Ethical Leadership and Decision Making in Education

Practicing a Professional Ethic: Leading for Students’ Best Interests

“…As the sequence of both interviews proceeded and more specific questions were posed about what "best interests" means and its possible utility, more participants engaged in conversation about its validity for decision making and moral guidance. Few participants, if any, rationally or reasonably connected the expression "best interests" to a developed ethical conceptualization of practice and, as such, there is little evidence that the data acquired through this study aligned with the meaning of "best interests" as articulated through the Ethic of the Profession and Its Model for Students' Best Interests (Shapiro and Stefkovich 2001, 2005, 2011Stefkovich 2006).…”

“…This study offers empirical insights that address both the strengths and weakness of one aspect (the central injunction) of a theorized ethic for the profession of school leadership and constitutes an attempt at providing empirically based theorizing about the Ethic of the Profession and Its Model for Students' Best Interests (Shapiro and Stefkovich 2001, 2005, 2011Stefkovich 2006). As an ethical amalgam of justice, care, and critique contextualized in schools, along with an articulated framework of rights, responsibility, and respect that constitutes a student's best interests, forming a distinct professional ethic for school administration (and all school workers who lead), as evidenced or not within this study, is far from validated and settled.…”

“…I was interested in how secondary school principals interpreted their experience of leadership decision making as a moral activity in relation to a specific ethical decision-making framework, the Ethic of the Profession and Its Model for Students' Best Interests (hereafter the "framework"; Shapiro and Stefkovich 2001, 2005, 2011Stefkovich2006). This study did not investigate decision making per se but, rather, focused on principals' post hoc reasoning about the decisions they made, or would have made, in a hypothetical situation.…”

“…The framework (Shapiro and Stefkovich 2001, 2005, 2011Stefkovich 2006) recognizes moral aspects unique to the profession of educational leadership and grounds the moral dimension of the profession on the nomothetic injunction, "serve the best interests of the student" (Shapiro and Stefkovich 2001), thereby "promoting the success of all students" (ISLLC 1996(ISLLC , 2008 by focusing on the needs of children (Walker 1998). The framework is situated in a larger "multiple paradigm" ethical landscape of justice, care, and critique (Starratt 1991(Starratt , 1994.…”

Making Our Judgments Right: Ethics of Corporal Punishment in Indian Schools

“…Based on literature synthesis and the critical examination of the Court case using ethical frameworks (Stefkovich, 2006;Stefkovich & Shapiro, 2010) this paper argues that law alone may not preclude teachers from using an age old practice such as corporal punishment. Furthermore using literature related to the Court case as secondary data sources, the paper argues that teachers trained in incorporating ethical paradigms in their decision making presents best chances for effective implementation of laws against corporal punishment in Indian schools.…”