ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the theory of critical realism and demonstrate how the critical realist's alternative view of reality and inquiry is significant to research in educational administration. The philosophers of the Vienna Circle adopted Comte's ideas in the early 1920s, and while there were a great many more nuances inherent in the development and establishment of positivism, it is enough for the purposes to note that by the mid-1900s logical positivism had become a dominant methodology in most natural and social science traditions. Searle in 1995 offered one of the most comprehensive explanations of the reasons why people can consider social phenomena as independently real, and much of it has to do with a critical realist's conception of objectivity. Critical realism is indeed theoretically oriented, but it also yields simple results that are easily applied in a pragmatic manner within administrative practice, making this methodology ideally suited to informing inquiry in educational administration.
