An empirical investigation of secondary principals' perspectives on "the best interests of the student" as a viable professional ethic for educational leadership
Open Access
- Author:
- Frick, William Charles
- Graduate Program:
- Educational Theory and Policy
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 07, 2006
- Committee Members:
- Dana Lynn Mitra, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Jacqueline A Stefkovich, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Gerald K Letendre, Committee Member
Nancy A Tuana, Committee Member - Keywords:
- ethics
education administration
education leadership
values
decision making
moral practice - Abstract:
- This study examined secondary principals’ perspectives about the expression “the best interests of the student” as a viable professional ethic for educational leadership. Additional features of professional moral reasoning were examined as well; which included principals’ perceptions about the morally unique aspects of their work, principals’ sense making about their own experiences and judgments where a plurality of values and situations embody competing and irreducible moral standpoints, and the meanings ascribed to professional moral practice. An additional focus of this investigation was how secondary principals interpret the experience of leadership decision making as a moral activity in relation to a specific ethical decision making theory, the Ethic of the Profession and its Model for Promoting Students’ Best Interests (Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2001, 2005; Stefkovich, 2006). This study did not investigate decision making, per se, but rather focused on principals’ post hoc reasoning and reflections about the decisions they made. I was primarily concerned about principals’ use of the expression “the best interests of the student” and its meaning and utility in professional practice, but I was also equally concerned about principals’ ethical and moral deliberations and whether these experiences and the meanings ascribed to them either supported, modified, or disconfirmed aspects of the Ethic of the Profession framework and its Model for Promoting Students’ Best Interests. Data were acquired by qualitative-naturalistic inquiry based primarily on in-depth interviews. Data collection techniques that were explorative and generative in nature were best suited for my research questions. I used a general, modified phenomenological perspective suited for an educational research context in order to capture eleven purposefully sampled administrators’ perspectives about moral practice and decision making experiences. Findings indicate that participants clearly articulated what they considered to be unique moral aspects of the profession of educational administration. The expression, “the best interests of the student” was employed by participants as both a professional injunction of special duty and as an intimation of personal dispositions deemed necessary in order to recognize, respond and address students’ needs. Sometimes the phrase was used as a formal maxim, while more often the expression was “weighed” with a variety of other rules of actual duty, assortments of additional considerations and motivations, and situational and contextual variables in order to determine what value or set of values take(s) precedence while seeking to meet both individual and collective student needs. A clash between personal beliefs and values and organizational/professional expectations was very real for participants. The experience was generally frequent, but varied from principal to principal (reports of daily to occasionally to several times a year). One basic principle driving the profession that stands as a moral imperative or ideal for clearing away moral discord between personal values and organizational procedures and policies or professional expectations was not evidenced in the data. A variety of approaches and strategies were used by participants to resolve the intrapersonal value clash experienced in their work.