Moral leadership in schools
| Date | 01 April 2004 |
| Pages | 174-196 |
| Published date | 01 April 2004 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09578230410525595 |
| Author | William D. Greenfield |
| Subject Matter | Education |
Moral leadership in schools
William D. Greenfield Jr
Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, USA
Keywords Values, Ethics, Leadership, Principals, Authority
Abstract The genesis of the moral leadership concept in educational administration and
examples of studies exploring this idea during the 1979-2003 period are discussed. The author
recommends more contextually sensitive descriptive studies with a focus on the social relations
among school leaders and others, giving particular attention, in a phenomenological sense, to the
meanings, perspectives, and espoused purposes of school leaders’ actions, social relationships, and
interpersonal orientations.
What is the meaning of the construct, “moral leadership”, and why is it an
important and relevant idea in the context of a journal and conference theme
rooted in historian Callahan’s (1962) classic study, Education and the Cult of
Efficiency? There is a twofold answer to this question. First, the education of the
public’s children is by its very nature a moral activity: to what ends and by
what means shall public education proceed? (Dewey, 1932; Green, 1984).
Second, relationships among people are at the very center of the work of school
administrators and teachers, and for this reason school leadership is, by its
nature and focus, a moral activity (Foster, 1986; Hodgkinson, 1978, 1983, 1991;
Starratt, 1991, 1996).
Thus, at the very center of the leadership relationship is an essential moral
consideration: leading and teaching to what ends, and by what means? The
answers to both of these questions confront school leaders with important
issues regarding a school’s resources, and most critically, its human resources,
teachers and students. (Greenfield, 1986, 1987, 1995) Like their counter-parts in
the early twentieth century, contemporary educational leaders face similar
pressures for accountability and efficiency in the growing national and
international preoccupation with standards, standardization, and the
measurement of schooling outcomes. (Carnoy and Loeb, 2002; Verstegen, 2002)
Considered within this context, the idea of moral leadership holds much
promise for enabling school administrators to lead in a manner that can best
help teachers develop and empower themselves to teach and lead in the context
of external pressures to reform schools. Toward this end there has been a
growing interest in studying values, ethics, and the moral dimensions of
educational leadership. A major contributor to the recent broadening of
scholarship in this area has been the UCEA Center for the Study of Leadership
and Ethics[1]. The Center’s work has resulted in the publication of a powerful
The Emerald Research Register for this journal is available at The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/researchregister www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
An earlier and lengthier draft of this article, presented at the annual meeting of the American
Educational Research Association, April 19-23, 1999, Montreal, Canada, is available from the
Educational Resources Information Clearinghouse, ED 443171.
JEA
42,2
174
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 42 No. 2, 2004
pp. 174-196
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/09578230410525595
collection of scholarly studies focused on ethics, values, and educational
leadership (Begley, 1999; Begley and Leonard, 1999; Begley and Johansson,
2003).
This article briefly reviews the genesis of attention to the concept of moral
leadership in educational administration, and describes how scholars have
utilized the idea in empirical studies of school leadership published during the
1979-2003 period. The article concludes with suggestions for focusing the study
of school leadership, including more contextually-sensitive descriptive work
and an emphasis on studying the social relations among school leaders and
others, with particular attention to the meanings, perspectives, and espoused
purposes of school leaders’ actions, social relationships, and interpersonal
orientations.
Moral leadership in retrospect
Almost four decades ago Gross and Herriott (1965) published a large-scale
study of leadership in public schools. Directed at understanding the efficacy of
the idea of staff leadership, Gross and Herriott’s (1965, p. 150) finding that the
executive professional leadership (EPL) of school principals was positively
related to “staff morale, the professional performance of teachers, and the
pupils’ learning”, marked the beginning of the field’s long-term fascination
with understanding school leadership. This benchmark study was rooted in a
controversy regarding the proper role of the school administrator: to provide
routine administrative support versus to try to influence teachers’ performance.
The latter orientation, referred to by the researchers as staff leadership,
provides the conceptual foundation for most of the studies of school leadership
since that time. Indeed, it is doubtful that there is any prescriptive, empirical, or
theoretical writing since their 1965 that is not grounded in a staff leadership
conception of the school administrator’s role.
A second important contribution sh aping the study of educational
leadership was Burns’ (1978) differentiation of transactional from
transformational leadership. Distinguishing between these two types of
leadership did much to call attention to and legitimize the concept of moral
leadership. Burns (1978, p. 4) makes several observations that capture a shift in
focus that would come to characterize the next 20 years of leadership studies in
educational administration:
I will deal with leadership as distinct from mere power-holding and as the opposite of brute
power. I will identify two basic types of leadership: the transactional and the transforming.
The relations of most leaders and followers are transactional – leaders approach followers
with an eye to exchanging one thing for another: jobs for votes, or subsidies for campaign
contributions. Such transactions comprise the bulk of the relationships among leaders and
followers, especially in groups, legislatures, and parties. Transforming leadership, while
more complex, is more potent. The transforming leader recognizes and exploits an existing
need or demand of a potential follower. But, beyond that, the transforming leader looks for
personal motives in followers, seeks to satisfy higher needs, and engages the full person of the
Moral leadership
in schools
175
To continue reading
Request your trial