| This research is meant to be an effort to explore, analyse and determine responsibility as regards the management of schools, based on the concepts and insights in business ethics. The central problem posing searches for an answer to the question what a principal exactly means, when using the word 'responsible'. Put in a negative way it is neither the aim of this research to explore the implementation of applied ethics in the curriculum op the schools, nor to explore the meaning and impact of the ethical dimension within Flemish educational politics.;Among others 'school ethics' opens a new and deeper approach of well-known educational concepts as educational quality and policy pursuing competence, and the theories behind them. It also outlines a cluster of (existing) concepts permitting to look in a more differentiated and so more balanced way to the ethical dilemmas and decisions with which a school, and more especially its principal, is confronted. Furthermore this field research offers a first insight in the intuitive opinion of principals of Flemish secondary schools about their professional responsibility. With this PhD-research a start has been made for a scientifically grounded study of the ethical dimension within the policy and management of school organisations. In this the philosophy of prof. Emmanuel Levinas and the stakeholder approach of prof. Ed Freeman are crucial.;With the implementation of the issue of responsibility in the policy and management of school organisations, and so of their principals, this study supplies a new and actual interpretation of the recently appropriated / assigned autonomy of the school within a hectic and ever-changing environment, perpetually calling for transparency and accountability about the offered quality. It may be called clarifying to notice that in this research a lot of principals do not yet have a clear opinion on this issue; it is however also motivating to notice that they experience and accept this responsibility, though in an intuitive way. |
