Growing awareness of and interest in the phenomenon of globalisation of educa- tional policy and practice is creating the need for the development of a comparative and international branch of educational leadership and management (Dimmock & Walker 1998a, 1998b). Interest in, if not willingness to adopt, imported policies and practices without due consideration of cultural and contextual appropriateness is justification for developing a more robust conceptual, methodological and analytical approach to comparative and international educational management. Currently, educational management has failed to develop in this direction. Indeed, as we argue below, it shows every tendency to continue its narrow ethnocentric focus, despite the internationalising of perspectives taken by policy-makers and others to which we have already alluded. In this respect, it could be argued that our field is lagging behind conceptually and epistemologically trends and events already taking place in practice. In addition, it has already failed to keep pace with comparative and international developments in other fields, notably business management and cross- cultural psychology.Globalisation of policy and practice in education is in part a response to common problems faced by many of the world’s societies and education systems. Economic growth and development are increasingly seen within the context of a global market place. Economic competitiveness is seen to be dependent on edu- cation systems supplying sufficient flexible, skilled ‘knowledge workers’. This phenomenon, however, emphasises the need to understand the similarities and differences between societies and their education systems. No two societies are exactly alike demographically, economically, socially or politically. Thus an attrac- tion of an international and comparative branch to educational management is systematic and informed study leading to better understanding of one’s own as well as others’ education problems and their most appropriate solutions.
A strong argument for the need to develop an international and comparative branch to the field is the ethnocentricity underlying theory development, empirical research and prescriptive argument. Anglo-American scholars continue to exert a disproportionate influence on theory, policy, and practice. Thus, a relatively small number of scholars and policy-makers representing less than 8% of the world’s population purport to speak for the rest. Educational management has a vulnerable knowledge base. Theory is generally tentative and needs to be heavily qualified and much that is written in the field is prescriptive, being reliant on personal judgement and subjective opinion. Empirical studies are rarely cumulative, making it difficult to build systematic bodies of knowledge. Yet despite these serious limitations, rarely do scholars explicitly bound their findings within geo-cultural limits. Claims to knowl- edge are made on the basis of limited samples as though they have universal application. A convincing case can be mounted for developing middle range theory applying to and differentiating between different geo-cultural areas or regions. During the next decade there is need to develop contextually bounded school leadership and management theories. This will allow us to distinguish for example, how Chinese school leadership and management differs from say, American or British.
A further concern leading to the need for a distinctive branch of comparative educational management is the need for more precise and discriminating use of language. Many writers, for example, glibly use terms such as ‘Western’, ‘Eastern’ or ‘Asian’ in drawing comparisons. Little attempt is made, however, to define or distinguish these collective labels, a serious omission when there is likely to be as much variation within each of them as between them. For example, major contex- tual and cultural differences apply between English-speaking Western countries such as the UK and the USA, let alone between the UK, USA, France and Germany, with their different languages and locations on two continents. Yet they are all examples of so-called ‘Western’ countries. Likewise, when referring to the ‘East’ or to ‘Asia’, major cultural differences are to be found between China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia and Singapore. Developing comparative educational management might introduce more rigour and precision in the terms used to define education systems geographically and culturally.