Teaching Educational Leaders to Move from Moral Reasoning to Moral Action

Ethical leadership is critical to effective schools. However, earlier research showed that ethics and moral reasoning were often not formally taught nor assessed in pre-service leadership programs. In this study I examined graduate programs' approaches to curriculum, instruction, and assessment...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEducation leadership review Vol. 18; no. 1; pp. 37 - 51
Main Author Pijanowski, John
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published NCPEA Publications 01.12.2017
Subjects
Accreditation (Institutions)
Administrator Education
Assignments
College Faculty
Curriculum
Decision Making
Department Heads
Ethics
Evaluation Methods
Graduate Study
Leadership Responsibility
Leadership Styles
Moral Values
Research Universities
Semi Structured Interviews
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Summary:Ethical leadership is critical to effective schools. However, earlier research showed that ethics and moral reasoning were often not formally taught nor assessed in pre-service leadership programs. In this study I examined graduate programs' approaches to curriculum, instruction, and assessment of learning in ethics and moral reasoning. Rest's four component model of moral decision making provided the theoretical base for structuring the inquiry into how colleges define, teach and assess moral leadership (Bebeau, 2002). Results of interviews with 43 graduate schools of educational leadership in the United States showed 91% of graduate schools of educational leadership report teaching moral leadership in some fashion but vary greatly in curriculum, method, and assessment. Professional standards appear to influence the kinds of assignments and assessments most commonly reported in this study. In several cases, school leadership programs have engaged their faculty in a thoughtful planning process to integrate the teaching of moral leadership into their curriculum and develop meaningful assessment strategies. Highlighting these exemplary programs will be a critical next step in sharing information among faculty about how to teach moral leadership and evaluate student work in this area. However, before this can be effectively done the field must begin to reach a shared understanding of how moral leadership is defined within programs and in the literature. It is on this point that the work already done in moral psychology as applied to other pre-professional training programs can be most helpful.
ISSN:1532-0723