Investigation of the field of educational administration in Turkey in the context of identity

This research aims to examine the current situation of educational administration as a discipline in Turkey within the context of identity. The research was designed with the case study. Two different data collection processes were followed in the research: document review and interview. The mission statements of the educational administration discipline of the universities in Turkey, the courses in the graduate programs and the theses made in the field between the years 2019-2021 were examined from various aspects by document review. Besides, semi-structured interviews were conducted to obtain the views of the faculty members working in the field of educational administration on the ontological, epistemological, and methodological identity of the field. Descriptive and thematic analysis were used in the analysis of the obtained data. As a result of the document review, it has been observed that the field of educational administration has different names in universities, has some missions that are inconsistent in practice, and does not have a common/basic course package within the framework of graduate programs. In addition, the doctoral dissertations examined provided information about the focus topics and methodological elements in the field. The findings obtained from the interviews showed that educational administration as a discipline has made a significant progress in the identity development process in Turkey, but there is no serious effort and understanding regarding identity development in the field, since the field has an "identity diffusion" in general. It has been concluded that the discipline has difficulty in producing a solution to the problems that negatively affect its identity and the problems in the field reproduce themselves. In the field of educational administration, inclusive and organizing mechanisms are needed for the formation of identity awareness and for the field to reach an intellectually advanced level. Based on the results, various suggestions were made for practitioners and researchers. Keywords: educational administration, identity, discipline, scientific field, ontological identity, epistemological identity, methodological identity