The Historical Evolution Of Western Educational Administration Methodologes

Educational Administration as a discipline of application, has a history of over one hundred years in the western world. We should pay more attention to the summarization and induction of its methodologies as to its theoretical developments, since methodologies can fully reflect the level of development of a certain discipline.This article reviews different stages of western educational administration researches, summarizes the main methodologies used in each stage systematically, and analyses each methodology in order to reveal the historical evolution of western educational administration methodologies. The development of western educational administration consists of five stages, namely the era of ideology, the period of seeking science, the period of theory movement, the period of post-positivism, and the period of coherentism. Educational methodologies vary according to different theoretical foundations. In the era of ideology, speculation is the main methodology confined to the level of cognition; In the beginning of 20th century, under the influence of Taylor's scientific management theory, educational administration emerged from business administration and followed the development of public management and administration, quantitive research methodology began to be used and thus formed the measurement movement; After the second world war, under the influence of Herbert Simon, educational administration which had the theoretical foundation of logical positivism and experimentalism developed rapidly, logical positivism methodology was advocated, thus formed the theory movement in the history of western educational administration; After the nineteen sixties, under the influence of post-modernism, educational administration gradually stepped into the period of post-modernism, the research paradigm was diversified, phenomenological approach, field research, critical theory, axiology research and other research paradigms coexisted; Since the nineteen nineties, educational theories have been advocating the integration and coherence of different methodologies to solve the problems brought by diversified paradigms, systematic integration and emphasis on the commensurability of quantitive methodology and qualitive methodology are the properties of the coherentism period.Currently, educational administration proceeds along the direction of systematic integration and will become more open and comprehensive, at he same time, more and more researchers with different academic backgrounds will join in the research of educational administration.