Summary

The influence of cognitive science on educational administration has been patchy. It has varied over four main accounts of cognition, which are, in historical order: behaviorism, functionalism, artificial neural networks, and cognitive neuroscience. These developments, at least as they may have concerned educational administration, go from the late 1940s up to the present day. There also has been a corresponding sequence of developments in educational administration, mainly motivated by accounts of the nature of science. The goal of producing a science of educational administration was dominated by the construal of science as a positivist enterprise. For much of the field’s early development, from the 1950s to the early 1970s, varieties of behaviorism were central, with brief excursions into functionalism. When large-scale alternatives to behaviorism finally began to emerge, they were mostly alternatives to science, and thus failed to comport with much of cognitive science. However, the emergence of postpositivist accounts of science has created the possibility for studies in administrator cognition to be informed by developments in neuroscience. These developments initially included the study of artificial neural networks and more recently have involved biologically realistic mathematical models that reflect work in cognitive neuroscience.