Management in education

The topic of Management in Education has been attracting growing attention in the area of educational policy for some time now. It has been approached along a number of different lines such as organisation development, innovative project work, school administration, management of private training providers, higher education management, leadership, managerial rationality and strategic planning. These dimensions have been included in the contents of five university courses on the subject of Management in Education which were developed in the education departments of five universities who participated in a joint EC-project. In line with the aims of the EC-Commission's Alfa-programme the project involved universities from Europe and Latin America. In this book five members of the Alfa-network concerning 'Management in Education' describe the experiences of their own universities in connection with the course. The courses are conceived as a major element in M. A. programmes in education, but differ from university to university in terms of specific objectives, contents, didactic approaches and clientele. Using a set of evaluative categories developed in the network, each author reflects on the course process, on its effects on the students' career outlooks, on the immanent understanding of the role of the university in their courses, on his or her self-concept as a university teacher or scholar and also on potential approaches to research into the relatively inconsistent and controversial topic of management in education. Working in quite dissimilar university environments, the authors offer a variety of solutions for the problem of how to make this topic a dynamic ingredient for new university programmes in education. The authors are: Eeva-Liisa Kronqvist, University of Oulu in Finland, Iris Erazo Tabora, National Pedagogic University Francisco Morazán of Honduras, Lennart Wikander, University of Uppsala in Sweden, Dietmar Waterkamp, Technical University of Dresden in Germany, Gustavo Hawes, University of Talca in Chile.