A study of school principals views on ethical dilemmas encountered in schools

The purpose of this research is to determine decisions the high school principals make in the face of ethical dilemmas and to investigate the effect of the gender factor in the methods, and justifications they used in the solution of these dilemmas. The study is a research based on the phenomenological method one of qualitative research methods. The study group was constituted using purposive sampling methods: the criterion sampling method and the easily accessible case sampling method. It consists of ten female and ten male principals working in the high schools in Şahinbey and Şehitkamil districts of Gaziantep province in the 2016-2017 academic year. The answers to the ethical dilemma scenarios presented to the school principals were used to collect the research data. Content analysis was used to analyse the data. In the research findings, the answers given by the participants to the eight different types of ethical dilemma scenarios presented to them were divided into categories. In this way, their decisions were determined. It has been determined that in the dilemma of community standards and individual rights female and male principals make decisions according to the individual rights, in the dilemma of traditional curriculum and hidden curriculum female and male principals make decisions according to the traditional curriculum, in the dilemma of personal codes and professional codes female and male principals make decisions according to the professional codes, in the dilemma of the American Melting Pot and the Chinese Hot Pot female and male principals make decisions according to the American Melting Pot, in the dilemma of equality and equity female and male principals make decisions according to equality. It has been determined that in the dilemma of religion and culture female principals make decisions according to both of them, male principals make decisions according to religion, in the dilemma of accountability and responsibility female principals make decisions according to responsibility, male principals make decisions according to accountability, in the dilemma of privacy and safety female principals make decisions according to safety, male principals make decisions according to privacy. According to these results, some suggestions have been made for school administrators about ethical dilemma solutions. Keywords: Ethics, Ethics in Education, Ethical dilemma, High school principals