CASEA ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING/ ACEAS ASSEMBLEE GENERALE ANNUELLE 2009 Carleton University May 25, 2009 T.B. Greenfield Doctoral Dissertation Award Report Dawn Wallin This year, CASEA received eight doctoral dissertations for review. This year’s committee consisted of Dr. Jose da Costa (University of Alberta), Dr. Hope-Arlene Fennell (Lakehead University), and Dr. Roseline Garon (Université de Montréal). Because the number of contributions were high, we must extend sincere appreciation to the committee members who invested considerable time in providing diligent and thoughtful reviews of the short papers, the letters of reference, and the candidates’ full dissertations. After each submission was reviewed according to the CASEA award criteria, committee members forwarded their reviews to the chair.  The quality of the dissertations this year was commendable, and the review process went through a number of iterations with discussion before the winner was determined. This added to the length of the process, but also affirmed for the committee the need to discuss the various strengths and limitations of the dissertations, and underpinned the difficulty in determining a single winner when the quality of scholarship is high and the contextual differences between dissertations add value in their own right. It is my pleasure to report that the recipient of this year’s award is Dr. David Burgess, who completed his PhD at the University of Saskatchewan.  Currently Dr. Burgess is a faculty member of the Department of Educational Administration in the Faculty of Education at the University of Saskatchewan. Dr. Burgess worked under the supervision of Dr. Larry Sackney, Professor Emeritus of the Faculty of Education at the University of Saskatchewan.  His dissertation is entitled, “Prolegomenon to Organisational Relationships Involving the Administration of Education.”  His study focused on a “discussion of the foundational and philosophical structures of interorganisational relationships involving educational administration” (p. ii). Dr. Burgess examines the problems of modernity faced in educational administration and advocates for two stages of redress: (a) a singular definition of pedagogy for public consumption and (b) the eradification of dysfunctional communication based on Habermas’ (1970) notions of communicative action and Mouffe’s agonistic position for interorganisational relations. The committee noted that Dr. Burgess’ work contributes greatly to the philosophical underpinning educational administration and has the potential to frame innovative reseach studies in the future. The methodology he used consisted of two thought processes: hermeneutics and pictorial semiotics.  His work is further influenced by philosophical analogy, heuristics, educational mnemonics and educational multimodal literacy.  His ontology is based on neo-Kantian realism and his espistemologically is rooted in Kant’s analysis of the transcendental apperception. Our sincere congratulations are extended to Dr. Burgess and it is our hope that he will continue to refine and add to the philosophical and theoretical conceptualizations of educational administration as his career progresses.   Sincerely, Dawn Wallin