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Keywords Values, Ethics, Leadership, Principals, Authority
Abstract The genesis of the moral leadership concept in educational administration and examples of studies exploring this idea during the 1979-2003 period are discussed. The author recommends more contextually sensitive descriptive studies with a focus on the social relations among school leaders and others, giving particular attention, in a phenomenological sense, to the meanings, perspectives, and espoused purposes of school leaders' actions, social relationships, and interpersonal orientations.
What is the meaning of the construct, "moral leadership", and why is it an important and relevant idea in the context of a journal and conference theme rooted in historian Callahan's (1962) classic study, Education and the Cult of Efficiency? There is a twofold answer to this question. First, the education of the public's children is by its very nature a moral activity: to what ends and by what means shall public education proceed? (Dewey, 1932; Green, 1984). second, relationships among people are at the very center of the work of school administrators and teachers, and for this reason school leadership is, by its nature and focus, a moral activity (Foster, 1986; Hodgkinson, 1978,1983,1991; Starratt, 1991, 1996).
Thus, at the very center of the leadership relationship is an essential moral consideration: leading and teaching to what ends, and by what means? The answers to both of these questions confront school leaders with important issues regarding a school's resources, and most critically, its human resources, teachers and students. (Greenfield, 1986,1987,1995) Like their counter-parts in the early twentieth century, contemporary educational leaders face similar pressures for accountability and efficiency in the growing national and international preoccupation with standards, standardization, and the measurement of schooling outcomes. (Carnoy and Loeb, 2002; Verstegen, 2002)
Considered within this context, the idea of moral leadership holds much promise for enabling school administrators to lead in a manner that can best help teachers develop and empower themselves to teach and lead in the context of external pressures to reform schools. Toward this end there has been a growing interest in studying values, ethics, and the moral dimensions of educational leadership. A major contributor to the recent broadening of scholarship in this area has been the UCEA Center for the Study of Leadership and Ethics[1]. The Center's work has resulted...