Moral Leadership

Paper Summary:

The paper discusses the book entitled "Moral Leadership: Getting to the Heart of School Improvement," in which the author Thomas J. Sergiovanni outlines a blueprint on how to improve schools through the use of moral role models and basic leadership characteristics. The paper highlights that the book discusses how creating a new leadership can transform a school from "an organization to a community" and inspire the kinds of "commitment, devotion and service" that will make society's schools great

From the Paper:

"This failure to understand leadership is referred to as a "managerial mystique". This term was coined by Abraham Zeleznik and refers to the misplaced focus on the leadership process instead of the people, ideas and emotions. Further, Sergiovanni argues that it is because of this managerial mystique that schools have been unable to capture, and build learning communities from, true leadership. Instead, schools have been obsessed with "doing things right at the expense of doing the right things." For example, school improvement plans became substitutes for improving outcomes. Teacher appraisal systems become substitutes for good teaching. In-service takes the place of changes in practice, congeniality substitutes for collegiality, cooperation moves in over commitment and compliance takes over for actual results. The result is that schools become trained in incapacity, or doing only ones job in isolation as opposed to working as a team and the loss of goals, which therefore leads to a standard of mediocrity."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Sergiovanni, Thomas J. Moral Leadership: Getting to the Heart of School Improvement. New York: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated, 1996.

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