administration theory together. In a word, the theory of knowledge that the erectors of educational administration theory hold in the course of constructing their educational administration theories is the epistemological base of educational administration theory.The second part, including chapter two, chapter three and chapter four, tries to answer the question of "we have how many kinds of epistemological base of the educational administration theory in the course of the development of the educational administration and how do these epistemological bases determine their educational administration theories." In this thesis, we find out some kinds of epistemological base of the educational administration theory as follow: the epistemological base of scientism in western educational administration, the epistemological base of humanism in western educational administration, and the epistemological base of naturalistic coherentism in western educational administration. The epistemological base of scientism in western educational administration is logical positivism or empiricism, the theorist in educational administration who stand up for the epistemology of logical empiricism take for the educational administration as some kind of social-physics. The other theorists in western educational administration who deprecate the epistemology of logical empiricism regard Greenfield as their forthgoer. They all disapprove of the scientism in western educational administration;on the contrary, they pay more attention to the subjectivity, the values and ethics of human in educational administration and advocate the epistemology of subjectivism. They are the second circle in western educational administration, i.e. the humanist in educational administration. If we can say that the scientistic theorists in educational administration insist on the division between "facts" and "values" and the science only deal with "fact", so they exclude the issues of values from educational administration;we also can say that the humanist in western educational administration is on the contrary, they advocate that the educational administration should be "a science with values and of values". What need to point out is that humanism theories in educational administration include Greenfield's subjectivist educational administration theory, Hodgkinson's theory of values in educational administration, the criticism in educational administration, the cultural perspective in educational administration and the postmodernism in educational administration;accordingly, their epistemological bases are Greenfield's subjectivistic epistemology, Hodgkinson's epistemology of values, Habermas's theory of cognition interest, Gadamer's hermeneutic and Rorty's postmodernepistemology. In order to mediate the conflict between scientism and humanism, naturalistic coherentism takes on the cloak of integrator to present to the western educational administration. The epistemological base of naturalistic coherentism is the naturalistic epistemology.The third part of this thesis, including chapter five and chapter six, tries to answer the question of what kind of epistemology we should insist on to build the scientific educational administration theory. In this thesis, by reflecting and criticizing the epistemological bases of educational administration theories in Western, we find out that we should take the Marxist epistemology as the scientific epistemological base to build our educational administration theories in China as the scholars of zuti educational administration theory have done. Though the zuti educational administration theory is not completive at present, it has the potential to become the most scientific educational administration theory. In the end of the thesis, we also propose some new developmental direction of the zuti educational administration theory in the light of the Marxist epistemology.