| This research attempted to determine the ethical perceptions of Indiana K--12 public school principals through their ratings of selected ethical preparedness statements. The goal was to determine if significant differences exist among public school principals in the state of Indiana based on level and locale of school, gender, ethnicity, source of ethical development, and years of service related to ethical areas of knowledge, disposition, and performance as derived from the Interstate School Leaders Licensure Consortium: Standards for School Leaders (ISLLC) Standard 5.;The population for this study consisted of 1,900 public school principals in the state of Indiana. A survey instrument was emailed to the respondents, with a return rate of 62%. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used, with follow up tests (comparing each pair of groups) performed with Mann-Whitney tests.;Significant differences were found in level and locale of school, years of service, ethnicity and sources of ethical development as they relate to the areas of Knowledge, Dispositions, and Performances of selected ethical preparedness statements derived from ISLLC Standard 5. Further research is recommended to better understand the reasoning behind why more K--5 public school principals respond more often on educational surveys than other principals, why grades 7--12 administrators have a more conservative and ethical outlook, how ethical development plays such a crucial role in professional training, and why gender consistently brings about no significant difference---all referencing the outcome variables of Knowledge, Disposition, and Performance as they pertain to ISLLC Standard 5. |
