Towards a postcolonial and decolonising educational administration history

ABSTRACT

This article examines the increasing postcolonial and decolonising literature as it relates to non-Western countries and the history of their educational systems undergoing internationalisation and globalisation. The first section reviews a number of historiographical developments in the twentieth century that laid a foundation for a more cultural and global view and to include marginalised populations. The second section examines the critiques of educational history from postcolonial and decolonising perspectives, and the colonisation of mind critiques, including the recent indigenous research methodology movement. The third section explores two main challenges for the field of educational administration history are discussed: developing ways of understanding countries that operate under very different paradigms than Western states, and which are undergoing societal changes and stresses that Western states are not experiencing; and a revised research and methodology that captures problems of recolonisation/neoimperialism, the subaltern personality, and struggles to maintain indigenous cultures and roles. In order to respond to these conditions, educational administration, like other fields has to generate new models, theories, and modes of practice that derive from the conditions that postcolonial developing states face including identity formation, values, role construction and institutional arrangements.

KEYWORDS:

• Postcolonialism
• decolonisation
• colonisation of mind

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributor

Eugenie A. Samier has taught in Canada and Dubai, and has guest lectured in many universities in Europe and the Arabian Gulf. She is editor of several books with Routledge and a contributor to Handbooks and Encyclopaedia in the field, as well as author of many articles and chapters on the psychology, sociology and politics of educational administration and on international comparison in the field.