Exploring Decision-Making and Generative Moral Decisions in Educational Leadership

Abstract

This broadly phenomenological study explores the decision-making experiences of educational leaders to better understand how a leader’s moral literacy relates to their generative capacity. Generative capacity refers to the ability to envision new possibilities, to reframe, and extend beyond the status quo (Avital & Te’Eni, 2009). Interviews with six school and district leaders from a mid-sized New England school district explored the constructs of moral literacy (Tuana, 2007) and moral imagination (Fesmire, 2003; Godwin, 2008, 2015; Johnson, 1992; Martin, 2007; Werhane, 1999) to better understand the connections between moral imagination and generative decision-making. Decision-making is an essential component of professional practice for educational leaders that has the potential to positively impact the organizations that they serve. The findings from this study suggest that ethics sensitivity in generative decisions was related to organizational culture and context. When making generative decisions, school and district leaders used an ethic of critique (Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2016; Starratt, 1994) or the ethic of the profession (Shapiro & Stefkovich, 2016) as moral frameworks for evaluating potential actions. These frameworks were most likely to result in a change to the status quo. Participants developed possible resolutions to these identified moral issues. Decision-making was identified as an iterative process that requires a level of consensus. The importance of centering the voices of people from historically marginalized groups emerged as essential throughout the process.