Course helps future educational administrators learn ethics.

A school administrator is an educational leader who promotes the success of all students by acting with integrity, fairness, and in an ethical manner. (From the ISLLC Standards for School Leaders.)

Who in education could argue with that statement? But how do school administrators learn to act ethically, fairly and with integrity?

Dr. Dorothy Suomala, assistant professor of educational leadership at Minnesota State University in Moorhead, believes ethics courses should play a key role in educational leadership graduate programs.

In a paper co-written with student Maartje VandenBogaard, Suomala described her school's ethics course for aspiring school administrators and the process of creating an ethical leadership platform. Neither was able to attend the Women in Educational Leadership Conference at the University of Nebraska in September, but a colleague presented it in their place. Suomala also spoke later with WIHE.

Since they will go on to a high-pressure career requiring much ethical decision making, the goal "is to give students the tools to be independent in making good decisions and to know their decisions are good," she told WINE.

Until the late 80s, courses in the ethics of educational administration were rare, she noted. The focus was on the "how" of administration and not the "why." But that focus is changing. Suomala's department, for example, now requires an ethics course in its master's and licensure programs.

While students in educational leadership generally understand they'll be expected to adhere to a professional code of ethics, they often have little background in formal ethics or in exploring what they personally believe and why, Suomala told WIHE. One tool to help them do this is the creation of an ethical leadership platform.