Many educators are also academic researchers and activists. This diversity can enrich our lives in important ways, allowing us to experience distinct domains of life and apply insights across them. Nevertheless, the responsibilities connected to these roles sometimes conflict in ways that undermine the meaningfulness of an educator's life by…

Students in teacher education programs are often faced with perceived threats to their epistemological heritages. According to System Justification Theory, when faced with these perceived threats, individuals may become more defensive, epistemically resistant, and cognitively rigid. More specifically, due to a palliative psychological need,…

Several years ago, the Legislature adopted significant amendments to the basic conflict of interest statute for local elected officials, primarily in the area of financial thresholds, but also in the area of scope of enforcement. This is an important area of the law for board members and superintendents, so a current and thorough knowledge of the…

As president of the University of Miami, Donna E. Shalala answers to dozens of trustees, many of whom are captains of industry. But two of those board members also answer to her. Ms. Shalala's uncommon role reversal is a product of her lucrative service on the boards of two different companies headed by members of Miami's Board of Trustees. In…

This article considers the experiences and perceptions of practising English headteachers and the tensions that they face when juggling government prescription and government initiatives, which may be antagonistic to their educational values and beliefs. Managerial control over teachers work has been particularly acute and destructive to…

Inspired by real-life events, this case describes the dilemma of a novice assistant principal who must balance her role as an administrator at her high school campus where a cousin's son, Eddie, recently enrolled and is proving to be disruptive the first month of school. Troubled by questions of ethics and loyalty, the issue is complicated after…

Researchers undertake a number of different research evaluation tasks, taking up a substantial part of their research time--estimated to about one work month per year for a professor. This paper addresses the various evaluator roles and tasks researchers take on, and the tensions they involve. How the research evaluator role may conflict with the…

Special education teachers who also serve as case managers for students with disabilities are in unique leadership positions in which they face complex ethical dilemmas and are called on to make decisions that involve multiple competing interests and pressures. The purpose of this study was to explore how special education leaders identify ethical…

How do teachers reconcile their religious identity with their teacher identity in diverse settings? Two case studies of K-8 teachers, drawn from the same religious community and teaching at the same school, are used to examine teacher dispositions and how they integrate religious dispositions with their life and work as teachers. This article…

Although all teachers are expected to be "role models," discursive trajectories reaching back to the West's gay liberation pressure queer teachers to be role models in specific ways--by "coming out" and helping queer students out of their "time of difficulty." Paradoxically, discourses that construct children as…

Critical discourse analysis was employed to examine the narratives collected from 40 community college administrators who were asked to recount their experience in an event, activity, or decision that challenged their values. The analysis yielded three findings. First, contradictions emerged between the administrators' educational and professional…

This paper seeks to ascertain the attitudes to, and work on, English school boards of clergymen from the three main Churches which had taken an active interest in education in England in the nineteenth century--the Church of England, the Roman Catholic Church and the Wesleyan Methodist Church. Were the clergy "the enemy within",…

Most professions have wrestled with the problem of dual relationships, and the profession of youth work is no exception. Howard Sercombe holds that in order to understand how dual relationships can be avoided within youth work, it is necessary to be clear about what is involved in professional relationships. Sercombe also outlines policies that…

In this article, the authors review the case scenario featured in "When Is an External Evaluator No Longer External?" In the literature, the authors observe that there is no dearth of definitions of internal and external evaluators. For example, Kendall-Tackett defined an external evaluator as "any individual not directly involved in the program…

Nearly every legislative session in the last decade has changed state law in a way that requires school board members and superintendents to be more highly sensitized to conflict of interest issues, regardless of the size of their district. Prior state law simply forbade most opportunities for financial conflicts of interest, especially those…