Developing Ethical Principles for School Leadership

PSEL Standard Two

Lisa Bass, William C. Frick, Michelle D. Young, Lisa Bass, William C. Frick, Michelle D. Young

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781317420521
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

Co-published with UCEA, this new textbook tackles Standard #2 of the Professional Standards for Educational Leaders (PSEL)—Ethics and Professional Norms. This volume includes specific strategies for school leaders to develop knowledge and skills in supporting the learning and development of all students, as well as understanding the dynamics and importance of ethics in leadership practice. By presenting problem-posing cases, theoretical grounding, relevant research, implications for practice, and learning activities, this book provides aspiring leaders with the background, learning experiences, and analytical tools to successfully promote ethical leadership and student success in their contexts.

Special features include:

• Case Studies—provide an opportunity to practice ethical reasoning and engage in the discussion of complexities and debates within each case.

• Learning Activites—a range of exercises help readers make connections to the PSEL standard.

• Important Resources—includes resources that support and encourage students to explore each of the chapter's elements.

CHAPTER 1
Being an Ethical Leader Means Taking Responsibility for Students’ Academic and Social Success

William C. Frick, Steven J. Gross, Alison S. Wilson

CHAPTER OVERVIEW

In this chapter we seek to provide varying definitions of ethical leadership and bring to light the important balance of attending to school children’s academic and social wellbeing, while adhering to professional ethical standards. Leaders in educational settings at all levels are continually confronted with complex ethical challenges that require deep reflection and understanding. In order to respond effectively to such complex problems, leaders must have an expanded understanding of a range of ethical reference points. This means being able to reason and act pluralistically with Multiple Ethical Paradigms (MEP) including the ethics of justice, care, critique, community, profession, and virtue. Further, students of educational leadership must see the moral situations and ethical dilemmas they face in the context of varying degrees of turbulence, ranging from light, moderate, severe, and extreme as well as the underlying forces of stability, cascading, and positionality that can raise or lower the level of instability of a given situation or constellation of phenomena. This chapter also includes a case study that illustrates the tension between accountability and responsibility for students’ academic and social success that educational leaders can experience when faced with an ethical dilemma. Key sections are followed by opportunities for aspiring educational leaders to apply the concepts and tools for ethical decision making presented throughout the chapter to the case study as well as their own educational practice.

INTRODUCTION

As indicated by Standard 2 of the Professional Standards for Educational Leaders (PSEL) (2015), 21st-century school leadership requires administrators to accept responsibility for all aspects of students’ development (see Standard 2c) and foster a sense of this responsibility among all members of their school community (see Standard 2f). The language of “responsibility”, as indicated in the title of this chapter and addressed more fully in the following sections, is qualitatively different than the language of “accountability.” This requires leaders to have a clear understanding of the ever-increasing neoliberal political and policy context in which public schools currently function in addition to both a broad and deep awareness of the students and communities they serve (see Standard 2e), including the commitment and capacity to support them (see Roosevelt, 2006). Moreover, as we recognize the transition to the PSEL (2015) (formerly the ISLLC Standards), we would like to high light the differences between key elements of the “Ethics” standard. According to the ISLLC Standards (2008), an educational leader promotes the success of every student by ensuring a system of accountability for every student’s academic and social success. In its more recent iteration in PSEL (2015), this standard calls for effective educational leaders who adhere to ethical principles and professional norms that place children at the center of education and accept responsibility for each student’s academic success and well-being. As you are likely to clearly see, these elements (as italicized) are not necessarily commensurate and therefore we set to the task of examining both very closely. On another note, the importance of language and the power of meaning it conveys cannot be overstated; as such, we are pleased with how this element and its associated meanings have undergone a change that is more repre sentative of the foundational moral purposes of schooling and its operation.

We would also be remiss if we did not mention our keen awareness of how standardization has penetrated the profession of educational administration, as it has for education as a professional field generally, in addition to the standardization influence on the institutionalized bureaucracy of schooling per se. This has a lot to do with accountability, and we will discuss more about this later in the chapter. Are standards (model policy, preparation, professional association, etc.) good or bad? Our intention is not to provide a critique of ISLLC or PSEL Standards or other standards that are informed by their various iterations, but we do want our readers to be aware that standards of most kind (understood as benchmarks rather than criteria of excellence, see Strike, 2007) can be superficial, mechanistic, and depict the minimum of some criterion or aspiration, and this is particularly so when we seek to standardize the morally humanistic dimension of professional work in school leadership. Standards are not sufficient and all encompassing, even with an informed and educatively oriented textbook such as this. By no means do we wish to reinforce the legitimacy of benchmarks, but we do wish to elaborate and nuance the possible meaning of moral excellence. Standards therefore should not be simply employed expediently and uncritically in the sense that external and distal powers drive expectations for the profession and therefore we must assiduously prepare to meet those expectations. We believe this is wholly the wrong approach to thoughtful professional formation, both in craft skill and in moral commitments. We hope this chapter, and the book as a whole, breaks what can be viewed as an artificial mold of standardization and encourage readers to look deeper, reflect robustly, and adopt dispositions and commitments that are praiseworthy of the profession.

We begin by introducing a case that will serve to direct and promote the development of thinking over specific content presented in this chapter. With the case as setting and backdrop, a progression of various learning activities and summary tables will be presented at critical junctures in order to encourage interactive meaning making with ideas, assertions and challenges so as to promote the application of informed administrative practice.

CASE STUDY 1.1: WHEN ETHICS AND POLICY COLLIDE

It had been a typical spring day for first-year assistant principal Richard Inman at Rocket Junior High. By 7:20 a.m., while waiting for Bus 50, Richard walked through the courtyard speaking with the students. Bus 50 dropped off students from the south side of town. A south-side kid himself, Richard had an agenda to reach this group of students. By staying late and playing basketball after school with the toughest of the bunch, he had cultivated a relationship with Juan, a muscular, heavily tattooed young man of 15 who was the undisputed leader of the group. His extra effort to cultivate a relationship was paying off. Juan and his devoted followers had improved their grades, mingled with others, and Juan himself had not been involved in a fight for months, a record for him.

Later in the day, he was not so optimistic. Richard called Juan to the office to follow up on his third tardy of the week. Juan’s fifth-period teacher immediately called him back stating that she had witnessed Juan giving something to another student in the hall (just after he had been summoned to the office). The teacher believed drugs might have been exchanged and said that the other boy, David Ramos, a slightly built young scholar who participated in honors’ classes and was a standout trombonist in the band, seemed quite nervous. Richard contemplated what to do with David Ramos.

In this school of 900 students, the only discourse Richard could recall having with David was a congratulatory remark after the Christmas band concert. Decision made, he reached again for the phone and asked the school police officer to escort David out of class and bring him to the office.

Juan arrived first and David soon after. Richard brought both boys and the officer (a decision of inclusion he would later doubt) into his office and asked them what had taken place. Juan said he had just given David something to hold for him. When David was questioned about the exchange (in the presence of the officer), he began to shake, tears welled up in his eyes, and he refused to say anything. The officer searched David and discovered a pair of brass knuckles, a prohibited weapon, the possession of which constituted a felony offense. The officer immediately handcuffed David.

At this point, David began to cry and suddenly Juan said, “Hey, I told him I would kick his ass if he didn’t hold the knucks for me. Those are mine; I was going to use them after school to take care of some personal business.”

Richard felt a swell of pride. Standing up and admitting that he had coerced the small, honor student to hold the weapon for him was a HUGE breakthrough for Juan! His joy immediately turned to sadness, regret, and guilt.

Richard thought the school police officer would take the cuffs off of David but that did not happen. He asked why and the officer said that he had to take both students to jail and charge them with felony possession of a prohibited weapon on school property. In addition, a zero-tolerance board policy demanded both students should be expelled for no less than 45 days into the district’s disciplinary alternative education program (DAEP).

That was no big deal for Juan; he had been through this numerous times before. But not David. This kid had not been in any trouble and had not initiated what happened to him. The system was broken, and he himself had just become a victim along with a small boy who had not had the courage to stand up to a bully. What kind of society demanded courage from 11-year-old children? Richard felt sick as he realized his own thoughtlessness had contributed to both boys being cuffed and led from the room. He felt trapped between following policy, which he had been taught to do, and his deep obligation to do the very best he could for his students.

Within minutes, both boys were taken to the youth detention facility. Richard called the mothers of both boys and the reaction of the parents spoke volumes. Juan’s mother responded with “Let him sit there for a few days; maybe he will learn his lesson this time.” David’s mother hung up on Richard and was in his office 15 min later. Richard explained the situation and promised David’s mother he would do all he could to help. David’s mother ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Series Foreword
• Foreword
• Preface
• 1 Being an Ethical Leader Means Taking Responsibility for Students’ Academic and Social Success
• 2 Modeling Ethical Leadership: Being an Ethical Leader Means Modeling Principles of Self-Awareness, Reflective Practice, Transparency, and Ethical Behavior
• 3 Supporting Democratic and Ethical Schools
• 4 Safeguarding the Values of Diversity and Equity
• 5 The Moral and Legal Dimensions of Decision Making
• 6 Supporting Socially Just, Equitable, and Inclusive Schools
• 7 Future Directions in the Development of Ethical Leadership
• Notes on Contributors
• Index