Educational Planning: Differing Models

Planning is an almost ubiquitous activity, engaged in by individuals, organizations, communities, and nations. It is pursued for a variety of purposes in a variety of ways, depending on what is being planned, who is doing the planning, and what assumptions are being made about the context and constraints of planning. There has been relatively little conceptualizing and theorizing directly about the process of educational planning. As with many other educational concerns, the sources of theoretical insight frequently lie in the behavioral and social sciences. Most models pertaining to planning and policy-making have their disciplinary roots in sociology, economics, political science, psychology, or the synthetic administrative sciences (Friedman and Hudson 1974). Empirical studies in support or explication of such models tend to be found in business or public affairs rather than in education. Classifying and distinguishing between models of planning are hindered by the lack of agreement on definition. Thus, in the literature, what one author calls a planning model may be labeled policymaking, management, decision-making, or merely politics by other authors. Much of the confusion is perhaps an inevitable result of the complexities of social organization and decision processes and the inadequacies of the languages of the social sciences. Policymakers may evolve strategies (plans) while planners, in certain contexts, may determine goals (policies) and decide who should ‘‘get what, when, and how’’ (Adams 1988). This entry offers a classification of overlapping sets of interactive and rational models of the educational planning process, and explores their paradigmatic context. Comparison is made of technicist, political, and consensual models along a number of dimensions and attention is given to the utility and limitations of the different models by providing international examples of educational planning in practice.