UNDERSTANDING ETHICAL DILEMMAS FACED BY EDUCATIONAL LEADERS

In recent years the conduct of leaders, in an ethical sense, in many professions and types of organisations has captured public attention. In particular, educational leaders are often faced with ethical dilemmas in the daily course of their work as they are required to make complex decisions in the best interests of their students and their schools. This is understandable given the complex challenges and competing forces that beset leadership which is clearly a values-based activity (Walker & Shakotko, 1999). There is little doubt that, given the rapidly changing social, economic and political context in which schools now operate, the moral and ethical dimensions of leadership continue as important topics for exploration. This paper reports the findings of recent research into the ethical dilemmas faced by a number of heads of non-government schools in Australia. These dilemmas centred broadly around making critical decisions, usually about staff and students, where a number of competing forces impacted on the decision itself, with the potential to lead to significant implications for individuals as well as for the school more generally. Th