Prelims

Half Title Page

International Aspects of Organizational Ethics in Educational Systems

Series Page

Studies in Educational Administration

Series Editors: Gaëtane Jean-Marie and Ann E. Lopez

Studies in Educational Administration presents monographs and edited collections along the broad themes of educational leadership, management and administration.

The series presents research conducted across a diverse range of contexts and locations. Proposals are invited for authored or edited books from scholars in all stages of their careers for work that will help us to advance the educational administration field, and will be of use to both researchers and school administrators and teachers.

Forthcoming Publications

Alison Taysum and Khalid Arar (eds), Turbulence, Empowerment and Marginalized Groups in International Education Governance Systems

Izhar Oplatka and Khalid Arar (eds), Emotion Management in Teaching and Educational Leadership: A Cultural Perspective

Interested in publishing in this series? Please contact Gaëtane Jean-Marie and Ann E. Lopez at sea@uni.edu

Title Page

International Aspects of Organizational Ethics in Educational Systems

By

Orly Shapira-Lishchinsky

Bar-llan University, Israel

United Kingdom – North America – Japan India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2018

Copyright © 2018 Emerald Publishing Limited

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78714-778-2 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78714-777-5 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78743-018-1 (Epub)

Dedication

In Memory of Professor Paul T. Begley, My Authentic Leader

Sponsored by

MARIE SKŁODOWSKA-CURIE – Individual Fellowships, Horizon 2020 European Commission

The Schintzer Foundation for Research on the Israeli Economy and Society, Bar-Ilan University

The Vice President for Research of Bar-Ilan University

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my colleagues: researchers, school principals, supervisors, school counselors, teachers, educational administrators, human resource managers in different educational systems, and directors in the educational systems of local municipalities. Their curiosity about the research on organizational ethics, their drive to understand how ethical codes for educators and teachers have been developed and integrated across nations, and their real desire to reduce teachers’ withdrawal behaviors encouraged me to write this book. I wish to thank all of my mentees, who were studying for their Masters’ degrees and doctorates, for the learning process that we experienced together undertaken by working closely in educational field. I also thank the educational leaders, responsible for human resources, in educational systems throughout the world, who had a real desire to offer solutions for reduction of teachers’ withdrawal behaviors.

Further thanks go to the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships, Horizon 2020, European Commission; Schintzer Foundation for Research on the Israeli Economy and Society, Bar-Ilan University; and the Vice President for Research of Bar-Ilan University for support and help in sponsoring this book. I would like to thank Suzanna Levin for her designing of the figures, and Dr. Julia Chaitin for her help in reviewing this book. Finally, I would like to thank my mother, Dalya, and my core family, Alon, Yaarit, Aaron, Arad, and Yogev, for their emotional and cognitive support throughout this project. I love you!

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Cases

List of Questionnaires

About the Author

Orly Shapira-Lishchinsky is an Associate Professor in the largest Israeli Department of Administration and Leadership in Educational Systems in the School of Education at Bar-Ilan University. She is also a Member of the Ethics Board of the university. Professor Shapira-Lishchinsky was a Visiting Scholar and Instructor at Fordham University, the University of Missouri-Columbia, and the University of Alabama, and she was a Research Scholar at the State University of New York, in Albany, NewYork.

She began her career in the educational system as a high school Chemistry teacher and homeroom teacher, and continued as a Mentor for science and technology teachers. Professor Shapira-Lishchinksy headed a project for the integration of science and technology in the Ort educational network in Israel.

Professor Shapira-Lishchinksy’s research focuses on the relationships between perceptions of organizational ethics and teachers’ withdrawal behaviors, such as tardiness, absences, and the tendency to leave. Her work explores the development of ethical codes in educational systems throughout the world through strategies of leadership and expertise and facilitation of group simulations. Her recent studies compare different educational systems of the world.

Professor Shapira-Lishchinksy’s research has been published in leading academic journals that focus on educational administration, including: Educational Administration Quarterly, Journal of Educational Administration, and Educational Management Administration & Leadership. She has lectured at prestigious conferences, such as the AERA, CIES, ECER, and the UCEA. In addition, Professor Shapira-Lishchinksy is on the editorial board of the International Journal of Educational Management and the Journal of Education and Training Studies. Her research has been funded by different foundations, including the Marie Sklodowska-Curie, the Shalem Foundation, and the Israeli Ministry of Education. Professor Shapira-Lishchinksy also serves as an Expert of Research Services for the head scientist at the Israeli Ministry of Education.

Foreword

This book was written because of the real need to dispel some of the ambiguity and uncertainty found in the international research and in the educational field concerning the meanings of the concept “organizational ethics” among educational leaders and teachers. This ambiguity is found across nations and is a characteristic of different educational systems. It produces uncertainty concerning different responses of educational leaders and teachers to ethical cases. This uncertainty can lead to a decrease in the status of educational leaders and teachers, since teachers may express insecurity concerning how they should behave when faced with an ethical issue.

The multitude of inappropriate behaviors among educational leaders and teachers harms the teaching profession, the quality of teaching, the schools’s learning processes, and its scholastic achievements. Therefore, in order to lower the ambiguity surrounding these ethical cases, to empower the teaching profession, and to improve the educational systems’ effectiveness, many countries throughout the world have developed ethical codes that are designed for educational leaders and teachers.

The goal of this book is to focus on organizational ethical aspects in the international context in different educational systems of the world, through the development of an integrative approach. It centers on teachers’ withdrawal behaviors and the development of an ethical code for educators and teachers, which can serve as a tool for reducing misbehaviors and withdrawal behaviors among teachers. By discussing the leading ethical predictors for withdrawal behaviors, and considering personal and organizational characteristics, this book can contribute to an understanding of the perceptions and attitudes which that lead to teachers’ tardiness, absenteeism, turnover, and attrition in educational systems.

In light of this, the book is divided into four main sections.

The first section focuses on the expression of ethics in the international context by relating to both national culture and global culture. As part of understanding the international aspects of the concept of ethics, by considering educational systems, this section discusses the characteristics of teachers’ behaviors in ethical schools. Such a process can lead to the emergence of the concept of ethical school culture – a concept that has not yet been investigated in educational systems via an organizational perspective. In this section, I present an integrative approach, simultaneously considering the concept of ethical school culture, in addition to traditional factors, such as internal and external school factors, in order to explain inequalities in students’ achievements.

This section also deals with the development and the assimilation of an ethical code in a number of different countries as a tool for dealing with ethical challenges in varied educational systems. The development of an ethical code for educators and teachers, and its assimilation in different educational systems of the world, can help lower the ambiguity surrounding ways to deal with ethical events that faced by educational leaders and teachers face. As a result, it can help empower the teaching profession, promote teacher education for social justice, and help advance quality educational systems across nations.

The second section focuses on the international aspects of ethics in the context of school leadership. This section discusses training processes and focuses mainly on the moral dimension of leadership – authentic leadership of school principals – while describing additional leadership styles imbued with ethical meanings, such as transactional and transformational leadership styles. It focuses on ethical dilemmas faced by educational leaders and provides help for the decision-making process that concerns ethical decisions.

The third section focuses on ethical perceptions of teachers, personal and organizational characteristics, and organizational commitment that predict teachers’ withdrawal behaviors such as tardiness, absenteeism, turnover, and attrition.

In this section, the teachers’ withdrawal behaviors serve as the criteria for the ethical challenges that concern all people working in educational systems across nations – from the level of teachers, educational coordinators, principals, supervisors, and district administrations of the ministries of education. While most of the studies on withdrawal behaviors of teachers have focused on socioeconomic factors in order to explain teachers’ withdrawal behaviors, such as gender, seniority, and age, this book raises ethical aspects from the field that have not yet been studied in relation to withdrawal behaviors.

I also describe the concept of organizational citizenship behavior, which is generally perceived as the opposite behavior of withdrawal behaviors, in this section. In addition, I discuss the characteristics of the relationship between teachers’ organizational citizenship behaviors and teachers’ withdrawal behaviors. At the end of this section, I present updated studies that have explored the relationship between ethical perceptions and withdrawal behaviors and organizational citizenship behaviors, including strategies and learner-centered education, for minimizing withdrawal behaviors in educational systems.

The fourth section of the book focuses on the applications of the topics previously presented and discussed previously. It explores how educational leaders throughout the world can deal with ethical challenges in educational systems by employing analyses of critical ethical incidents in group simulations. Furthermore, the section presents the gap between official policy and practice and innovative research in the area as well as the scenarios to use in different training frameworks.

The book’s content can lead to plans of action for educational leaders across nations – those working in the headquarters of the ministries of education, in the schools, and in the educational departments of local municipalities. These plans of action can help minimize withdrawal behaviors and promote organizational citizenship behavior among teachers, and can help the schools increase excellent achievements and minimization of social gaps.

The discussion about the development of the ethical code, from an international viewpoint, which also demonstrates how the processes work in different countries, can influence functionaries and educational leaders, in different strata, who are in charge of human resources in educational systems. It can help educational leaders and teachers, across nations, to formulate ideas for developing, updating, and assimilating an ethical educational code by designing and facilitating educational programs and workshops. This ethical code can also help facilitate the definition of roles of teachers, help empower them, minimize inappropriate behaviors, and increase school effectiveness.

The book allows for the development of an integrative approach for coping with ethical challenges among educational leaders and teachers and connects theory to praxis. In light of the fact that many people throughout the world deal, in one way or another, with ethical challenges, this book is relevant for researchers and students in the field of administration and leadership in educational systems. It is also relevant for stakeholders interested in human resources in educational organizations at headquarters’ level, in administrative and supervisory positions, directors in departments of education at the local level, and functionaries in school leadership, such as principals, vice principals, and pedagogical coordinators.

In sum, I believe that the strength of this book is derived from the fact that it developed from the fieldwork. I was a chemistry teacher and a homeroom teacher in a high school, as well as a mentor and a project manager for science education. Today, I am in research and teach in the academic world. As a result, the book presents an academic perception while also connecting to the field.