The field of educational administration has become important around the world in terms of both its theoretical and practical aspect. Schools are the foci of societal and global change, which places the educational administrators in a critical situation. In order to cope with and adapt to the rapid changes, they need to be well-trained and perform their jobs professionally. At this point, the "scholars" of educational administration/management  holds outstanding responsibility for training the school administrators as well as contributing to the academic development of the field. The field of educational administration, owing its presence to the general administrative thought and science of management, has beeninfluenced by different paradigms, thematic domains, various lines of inquiry and a continuing quest for a knowledge base since its emergence. Moreover, various organizational theories were utilized and various trends became dominant in research (Willower & Forsyth, 1999). Educational administration scholarship in Europe has to encounter many challenges due to the recent global changes. Evidently, it is woven with problems and issues such as the scientific natureof the field, the efforts to build a solid knowledge base, utilizing diffierent  research paradigms and methodology, scholarly activities, various phenomena affecting the scholarly development of the field (Aydın, Erdağ ve Sarıer, 2010; Donmoyer, 1999; Maxcy, 2001; Şimşek, 2003; Oplatka, 2007) 

Therefore, this study aims to explore thoroughly, from the perceptions of the actively working scholars of educational administration, where it stands as an academic field, whether there is a canon shared by all the scholars, which research paradigm is used and how educational administration scholarship has been affected by the important social and political events especially after the 1950s. In short, it aims to set up a theoretical and conceptual framework for the educational administration field in the Turkish academic context in comparison with the situation in European academia.

The main research question serving the purpose of the study is as follows:

What is the current situation of educational administration scholarship today from the perceptions of the educational administration scholars in universities in Ankara, Turkey in comparison with European context?
The study subsequently aims to address the following questions:
1. How do educational administration scholars regard the field of education among other academic disciplines?
2. Is there an established canon shared by all the educational administration scholars in Turkey?
3. What is the dominant paradigm used by educational administration scholars in Turkey?
4. What were the historical and political events and turning points that influenced the field in the time in Turkey?

Moreover, the findings will be compared to the current state of the field in European context. 

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