4.1 Ethical Leadership
Learning Objectives
- Describe the ethical responsibilities that guide programs for early care and education and the professionals that work in them.
- Use the NAEYC code of ethical conduct to guide decision making[TM1] .
- Recognize how culture, bias, and belief systems impact and influence ethical dilemmas.
Running an Ethical Program is Complex
What are ethics? From a practical standpoint it can be difficult to connect to the concept because they are ideals and principles we aspire and work towards. Ethics can be easy to read about and then set aside as something you don’t really need or might come back to some day. However, ethics are something you use everyday in decision making, relationships, and interactions with children, families, colleagues, and your community.
As an early care and education professional, I would frequently be faced with any of the following ethical scenarios:
- Responding to a parent when they ask me to keep their 3 year old from napping because they are not sleeping at night.
- Unpacking a child’s lunch that included a sandwich made out of chocolate chips, marshmallow crème and sprinkles—every day. Yes every day!
- Overhearing a team member complaining about another team member.
- Being asked by my supervisor to “just do this today because licensing is coming by.”
How did I navigate these challenges? Sometimes not too well. But once I learned there was a tool to use, the National Association for the Education of Young Children’s Code of Ethical Conduct, I was much better prepared to recognize and respond to ethical dilemmas when they occurred! The NAEYC created the Code of Ethical Conduct to guide professionals in how to navigate ethical situations and dilemmas. Let’s first dive into some definitions and foundational concepts.
Commonly Used Words
Ethics, ethical responsibilities, and ethical leadership are big topics that we will introduce in this module.
Ethics are moral principles that govern a person’s behavior or the conducting of an activity.
Ethical responsibilities is the ability to recognize, interpret, and act upon multiple principles and values according to the standards within a given field and/or context.
Ethical Leadership is defined as “leadership demonstrating and promoting ‘normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relations’.”
Is there a connection between values, morality, and ethics? Generally, the words are used interchangeably. There is, however, a difference:
- Values are the qualities we believe intrinsically to be desirable and that we prize for ourselves
- Morality is usually more theoretical; it is a philosophical concept that is about our beliefs about right and wrong
- Ethics are the practical application of morality in daily life. The term ethics refers to a conscious deliberation regarding moral choices.
The difference is that of theory and practice. If a person has a moral character, he or she will generally deal with other people in an ethical manner.
Example
Adaptation Credit
Adapted from Chapter 1 in Leadership in Early Care and Education by Dr. Tammy Marino; Dr. Maidie Rosengarden; Dr. Sally Gunyon; and Taya Noland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
