ABSTRACT
The publication Educational Administration: International Perspectives, which emerged from the first International Intervisitation Program held in the USA and Canada during 1966, reflected the same enthusiasm and confidence in the future as did R Buckminster Fuller's contemporary paper An Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1968).
The first international conference was deliberately designed to bring together practising senior educational administrators, researchers and theorists in the field; it resulted in 16 papers by authors from the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. In a real sense these papers were scenarios for the future of educational administration around the world.
The three main expectations which emerged from the papers appeared to assume that in the future the practice of educational administration would be illuminated by:
The social sciences, in much the same way as the practice of medicine is illuminated by the natural sciences.
The widespread adoption of both traditional and alternative training modes for administrators.
The adoption of an international perspective by both scholars and practitioners.
In the course of the two decades since 1966 there have been considerable achievements in these three areas in many parts of the world, and less developed, as well as developed, nations have benefited profoundly from them. While by no means all schools and school administrators have been touched by these developments there is good reason to be optimistic regarding achievements arising from future International Intervisitation Programs and similar gatherings.
