educational Administration as a field of theory and research has never held a particularly high status in the academic community. There are a number of reasons for this, among them the practical nature of the activity (though the same practicality presumably applies to law, engineering, architecture, and medicine); the lack of consensus over theoretical issues (though there has always been a continuing series of controversies in science, humanities, and the arts); the low level of research methodology; and the political nature of the field. Some of the criticisms of educational administration are just. There often has been a tendency for work in educational administration to be simply a laying on of hands for those who need credentials or a programmatic concern with the maintenance of policies and regulations into which principals and departmental officers are thought to need socializing.. However, there are good grounds for believing that the processes through which learning is organized in society are of central importance in both the production of knowledge, the maintenance of culture, and the reproduction of social structure. Educational administration is a key element in these processes of structuring knowledge and society. It is at SUNY BINGHAMTON on May 16, 2015 eaq.sagepub.com Downloaded from

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This paper argues that social justice is central to the pursuit of education and therefore should also be central to the practice of educational administration. Social justice in education, as elsewhere, demands both distributive justice (which remedies undeserved inequalities) and recognitional justice (which treats cultural differences with understanding and respect). But, given that cultures are always in the process of change, education is a key agency for negotiating cultural change through the exploration and negotiation of difference. Educational administration as a field can no longer escape the consideration of such issues as they are brought to the fore by the recognition of the failure of schools and school systems to ameliorate injustice in the distribution of resources and to recognise and celebrate difference as a means to social and cultural progress. We still need a model of educational administration centered around the problem of the justice and fairness of social and educational arrangements. Given the renewed interest in such issues, perhaps what was impossible twenty five years ago might now be achieved

The author argues that ideological forms of organizational/managerial control that are designed primarily to serve the interests of elites are prevalent in schools as well as in corporations. An important part of control ideologies is their defining of alternative or oppositional cultures as "irrational. " Schools, because they are the meeting places for those in and those out of power, are forced to develop their own very complex cultures, which are also seen by those in power as "irrational. " With reference to some descriptive studies the author illustrates both the complexity of school cultures and the increased difficulties they incur because they are defined as illegitimate by ruling elites.

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