This paper describes an ARC (SPIRT) project investigating the ethical decision-making of school principals. The project seeks to develop understanding of the nature of ethical decision-making and values driven leadership among school principals working for Education Queensland (formerly the Queensland Department of Education). The need for a project of this kind results from a confluence of social, cultural and economic imperatives common in our international, national and local contexts. These imperatives and their contexts are discussed below.

In Australia, as is the case in most Western nations, schools are under intense pressure from at least four sources. Firstly, there have been increasing demands for involvement by non-educationalists in school decision-making. The effects of these demands can be seen in three recent and influential documents on curriculum produced by committees headed by a computer company chief executive, an insurance executive and a retired union official (Finn 1991, Mayer 1992, and Carmichael 1992) and the implementation of school-based management structures. The latter have involved the introduction of governance by school councils with strong community representation. Secondly, revolutionary changes in knowledge growth and in the application of new technologies to the teaching and learning process have resulted in an incessant call for schools to modernise. Thirdly, schools are being asked to respond to increasing and seemingly intractable social problems such as unemployment, youth suicide, and violence: problems that vary in their effects on different school communities but have deeply penetrating effects on many schools. And fourthly, the liberal-progressive, individual-centred educational philosophies that have driven educational practices for most of the post-war years are being pressured to yield the ideological terrain to powerfully asserted economic-rationalist and utilitarian emphases.

In the face of these changes, school principals 'have found that time for constructive educational planning has diminished, and crisis management has become the norm' (Bottery 1992, p.1). In particular, as Bottery suggests, what is of most concern is that school leaders' understandings of the espoused values of schooling are being lost in the face of the exigencies of crisis management. The danger is that the choices principals make are being guided not by those values but by measures of expedience born of the need to simply survive crises.

In studies of educational administration in Australia and overseas, there is general agreement that educational leadership is values driven, and therefore leaders should be cognisant of, and act appropriately towards, the many ethical problems and issues presented by schooling (Evers et al, 1992; Office of Education Research and Improvement, 1989; Sergiovanni, 1992; and Starratt, 1991). This is not surprising, since there are very strong arguments supporting the view that all professions, including teaching, possess a moral dimension (Fenstermacher, 1990). Primary amongst these is the notion that the practitioner engages with an element of the client's life in order to bring about changes that are in the client's best interests. So, as examples, the surgeon alters the physical status of patients by operating on their bodies in order to better their health; the psychologist aims to bring about improvements in a client's mental health by means of a specialised conversation, and the school principal is concerned with providing experiences for school children that will help transform them into adults capable of living good lives. All these instances are characterised by the idea that normative concerns govern the practices of professionals, that is, professionals work towards making things better. But there are always contestable judgments to be made about what is involved in living a better life, for both client and professional. And because it is not always clear just what the best action is, engagement with normative complexity is an important and enduring feature of professional life.

A recent study undertaken by one of us indicates that there is some empirical evidence that this view is supported by school principals. In 1996 Griffith University funded a collaborative research project titled "Expectations of School Leaders". This project was developed in association with industry partners in government and non-government education sectors. It involved intensive case studies of twelve principals and surveys of teachers, parents and students to identify the expectations they held of school leaders. The study paralleled three similar projects in England (led by Professor Kathryn Riley of the Roehampton Institute of Education), Scotland (led by Professor John MacBeath of the University of Strathclyde) and Denmark (led by Associate Professor Chresten Kruchov). An interim report on the results of the study was presented at an international symposium, Expectations of School Leaders in Times of Change (London, September 1996). This symposium drew participating principals and research teams together from the four countries involved in the study. That interim report included data which indicated that principals attach a great deal of importance to the personal values they bring to their leadership role. Although the study was primarily focused on what a range of people expected of principals, interview data included many references to how an individual's values stance informs practice. Further analysis of the interview data was undertaken to pinpoint specific references to school leaders' values and to the kinds of decisions in which they reported involvement. This analysis, although far from extensive, suggests that concerns with ethical behaviour, personal value positions and consistency in decision-making action are perceived by principals to be significant issues.

There is also additional evidence from other published research which indicates that school principals find these normative complexities a major concern. For example, this has been observed by Walker's (1995) analysis of school principals' reports of the ethical quandaries that arise for them in dealing with the competing interests of the participants of schooling as well as their own sense of personal integrity. As with most of the published empirical research concerning ethics in educational leadership, Walker's (1995) project is an American study and the extent to which its findings are applicable to the Australian and Queensland contexts are unknown. However, for the Education Queensland partners in this proposed project, anecdotal evidence suggests to them that their school principals do have similar concerns and that these concerns are an important feature of their daily work.

After an extensive search of the available published material, it is clear that there is no documented Australian empirical research that can claim to describe the kinds of ethical problems and issues faced by school administrators and the nature of the ethical reasoning that they employ. Of the research of this kind that has been undertaken elsewhere, the instances uncovered by our search of the literature are confined to smaller samples than is proposed for this study and with data gathering restricted to questionnaires (viz. Kirby, 1992).

This project is concerned with the values-driven character of school leadership and, in particular, the nature of school principals' ethical decision-making. As we have observed above, schools in most Western nations, including Australia, face common trends that have resulted in placing all staff, but especially school leaders, under intense pressure. In these schools there is a recognised imperative to provide quality preparation and support for educational leadership by external agencies, such as universities, as well as employing authorities such as departments of education. Acknowledging this imperative, and via its collaboration in this project, Education Queensland seeks to understand further the character of principals' ethical decision-making and its relationship to the goals of school improvement. The aim of this project is to provide outcomes which contribute to the empirical and theoretical foundations upon which this understanding can be built. As a result, Education Queensland, as well as other school systems and institutions concerned with the professional development of principals, should be better equipped to more effectively articulate policies on school improvement with the provision of professional development programs.

Four key questions follow from this aim and guide the project:

1. What ethical issues are confronted by school principals as they perform their responsibilities?
2. What is the nature of the immediate setting within which these ethical issues arise?
3. How and why do school principals make ethical decisions?
4. How might the answers to these questions best inform professional development programs?

The findings of the project are intended to inform future initiatives of Education Queensland to improve the quality of their existing and anticipated forms of leadership support. However, as explained earlier, common patterns of school leadership are emerging across national and international contexts as educational systems face similar circumstances and issues precipitated by common social, cultural and economic imperatives. This means that the project findings should be well placed to stimulate research and professional development provision far beyond the Queensland context.

The project contains four main elements:

• face-to-face interviews with principals drawn from a representative sample of Queensland state schools for the purpose of producing descriptive case studies;
• a survey of all non-teaching Queensland state school principals;
• an analysis of the project's generated data sets and relevant published material to produce policy recommendations; and
• the writing of fictionalised, illustrative case studies which highlight the findings of the project, together with an analytic commentary.

The case studies are being based on in-depth interviews with 25 school principals. The interviews have been completed and we are in the process of writing brief case accounts of the ethical issues reported to us (the nature of these issues is described later in the paper).

For the interviews, principals have been drawn from a range of contexts capturing geographical location, social and cultural settings, educational purpose, and school enrolment size. The interviews have been characterised as "conversations" or "discussions" in which two-way interaction with respondents has been encouraged. Examples of the kinds of questions we used follow:

What features of your school are significant to you in the way you work here?

From where or what sources do most of your ethical problems originate?

• Is it an enduring problem?

• Who is implicated?

• What is at stake?

• What kind of information is relevant/useful?

• Have you seen this problem before?

• Are there guidelines to help deal with this problem?

• How common are these?

Why do you say these are ethical problems?

• What kind of behaviour was involved?
• What principles, values or rules were brought into play?
• What is the source of these principles, values or rules?
• Was this a problem to you alone or a problem to others and why?
• Have ethical problems grown in importance in schools over time?

How do you go about dealing with ethical problems such as these?

• Could you give us an example?
• Why did you choose this example - what processes does it contain?
• Have you used this approach in the past?
• What other approaches have you employed?
• What have you learned about dealing with ethical problems?
• Are there methods which you have seen used by fellow principals?
• Have processes for dealing with ethical problems grown over time?

• Which decisions have you been happy with and why?
• Are there any decisions which should have been different and why?
• To what extent have the consequences of the decision been

• What kind of obligations as a principal are involved in reaching ethical

• What worries you about the impact of your decisions on others in the

• How important is 'getting it right' in your role as principal?

• How did you, might you learn most about this area?
• Do you think beginning principals can be prepared for these kinds of

• In what ways might this occur?
• What kind of personal qualities are needed in a principal in order to

• Are there specific skills or abilities that help?

The list of questions was used only as a resource. We did not refer repeatedly to them during the 'conversations', nor did we follow a set sequence. We tended to open with a context question before moving to the kinds of decisions principals found both easy and difficult. The conversations then took on a life of their own into which we injected questions from the list from time to time.

The ethical issues identified in the case studies will be used to inform the development of a survey instrument that will be administered to non-teaching Queensland state school principals (n=850). This instrument is being designed to determine the frequency, distribution, level of complexity, perceived importance, and contextual character of these ethical issues within the broader context of the total population of school principals from which the case studies were drawn. These findings will allow for possible explanatory generalisations to be made concerning ethical decision making practices and the values which underpin them.

It is not the intention of this paper to provide a full description of the results of the study so far. Suffice it to say that we have conducted the interviews and that we have finalised the transcripts. Our analysis is proceeding and we have already completed the identification in the data of the ethical issues principals described. Classifications of the types of issues with which principals must deal have been produced. In addition, as we indicated earlier, we are in the process of writing up each issue as a case account from the interview transcripts. Examples are included as Appendix 1.

The frequency with which particular types of issues have been encountered in our interviews is documented in the figures which follow.

The first figure shows that of 164 ethical issues described by our principals most (35.98%) involved matters relating to staff. Least often encountered were issues involving external relations. This is not surprising given the close institutional relationships in schools where student and staff interaction is intrinsic to teaching, learning and school leadership.

Figure 2 shows that the principals interviewed reported that most of the ethical issues they faced involving students, were connected with behaviour.

Violence, alcohol and drug usage and harassment are examples of the kinds of difficult matters implicated in behavioural problems. Suspensions and expulsions are always potentially troublesome and these figured prominently amongst the issues identified. We were interested to note the number of enrolment issues considered by principals to require ethical judgment. These included matters of selection on the basis of academic merit, sporting and performing arts talents.

In Figure 3 it is clearly shown that the bulk of ethical issues involving staff revolve around human resource management (HRM) matters.

These ethical issues include teacher transfer, the preparation of references, staff selection, approving or withholding approval for leave and placement of teachers on diminished work performance.

The picture presented in Figure 4 shows that the most frequently encountered financial matters of an ethical nature are those requiring decisions on the allocation of resources within the school and accounting for school funds.

Allocation matters included concern over the distribution of funds to particular sections or departments in the school, the extent of funding available to the administration and conflict over capital works priorities. Issues involving money ranged from how to deal with the mismanagement of funds to outright theft.

Figure 5 records the fact that dealing with the local community is the source of many ethical issues in the external relations arena.

Amongst the local community matters raised we noted concern over valuing language differences in the school, dealing with racism, managing the new powers of parents in Councils. However, in Queensland, School Councils are such a recent phenomenon that it is unlikely yet that extensive decision-making involving this body had been encountered by the principals we interviewed.

The final figure uses the term, 'Big Picture' ethical issues to cluster matters of a more general kind such as how one goes about making ethical decisions, what the role of the school should be in children's moral development, what kind of vision is appropriate in a school with a diverse population and how a school should react to central directives.

As Figure 6 shows, the most frequent of these kinds of issues were those concerning the process of ethical decision-making.

Having presented a taste of the kinds of ethical issues encountered thus far in the study, we conclude the paper with a brief outline of the work now underway to complete it.

As indicated earlier, we are currently 'writing up' the 164 issues identified as case accounts. Three examples of this work are included below to illustrate the outcomes of the writing task.

Issue 1. Assessment Falsification

Towards the end of the year a principal asked how his year 12 daughter was going in her second language assessment. She reported that she was doing 'pretty well' but that she couldn't say much more because she hadn't seen feedback from her teacher on any of the assessment tasks she had submitted. She had only received marks. A little further investigation into this matter with other students revealed a similar pattern sufficient for the principal to discuss the issue with the teacher (a recent arrival in Australia and the only person in the small town who had competence in the language). By this time, it was near the end of the senior year. The talk with the teacher uncovered a major problem. The teacher had been replacing the senior students' assessment tasks with ones he had written himself. Further investigation showed that this practice was widespread affecting all second language students in the school from years 8 to 12. Needless to say, the students were assessed as performing very well.

Issue 2. School Council Membership

It is well known by all, including the principal, that a particular woman seeking a place on the school council is a 'pain in the neck' (to quote the principal). She is 'aggressive', 'single minded', and has a personal 'barrow to push'. She is considered by most to be disruptive and potentially destabilising for any school body let along the council.

The principal is concerned about how to deal with the issue in the lead up to nominations and the election for the council.

Issue 3. Conflict of Interest

A highly regarded and hard working senior teacher recently came up with the idea to put a drink machine into the covered sports area so that students might purchase chilled soft drinks. This was approved by the outgoing principal. The new principal, whilst examining all of the school's finances felt that there was a conflict of interest in this arrangement since the teacher concerned was drinks provider at the local hockey club. More than this, she suspected that the teacher was making money out of the machine and pocketing it. With a little further investigation she found that this was eminently possible because the teacher, as the leasee, had a key to the machine. By purchasing discount soft drinks and placing them in the machine before the restocking date followed by the owners it was possible to make a profit 'on the side'.

Once all of the case accounts are completed we will turn our attention to the preparation of the survey instrument. This we hope to administer during semester one, 1999. Next year we will also move to writing a series of Case Studies from the interview data. At this stage, it seems that several will concentrate on ethical decision making processes employed by different principals while others will focus on the values positions implicit in particular decision outcomes. We anticipate completion of the study by March 2000.