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A Mixed Methods Study on Educational Leadership and Ethical Decision Making in Situations of High Turbulence

<p> Researching ethical decision-making, within an educational setting, shed light on the importance of how each decision may influence an individual leader across generations. &ldquo;A leader&rsquo;s system of values, or deeply held beliefs, is the ethical framework from which a leader develops a vision, defines and shapes the change process and takes action to make his or her vision a reality&rdquo; (Vogel, 2012, p. 1). The researcher sought to investigate the how and why of each decision to explore a possible gap between one leader to another, based on age, experience, education, gender and/or race. When an educational leader experienced a turbulent situation with a decision, these situations &ldquo;tap both the ethics of justice, critique, care, and the profession, as well as &hellip; the emotional context for [each] decision&hellip;by focusing on The Turbulence Theory&rdquo; (Shapiro &amp; Gross, 2013, p. xi). Shapiro and Gross (2013) established a similar study based on the Multiple Ethical Paradigms: ethic of care, ethic of critique, ethic of justice, and ethic of profession, which formed the foundation for the researcher&rsquo;s study. This study also gathered data on how a leader&rsquo;s experience shaped current decision-making. </p><p> The total number of participants consisted of 45 educational leaders enrolled at a Midwest university with a unique set of leadership characteristics. The 45 surveyed participants consisted of 30 females and 15 male educational leaders with 12 of those participants self-reported as Black and 33 self-reported as White. The participants described in detail the thinking behind each decision. The researcher analyzed each decision based on a specific ethical decision-making paradigm to seek a relationship to an educational leader&rsquo;s characteristic. </p><p> Results from the contingency table revealed a relationship between specific characteristics based on a particular scenario. Recommendations for future studies included investigation on each ethical paradigm and an individual educational leadership characteristic and analysis on reasons &lsquo;why&rsquo; each educational leader leaned on one particular ethical paradigm over another. </p><p>

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:10746672
Date04 April 2018
CreatorsSladek, Jenna
PublisherLindenwood University
Source SetsProQuest.com
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typethesis

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