Passing on the reins of responsibility? An international comparison of school leaders’ values

Bottery, Mike; Wright, Nigel

Abstract

This study stemmed from concerns about school leaders responses to the current global environmental situation. The issue was tackled by asking what priority they gave to environmental issues in their schools by examining their perceptions about a range of educational values and priorities, based upon five educational codes. A questionnaire was therefore designed which asked principals and headteachers to place their ratings in three differeent categories: (a) how they perceived governments' priority in these areas; (b) how highly they prioritised them in practice and (c) how highly they themselves valued these. The result from England, Poland and Finland suggest that principals in these countries do value environmental issues but that there is considerable variation in the level of approval of different environmental concerns. The results also suggest that they believe that their governments hold similar values, though in all cases these principals held these beliefs more strongly than their governments. However, and more broadly, none of the ideological codes was rejected, though there were interesting differences in the support for different statements within each code. The overall picture that emerged was one of pragmatic individuals whose core belief was one of passing on the 'reins of responsibility' to the next generation. Finally the results raise the question, despite a general approval of environmental values, of whether judgements were sufficiently informed to facilitate the transfer of such responsibility at a level commensurate with environmental problems currently developing.

Citation

Bottery, M., & Wright, N. (2014). Passing on the reins of responsibility? An international comparison of school leaders’ values. Contemporary educational leadership, 1(3), 51-70

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 1, 2014
• Online Publication Date: Mar 1, 2014
• Publication Date: 2014
• Deposit Date: Jun 9, 2020
• Print ISSN: 2391-4572
• Publisher: Uniwersytet Jagielloński
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 1
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 51-70
• Series ISSN: 2391-4572
• Keywords: educational values, educational codes, environmental issues
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/753811
• Publisher URL: https://cel.journal.uj.edu.pl/passing-on-the-reins-of-responsibility-an-international-comparison-of-school-leaders-values.