ETHICS AND DATA IN DECISION MAKING

The Role of Ethics and Data in Decision Making

Abstract

This paper seeks to establish the relationship between data and ethics and how it influences decision-making within a school set-up. Data-driven decision-making has been identified as one of the essential values in school leadership. Since the 1960s, existing decision-making techniques in educational leadership literature have been data-driven decision-making, moral decision-making, and contingency decision-making. Making decisions through a data-driven approach refers to data use in goal setting, identification of problem statements, identification of options and evaluation, and finally, choosing a course of action. On the other hand, moral decision-making deals with what is fair, right, virtuous, and morally upright. These two approaches could conflict if school leaders are situated in a context where leaders, students, and facilitators have competing interests. This paper concludes by highlighting how these two concepts can be employed harmoniously to facilitate leaders better decision-making.

Keywords: data, ethics, decision making, school administration, goals

The Role of Ethics and Data in Decision-Making within a School Set-Up

Data-driven decision-making has been identified as one of the essential values in school leadership. Since the 1960s, prevalent decision-making techniques in educational leadership literature have been data-driven decision making, moral decision making, and contingency decision making (Strike & Soltis, 2005). Making decisions through a data-driven approach refers to data use in goal setting, identification of problem statements, identification of options and evaluation, and finally, choosing a course of action. On the other hand, moral decision-making deals with what is fair, right, virtuous, and morally upright.

Ethics

This refers to moral philosophy. It can also be defined as a code of morals practiced by a person or group of people. It simply defends the concepts of right and wrong. On a general note, ethics seek to resolve questions of human morality. This is done by the definition of ideas such as right and wrong, good and evil, etc. (Wagner & Simpson, 2008)

Ethics in school administration deals with educational actions which happen within a school setting. To this effect, the success of a school and the extent to which it achieves its goals is dependent on school leadership and effective governance. Ethical issues are a part of everyday life in schools (Wang, 2019). As much as doing the right thing may seem easy when an ethically difficult situation arises; one must seek to examine their ethics in practice. The question then becomes, can one stand by the right choices even when faced with tough situations that may require one to compromise?

A school leader who consistently behaves morally means that he or she values social justice. In contrast, a leader who is inconsistent and behaves arbitrarily loses his reliance among the other staff members, which becomes controversial (Wagner & Simpson, 2008). Decision-making within a school set-up is a crucial process, and hence an ethical or unethical decision directly influences the school climate. The following table shows some of the ethical violations and the penalty awarded for every violation.

District Code of Ethics Analysis Chart

School District: Miami senior high school

Ethics Violation

Example of Violation

Penalty for Violation

Disruptive behavior

. The 2018-2019 SESIR Data shows there were 60 incidents of disruptive...

Paying careful attention to text difficulty

4. teach essential content knowledge so that all students master critical concepts

Combination of wide reading, direct teaching of individual, high utility words, instruction in how to learn interdependently, and instruction activities that increase learning consciousness

5. increase the amount and quality of open, sustainable discussions

Employing either facilitator-guided or group-based approaches to ensure that students have opportunities to participate in high-quality discussions.

Decision making and ethics

Ethical decision-making is the process of assessing the moral consequences of a course of action. Ethical decisions cannot be entirely made based on objective analysis or consideration of data alone but on judgment and interpretation (Greenfield, 2004). It also involves choosing who has to be involved in the decision-making process and how the decisions themselves should be made. Educational managers and leaders need to be aware of their own ethical and moral affiliations to refer to them when faced with difficult decisions.

Conclusion

School leaders make countless decisions every single day, and their decisions are manifested in their behavior. Without high-quality data, school leaders as decision-makers are flying blind. School leaders usually have to make decisions based on incomplete data, ambguity, conflicting perspectives from stakeholders, and time pressure. Many decisions involve degrees of ambiguity that data-driven decision-making alone cannot handle. Therefore, when it comes to decision-making, data alone is not usually enough. Therefore, moral decision-making jumps in to ensure harmony during the decision-making process to avoid the problems and unethical behaviors associated with decision-making (Wang, 2019). Data alone do not necessarily cause wise decision-making. Leaders should work…