Educational Management Administration & Leadership

This article attempts to provide a foundational understanding of school learning as moral activity as well as intellectual activity. It first develops a distinction between general ethics and professional ethics, and provides an initial explanation of the moral good involved in learning. The moral good of learning is then connected to the fundamental moral agenda of learners, namely, to find, own and engage their true, authentic selves. The article takes up the distortion of the learning process in schools due to a misguided epistemology of knowledge inherited from the Enlightenment and suggests an epistemology more in tune with the sociology of knowledge and contemporary physics. This enables a clearer foundational connection of learning with authentic human development. There follows a description of what teaching for that kind of learning might look like. The article concludes with some implications for leadership of such learning.

This article proposes that effective leadership in intercultural schools requires authentic understanding and related action; and that this can only be sought through a dedication to ongoing leadership learning. After briefly introducing the metaphor of authentic leadership, outlining the influence of culture on school leadership and the context of intercultural schools the paper suggests a number of learning avenues through which leaders can consciously reframe and better understand problems and solutions around these intercultural school contexts. These interrelated avenues include learning beyond standardised leadership prescriptions, simultaneously trusting and mistrusting experience, learning through student learning, learning through variation, learning through looking beyond culture and learning through curiosity. The major theme running through related discussion is that authentic intercultural leadership is particularly attuned to the values, beliefs and behavioural uniqueness of the students, teachers and others which comprise the community. In other words, it aims to acquire intercultural understanding on an ongoing basis and use this to inform leadership beliefs and practice. Therefore, authentic leadership and learning can be viewed as inseparably twinned.

This article explores the alternate ways ethical school leadership in the best interests of students is conceptualized in the educational leadership literature from several foundational perspectives including philosophy, psychology, critical theory and case law. Perspectives which are grounded solely in theory are differentiated from those grounded in research and practical field applications. An argument is made for the merits of applying multiple ethical perspectives. The findings of existing research on the valuation processes of school principals and their ethical leadership practices are also discussed with a particular focus on their explicit or implicit interpretations of the meaning of `best interests of students'. A genuine regard for student best interests emerges as a major influence on principal leadership practices in two ways: principal valuation processes are heavily oriented towards rational consequentialist orientations; the best interests of students figures prominently as a meta-organizer and ultimate influence on their decision making.

This article reports on research that explored the concept of authentic leadership with seven principals of Catholic primary schools in Brisbane, Australia. Recent developments in leadership theory have promoted the concept of authentic leadership for addressing the leadership demands associated with our seemingly ever-changing and unpredictable, if not chaotic, world. In particular, authentic leaders are said to act in accordance with their personal values and convictions thereby building essential credibility, respect and trust. This suggests that the development of authentic leadership is contingent upon the leader having explicit knowledge of their values so that they can readily act in accordance with these values. Hence, this research sought to determine whether or not it is possible to develop authentic leadership practices by increasing the leader's explicit knowledge of their personal values. A deeply structured process of self-reflection was used as the means for increasing this explicit self-knowledge. In the light of this research, it is proposed that there is more to authentic leadership than knowing one's values. Arguably, truly authentic leadership might only be possible for those leaders who have the commitment and courage to come to know and understand the full extent of the influential power of their whole inner Self.

This study, which was sponsored by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, was conducted in French-language minority schools in seven Canadian provinces: British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. Using an open-ended interview guide, 47 principals were asked about the tensions and possibilities relating to ethical leadership in linguistic minority contexts. Results show how the presence of an ethic of critique is strongly rooted in a context of struggle for the protection of a French-speaking identity as well as linguistic and cultural survival. Participants' number of years experience as school principals significantly influences their ethical posture. New school principals use only one ethic, the ethic of justice, whereas seasoned principals use a consolidated ethical framework which includes the ethic of care and the ethic of critique. An emerging professional ethic is also observed, built both on each person's ethical nature and his or her life experience. Most importantly, this type of professionalism, very much nurtured by relationships, is auto-regulated rather than externally regulated, as with a deontology code.

This article reports on the values and moral dilemmas of one Icelandic headteacher. The article draws on doctoral research currently being conducted with educational leaders in Icelandic basic schools. The research explores the values underpinning the work of female and male educational leaders and how values impact upon their actions, in particular when encountering moral dilemmas. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews with participants who all work in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland. The main tool of analysis is an adapted version of Begley's `arenas of administration'. This article adds another theoretical dimension, that of gender, to Begley's model. Results show that the motivation behind the headteachers' values is primarily based on consensus. They also show how the headteacher attempts to act as a mediator between competing values of the various leadership arenas while coming to terms with her own. Gender was found to effect on the headteacher in various ways as she felt the need to negotiate and contest her values and leadership actions against stakeholders of various arenas.

Being a skillful school leader presumes the competence to judge the ethical consequences of actions. This implies a need for all school agents to discover and analyze what values are at stake and, in turn, reconcile didactic rationality with ethical rationality. This article aims to explore ethical dilemmas in daily school practice, experienced and identified by school agents on different levels: school politicians, superintendents, principals and teachers. These dilemmas are further analyzed from different ethical perspectives. The findings demonstrate a variety of ethical dilemmas on different leadership level. What was considered as an ethical dilemma on one level is not mentioned on another level in the school system. Nevertheless, one common trend was the conflict between a strong values oriented profession and personal values of individuals, where children's rights might be at stake.

This article emphasizes the extent to which conceptions of authenticity are forged through social interaction and socially mediated identities and how, in turn, authentic leadership involves the transformation of the organizational, social or cultural order in which leadership is situated. The overarching context for this exploration of authentic leadership is the loss of authentic meaning inherent in modern times and the importance of developing a fulfilled identity as a way of developing the possibility of meaning. An analytical distinction is made between three dimensions of authenticity (personal, ideal, social) before turning to the specific social context constituted by the contemporary modern era. This context—the enhancement of entrepreneurialism in public sector organisations which gives rise to bureau-enterprise culture—is outlined and, building on sociological work by the author, the nature of social authenticity and identities, and how they interlink with the other dimensions in this culture, are explored. The task for educational leadership concerned with authenticity is, it is proposed, to take a strategic approach to searching out and maximising the democratic potential within contemporary trends towards the bureau-enterprise culture.