Evaluation of theorizing in educational administration studies based on interdisciplinary criteria

The debate over theory and theorizing in educational administration has been an old and persistent challenge. Although many experts view the educational administration field as interdisciplinary and integrated, the epistemological foundations and detection of its interdisciplinary nature and classification in education administration that lead to a validation theory in this field has been rarely studied. Considering the single-discipline and interdisciplinary macro approaches in the production of science, an attempt of theorizing actually focuses on the interdisciplinary approach in terms of diversity of integrated types and their diversified performances. Using an analytical-inferential approach, the present study identifies the current condition of "theorizing" in educational administration after identifying and introducing the interdisciplinary evaluation criteria in three forms of multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary. And through analyzing a typical theory entitled "school as a social system" in educational administration, its natural and inevitable processes in the future have been investigated. The findings indicate that theorizing in educational administration studies is on the verge of transition from a single-discipline approach to multidisciplinary types. This way, the evolution of theorizing is predictable by diverging from a multidisciplinary to an interdisciplinary type.