The Professionalization of Educational Administration: Early Training
In 1879 William H. Payne accepted a professorship at the University of Michigan after having served asa superintendent of schools in nearby Adrian, Michigan. Payne (1886) designed a curriculum devoted to the training of teachers ina then newly approved program: The Science and the Art of Teaching. He pointed out that the program was “new not only to thisUniversity, but, in its scope and purpose, was new to the universities of this country” (p. 337). As a part of a program ofstudy devoted to teaching, he developed the first course on the topic of educational administration. By 1884 a course entitledSchool Supervision was taught at the University of Michigan which was supplemented by Payne’s own Chapters on School Supervision: atext he authored. Payne’s course embraced “general school management; the art of grading and arranging courses of study; theconduct of institutes, etc. Recitations and lectures” (p. 343). The chapter headings of the text outlined reading topics which becameinstructor lectures. Note that more than a third of the book was devoted to explaining and defining the role and power of thesuperintendent:
Chapter I--The Nature and Value of Superintendence
Chapter II--The Superintendent’s Powers defined and some of his General Duties discussed
Chapter III--The Superintendent’s Powers defined and some of his General Duties discussed (continued)
Chapter IV --The Superintendent’s Powers defined and some of his General Duties discussed (continued)
Chapter V--The Art of Grading Schools
Chapter VI--The Art of Grading Schools (concluded)
Chapter VII--Reports, Records, and Blanks
Chapter VIII --Examinations
The content of the book reflects the time in which it was written. Chapters on School Supervision wasprescriptive in its approach to administration and dogmatic in its educational thinking. Itwas, however, a milestone for educational administration in that Payne acted upon an emerging need to trainschoolmen for administrative roles. Payne can be credited for putting into the university curriculum a course of study that beganthe slow rise of educational administration to an academic, university-based discipline. As Payne (1886) wrote, “Graduates ofthe university are called to supervise the more important public schools of the state. Why should they not have the opportunity tolearn the theory of school supervision?” (p. 336).
The need for supervisory leadership did not result in a rush to establish programs in educationaladministration during the last quarter of the 19th century. Woodrow Wilson (1886), an assistant professor and future presidentpromoted, in The Study of Administration, the idea of administration as a science and field worthy of study. His essay isrepresentative of the industrial as well as educational environment that identified the need for administrative training programs. Hewrote that, “The object of administrative study is to rescue executive methods from the confusion and costliness of empiricalexperiment and set them upon foundations laid deep in stable principle” (p. 8). This was a canon for what Wilson envisioned as auniversity program of preparation. This essay spurred the effort to examine the skill required to administer a growing schoolbureaucracy. Yet, it was not until the early 1900’s that educational administration became a truly establisheduniversity-based program of study and achieved a recognized professional acceptance when Columbia University offered a doctoraldegree with an emphasis in educational administration.