The present situation certainly requires moral leadership, morality, integrity and openness-fine words but what do the mean for leaders?
Seek first to understand and then to be understood-most people listen not to understand, they instead listen with the intent to reply (Covey)
Look at the weakness with compassion not with an accusation (Covey)
According to Professor West-Barnham, education is essentially a moral activity, and schools are moral communities in which all decisions are based on personal values and the morality of the school is expressed through the daily actions and activities of the members
-what are the principles by which we should live?
-how do we make them meaningful?
-how should we act?
He maintains that there is a high correlation between schools that have a clear consensus about their values and those achieving high performance for all. Actually he goes further, he says that one of the characteristics of a healthy community is that there is a consensus about the values by which it should live.-what does that mean for N.Ireland?
Moral Leadership Part 2 Connecting the country’s culture to educational performance.
Prof West -Barnham goes on to ascribe the reason for Finland’s high performance is the national consensus about the country’s social vision of commitment to inclusive, equitable and social values beyond the education system.
Would you say that in N.I Ireland there is a high degree of consensus about the values by which we should live and a high degree of consensus about how schools should be organised?
He is saying that you cannot separate a country’s behaviour and attitude from its national experience/culture and that consensus on this is vital-do you agree?
Sweden espouses a high trust society where there are high levels of trust between the citizenry and the state, reflecting the culture of the country. It has not closed schools.
For example, Sweden has approached the epidemic as a matter of the citizenry taking individual responsibility for their activities eg social distancing and going out was articulated as an appeal to shared responsibility and common self interest rather than enforcement by fines and arrests
Spain and Austria have a rather different societal history and approach
Part 3 Authority, leadership, national consensus, education and the state- a library!
How have we made decisions-does it matter? Recent controversies over funerals, protests, school openings, business openings, church openings, masks, Brexit should cause us to think how decisions are being made on our behalf.
Moral leadership based on integrity gives credibility and authority to decision making it is especially critical for people on the end of those decisions
Leadership based on following the authoritarianism on the other hand is more comforting since it allows limited ambiguity or discretion, but relies on the value systems of the authority. Is this not also an abdication of personal responsibility?
The argument is that societies with a high level of national consensus have higher education standards and handled the pandemic differently because they placed more trust in their citizenry and had less reliance on authoritarianism-so how we handled the pandemic is reflective of our society and this in turn affects our educational standards as McNeill (1976 !) argued that how we deal with epidemics mirrored each affected society.
In N.I there exists no societal consensus on eg selection, the division of schools along essentially religious lines, Brexit nor indeed the national identity of its citizens and this is reflected in our educational performance and in our handling of the pandemic.
So what do you think- are decisions being taken on: authority-, the Executive, DE or our moral values or the values, principles and beliefs of the decision makers or a Christian value system?
More to the point-how should they be taken?
Part 4 What does moral leadership look like?-Actions speak louder than words
How then to translate this into acts, how do we help children-our future leaders- develop ethical understanding that is translated into a personal value system and thus moral behaviour -for a leader, this requires many themes
-the concept of social justice
-the value placed on equity and entitlement
-the potential for tension between individual rights/values and public responsibilities
-the significance attached to personal autonomy and personal responsibility
Leaders are required to be the exemplification of what their society values (whether school or country)-
Their actions should be ethically based, value driven and morally consistent. So in N.I where there is no national consensus on eg selection, integrating schools, nationality, the place of religion -it becomes even more challenging to enact the themes outlined above.
How does the Leader align his/her personal value system with the demands of government and balance with the natural tendency to obey the authority. How does he/she satisfy the demands of a community when that community is divided and even divided within itself?
How do you square the circle if your personal beliefs are at odds with the school or society?
Hence the importance of the person specification in a job description btw, and indeed the interview questions which enable the panel to explore the value system and beliefs of the applicants.
This clearly is a different type of head to one defined by effective management techniques or a focus on improvement in instruction. i.e the one inspected and reported.
Crises force us to reflect on our value system-epitomised by the 4 bullet points above. Insert your dilemma alongside the points-whether it is selection, Brexit, racism, masks…keep you awake at night!-but it is a very sound soul searching exercise.