Abstract:

The purpose of this presentation is to introduce groups of international young teachers and part of the material they had to study for the two-year Master’s Degree Program of the Institute of Educational Leadership at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland, during 2007-2017. The present writer’s share of the course Ethical & Responsible Leadership was to give 10 – 12 lessons altogether (depending on the university’s financial situation). The usual number of sessions was 5/6 lessons per week; then two weeks free for homework and then the rest of the weekly lessons. The students had been provided with a course path to make them acquainted with the key elements of the course – that is: the route from philosophy to practice. Students were divided into groups: the first task for each group was to ponder on the following question: What do we mean when we speak about ethics? Lively disputes arose because of the responses by representatives from various nationalities and educational backgrounds. The ‘formal’ philosophical part consisted of basic terminology and a few fundamentals about ethics. The word ethics itself was defined in singular and plural forms, as was Bennett’s (2010) question: What is this thing called ethics? Delving into practice started with reminiscences of UBUNTU, a Zulu word about the importance of collaboration presented in a congress for world principals in Cape Town in 2005. Then the students learned glimpses about ethical schools (Starratt 2003) and the connections of ethical systems with leadership styles (Hitt 1990). The final assignment was writing two essays, one on the course material dealt with and the other on Noddings’ (2005) The Challenge to Care in Schools. An Alternative Approach to Education. The essays were assessed using grades from 0 to 5.

Keywords:

Ethics, education, leadership.