ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the history of educational administration and leadership as a field of study. It explains a narrow approach to administration and leadership limits a principal's ability and wherewithal to identify and work with teachers and communities to address the underlying issues to poor student performance and depressed post-secondary outcomes. The chapter presents the history chronologically beginning with the rise of Taylorism and scientific management. In the early 1900s, universities started following the pathway mapped out by Woodrow Wilson by studying problems within organizations, management, and administration. The human and social dimensions of educational administration became more apparent during the Great Depression and economic and social upheaval of the 1930s. By the 1980s, professors of educational administration began to focus more specifically on schools and the work of principals rather than abstract conceptions of administration and organization.
