This symposium focuses on how school leaders handle values and ethics concerning policy. Values, valuation processes, and leadership in educational administration with a particular emphasis on the notion of community and professionalism are the bases for researchers active at the Consortium for the Study of Leadership and Ethics in Education (CSLEE) which was established as a University Council for Educational Administration (UCEA) Program Center in June 1996. More than twenty years later this UCEA program center continues its work and remains devoted to the support, promotion, and dissemination of theory and research on values and leadership. The CSLEE is a consortium of faculty and research associates representing eight international university-based centers and institutes. The papers in this symposium are all written by active members of the CSLEE and the empirical examples come from 4 different countries.

Values have traditionally been considered an important influence on administrative practices.  Chester Barnard’s seminal work, The Functions of the Executive, proposes a definition of leadership, dating back to 1938, that highlights the moral dimension of leadership as essential to administration.   More recent works by Don Willower (1994, 1999) and Jerry Starratt (2003) have reinforced the relevance of values as influences on administration and promoted active debate on the subject. 

A practice-grounded and research-validated reinterpretation is presented of how values and ethics influence administrative practices in schools.  The basic proposition is that acquiring administrative sophistication is a function of understanding the influence of personal values on the actions of individuals and the influence of values on organizational and social practices.  A values perspective is used to link theory and practice to promote authentic leadership and democracy in schools.  Authentic leadership may be thought as a metaphor for professionally effective, ethically sound, and consciously reflective practices in educational administration.   This is leadership that is knowledge-based, values informed, and skillfully executed.  With these notions in mind, values are formally defined and proposed as an influence on the actions of individuals as well as on administrative practice.  The perennial challenges of leadership are discussed together with the special circumstances of our times.  This requires the pursuit of personal sophistication, sensitivity to others, and the promotion of reflective professional practice. Examples of findings from recent research that demonstrate the utility and relevance of values and valuation processes as guides to educational leadership are presented. 

The challenges between educational systems leadership and democratic ethical practices on various leadership levels and in different leadership positions in the educational system are covered in the four papers to be presented. All educational systems have several governing and leadership levels. Both within and between the levels are intervening spaces that interpret, transmit, and translate policy intentions. Our symposium will focus on how diverse values and ethics are understood and played out depending on the level and country context. We are interested in how relations and communication in the intervening spaces reflect values and ethics and how these are connected to policy and practice in the translation processes. All the papers in the symposium will analyze how values and ethics are understood and handled on different leadership levels. Especially, how diversity in values and ethical issues are understood and handled by school leaders on different levels in the system.

Begley, P.T. (ed.) (1996) Values and Educational Leadership, Albany: State University of New York Press. Begley, P.T. & Johansson, O, Eds. (2003) The Ethical Dimensions of School Leadership. Kluwer Academic Publishers. Begley, P.T. & Johansson, O. The Values of School Administration: Preferences, Ethics, and Conflicts (2008) in Journal of School Leadership Volume 18—July 2008. This article is a reprint, originally appearing in volume 8, number 4, of the 1998 Journal of School Leadership. Branson, C.M., & Gross, S.J. (Red.) (2014). Handbook of Educational Leadership. Routledge. Johansson, O. & Ärlestig, H. (2022a). Democratic governing ideals and the power of intervening spaces as prerequisite for student learning. Journal of Educational Administration, 60(3), 340–353. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-04-2021-0079 Johansson, O., Ärlestig, H. (2022b). Policy implementations in schools: the chain of command and its intervening spaces. In A. Nir (ed.) School leadership in the 21th century: challenges and strategies. (pp. 247–276). NY: Nova. Starratt, R,J (2003) Centering Educational Administration -Cultivating Meaning, Community, Responsibility, LEA Publisher, London. Willower, D. (1994). Educational administration: Inquiry, Values, Practice. Lancaster, PA: Technomic. Willower, D. (1999). Values and valuation: A naturalistic approach. In P.T. Begley (Ed.), Values and educational leadership(pp. 121-138). Albany, NY: SUNY Press.