چکیده:
Every year, numerous academic textbooks on school management are published in Iran,
yet only a small number of them are well received by academics. A common research
method to analyze the content of these popular textbooks is content analysis which identify
only the overt messages of the textbooks. However, every textbooks have also a covert
massages that may attract such a wide audiences too. Therefore, the unspoken side of the
textbooks is as important as the spoken side. Thus, two most popular and frequently
published textbooks in the field of school management, namely, ‘An Introduction to
Educational Management’, which has been republished 45 times, and ‘Theoretical
Foundations and Principles of Educational Management’, which has been republished 25
times, were selected and analyzed through symptomatic reading. The results showed that
the narration of these two books is based on a rational paradigm which views schools as
an integrated and coordinated entities but neglects the game of power that always
accompanied by contradiction and tension. Because to preserve of rational rhetoric, the
textbooks rely on logic-based principles and only some theories are discussed in the books
that are silent about power dynamics. Alagheband’s narration (the author of the books)
tends to leave everything, related to ‘power dynamics’, unspoken. This narration would
attract two groups of audiences; the first group is schools actors and other practitioners of
educational system that are tired of school contradictions and its unfair world. Therefore,
rational paradigm which remain unspoken on the game of power acts like as a remedy to
tiredness and perceived unfairness. The second group is some educators concerned with
the educability of educational management knowledge. They need to simplify the concepts
of and detoxify educational management complexities and inconveniences accordingly