Moral literacy for teacher and school leadership education: a matter of attitude
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/09578230710762436 |
| Pages | 413-426 |
| Published date | 10 July 2007 |
| Date | 10 July 2007 |
| Author | Pauline Leonard |
| Subject Matter | Education |
Moral literacy for teacher and
school leadership education:
a matter of attitude
Pauline Leonard
College of Education, Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, Louisiana, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for conceptualizing three
dispositional-related stages that educators may experience in their professional careers and address
the implications of these stages for integrating moral literacy perspectives into initial and advanced
teacher and leader certification programs.
Design/methodology/approach – The dispositional conceptual framework is presented and
discussed from the author’s viewpoint. The contention is that there is at least some general consistency
that teacher and leader program candidates, at various stages of their professional careers, may
experience and reflect in the attitudes – a component of dispositions – that they bring to the
university classroom learning environment.
Findings – Observations and insights about the consistency of dispositions within each of three
program candidate groups are discussed. The dispositions emerged as: attitude formation; attitude
adjustment; and attitude alignment. Within the context of course development and through that
process of course delivery, the author describes how an understanding of candidates’ attitudinal stages
informed decisions about course content and instructional strategies to facilitate an ethos of values
inquiry and reflection.
Originality/value – The framework may be useful to professors of education interested in
integrating values inquiry and moral agency into their teaching.
Keywords Higher education,Teaching, Leadership
Paper type Viewpoint
The discourse on moral literacy in education is often characterized as serving to
reconcile and polarize incompatible viewpoints on the subject. Positional arguments
are frequently fuelled by an ideological commitment to concepts ranging from
“value-free education” t o “moral obligation to addres s values in education”.
Consequently, attempts to address the question of integrating dispositions in the
form of moral values and ethics into teaching oftentimes get conflated into one
acrimonious debate where only two oppositional alternatives are considered – to
impose a dominant set of values on students, or to adopt a value-free approach to
teaching and learning. However, solutions need not be conceptualized so simplistica lly.
Goodman and Lesnick (2001, p. 3), for example, acknowledge that schools are “moral
thickets” and assert that, while addressing moral issues in the educational setting is a
given, the solutions for addressing these issues are “complex, elusive, and inherently
contestable”. Indeed, if schools are moral thickets, Pre-Kindergarten – 12th grade
(PK-12) teachers and administrators need to be fully prepared for the inherent moral
responsibility of their work. This begs the question of whether or not teacher and
administrator preparation programs in institutes of higher learning are effectively
preparing candidates to fulfill this moral responsibility in the public school setting.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
Moral literacy
413
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 45 No. 4, 2007
pp. 413-426
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/09578230710762436
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