Ethical Leadership and Decision Making in Education: Applying Theoretical Perspectives to Complex Dilemmas

Citation

Paul Doscher, S. (2006), "Ethical Leadership and Decision Making in Education: Applying Theoretical Perspectives to Complex Dilemmas", Journal of Educational Administration, Vol. 44 No. 5, pp. 522-525. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578230610683804

The second edition of Shapiro and Stefkovich's Ethical Leadership and Decision Making in Education: Applying Theoretical Perspectives to Complex Dilemmas is an engaging, perceptive, and savvy text provoking conscious ethical reflection by educational leaders, their instructors, and other stakeholders. Two new chapters on religious differences and high‐stakes testing have been added to keep pace with changing concerns. Discussions of recent scholarship keep the reader abreast of the fields of ethics and educational leadership.

Shapiro and Stefkovich take a multi‐paradigm approach to case study analysis. They offer four distinct lenses through which to view contemporary educational dilemmas:

1. 1.

   the ethic of justice;

2. 2.

   the ethic of critique;

3. 3.

   the ethic of care; and

4. 4.

   the ethic of the profession.

The authors hold with Dewey's definition of ethics as the science of determining whether conduct is considered good or bad, right or wrong. The multiparadigm approach enables readers to make and defend tough ethical choices by responding to critical questions: “Ethics approved by whom? Right or wrong according to whom” (p. 10)?

The book's organization is as straightforward and orderly as the authors' approach to ethical reasoning. Three major parts are introduced by a neat preface setting forth the authors' purposes, paradigms, and plan. Part I is divided into two chapters. In Chapter 1, Shapiro and Stefkovich quote extant literature, student opinion, and personal philosophy as theoretical bases for their approach to ethical case study. Chapter 2 presents concise yet comprehensive explanations of the paradigms. Lucid definitions, academic citations, and key analytical questions allow for easy reference and linkages to supplementary reading. In their expanded discussion of professional ethics, the authors differentiate between their paradigmatic approach and previous codified systems, such as the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) Standards for School Leaders. Shapiro and Stefkovich call here for a dynamic individuated process where professional educators:

… formulate and examine their own professional codes of ethics in light of individual personal codes of ethics, as well as standards set forth by the profession… (p. 26).

Professional educators are urged to keep students at the center of the decision making process and analyze issues from multiple dimensions, including the wishes of the community. The authors acknowledge clashes within and between personal, professional, and community ethical codes, and incorporate these conflicts into their holistic model for moral practice.

Part II concerns analysis of seven ethical paradoxes in education and modern society:

1. 1.

   individual rights versus community standards;

2. 2.

   the traditional curriculum versus the hidden curriculum;

3. 3.

   personal codes versus professional codes;

4. 4.

   the American melting pot versus the Chinese hot pot;

5. 5.

   religion versus culture;

6. 6.

   equality versus equity; and

7. 7.

   accountability versus responsibility.

Chapters are introduced by discussions of legal, theoretical, and historical circumstances placing educators at the center of the paradoxes. Case studies, some based on true events, are followed by discussion questions prompting the reader to analyze from multiple paradigms and perspectives.

In Chapter 3, cases involving teachers' moonlighting, conception, and co‐habitation rights form a platform for exploring personal versus community standards, moral objectivism versus relativism, and deontology versus teleology. In Chapter 4, the reader must untangle knotty curriculum problems involving AIDS education, vivisection, copyright laws and inclusion programs. The ethics of critique are particularly relevant to these case studies in which both traditional and innovative choices are challenged. In Chapter 5, professional ethics clash with personal codes. For example, in the case study entitled “Job sharing: some real benefits,” an assistant superintendent negotiates with the teachers' union over full‐time benefits for a pilot job‐sharing program. The discussion question, “What is the fairest choice Superintendent Brown could make?” demands the reader identify differing concerns and analyze the issue from the perspectives of job‐sharing employees, administrators, non job‐sharing employees and taxpayers. Having argued for a professional ethical paradigm:

… that includes ethical principles, codes of ethics, the ethics of the community, professional judgment, and professional decision making (p. 59).

Shapiro and Stefkovich impel readers to discern between competing values and integrate them into coherent professional choices.

In Chapter 6, readers grapple with acculturation and social power. When home and school cultures collide over foster care, corporal punishment and youth employment issues, ethical dilemmas ensue. In Chapter 7, the authors deliberately present four ethical dilemmas in which religious and cultural matters are so intertwined as to be nearly inseparable. Readers are challenged to stretch their conceptions of diversity to include previously ignored or misunderstood values, such as those of the Buddhist, Native American, and Muslim traditions, among others. Chapter 8 examines paradoxes between equality and equity where essentially similar people in similar circumstances have historically been treated unequally. The three cases in this chapter deal with inclusion, retrenching, and tracking and highlight the influence of ethical paradigms upon the interpretation of equity and equality. The last chapter in Part II deals with timely issues of accountability and responsibility. The authors allude to the many denotations and connotations of each term and present four high‐stakes testing cases in which readers must define and weigh contrasting values while attempting multidimensional analysis.

Part III is composed of a single chapter, “Ethics, ourselves, and our pedagogy.” Written for those teaching or wishing to teach ethics to educators, this chapter is a presentation of the authors' personal and pedagogical history as a model for recommended scholarly practice. Shapiro and Stefkovich advocate a “reflective, process oriented, and constructivist” (p. 152) teaching style that encourages students:

… not to memorize class notes and ethical codes, but to reflect on their own experiences and through them derive meaning from what they have learned. Our aim, then, is to empower our students and/or practitioners so that they in turn will empower others (p. 152).

Through conscious reflection on case studies and focused practice viewing issues through multiple ethical lenses, educators gain a systematic approach for analyzing motives, actions, and alternatives to real‐life dilemmas. The authors also make special note of the strengths and challenges posed by diversity in the classroom. They warn against stereotyping of any kind and attending to only the most obvious forms of difference, such those between races, religions, genders, etc. Differences within groups are often slow and difficult to detect. Instructors are advised to employ pedagogical strategies that draw students out and force them to reflect on their own and others' ethical codes rather than attempt to resolve differences.

The implications of this volume for education are several. Ethical Leadership and Decision Making in Education: Applying Theoretical Perspectives to Complex Dilemmas is an instructive and approachable resource for facilitating discourse among stakeholders. Shapiro and Stefkovich's practical, no‐nonsense feel for sorting out complex, multilayered quandaries removes much of the emotional Sturm und Drang from ethical analysis. This book is recommended for use at school sites amongst school administrators, faculty, staff and site‐council members, either in an ongoing roundtable setting or as a periodic spur to discussion when applicable. Teachers can use this text as a model for introducing ethics into secondary and post‐secondary curricula; the paradoxes explored in this volume are germane to nearly every discipline. The book, though assistive in ethical decision making, is most progressive in its framing of problems as true dilemmas – ongoing states of uncertainty formed by deep, broad currents of history, culture, and society. Without cataloguing these dynamics, the authors help practitioners see their challenges as part of a much bigger picture and to navigate a sensible, ethical, and professional course through them. Educational leaders in search of an elegant articulation of professional ethical process will find one within this book.

This book is available from the following address: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers, 10, Industrial Avenue, Mahwah, NJ 07430, web site: www.erlbaum.com