NOTIONS OF ETHICAL AMONG SENIOR EDUCATIONAL LEADERS

This article describes a study of the ethical definitions characterizing the moral wrestlings of members of the Saskatchewan League of Educational Administrators, Directors and Superintendents (LEADS). LEADS is a professional public service organization empowered by provincial statute to register and monitor senior educational administrators who in turn are charged with the responsibility for delivering education (elementary and secondary level) to the public of one of Canada's 10 provinces. The leaders' a priori definitions of ''ethical'' are described and analyzed in the research presented in this article. The article describes the ethical consciousness of senior public administrators and identifies the various meanings associated with the notion of ethical. These discrete definitional understandings provide the basis for a description of the notion of ethical and demonstrate an alternative research approach to describing the ethical orientations of educational leaders.