Ethical Decision Making in School Administration: Leadership as Moral Architecture

Paul A. Wagner, Ph.D., is Director of the Project in Professional Ethics, University of Houston-Clear Lake and a professor in the educational leadership program. He has also taught economics for undergraduates and business management theory and organizational behavior to business graduate students at the University of Houston-Victoria. He is a former Executive Secretary of the Philosophy of Education Society, vice-president of the Association of Philosophers in Education and served on the national ethics committee of the 40,000 member Association of Public Administrators. He was a founding member of the State of Texas’ Annual Ethics workshop for senior level officials. He has served as a consultant to a number of major corporations, universities, medical schools and technical schools in the area of strategic planning. He is the author of Understanding Professional Ethics, a Phi Delta Kappan fastback and the author of over 80 articles, book chapters, essay reviews and so on. He has served as an ethics consultant to both Leadership Houston and the American Leadership Forum.

Douglas J. Simpson, Ph. D., is Professor and Helen DeVitt Jones Chair in Teacher Education, Texas Tech University. He is the author or co-author of numerous articles, reviews, chapters and books, including John Dewey and the Art of Teaching, The Pedagodfathers: The Lords of Education, Recreating Schools: Places Where Everyone Learns and Likes It, The Teacher as Philosopher, and Educational Reform: A Deweyan Perspective. He has held tenured positions at the University of Louisville, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Tennessee State University, and Texas Christian University and taught in the fields of ethics and teaching, curriculum and instruction, school psychology, and educational theory. He spends time each week at Phyllis Wheatley Elementary School where he interacts with students about ethical, historical, and geographical interests. He is a former president of the American Educational Studies Association and the Society of Professors of Education.