Metaphors, whether verbalized, symbolized, or camouflaged, reveal school administrators' perceptions, values, and behaviors. This article examines how specific metaphors (assembly line, ticking clock, garden, mirror of society, museum, and candy machine) contribute to an understanding of school characteristics and administration. Training and…

Based on Schon's study of the nature of practical knowledge and his rejection of "technical rationality," this article examines the metaphorical language that teachers use when talking about their work. Teachers' definitions of curriculum in relation to their practice is a significant phenomenon for curriculum theorists to address.…

Applying Deming's principles to education represents change in metaphor, not paradigm shift. Exchanging factory metaphor for enlightened corporation metaphor updates business/economics image but perpetuates view of students as raw materials to be processed efficiently. No business metaphor truly aims at improving society as a whole. If production…

Considers educational planning as a communication of shared symbols creating intent geared toward change. Elaborates 11 groups of metaphorical images of planning (as circle, recipe, compass, map, puzzle, tree, maze, Ariadne's thread, prediction, art, and spider's web) bridging impression and expression. Relates this metaphorical analysis to…

Paradox arising from the coincidence of observing and being observed has epistemological implications. Traditional science attempted to eschew the observer and avoid self-reference; modern physics finds this problematic. Educational administration theories must reflect the self-reference of an educational social system's identity and must practice…

This book provides material and ideas for bringing metaphorical thinking into the classroom in the context of language discussions. It is organized to link the conceptual with the concrete, integrating teaching ideas with discussions concerning the various roles that metaphorical thinking plays in human understanding and communications. The book's…

This paper gives a brief introduction to a discipline called the cognitive science of mathematics. The theoretical background of the arguments is based on embodied cognition and findings in cognitive linguistics. It discusses Mathematical Idea Analysis, a set of techniques for studying implicit structures in mathematics. Particular attention is…

Describes chaos theory in light of its original principles derived from the physical sciences and in terms of scholarly attempts to apply those precepts to educational administration. When transposed to management models, the theory loses its mathematical and empirical underpinnings. Since researchers cannot verify whether the theory applies to…

Discusses a qualitative study focused on specific success strategies gathered in interviews with women superintendents. Interpretations that cut across the narratives are expressed through the metaphoric framework provided by Carlos Castaneda's principles of power that govern the "riddle of the heart," or caring ethic. Successful women…

Discusses four models/quadrants to frame different ways of thinking about education arising from four philosophical bases that have considerably influenced education and learning: realism, idealism, pragmatism, and existentialism. These models differ in their view of learning's meaning, emphasis on learning subject matter, and the basic media…

The metaphor linking the classroom with the workplace has often driven research and influenced educational practice. Although similarities exist, the conceptualization neglects the unique qualities of the classroom that create a "learning setting." Characteristics differentiating classrooms from work and recreational settings are…

Explains fundamental shifts dominating education's transition at technical, managerial, and institutional levels. Since the first edition of the "Handbook of Research on Educational Administration," school administration has been reconfigured and recultured. Social justice, democratic community, and school improvement comprise major…

Few great ideas to guide school practice are totally new. Conscientious educators have hit some good chords over the years; the challenge is recapturing that music and building a (pedagogical) symphony around it. Philosophical ideas about teachers' views of children, curriculum, teachers, and organizational structures are discussed. (MLH)

Investigates how teaching and the teacher's role in elementary and secondary school writing classes have been conceptualized by leading workshop advocates. Uses M. Bakhtin's writing on F. Dostoevsky to develop a metaphor of the writing teacher as novelist. Argues that workshop visions of teaching and the teacher's role mystify meaning-making and…

The kinds of representations and associations that elementary and secondary educators are building of the Internet and the ways in which these representations vary depending on their use were studied. Subjects were teachers from the Center for Technology in Education (New York) national telecommunications survey who had responded that they used…