Beyond convention, beyond critique: toward a third way of preparing  (Page 6/13)

Glass (2003) argued that federal and state standards enforced by high-stakes achievement tests have lowered education’s capacity to solve social problems:

• Conformity and obedience to standards distorted by dominant ideologies have supplanted independence and the creative transformation of social problems....fixed standards dictate curricula that ignore the depth and range of students’ backgrounds and knowledge, and substitute demeaning assessments and labels for teachers’ professional judgments. (pp. 164, 165)

Eventually, increased state control worked its way up from PK-12 education, through teacher preparation (Berlak, 2003; Tellez, 2003), to graduate programs in educational leadership (Militello, Gajda,&Bowers, 2009; Roach, Smith,&Boutin, 2010). This increased control took the form of state certification standards and corresponding tests. The control of principal preparation now seems to be gradually shifting from the state to the federal level through the ISLLC standards (Council of Chief State School Officers, 2008) and national tests based on the standards like the School Leaders Licensure Assessment (SLLA) and The Praxis Educational Leadership: Administration and Supervision Test (both developed by ETS).

Although state and national government presently constitute the most powerful source of external control, the other sources of control discussed earlier still are present to varying degrees. For example, business interests were strong supporters of the accountability movement (Business Round Table, 1996, 2001, 2002) and continue to exercise considerable influence over education (Sawchuk, 2009). Professors of educational leadership and the readings and learning activities they assign still apply social science theory to educational leadership. And in my home state of Texas, members of the religious right, with significant numbers in the state legislature and on the state board of education, exert considerable influence over schools and universities (see, for example, Blanchette, 2010).

Technical rationality

Angus (1996) argues that the literature on educational administration “encourages scholars and practitioners alike to think in managerial terms and to have in mind notions of systematic organization, prediction and managerial control, reliable and effective techniques, and a concern with means of achieving particular goals” (p. 989).

In Schön’s (1983) critique, technical rationality is based on the belief that university professors and scientists create knowledge through research and theory building and the practitioner’s role is to learn the resulting knowledge and how to apply it. Others have broadened the definition of technical rationality to include any model or plan developed by outside experts that is to be implemented by practitioners in a mechanical fashion. Whether the term is used as Schön defined it or in a more general sense, practitioners are reduced to “instrumental problem solving,” defined by Schön as “a technical procedure to be measured by its effectiveness in achieving a pre-established objective” (p. 165). Applied to principal preparation, technical rationality means that professors of educational leadership present their students with leadership blueprints—based on research and theory in educational leadership or borrowed from other disciplines—to be applied in PK-12 schools.