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This article proposes the concept of an ethic of community to complement and extend other ethical frames used in education (e.g. the ethics of justice, critique, and care). Proceeding from the traditional definition of ethics as the study of moral duty and obligation, ethic of community is defined as the moral responsibility to engage in communal processes as educators pursue the moral purposes of their work and address the ongoing challenges of daily life and work in schools. The ethic of community thus centers the communal over the individual as the primary locus of moral agency in schools. The usefulness of the ethic of community in regard to achieving the moral purposes of schooling is illustrated with the example of social justice. The author concludes that the ethic of community is a vehicle that can synthesize much of the current work on leadership practices related to social justice and other moral purposes of educational leadership.

This study had five objectives: explain the initial steps that led to the construction of the Ethical Leadership Questionnaire (ELQ); analyze the items and verify the ELQ reliability using item response theory (IRT); examine its factorial structure with a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and an exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) approach; test the item bias of the ELQ; assess the relation between the ELQ dimensions and ethical sensitivity. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Study 1 and Study 2 involved 200 and 668 respondents, respectively. Step 1 consisted in IRT; Step 2 in CFA and ESEM analysis; Step 3 in invariance of the ELQ items across gender, and Step 4 in structural equation modeling.

Results indicated the presence of the three types of ethic in the resolution of moral dilemmas, validating Starratt's model. The factor structure was gender invariant. Ethic of critique was significantly related to ethical sensitivity.

More replications will be needed to fully support the ELQ's validity. Given that the instrument may be used in diverse cultural contexts, invariance across cultures would be warranted.

As educational organizations become aware of the crucial need for more ethical leaders, they will need to pay particular attention to the ethic of critique as it appears to play a significant role in the development of ethical sensitivity.

Results presented in this paper answer a vital need for more ethical skills in educational leadership.

The ELQ provides a validated measure of Starratt's conceptual framework and highlights the key role played by ethical sensitivity and the ethic of critique.

The Supreme Court of the USA explains when universities may use race‐based admissions policies without violating the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution. These rulings raise important ethical issues for universities that are presently using race as a consideration in their admissions decisions. This paper discusses some of the ethical issues presented by the Supreme Court's decisions in the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, Grutter v. Bollinger, and Gratz v. Bollinger cases. A summary of the Bakke, Grutter, and Gratz cases is provided as well as an analysis of these decisions using an ethical framework that incorporates five perspectives: ethic of critique, ethic of justice, ethic of profession, ethic of care, and ethic of community. The accompanying discussion highlights areas of agreement and conflict between the goals of race‐based university admissions policies and the Bakke, Gratz, and Grutter decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on a case study, framed as an ethical dilemma. It serves as an illustration for the teaching of moral literacy, with a special emphasis on social justice.

Initially, the paper provides a rationale for the inclusion of case studies, emphasizing moral problems in university teaching. It discusses briefly the strengths and weaknesses of using these types of case studies in the classroom. In particular, it explains how both the rational and emotional minds can be addressed, through the use of these moral dilemmas, by introducing two concepts: Multiple Ethical Paradigms and Turbulence Theory. Following an explanation of the two concepts, an illustrative case is provided. This case deals with aspects of No Child Left Behind legislation that narrows the curriculum for some students. The underlying social justice issue of this case is raised. The dilemma is followed by a discussion of how to resolve or solve it by raising questions that relate to the Multiple Ethical Paradigms and Turbulence Theory.

It is hoped that university teachers will find that case study analysis, through the use of the two concepts of the Multiple Ethical Paradigms and Turbulence Theory, provides a meaningful and helpful way to promote moral literacy.

It is recommended that this kind of case study, framed through the use of a paradox, should be taught not only in educational ethics, but it can also be infused in many other courses in the university curriculum.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate ethical leadership in the context of the Arab educational system in Israel. It questions the relations of ethical leadership dimensions with decision making as well as background characteristics of the educational leaders.

Arab educational leaders (n=150) from diverse Arab schools responded to valid research tool of 40 items constructed of six subscales: three ethical leadership dimensions (critique, justice and care) and three leadership work aspects (ethical sensitivity, climate and decision making). Averages were calculated for each subscale.

Significant relations were found among ethical leadership dimensions and decision making, the leaders’ school type and their seniority.

This study is based on research in diverse countries, using a common conceptual frame. Its limitation is the sample’s narrow scope.

The study results may inform the developing ethical qualities in educational leadership.

The authors recommend widening the scope of the sample examined to further clarify the concept of ethical leadership and its implications to the practice of educational leadership.

Searching public school students has been a Constitutional reality since the landmark decision New Jersey v. T.L.O. in 1985. The law in this area of students’ rights has expanded greatly, including everything from locker searches involving canines to random drug testing of students involved in sports and extracurricular activities to highly intrusive personal searches. As recent as April 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the strip search of a middle school student for ibuprofen was illegal, but because school authorities would not necessarily have known they were violating the student's Constitutional rights, the school was immune from paying money damages. Thousands of searches of all kinds are conducted every day in schools across the country. Many of those searches are legal but not all. Whether legal or not, are those searches ethical? Is an illegal search of a student per se unethical because it violates the Ethic of Care? If a search is legal can it nevertheless conform to any standard of Ethic? Does searching a student violate the Ethic of Care or the Ethic of Critique?

Because ethical decisions about what is fair or just are at the heart of most controversial issues in the public sphere, understanding how high school seniors reason ethically about conflicting democratic values is important. Teachers and teacher educators would be assisted in leading discussions if they know the ethical frameworks most often used by students and how the facilitator might encourage consideration of alternative ethical viewpoints. By creating a professional community of practice between four U.S. government teachers, a university researcher, and a political science professor, we asked high school seniors to discuss their position relative to the Supreme Court decision in Texas v. Johnson (1989), which upheld flag burning as an expression of free speech. We were curious to know what ethical frameworks students used in wrestling with the value conflict in freedom of expression. We found all students used Lawrence Kohlberg’s (1976) ethic of justice framework almost exclusively and reasoned primarily in stages four and five on Kohlberg’s hierarchy.

The current criminal justice system is pledged to serve and protect society while preserving the rights of those who are accused. The purpose of this paper is to explore the premise of “innocent until proven guilty” and examine whether this assumption truly prevails under the current criminal justice system, or be modified to accommodate a sliding continuum of virtuosity.

This paper is a conceptual paper which relies heavily on the current literature about criminal justice and related ethical issues.

The paper argues that today’s criminal justice system fails to meet the standards of the virtuous continuum and that those who oversee that system need to rethink how the system operates and is perceived by the public if they wish the criminal justice system to be perceived as just, fair, and ethically responsible.

Because this paper is a conceptual paper it does not present research hypotheses.

This paper suggests that “virtue” and “ethics” must be the foundation upon which the criminal justice system is evaluated, and criminal justice must incorporate an ethical standard which is virtuous and fair to all parties and leaders who oversee that system must meet the standards suggested by the virtuous continuum.

This paper is among the first to identify the viewpoint of the virtuous perspective, moral perspective, amoral perspective, and immoral perspective in the criminal justice system.

The central argument in this paper is that ethical school leadership is imperative in a context of increasing performance-driven accountability. The purpose of this paper is to focus on school principals’ perceptions of how they understand ethical leadership and how they lead the ethical use of data.

This study utilises semi-structured interviews with six state school principals (one primary and six secondary) to explore their perceptions of ethical leadership practices; and how they balance current competing accountabilities in a context of performance-driven accountability.

There were four key findings. First, principals used data to inform and direct their practices and their conversations with teachers. Second, while ethics was a central consideration in how principals’ led, practising in an ethical manner was identified as complex and challenging in the current context. Third, Starratt’s (1996) ethical framework proved to be relevant for interpreting principals’ practices. Finally, all of the principals referred to dilemmas they faced as a result of competing priorities and all used a variety of strategies to deal with these dilemmas.

While there is a small body of research that explores school leaders’ understandings of ethical tensions and dilemmas, there is little research that has focused on school leaders’ understandings of the ethical use of data. This study, then, contributes to this area as it provides a discussion on school principals’ leadership practices in the current climate driven by data use.