Ethical Leadership

Ethical Leadership
– Association of Independent Schools, Executive
Conference.
– 15th, May 2007
– Novotel, Brighton-le-Sands, NSW
– Associate Professor Charles Burford
Ethical?
Ethics, Morals and Virtues:
What Are They
• “Ethos”(Greek)Meaning: Custom,Usage,or Character
• “The Science of the Ideal Human Character”
• “Moral” (Latin) Meaning:Manner, Good and Right,
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Virtue, Value, Worth.
“Describes What Is Good or Right or Proper.
“Virtues”: Focuses on attitudes, dispositions, values, or
character traits that enable us to be and to act in ways
that develop our human potential.
“It is about the good of the person performing the act
as they value its consequences”.
Ethics: What are they?
• Ethics are the norms and virtues by which
members of a community bind themselves to a
moral way of living. Starratt (2004) suggests
that they are maps that we consult only when
the familiar terrain we are traversing becomes a
tangle of underbrush.
Duignan et al (2003)
found that for leaders of service organisations,
the choice was often between two “goods”
rather than a “good” and a “bad”.
Competing Dilemmas And
Tensions in Ethical Decision
Making in Educational Leadership
• Honesty Both/And/Or Loyalty
• Individual Rights Both/And/ Common Good
• Deontology Both/And/Or Utilitarianism
• Mercy Both/And/Or Justice
• Care Both/ and/ Or Rules
• Rhetoric Both/ and/ Or Reality
Hodgkinson on Educational
Leadership
• “Simply put what changes is context, what
doesn’t change is human nature…..but
human nature just happens to be the
essential raw material of education. More,
it is also the essence of administration and
leadership. (Think character rather than
characteristics)” 2004.
• Trust above all else! (Burford 2004)
Moral Leadership
• Leadership is the art of calling others to
seek the truth as to what it means to be
human; to explore the essence of the
being; to discover the spiritual chemistry
of relationships; to make judgments about
significance, rightness, wrongness.
Accepting Complexity
• Education by its definition is a highly complex activity
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that is part science, part craft and part art.
Humanity is richly diverse and our students must thrive
in that kind of complexity
Our systems are equally complex since they are
comprised of multiple forces including a wide range of
people with their personal needs and aspirations.
Complexity does not have to mean confusion, if we look
at it with the same curiosity we give to looking skyward
on a clear evening.
Sadly, we sometimes fall into the habit of bureaucratic,
simplified actions that turn our schools into mere
factories.
Leadership and Learning as
Engagement
• If Learning is about engagement,
• How do we engage: teachers, students,
parents?
• How are we engaged ourselves?
• Burford and Gross (2006)
Student Engagement Research
(Burford and Gross 2005):
Best Learning
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1. Experiential and relevant
2. Teacher relationships
3. Extracurricular and informal education
4. Teacher passion and knowledge
5. Boredom: Old vs new teaching methods
6. Choice, career, independence and
maturity
7. Final exam, tertiary entrance, scaling
and alienation
Student Engagement: Connected
and an Individual (Burford and
Gross, 2005)
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Community identity and acknowledgement
Respectful relationships
Teacher as connection to school
Exams, competition, choice and life-skills
Group dominance, stereotyping and
acceptance
Controlling cultures
School and class size
Adults and The Teenager
Student Engagement Research,
Burford and Gross,2005)
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Acknowledge their right to live their own life
with independence and responsibility.
Don’t relive your life through the child’s life.
Show compassion, respect and trust for their
lives in transition, from child to adult.
Respect the differences in ‘lifeworlds’ of adults
and adolescents.
Pressure of career, exams and the need for a
social life.
Democratically-Ethical Schools
• Working with students and giving them a voice in
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crafting a responsive instructional model that both
challenges and supports their learning ie hands-on
learning. Ignoring student voice seems inconsistent in a
society that espouses the value of social justice.
Remember the core values of our society: the
fundamental equality of all.
Remember that we are leaders beyond the school walls
too.
We fall short of this goal when we follow conventions
blindly without asking why. This will cause tensions and
dilemmas in our leadership but …didn’t we come into
education because we care for children and their future.
Where do we start?
• In the Life World of the Child
Levels of Relational Learning
• Informational
• Formational
• Transformational
Dualistic View Of Education
• Informational
• Formational
• Education in Secular
• Pedagogy,
Subjects: Maths,
Language, Religion,
Art and Craft, Social
Studies, Health and
Physical Education
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Assessment,
Organisation,
Excursions,
Ceremonies, Camps,
Community Service,
Co-Curricular
Activities, Pastoral
Care, Community Life.
Transformational
• Begins with personal meaning:
– The learner must connect the subject/object of the
lesson/unit to his/her life experience.
– How is this subject/object like something familiar in
his/her experience.
– Imagine a situation in his her life where it might be
important to know, like, refer to the subject/object of
the lesson
– How is the subject/object connected to his/her family,
neighborhood, life at home, to friends.
– How is the subject/object connected to something
that recently appeared in the media
AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP FOR TRANSFORMING LEARNING IN CATHOLIC SCHOOLS
VALUES
ETHICS
LEADERSHIP
PRIORITIES
Distributed
responsibility
Authenticity
Catholicity
Evidence
based practice
LEARNING
PROCESSES
Curriculum
standards and
targets
Professional
learning
School and
class
organisation
Sustainability
Pedagogy
Community and
Culture
Intervention
programs
Change
management
Monitoring,
assessment
and reporting
Excellence
Justice
Presence
Transformation
Relationship
Common Good
Responsibility
External
networking
Transformed
Learner
Catholicity
• The defining characteristic of our schools is that
they are Catholic – a work of love, for the full
human development of our students, grounded
in the teachings of Christ and at the service of
society. They are a key element of the
evangelising mission of the Church as they strive
to bring culture and faith into harmony in the
school community. The Catholic school takes its
stand within the organic pastoral work of the
Christian community.
Excellence
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Schools must be good schools. That is, they
must seek the very best outcomes for their
students. This comes down to ensuring the
highest quality of teaching and learning both for
staff and students.
All improvement is set within a framework of:
– values about the nature of the moral purpose of
schools
– teacher professionalism
– the capacity of every student to learn given support in
an appropriate learning environment.
THE COMMON GOOD APPROACH
•Presents a vision of society as a community whose
members are joined in a shared pursuit of values
and goals they hold in common.
•The community is comprised of individuals whose
own good is inextricably bound to the good of the
whole.
•The principle states: “What is ethical is what
advances the common good. We are not justified in
taking actions that directly harm others.”
•But it is not always clear in practice
THE JUSTICE APPROACH
•Focuses on how fairly or unfairly our actions distribute
benefits and burdens among among the members of a
group.
•Justice requires consistency in the way people are
treated.
•The principle states:”Treat people the same unless there
are morally relevant differences between them.”
Problems exist on the issue of disadvantage and what
should be done about it.
Transformation
• Teaching has often been described as sowing the seeds of the
future. It is a vocation of hope, in which teachers constantly stretch
the limits of learning – both their own and that of our students".
• Schools must go beyond the informational and even the formational
to the transformational. As Jerry Starratt says, through
transformative learning, the learner becomes a fuller, richer, deeper
human being.
• Schools should be vibrant learning communities which make a
fundamental contribution to society by working to bring culture and
faith into harmony. They should be places within which students
gain the knowledge, skills and attitudes to critically engage with
their society as they become effective global citizens.
Ethic 1: Authenticity
The ethic of authenticity challenges us to
act in truth and integrity in all our
interactions as humans, citizens, teachers
and leaders.
Ethic 2: Presence
The ethic of presence challenges us to
relate to ourselves and to others in ways
are truly open and truly engaging.
Ethic 3: Responsibility
The ethic of responsibility challenges us to act in
ways that acknowledge our personal
accountability for our actions, for shaping
learning and for providing growth promoting
environments of relationship and learning. We
are responsible as human beings, as educators
and as citizens to all stakeholders in our schools:
students, parents, teachers, support staff,
government agencies and the Church.
Consider Other Approaches to
Ethics: Shapiro and Stefkovich 2001
• Justice
• Critique
• Care
• Profession
• Community (Gail Furman, 2005)
Some frequently mentioned
Leadership issues: LTLL
Research
• A conceptual model was seen as useful as it made explicit the key
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domains in building towards improved learning outcomes and the
place of shared moral purposes of learning and more concrete
behaviours of leadership and learning.
Strength in developing and implementing practices for collecting and
interpreting available data and linking to best practice elsewhere.
Having processes in place for enhancing staff skills in the area of
evidence based practice.
Embed teacher team learning in professional practice and utilise it
as a driving force in school innovation and development.
Articulate understandings of contemporary theories on student
learning and teaching practices
Issues Cont.
• Leadership needs to be seen as socially just
• Utilise teacher appraisal processes to identify and
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support the specific learning needs of individual
teachers*
Facilitate opportunities for parents to undertake training
and share their experience of strategies for supporting
their child’s learning
Report regularly to parents in a language that is readily
understood and that provides interpretive comments etc
Develop a sense of shared responsibility and ownership
with students and parents for social, emotional and
academic learning underpinned by common
understandings of educational goals
* Most frequently mentioned
• There appear to be two strong recurring themes:
• developing a strong sense of being a learning community
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among staff – focussed on skill needs (particularly
evidence based practice) and shared understandings and
language especially about the values and ethics of
educational processes. This calls for strong articulation
among processes. And
building links with parents and giving voice to students
to engage them as real partners in learning.
Building a Culture Of Moral
Leadership In Education:
• There is a crucial need for individuals to take
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responsibility for leadership at all levels and for
organizations to involve people more in the
policies/decisions they have to implement.
Contemporary leaders require frames of
reference that can assist them to manage
situations of uncertainty, ambiguity and paradox.
Need frameworks for making choices that can
encompass seeming polar opposite
considerations, values and ethical positions.
Platforms For Leading Learning
Communities
• What Does the Wizard of Oz Have
To Offer Me?
• Charlie’s Chance to Mentor You
Ethical Model
Intangible Elements
Values
Profession
Beliefs
Care
Sacred
Ideology
Justice
Critique
Tangible Elements
Congruity
Doing the
Right Thing
throughout the
Organisation
Verbal Manifestation
Visual Manifestation
Behavioral Manifestation
•Aims
•Crests
•Rituals
•Goals
•Mottos
•Ceremonies
•Myths
•Icons
•Language
•Fables
•Uniforms
•Structures
•Metaphors
•Resources
•Procedures
•Saga
•Facilities
•Rules
•Legends
•Symbols
•Regulations
•Traditions
•Rewards
•Sanctions
Burford’s Belief Model
Leadership Value : X
• Belief
• Ideology
– My belief about this
value
– Ought
– Full sentences
– Ought NOT
– Don’t use the value
term
– See/Hear/Do
– Agreed meaning
– Evidence - What
would we accept?
Walt Whitman on Education and
Life
• This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun
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and the animals, despise riches, give alms to
everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and
crazy, devote your income and labour to others,
hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have
patience and indulgence towards the people,
take off your hat to nothing known or unknown
or to any man or number of men, go freely with
powerful undereducated persons and with the
young and with the mothers of families,
Walt Whitman
• Read these leaves in the open air every season
of every year of your life, re-examine all you
have been told at school or church or in any
book, dismiss what ever insults your own soul,
and your very flesh shall be a great poem and
have the richest fluency not only in its words but
in the silent lines of its lips and face and
between the lashes of your eyes and in every
motion and joint of your body……..