ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we turn to our third theme at the center of educational administration: cultivating responsibility. Initially it will be helpful to situate this theme within the analysis earlier provided by Murphy (1999) of the three possible centers for educational administration. Murphy identified education for social justice as one of the three core themes which could ground or center educational administration. Although Murphy preferred school improvement as the center, he saw concern for social justice in education as implicated in the effort at school renewal. A sizable number of educators and parents, however, would use a different vocabulary in attending to the theme of “responsibility,” namely, those espousing “education for moral character.” The initial sections of this chapter, therefore, will be devoted to summaries of these apparently competing schools of thought so as to highlight how the theme of cultivating responsibility speaks to both, and provides, I would argue, a deeper and broader perspective for educational leadership. The later part of the chapter will be devoted to presenting what I mean by “responsibility,” followed by a brief analysis of how it is learned, followed by illustrations and applications drawn from the schooling context. This chapter is intended to provide the grounding for the succeeding two chapters that complete Part I of the book.
