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Teaching Educational Leaders to Move from Moral Reasoning to Moral Action

John Pijanowski

University of Arkansas

Ethical leadership is critical to effective schools. However, earlier research showed that ethics and moral reasoning were often not formally taught nor assessed in pre-service leadership programs. In this study I examined graduate programs’ approaches to curriculum, instruction, and assessment of learning in ethics and moral reasoning. Rest’s four component model of moral decision making provided the theoretical base for structuring the inquiry into how colleges define, teach and assess moral leadership (Bebeau, 2002). Results of interviews with 43 graduate schools of educational leadership in the United States showed 91% of graduate schools of educational leadership report teaching moral leadership in some fashion but vary greatly in curriculum, method, and assessment. Professional standards appear to influence the kinds of assignments and assessments most commonly reported in this study. In several cases, school leadership programs have engaged their faculty in a thoughtful planning process to integrate the teaching of moral leadership into their curriculum and develop meaningful assessment strategies. Highlighting these exemplary programs will be a critical next step in sharing information among faculty about how to teach moral leadership and evaluate student work in this area. However, before this can be effectively done the field must begin to reach a shared understanding of how moral leadership is defined within programs and in the literature. It is on this point that the work already done in moral psychology as applied to other pre-professional training programs can be most helpful.

Moral leadership has become an increasingly popular concept in the field of educational administration. It has been the focus of policy initiatives, accreditation standards and a body of research has emerged over the past two decades identifying moral leadership as a characteristic of high performing schools, particularly among high poverty schools (Fullan, 2003; Hodgkinson, 1991; Liou, 2017; Nucci, 2001; Sergiovanni, 1992; Sizer & Sizer, 1999; Starratt, 1991). However, the increased attention to moral leadership in schools has not shed much light on how to best teach moral leadership in the preparation of school administrators. The burst of interest since the early 1990s in developing moral leadership in schools largely has taken the form of identifying moral leadership as an important, in some cases critical, element of a strong school.

A resurgence of interest in moral leadership has been spurred on by anecdotal evidence that increasing pressures to meet student accountability measures brought on by state and federal reforms have resulted in an increase of both fraud and unethical allocation of school resources (Oplatka, 2016; Pardini, 2004). A general concern with thin applicant pools for school leadership positions has also raised concerns over the last 15 years that many ascending to top school positions may not be ready to make strong moral decisions in the face of increasing pressures (Pardini, 2004; Stover, 2002). In a survey of chief state education officers, executive directors of American Association of School Administrators’ (AASA) state affiliates, and executive directors of the National School Boards Association’s (NSBA) state affiliates, approximately 60% felt they were facing a leadership applicant pool crisis, over 84% felt the quality of the applicant pool was decreasing, and 75% of the respondents cited a need to improve pre-service graduate programs (Glass, 2001; Stover, 2002). Rural schools are particularly disadvantaged in developing deep principal candidate pools (Pijanowski et al., 2009).

Long before NCLB the ethical behavior of school administrators was under fire as the 1990s brought a seemingly endless string of high profile stories detailing ethical charges against top school officials (Pardini, 2004). Stories of nepotism, embezzlement, and sex scandals led to an increased critique of the role of moral leadership in schools. The result was not only more attention from scholars in the field but also increased activity among policymakers and professional organizations to establish ethics standards, and state or district wide ethics commissions. For example, in 1992 the state of New Jersey passed the School Ethics Act, which established the School Ethics Commission with the power to investigate ethical violations among school board members and school administrators, and to recommend disciplinary actions to the commissioner which range from formal sanctions to removal. The commission is responsible for oversight of a wide range of potential ethics violations but at the time was established to curb what was seen as rampant nepotism during the 80s and early 90s (Holster, 2004). Over the past two decades, state educational ethics commissions have become the norm nationwide.

Defining Moral Leadership Despite a spike in scholarly activity advocating for moral leadership and increased attention to ethics regulation, the body of research exploring the nature of moral leadership remains thin. In earlier studies, researchers have found that for school district leaders size of district and salary are positively correlated, and years of service negatively correlated, with more ethical responses to moral dilemmas. These same researchers have shown that, in general terms, the ethical capacity of school leaders was not sufficient for the demands of the job (Fenstermaker, 1996; Pardini, 2004). Fenstermaker (1996) found that less than half (48.1%) of 2790 responses to borderline ethical dilemmas by 270 randomly selected superintendents that responded to the

survey were scored as ethical. The growing evidence of ethical shortfalls within the profession in the mid-90s led to a broad call from within and outside the field to address the moral decision making of school leaders. Both pre-service and in-service ethics education programs were prescribed to teach ethics to aspiring and sitting administrators (Pardini, 2004; Fenstermaker, 1996). As those shaping policy and developing responses to the moral crisis in schools began their work, it became clear that talking about morals in schools was still a controversial topic and there was not a clear definition of what moral leadership was, despite the charge to hire more of it and help those already hired to have it (Starratt, 1994). Researchers have claimed that moral leadership as a key indicator of student success often fails to define what moral leadership looks like, and when definitions are provided they vary greatly across schools and studies. In a review of moral leadership studies from 1979 to 2003, William Greenfield concluded that “one of the limitations of the studies of moral leadership that have been conducted during the past 20 years is that few scholars define very clearly what they mean when they refer to moral leadership” (Greenfield, 2004, p. 178). For example, in a review of twelve high performing, high-poverty schools, moral leadership was identified as instrumental to student and school success. The definition of moral leadership, however, was described in very different ways including “vision that what adults do in schools plays a major role in shaping children’s lives and preparing them for lifelong success,” “respect, high expectations, support, hard work,” “empowerment,” and “moral leadership also meant staff and students visualized themselves as part of the system as a whole. They understood that schooling was more than preparation for academic attainment. Education laid the foundation for success in life” (Bell, 2001, p. 10). The different definitions of moral leadership are largely a result of the diverse context and needs of schools that successful leaders must address. However, this creates a difficult challenge for teachers of educational leadership attempting to develop curriculum and teaching methods that will serve new principals and superintendents best as they graduate and enter an unfamiliar context with needs and ethical pitfalls that may not be immediately known to them.

The Influence of Accreditation Standards

The call to invest in moral leadership training has come from scholars, policymakers, and professional organizations in the field of educational administration. Graduate programs must prepare future leaders to be more aware of their ethical and moral responsibilities as well as being better equipped to execute them if they are to effectively steward the increasingly complex and high pressure school of the 21st century. School leaders are best able to positively influence school culture and success when well-established and significant community values that support equity and social justice are connected with “ethically and morally uplifting leadership” (Grogan & Andrews, 2002, p. 243). Graduate programs in educational leadership have been shown to significantly affect leadership capacity “when programs had a strong theory and research base, provided authentic experiences, simulated the development of situated cognition, and fostered real-life problem-solving skills” (Grogan & Andrews, 2002, p. 250). National professional organizations and accreditation standards have played a major role in shaping the curriculum of school administration graduate programs. The first among major professional organizations to place an emphasis on moral school leadership was the National Policy Board for Educational Administration (NPBEA), which in 1994 created the Interstate

School Leaders Licensure Consortium (ISLLC) with the goal of establishing universal professional standards that would guide the practice and preparation of school leaders (Murphy, 2005). Although consortium leaders recognized that infusing new standards with values and ethical guidelines would be controversial, they also acknowledged that behavior, policy, and practice were influenced by values and it was impossible to disentangle moral leadership and how schools functioned. This value-centered approach was reinforced by a belief among ISLLC founders that “the fight to create a scientifically anchored, value-free profession had brought forth an ethically truncated if not morally bankrupt profession” (Murphy, 2005, p. 33).

Six years after the initial formation of ISLLC, a working group was formed by the NPBEA to establish performance-based standards that would serve as the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education’s (NCATE) review standards for educational leadership programs (National Policy Board for Educational Administration, 2002). This working group included representatives from the major professional organizations in the field including the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, the American Association of School Administrators, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, National Association of Elementary School Principals, the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration, the National Association of School Boards, and the (UCEA) University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) (National Policy Board for Educational Administration, 2002). The result of this broad based and powerful coalition was a set of standards officially adopted by NCATE in 2002 that is the foundation of NCATE’s accreditation review process for educational leadership graduate programs. The NCATE standards were closely aligned with the ISLLC standards providing a single, unified set of national standards guiding administrative practice for the preparation of principals, superintendents, curriculum directors, and supervisors (National Policy Board for Educational Administration, 2002). These standards are now known as the Educational Leadership Constituent Council (ELCC) Standards. The NCATE/ELCC review process, that since 2002 has been the prevailing accreditation standard throughout the profession, has seven components. Standard number five refers specifically to ethics and reads, “Candidates who complete the program are educational leaders who have the knowledge and ability to promote the success of all students by acting with integrity, fairly, and in an ethical manner” (p. 13). The NCATE narrative continues (p. 13) to describe the purpose and function of the ethics in the profession: This standard addresses the educational leader’s role as the "first citizen" of the school/district community. Educational leaders should set the tone for how employees and students interact with one another and with members of the school, district, and larger community. The leader’s contacts with students, parents, and employees must reflect concern for others as well as for the organization and the position. Educational leaders must develop the ability to examine personal and professional values that reflect a code of ethics. They must be able to serve as role models, accepting responsibility for using their position ethically and constructively on behalf of the school/district community. Educational leaders must act as advocates for all children, including those with special needs who may be underserved. (p. 13)

The NCATE standards (p. 13) also provide guidance for graduate programs assessment criteria. The three elements of the ethic standard are described as being met for school building and district leadership when a potential school leader:

• 5.1 Acts with Integrity

Candidates demonstrate a respect for the rights of others with regard to confidentiality and dignity and engage in honest interactions.

• 5.2 Acts Fairly Candidates demonstrate the ability to combine impartiality, sensitivity to student diversity, and ethical considerations in their interactions with others.

• 5.3 Acts Ethically Candidates make and explain decisions based upon ethical and legal principles.

The standards go on to provide specific guidance to faculty regarding the activities and practices that would serve as good measures of candidate performance.

• Candidates are required to develop a code of ethics using personal platforms, professional leadership association examples, and a variety of additional source documents focusing on ethics.

• Candidates are required to conduct a self-analysis of a transcript of a speech delivered to a community organization and look for examples of integrity, fairness, and ethical behavior.

• Candidates are required to lead a discussion around compliance issues for district, school, or professional association codes of ethics.

• Candidates are required to make a speech to a local service organization and articulate and demonstrate the importance of education in a democratic society.

• Candidates are required to survey constituents regarding their perceptions of his/her modeling the highest standards of conduct, ethical principles, and integrity in decision- making and behaviors.

• Candidates are required to present an analysis of how he/she promotes teaching and learning that recognizes learning differences, multicultural awareness, gender sensitivity, and appreciation of ethnic diversity. (National Policy Board for Educational Administration, 2002a, p. 13)

As expected, the prominence of ethics in the ELCC standards coupled with the NCATE

accreditation process played a role in prompting leadership faculty towards the design and assessment of moral leadership curriculum. It is, however, important to note that as the ELCC standards became more prescriptive, there was a clear focus on producing documents that stemmed from reflection, but it was unclear how the practice of reflection, for example, would be taught and reinforced as a fundamental practice for school leaders. The ELCC ethics standard was an important vehicle for promoting teaching ethics in graduate programs but fell short of promoting the process of moral reasoning, and it is there where the field is still searching for an understanding of what effective moral leadership training encompasses and how to best deliver a comprehensive moral reasoning curriculum.

As the field of educational leadership transitions to a new set of standards we find there is an even greater emphasis on moving leadership candidates from moral reasoning to moral action. The Professional Standards for Educational Leaders (PSEL) approved by the National Policy Board for Educational Administration in 2015 serves as the guiding principles for the new leadership preparation standards. The PSEL ethics standards read (National Policy Board for Educational Administration, 2015):

Effective educational leaders act ethically and according to professional norms to promote each student’s academic success and well-being. Effective leaders:

A. Act ethically and professionally in personal conduct, relationships with others, decision-making, stewardship of the school’s resources, and all aspects of school leadership.

B. Act according to and promote the professional norms of integrity, fairness, transparency, trust, collaboration, perseverance, learning, and continuous improvement.

C. Place children at the center of education and accept responsibility for each student’s academic success and well-being.

D. Safeguard and promote the values of democracy, individual freedom and responsibility, equity, social justice, community, and diversity.

E. Lead with interpersonal and communication skill, social-emotional insight, and understanding of all students’ and staff members’ backgrounds and cultures.

F. Provide moral direction for the school and promote ethical and professional behavior among faculty and staff.

Previous Studies

The emergence of moral leadership as a topic of policy and a component of the accreditation standard has not been lost on graduate schools. Many graduate programs identified as exemplary place moral leadership at the core of their curriculum. In a 2002 study of exceptional programs in educational leadership most of the exemplary programs were closely aligned with the ISLLC standards and almost all placed a particular emphasis on the ethics standard (Jackson & Kelley, 2002). For example, the Miami University (Ohio) program emphasis was summarized as, “Accepting school leadership as an intellectual and moral practice requires educators to understand their role in shaping the purposes of schooling for a new era, and to understand how this cannot be detached from the broader social and political context” (Jackson & Kelley, 2002, p. 206). Historically, however, examples like Miami University have been the exception not the rule when it comes to program emphasis on moral development. Attempts to study teaching ethics and moral decision making in pre-service school leadership programs have focused largely on moral leadership as an emerging field with an emphasis on explaining the growth of ethics as an interest in school leadership, curriculum, and instructional strategies. Two studies have attempted to measure the approach to ethics in educational leadership preparation programs (Beck & Murphy, 1994; Farquhar, 1981). In the first study of its kind Robin Farquhar (1981) surveyed 48 colleges and found that only four schools reported, “distinct program components designed deliberately to focus on ethics,” and additionally found only two schools that “endeavor consciously to integrate ethics into much of what they teach” (p. 196). Beck and Murphy (1994) revisited the study of ethics in educational leadership programs by surveying department chairs about their practice and perceptions of teaching leadership ethics. While only 4 out of 42 respondents reported that their department offered learning opportunities concerned with ethics “a great deal,” 21 schools responded “somewhat” and only 7 schools reported little or no ethics

based curriculum of any kind. Beck and Murphy (1997) found that those schools that were actively engaged in an ethics curriculum did so because of the practical necessity for administrators to wrestle effectively with moral dilemmas and an evolving literature base supporting the need to provide more ethics instruction for leaders. Just over 1/3 of the responding schools offered courses in ethics showing a dramatic increase in attention to teaching moral leadership from the early 80s to the early 90s with an emphasis on the early 90s as a burst of activity because many chairs reported these courses as new or under development at the time of the study. In a review of curriculum at leadership programs teaching leadership ethics, 17 schools surveyed sent course syllabi and materials for Beck and Murphy to analyze (1994). The approaches to teaching ethics was varied but tended to draw from philosophy as the theoretical base and focused on problems in practice. Teaching strategies ranged dramatically and included deductive, inductive and reflective approaches. Four trends emerged in the course content:

1. Written cases and dilemmas 2. Readings from outside education 3. Readings focusing on professional ethics 4. Readings discussing specific ethical principles or issues

Beck and Murphy (1997) pointed out that a contributing factor to the diversity of course

content and pedagogy is the myriad definitions of ethics not only in the field of educational leadership, but in the literature as ethics is discussed cross-contextually. The lack of a unified definition of moral leadership and the wide range of thought about what moral leadership looks like and what it means for school success makes it difficult for research in the field to build on itself.

In other professional development fields (i.e., dentistry) the introduction of more strongly established operational definitions from moral psychology has provided a common language and facilitated growth in understanding profession-specific moral development by building on an existing body of research in professional ethics training in fields that have already adopted or applied moral psychology research (Bebeau, 2002; King & Mayhew, 2002). The lack of connection in the literature between the field of developmental moral psychology and educational leadership preparation is striking. For example, neither Kohlberg nor Rest are commonly cited in research that examines how prospective school leaders are taught and there have been few attempts to explore how moral psychology currently informs and may better inform the development of school administrators. Moral Psychology in Professional Ethics Education This study included an examination of the approach of graduate programs in educational leadership to create curriculum, teach, and assess moral reasoning. I chose Rest’s Four Component Model as the foundation for our inquiry to apply what has already been shown to be successful in professional education other than educational administration. Particularly compelling reasons to use the Four Component Model as a guide include assessment of ethics education showing the ability of pre-service and in-service education to improve moral sensitivity, reasoning, and motivation; the ability of a person to continue growth along these components in adulthood; and the independence of the four components (Bebeau, 2002; Bebeau

& Thoma, 1994; Bolman & Deal, 2002; Erwin, 2000; Grogan & Andrews, Gross, 2001; 2002; Jaeger, 2001; Kidder & Born, 2002; Latif, 2000).

Methods I reviewed the courses of study for 75 educational leadership programs and interviewed faculty at 43 major research universities, which offered doctoral programs in educational leadership and maintained a critical mass of at least five full-time faculty dedicated to teaching educational leadership. These criteria were chosen to focus on programs that were most likely to have consistency over time and across their curriculum as a result of courses being taught primarily by full-time faculty. For each university, I selected the department chair that was most directly responsible for the graduate program that prepares students as certified public school administrators. Initially each chair was contacted by phone to describe the project and either engaged the chair in a phone interview or was directed to the faculty member best able to address our questions about the teaching of moral decision making and ethics in their program.

Where previous studies sought to measure the teaching of ethics more generally defined, I structured the inquiry to differentiate between different elements of moral leadership education. I specifically was interested in how four components of moral decision-making are taught and how learning is assessed in graduate programs of educational leadership. The following operational definitions of the four components were discussed with each subject during the interview and were adapted from Bebeau (2002). Moral sensitivity is defined as interpreting the situation as moral. It involves being aware of the different possible lines of action and how each line of action could affect the parties concerned (including oneself). Moral sensitivity involves imaginatively constructing possible scenarios (often from limited cues and partial information), knowing cause-consequence chains of events in the real world, and having empathy and role- taking skills.The second, moral judgment, is defined as the ability, once a person is aware that various lines of action are possible, to effectively consider which line of action is more justified morally. The third is moral motivation and commitment, which is defined as prioritization of moral values over other personal values. The fourth and final component is moral character and competence, which is defined as having the strength of your convictions, having courage, persisting, overcoming distractions and obstacles, having implementing skills, and having ego strength. During the semi-structured interview, subjects were read the operational definition for each component and asked if the program addressed that specific component of moral decision making, what courses or experiences in which it was taught, what methods were used to teach it, and how learning of the moral component was assessed. Subjects were then asked to send us copies of relevant syllabi, lesson plans, case studies, reading lists or other teaching tools that are used by faculty at their university to teach moral leadership.

Results The results of our interviews showed a dramatic increase in activity from the previous studies by Farquhar (1981) and Beck and Murphy (1994). As illustrated in Table 1, 91% of the schools in our study reported that moral sensitivity was either explicitly covered in a course or integrated into their curriculum and 86% taught moral judgment. The component least likely to be taught,

motivation at 58%, still represents a sharp rise over the attention that ethics and moral leadership were receiving in the early 1990s. Table 1 Teaching the Four Components for Moral Decision Making

Component Taught Not Taught Integrated Indirectly Taught

Sensitivity 37 (86%) 4 (9%) 2 (5%) 0

Judgment 37 (86%) 6 (14%) 0 0

Motivation 25 (58%) 16 (37%) 0 2 (5%)

Implementation 33 (77%) 6 (14%) 0 4 (9%)

Seventeen different courses were reported to teach moral leadership but four clearly dominated: Educational Leadership/Administration, Education Law, Ethics, and School Culture (see Table 2). Interestingly, for the motivation component 30% stated that it was integrated throughout their curriculum and not a specific course. As one respondent stated, “That content is covered in our overall conceptual framework–the whole premise of our conceptual framework is grounded there.” For some schools there was a clear intent to weave moral leadership into the curriculum and in others it was driven by the interest of individual professors. In either case, the data indicated that schools are more likely to integrate ethics into staple courses such as Introduction to Leadership or School Law and yet as the presence of ethics in these courses appears to be on the rise so is the existence of ethics dedicated courses within the school leadership curriculum. Table 2 Most Reported Courses in Which the Four Components Are Covered

Component Leadership Law Ethics School Culture

Sensitivity 21 (57%) 14 (38%) 9 (24%) 6 (16%)

Judgment 21 (57%) 10 (27%) 11 (30%) 4 (11%)

Motivation 4 (16%) 4 (16%) 7 (28%) 2 (8%)

Implementation 24 (73%) 24 (73%) 11 (33%) 6 (18%)

Note. Percentages are of those schools that reported teaching the component. Eight different methods of delivering moral leadership instruction were reported with the five most popular presented in Table 3. Case studies are clearly the most used method of instruction for three of the four components followed by class discussion a trend reversed only

for the third component, motivation. The third most popular response, written work, tended to be reflective exercises that drew from field experience or case study analysis. In teaching the moral judgment component, six schools also reported capping the case study, discussion, and reflection activities with role playing or simulation exercises. One subject summarized this approach, saying, “role playing is viewed as the hallmark of the engagement in ethical issues since it puts people in uncomfortable situations and dilemmas and asks them to make decisions.” Table 3 Methods of Instruction for Teaching the Four Components

Component Case Studies

Discussion in Class

Written Work

Lecture Field Experience

Sensitivity 25 (68%) 17 (46%) 4 (11%) 6 (16%) 4 (11%)

Judgment 27 (73%) 21 (57%) 10 (27%) 10 (27%) 0

Motivation 16 (64%) 23 (92%) 8 (32%) 6 (24%) 2 (8%)

Implementation 17 (52%) 14 (42%) 8 (24%) 6 (18%) 9 (27%)

Note. Percentages are of those schools that reported teaching the component.

In many examples case studies and readings in ethics were part of adopted texts and when readings were brought in that were dedicated to the discussion of ethics or moral leadership, they tended to be philosophy or practitioner based. Interestingly, only three subjects indicated the use of readings from the field of moral development in the classroom. Two faculty members did point to the works of moral theorists James Rest and William Perry as heavily used in their curriculum. Written assignments and observations were the two assessment methods most preferred by the schools in our study, but a close third is that they are not assessed (see Table 4). Many who were interviewed expressed that they felt that even when attempts were made to evaluate student work along one of the moral components they felt it was “hard to assess.” As one professor put it, “We wing it a lot…rather than empirical evidence professors rely more on behavioral attributes. Students are assessed on their ‘doing’ in the field and related experiences.” Table 4 Methods of Assessing Learning of the Four Components

Component Written Assignment

Observation Presented Work

Exams Not Assessed

Sensitivity 20 (54%) 10 (27%) 2 (5%) 6 (16%) 13 (35%)

Judgment 22 (59%) 12 (32%) 6 (16%) 6 (16%) 5 (14%)

Motivation 16 (64%) 14 (60%) 8 (32%) 6 (24%) 3 (25%)

Implementation 14 (42%) 8 (24%) 8 (24%) 6 (18%) 17 (52%)

Note. Percentages are of those schools that reported teaching the component.

Table 5 Programs Offering Ethics as a Course

Total Schools

Sampled Required Elective None

Stand Alone (% of ethics courses)

Combined (% of ethics courses)

75 10 (13%) 18 (24%) 47 (63%) 21 (75%) 7 (25%)

Written work included reflective pieces, writing a code of ethics, and responses to case study dilemmas. Observations of students in class and out of class included a mix of both formal and informal evaluations of students’ reasoning, knowledge, and feedback from field supervisors. In a follow-up to how one college uses scenarios, a member of the faculty reported, “It’s harder to do it that way because it is easier to say how you would act but not really know what to do in an actual situation . . .we want to be making the students walk the talk.”

Conclusion and Implications It is not clear whether the increased attention given to moral leadership education is more a result of accreditation standards; the public calls for better moral leadership, or the presence of more scholarly articles on the subject. What is evident is that the overarching theme found in the literature has translated to practice in the majority of school leadership graduate programs. Moreover, the prescriptive elements of the ELCC standards appear to influence the kinds of assignments and assessments most commonly reported in this study. In several cases school leadership programs have engaged their faculty in a thoughtful planning process to integrate the teaching of moral leadership into their curriculum and develop meaningful assessment strategies. Highlighting these exemplary programs will be a critical next step in sharing information among faculty about how to teach moral leadership and evaluate student work in this area. However, before this can be effectively done, the field must begin to reach a shared understanding of how moral leadership is defined within programs and in the literature. It is on this point that the work already done in moral psychology as applied to other pre-professional training programs can be most helpful.

The Neo-Kohlbergian approach to moral development that gave birth to Rest’s four- component model has shown great promise in identifying independent and measurable skills that make up the process of effective moral decision making. The field of moral psychology has shown us how these components can be effectively taught and students can become better at identifying a moral problem, sifting through the myriad lines of action, making morally justified decisions about which line of action to choose, placing that choice in the context of often competing personal and professional values, and having the strength of conviction to persist and

follow through with the moral choice. However, the field of moral psychology is increasingly influenced by advances in our understanding of how the mind is influenced by emotional and physical stressors that can dramatically affect one’s ability to follow through with moral decisions (Noval & Stahl. 2017; Regan & Sachs, 2016). There is a rising tide of research that points to self care as a foundational piece of supporting consistent moral action (Barnes et al., 2015; Jazaieri et al., 2016). Adapting these efforts to the context of school leadership would help faculty develop stronger assessments as well as address the teaching gap that exists in the third component of moral motivation and commitment.

The faculty who participated in this study had little trouble connecting the four- component model to the work they were, or were not, doing in their own programs. Although several offered that they were not familiar with the model, and only a few seemed to use it in their curriculum, the translation from Rest’s model to the practice of delivering pre-service school leadership instruction was easily made. Over the last 25 years the field of educational administration has moved from formally introducing ethics into the education leadership curriculum to a widespread effort to emphasize moral leadership through myriad methods and theoretical frameworks. The next steps in this evolution are to examine critically how colleges of education teach moral decision making, ask the question “what works,” and build a knowledge base that informs and improves pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment in the field of moral school leadership.

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