Ethical Issues in Education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Ethical Issues in Education - Essay Example The purpose of decision making is to direct human behavior towards a future goal. In school environment, group decision making involves co-acting members with specialized knowledge, interacting to arrive at some valued decisions or outcomes. Ethical and moral decision-making in schools are important because it determines the main trends and approaches to education including staff relations and teacher-student interaction. Educational leadership in schools is interpreted in simple terms, such as getting others to follow or getting people to do things willingly, or interpreted more specifically, for example as the use of authority in decision making. It may be exercised as an attribute of position, or because of personal knowledge or wisdom. Although, modern views on leadership underline the importance of personal traits of educational leaders and his/her ability to lead and direct teaching staff and students. The aim of the paper is to analyze and evaluate the main issues and problems faced by school principals, and their impact on education process and moral development of students. In schools, ethical decision-making is purely a matter of subjective choice or preference, or a matter relegated to religious beliefs and dogma is also misguided. Ethics can be and has been the subject of public debate and public consensus. Ethical decision-making is gained from reflecting on the ways the community solved the practical problems of living together in a self-governing community. Following Beck (1994) in one sense, ethical knowledge does not issue in absolutes, for the community never came up with the one best way to respond in all situations. In schools, ethical and moral decision-making of a principle is crucial because he/she demonstrates how to be an ethical person by living in the community and learning the normal ways the community conducted its affairs and relationships. As long as educators have been able to draw on the conception of science as the authority about the world, they have been able to legitimize a claim to always "know what is best" for their stude nts. Acknowledging that the voice of the student carries its own distinctive authority means challenging the accepted distribution of power and authority within school. If questions of the nature of knowledge cannot be untangled from those of ethics, neither can they be untangled from questions of education politics (Aiken et al 1995). Accordingly, ethics needs to focus on the practical decision-making context. It must certainly be multidisciplinary: sociological, philosophical, psychological, and educational. More importantly, it needs to return to the real roots of education itself and to immerse itself in its own proper theoretical objects. The accumulation of these ethical decisions, together with the technical decisions with which they are intimately linked, contributes importantly to the final outcome of any particular encounter (Ashbaugh & Kasten 1995). Allowing for the context in which the original approach to the school principle is made educational outcomes depend more on the ethical decisions than on any other factors, including the decisions that may, in relevant circumstances, eventually emerge regarding the more familiar life and education issues. In school, the principle is a leader

The Wechsler Intelligence Scales Research Paper

The Wechsler Intelligence Scales - Research Paper Example Currently, the scales are available in three versions, they include WAIS-III, which measures adult intelligence, WISC-III, which measures intelligence in children, and WPPSI-R, which is designed for children aged between 4 and 6 ? years (IUPUI, 2010). There have been several revisions to improve the test ability of the scales and to include more population groups since Wechsler published the first scale in 1939. The purpose of WAIS-III is to measure adult intellectual ability. The scale is in its third edition, and is designed for individuals aged between 16 and 89 years (Pearson Assessments, 2011). The scale is administered in the form of visual, performance, and full tests for durations of between 60 and 90 minutes. The scale’s norms include IQ and index scores, which are all designed to test the individual’s intellectual ability in a comprehensive manner. The scale’s internal structure is composed of subtests that include tests on verbal comprehension, percept ual organization, working memory, processing speed and visual memory. The validity and reliability of WAIS-III are supported by correlations with previous editions of the intelligence scales and by clinical studies on adults with hearing impairments, retardation, and other forms of cognitive disabilities. The scale’s validity and reliability are also promoted by the availability of multiple tests administered to people with multiple intellectual abilities. WISC-III Also developed by David Wechsler, the purpose of the third edition children’s intelligence scale, (WISC-III), is to test for verbal and performance abilities among children aged between 7 and 16 years. It includes tests on information, coding, arithmetic, vocabulary, and comprehension (Kamphaus, 2005). Verbal abilities are tested through oral subtests while performance abilities are tested through nonverbal problems. Although all tests are timed, bonus points are awarded for faster work and older children ha ve to earn much higher points to rank with the appropriate age group. The test has several subtests grouped into the general areas of verbal and performance scales. Verbal scales are designed to measure language, memory skills, reasoning and general knowledge while performance scales are meant to measure problem-solving, spatial, and sequencing skills. Administration of the test is done by trained examiners to individual examinees and a complex test material is usually required. In scoring, the test scores are converted to standard scores and computed with a standard deviation of 3 and a mean score of 10. Scores in the subscales of verbal and performance areas are turned into IQ scores, and later summed to obtain the overall score. All scores obtained in the tests are normative with a standard deviation of 15 and a mean score of 100. The scores are then classified to indicate the individual’s class as follows: Beyond 130- gifted, 120-129- very high, 110-119- bright normal and 90-109- average (IUPUI, 2010). Individuals who score 85-89 are considered low average, 70-84 are classed as borderline mental functioning, and scores below 50 indicate cases of mild, moderate, or severe retardation. The multiple tests incorporated within the intelligence