Keywords
Moral reasoning, moral decision making, morality, urban, high poverty, elementary school principals, lawrence kohlberg, james rest, defining issues test 2
Abstract
The focus of this research was to identify the moral reasoning and moral judgment of elementary school principals who serve in high-poverty schools. The study was undertaken at the request of the client public school district who was attempting to identify characteristics of current elementary principals serving in high-poverty schools. Two research questions guided this study concerning the moral operational level of the principals. The theoretical framework of the study was based on the work of Lawrence Kohlberg and his stages of moral development. Participating principals were administered the Defining Issues Test-2 (DIT-2), a pencil-paper questionnaire that presented five moral dilemmas and a series of statements asking for the participant to rank solutions to the dilemmas. The results indicated that the majority of participants operated from lower levels of moral development, reasoning, and judgment. Participants’ scores were matched with their schools’ performance grades. There was not an indication that high moral scores and high school performance were linked. This study confirmed the results of an early study conducted by Vitton and Wasonga (2009) and encourages a deeper examination of the results of accountability and principal decision making.
Notes
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Graduation Date
2013
Semester
Summer
Advisor
Murray, Barbara A.
Degree
Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)
College
College of Education and Human Performance
Department
Teaching, Learning, and Leadership
Degree Program
Educational Leadership; Executive
Format
application/pdf
Identifier
CFE0004943
URL
http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0004943
Language
English
Release Date
August 2013
Length of Campus-only Access
None
Access Status
Doctoral Dissertation (Open Access)
Subjects
Dissertations, Academic -- Education, Education -- Dissertations, Academic
STARS Citation
Strenth, Robert, "The Moral Reasoning And Moral Decision Making Of Urban High-poverty Elementary School Principals In A Large Urban Southeastern School District" (2013). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2696.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/2696