Ethical Administration: An Oxymoron?

Abstract

This article argues that education is a fundamentally moral enterprise and that educational administration needs to change in order to reflect ethics at its core, not at its periphery. It suggests that traditional educational administration is informed by the constructs of power and leadership and that it has developed a generalized knowledge-base on modest theoretical grounds. Together these elements preclude development of educational administration as an ethical enterprise by dominating the discourse and inhibiting the dialogue necessary for ethical decision making. The question of whether or not ethical decision making can take place within an organization is explored. Recommendations for curricular changes in educational administration programs are advanced with regard to putting ethics at the core of the curriculum instead of training in idiosyncratic particulars.