High School Principals' Ethical Decisions: A Comparative Analysis of Socio-cultural & Structural Context in Pakistan and United States

Open Access
- Author:
- Jehan, Mehnaz
- Graduate Program:
- Educational Leadership
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- September 17, 2015
- Committee Members:
- Roger C Shouse, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
De Roger C Shouse, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Dr Semali, Committee Member
Dr Nolan, Special Member - Keywords:
- Ethics
Ethical Decisions
High School Principals
Socio-Cultural Context
Structural Context
Pakistan/United States - Abstract:
- Ethics in educational leadership and comparative educational research place particular emphasis on exploring contextual realities to develop a comprehensive and holistic understanding of leadership concepts to improve leadership practices. In this regard, this study aimed at explaining socio-cultural and structural contexts that shape high school principals' ethical decision making in Pakistan and United states. the study is comprised of a comprehensive literature review as well as primary data collection from Pakistan. I employed qualitative paradigm to achieve the purpose of this study. in depth and semi structures interviews provide the main strategy to seek principals' experiences with ethical challenges in Pakistan. Furthermore, phenomenological underpinnings informed and guided my interview strategies. I have not engaged in a formal phenomenological investigation, which required adapting methods and substantial knowledge of phenomenological philosophy. Dilemma analysis, a widely used strategy to study ethics in educational leadership, provie ways of seeking principals' experiences with ethical challenges and decision-making at two stages. At the first stage, I shared with the principals two dilemmas depicting real situations in the context of Pakistan for their comments. At the second stag, I employed "Real life, respondent generated dilemmas" in an hour and half long semi-structured interviews to help them think of at least three critical challenges or issues they experienced in their professional lives. Findings reveal that the high school principals in Pakistan work in a varied environments and are pulled in different direction. Each direction has its own conflicting demands creating dilemmas for them. Moreover, the socio-cultural and structural forces impact at various levels and color principals' decisions. Since this study takes an initiative of highlighting a need to understand ethical dimensions of educational leadership in the context of Pakistan, it was limited in scope. Hence, the study recommends investigating the concept of ethics in depth, focusing on ethics relative to women in leadership practices, as well as differences in ethical leadership between private and public school principals.