1.3 K-12 leadership and the educational administration curriculum  (Page 11/14)

Professional knowledge is the accumulation of information an educational leader acquires, for example, abouteducation law, state and federal policies, school board procedures, state funding formulas, how to conduct teacher evaluations,handling discipline procedures for suspension, working with state department officials on revising the state testing program and thelike. Knowledge for doing one’s administrative job has become more complex under the weight of mandates, societal expectations, parentdemands, and student needs. Knowing the professional role, and having the professional knowledge to perform in that role, is thegateway into administration. It is the value added ability one brings to an educational position. It is the craft knowledge thatis acquired during one’s career and is not easily transferable.

Murphy (2005) described the post World War II orientation of educational administration toward the behavioralsciences as a “clamoring for more scientifically based underpinnings for the profession” (p. 157). This clamoring for amore scientific and academic program reinforced and established the third domain of the Theory of Educational AdministrationPreparation. The academic domain altered the profession of educational administration at the university level as professorsnot only established the academic domain as a critical component of the curriculum, but saw their own role, as a professor in theacademic community, shifting to emphasize research and scholarship as a professional expectation and requirement. Moore (1964)described the professor of educational administration as:

a new breed of leader in school administration. Typically, he is on the faculty of a multipurposeuniversity which prepares school administrators, he is a student of the behavioral sciences, and he is an interpreter of researchapplied to educational processes and institutions. (p. 23)

This is an apt description of a professor of educational administration in 1964 and in 2006.

These three domains, then, in very broad terms and over the course of the 20th century, influenced professionalpreparation through the development of a curriculum that reflected courses taught by professors oriented to one, some, or all of thesedomains. However, this predominantly umbrella orientation, or as Donmoyer (1999) described it—the big tent—did not provide anadequate depth to inform the profession about what educational leaders should know and be able to do.

The lack of a recognized knowledge base spanning all three areas troubled both professors andpractitioners. A perceived and actual dearth of information about critical knowledge in each domain led to what became the 50 yeardialog about the lack of a knowledge base and the weak underpinnings for standards by which to guide programs preparingprincipals and superintendents. The standards problem has a history going back to 1950 when the Cooperative Program in EducationalAdministration (CPEA) was formed. During its existence between 1950 and 1960, CPEA struggled for a purpose as UCEA and NCPEA emerged asthe primary professional organizations in the field. However, one can trace early conversations about improving administratortraining programs to this short lived organization.