Research into Educational Management in Portugal: Themes, Focus and Methodologies

Abstract

Today, educational management is an expanding scientific field that has been attracting ever more social and political visibility, and it has been the object of a considerable amount of research. In the Portuguese context, over the past two decades there has been a sharp movement to create post-graduate courses, to increase individual and collective research and the number of scientific publications. The growing centrality assumed by the sociological approaches of educational organisations, associated with a vast collection of scientific research and publications, promoted a meta-analysis of a considerable amount of work produced in this area. For this analysis, we selected 80 dissertations all presented within the context of the pioneering Master’s course, and the oldest course in the country on educational management, the Master in «Education Sciences», specialising in «Educational Management», offered by the University of Minho. Of the main trends identified, the most important were: (i) synchronization between the political agenda, professional experience and research interests; (ii) use of a certain theoretical pluralism, mobilizing two or more models of organizational analysis; (iii) the use of a largely qualitative methodology, tending towards the case study method; (iv) mobilizing a meso-approach to school organization, seeking to coordinate micro and macro analytical levels. On a more substantive plane, this study has contributed to discussions on some dilemmas and agendas that, in our opinion, are involved in constructing the object of educational management.