ABSTRACT
This chapter explores further the contributions of classic and contemporary perspectives on distributed and situated cognition to the study of educational administration. Naturalistic perspectives on educational administration have turned to the cognitive sciences in order to understand some organisational practices and processes such as decision making. Spender noted that organisational theorists have been interested in cognition from the very beginning of organisational studies when they noticed that cognitive processes like decision making, understanding, and interpretation had an impact in the functioning of organisations. According to Fiol in 2002 and Jones in 1995 there remains great controversy regarding the appropriate account of cognition in organisations. James Spillane studied how policymakers and teachers made sense of science and math teaching standards in Michigan during the 1990s. A study of the cognitive dimension of the practices of educational administrators would give new way to understand the nature of knowledge of educational administration.
