Bringing back theory choice: comparative epistemology in educational administration and leadership research

In the past, theory choice was a key concern in educational administration and leadership: there were a range of theories on offer and explicit epistemological criteria for deciding between them. This is no longer the case. Leadership now stands as the default explanatory option, and theory choice criteria have become largely implicit. Against this tide, this article argues for restoring genuine choice between theories. First, it contends that theory choice has been limited by a contemporary reliance on ‘consistency’ as an epistemic criterion. Second, it challenges these limits by recovering ‘coherence’ as an alternative tradition in which consistency is held in tension with other criteria. Broadening the definition of consistency and resituating it within a coherence framework provides a basis for adjudicating leadership and administrative theories. Doing so can restore theory competition in the field and reopen the different problems and courses of action that alternative theories bring into view.