Thematic Comparative and Critical Bibliography of Compilation and Translated Books in Educational Management Science in Iran

A lot of the identity of any sciences depends on the texts it has produced in the past; but without a critical and integrated reading of these texts, it is not possible to get a clear picture of this identity, to avoid duplication and perversion, and to achieve synergy. The purpose of this paper was to identify the conceptual trends of educational management science in Iran, based on the survey of the production texts in this knowledge. The methodological approach of this research was a qualitative type of comparative and critical thematic bibliography. The research population was all the books indexed in the National Library of Iran during the last 60 years with the main and direct keywords of educational management, educational leadership and school management. After four stages of targeted screening, 28 books (16 authored books and 12 translated books) were singled out as research samples. Then, according to the tradition of bibliographic studies, after reading and critically taking notes from sample books, data, categorization and analysis, the main concepts were inferred. Concepts were also regularly validated using expert opinions. The results showed that in the written texts, a kind of absolute dominance of “management and abstract organization” in the approach to educational management knowledge in Iran has prevailed; but in translated texts, the science of educational management is closer to the real world of “schooling”. The findinds also demonstrate that in the authorial texts related to educational management science in Iran, due to the lack of a coherent conceptual framework within the discipline, discrediting and confusion in this science have become commonly widespread.