ETHICAL REASONING MODEL

Ethical Reasoning Model



Ethical Reasoning Model

Introduction

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.

Discussion

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, PHS, 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).?

There is ample evidence that the emergence of the PHS review process had an impact on the curriculum and instructional practices of licensure programs in educational leadership. It is to be expected that it would also bring about more interest in teaching ethical skills and assessing moral dispositions. What is not clear is how the field has interpreted the ethics standard when developing strategies for ethical training. Moreover, little is known about best practices currently used for assessing achievement in the moral domain.

The Neo-Kohlbergian Four Component Model and Moral/Ethical Schema

Additional work with Kohlberg's theory of moral development led to the development of a Neo-Kohlbergian approach to ethical behavior, including the recognition and designation of other moral processes within the broader spectrum of cognitive development. Rest's extensive review of morality literature considered morality from the social learning, behaviorist, social psychological and cognitive-developmental perspectives. The resulting Neo-Kohlbergian model addresses, incorporates, and builds upon Kohlberg's stages of moral judgment, but significantly extends scrutiny to another equally important aspect of morality - moral behavior (i.e. moral action). We now turn to the Neo-Kohlbergian model in an effort to broadly examine professionals' moral/ethical dispositions, or their trends in judgment and action as they work within ill- structured scholastic contexts.

While the Neo-Kohlbergian perspective extended Kohlberg's initial focus on moral judgment to an expanded consideration of moral sensitivity, motivation, and character, it also offers additional insight into Kohlberg's early work with psychological structures. Kohlberg's designation of fixed stages of moral development is extended by the Neo- Kohlbergian approach to moral growth through increasingly complex moral schema that demonstrate advancement from micro- to macro-morality. That is, the Neo-Kohlbergian emphasis on macro-morality scrutinizes the degree to which an individual focuses holistically on society-wide cooperation as opposed to micro-morality, where an individual remains centered on routine interactions with known ...