ABSTRACT
The management of education seems to be pulled in different directions, enmeshed in different discourses, revealing different influences. These influences are intellectual, cultural and economic. The concern here is mainly with the intellectual and the cultural, less so the economic. Dissonance is rife: neither among theorists nor within the culture is there much degree of consensus. Take the theorists: their theories are a mix of approaches derived from functionalism, social construction, chaos theory and postmodernist theory. On the one hand, there are those who point to fundamental incompatibilities among them, arguing that neither singly nor collectively can they serve as the basis for practice. On the other hand, there are others who, in their search for structure, suggest that a theoretical reconciliation is indeed possible – and necessary in order to inform management practice.
