Based on over twenty years of empirical and intellectual work about knowledge production in the field of educational administration, I examine the origins and development of the canon, methodologies and knowledge workers in England. I focus on the field as being primarily concerned with professional activity and how and why this was established from the 1960s, and the way knowledge workers have variously positioned themselves over time and in context. Using a case study of knowledge production at the time of the New Labour governments (1997–2010) I show how the emphasis on activity has left the field vulnerable to colonisation by markets and private interests, but how policy studies continues not only to reveal this but also to provide a model for how engagement with the social sciences can be productive.