Ethical Educational Leadership Summary

A new superintendent has been hired to run a school district. Her predecessor retired after serving for eighteen years. During his time, he hired much of the current administration and staff. As a result of working with him for so many years, the administration and staff grew to understand and follow his commanding leadership style where his way of thinking was the only one acceptable. In return, the superintendent of nearly two decades defended his employees against all criticism. When the new superintendent was hired, she took a more collaborative approach when leading, establishing various weekly and monthly committees to listen to concerns and allowing staff members to create the agendas. Less than a year into her administration, worries

The employees became comfortable with doing as they were told without question. When the new superintendent applied her democratic leadership style, she asked for the employee’s opinions on issues within the district, instead of imposing new policy without input (Goleman, 2000). The psychodynamic approach to ethical human relations “focuses on the structure of personality and how personality affects perceptions, action, and decisions” (Rebore, 2014, p. 102). From this approach, on page 94, Rebore (2014) states one of the guidelines of ethical educational leadership as, “The behavior of most people is influenced by past experiences.” Since the employees had spent many years under the leadership of someone who did not allow them to have a say in decisions, it is likely that they felt uncomfortable with the change. The new leadership style meant that the employees needed to modify their behavior to better align with the new

Her actions followed the humanistic approach which “views the individual as empowered” (Rebore, 2014, p. 95). The new empowerment opened the possibility for employees to take ownership over their own moral behavior, an opportunity they had not received with the former superintendent. With the new power, also brought shared responsibility of criticism to those decisions. This led to the employees feeling betrayed because the superintendent was not immediately defending them and their actions.

A third challenge the new superintendent faced pertains to the cognitive-behavioral approach to ethical educational leadership practice. The cognitive-behavioral approach is buffeted by an entire range of good and negative experiences. The reaction of people to experiences is molded by past reactions and how they process such reactions in order to modify future behavior. The basic principle of behavior is reinforcement. (Rebore, 2014, p.